Gen. Carter Ham, the
head of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has admitted bluntly the
failure of U.S. military training to instill respect for human rights
in a Malian army now accused of massacring Arabs and Tuaregs as it
fights its way north into rebel-held territory. "We didn't spend
probably the requisite time focusing on values, ethics, and a
military ethos," Ham acknowledged, saying that most U.S.
training for the Malians focused on tactics, strategy, and "technical
matters."
Since 1985, the
United States has sponsored approximately 156 Malian military
officers and non-commissioned officers at U.S. professional military
schools and given them training focused on professionalizing the
military forces. Over the past three years, this funding has reached
at least roughly $400,000 annually, and it is possible U.S.
intelligence agencies have also funneled in support as well. Sadly,
Mali is hardly an isolated case of U.S. military assistance
programmes operating with dangerously little oversight and lacking a
compelling central rationale.
Though good examples
of successful U.S. military training programmes exist but lots of
headline cases have gone badly wrong over the years -- from training
Indonesian troops that carried out atrocities in East Timor to the
billions poured into the Egyptian military to the scores of tainted
graduates from the School of the Americas that ran riot in Central
America during the 1980s.
In looking at the
patterns of U.S. military assistance, the question is not who gets
American military aid, but who doesn't. In 2012, the United States
delivered bilateral security assistance to 134 countries -- meaning
that every country on Earth had about a 75 percent chance of
receiving U.S. military aid. Once you weed out places like North
Korea and Vatican City, you are pretty much assured of receiving
military aid no matter how large or small your country, no matter how
democratic or despotic your regime, no matter how lofty or minimal
your GDP.
There has been
almost zero discussion of how to better focus U.S. military
assistance around clear objectives and direct it to countries where
it can make a lasting difference. And these aren't insignificant sums
when taken together. The administration requested $9.8 billion in
security assistance funding for fiscal year 2013.
Much of this
military assistance -- through programmes like Foreign Military
Financing; International Military Education and Training;
Non-proliferation, Anti-terrorism, Demining, and Related Programmes;
International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement; Peacekeeping
Operations; and the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund -- is
supposed to be overseen by the State Department with the Defense
Department doing the heavy lifting of actually delivering aid and
training.
The rationale on
paper for such assistance is straightforward and usually receives
uncritical congressional support. U.S. military aid helps train
security forces, finance the purchase of military equipment, bolster
the ability of law enforcement to tackle the illegal narcotics trade,
and shape cooperation on non-proliferation issues.
But more than
anything, the Pentagon has always insisted that spreading military
assistance so broadly is all about building relationships with fellow
militaries -- a cost effective way of establishing contacts who will
pick up the phone in a ministry of defence when needed. For many,
U.S. dollars propped up an autocratic military in Egypt, other argue
that it was the senior flag relationships between the Pentagon and
Cairo that kept the military from opening fire on democratic
protesters during the Arab Spring.
But U.S. military
aid looks much better on paper than in practice, in large part
because it is often delivered as if on autopilot without a reasoned
discussion of its merits. The State Department largely offers
rubber-stamp approvals, and the Foreign Service currently lacks
personnel with the expertise needed to engage in a rigorous debate
with the Pentagon about who deserves aid and why.
As Gordon Adams of
the Stimson Center has argued, the State Department's "internal
capacity to plan, budget, and manage these programmes needs to be
seriously strengthened." This, combined with the general
tendency of Congress to treat military spending requests as something
just short of a papal writ, has meant that U.S. security assistance
programmes receive very little oversight.
Equally troubling,
military and economic assistance are treated as quite different
creatures. For economic assistance, the United States has
increasingly insisted that aid recipients at least demonstrate some
marginal commitment to democracy and open markets. Not so on the
military side, where concerns about corruption, the rule of law, and
human rights are treated as something we are too polite to ask about.
Indeed, we probably
would offer military training to everyone if it were not for the
minor restrictions imposed by Senate Democrats like the Leahy Law,
which prohibits U.S. military assistance to known thugs and war
criminals that violate human rights with impunity. Yes, having
military-to-military contacts through U.S. military training and aid
is often useful and can build important relations and lasting trust.
But it is equally
true that the list of U.S.-trained officers that have led coups
against their sitting governments is a lengthy one in countries
ranging from Honduras to Haiti to the Gambia. Contrary to what Ham's
remark suggested, a few months spent studying tactics and logistics
in Kansas or Georgia rarely seems to slow down a power-hungry colonel
when he is hell bent on toppling the elected government that just
threatened to cut his budget.
Underwriting
security assistance to countries with autocratic leadership or
nations that are of little strategic significance doesn't make much
sense. U.S. military aid and training should be concentrated in a far
fewer countries rather than being sprinkled all around the globe like
fairy dust in hopes that good relations result.
Nations should be
chosen to receive such military aid and training based on their
commitment to reform -- both within the military and within the
broader structures of democratic governance, free markets, and
respect for human rights. Such aid should be a reward for
high-performing countries, not a party favour dispensed at the door.
General Ham sounded
genuinely surprised that American-trained officers were up to
nefarious deeds. Apparently Ham is not much of a history buff -- a
U.S. trained captain led a coup against the government of Mali just
last March.
Courtesy: Foreign
Policy Analysis
