Security Cooperation Activities: Strengthening a Partner Military and its Governing Institutions - Case Studies of Vietnam and Mali, Effect of Targeted Civilian Aid on Government Threats from Military

This report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. Determining the right mix of military to civilian aid to strengthen partner militaries and their governing institutions will challenge operational artists in the future. Military planners who broaden their fields of study to include a partner nation's military, government, and economic capabilities approach the problem with a holistic understanding. Recently, the United States concluded two wars, planned to reduce the size of the U.S. Armed Forces, and planned to increase reliance on allied partners abroad. In the future, U.S. military and foreign allies will expand partnerships while maintaining a global presence through security cooperation activities. Security cooperation activities train and equip partner militaries, while security sector reform increases a government's ability to manage its security forces. U.S. efforts that empower security forces without strengthening that government's ability to control brings unintended consequences like coups d'etat. Using comparative observations across two cases of U.S. security cooperation, Vietnam 1961-1963 and Mali 2002-2012, this monograph supports the hypothesis that military aid without targeted civilian aid strengthens a military and threatens its government in times of crisis.

Operational artists charged with planning security cooperation activities account for partner nation characteristics when deciding to apply military or civilian aid, e.g., money for military weapons or defense ministry training. Despite their best efforts to understand the environment, planners fail to recognize security cooperation pitfalls. For example, planners occasionally focus solely on a partner's military shortfalls at the cost of weakening a nation's governing civilian institutions. The purpose of this monograph is to test the hypothesis that an abundance of U.S. military aid, without targeted civilian aid, increases the strength of military institutions at the expense of the governing civilian institutions.