Chris Frueh

War, Peace and the Military, Pt. 2

Page 1

Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of foreign aid in the defense policies in

the 'first world' donor nations and how a historical study of various points in the history of

industrial nations could give direction as to new reasons and ways to invest in these developing

nations. My thesis is that an understanding of the Industrial Revolution could give valuable

insight into the transitional nature of developing countries in enough detail as to allow more

coherent foreign policy than merely building up the countries which profess our stated aims. In

particular, I will be focusing on the Cold War polar power structure from 1950 to the present to

mine for examples such as the Syria-USSR-Palestinian dynamic of aid and the results in

destabilizing the region, Egypt-USSR from 1962-1973, US-Colombia in the 1980s-1990s, US-

Iran during the reign of the shah, and Britain-Burma in the 1980s. I will then introduce the three

dimensions of manipulation through aid, draw parallels to these historical data points and show

how certain aspects of their upheaval mirror transitional periods in industrial history. I will then

conclude with a discussion of which future research could be most helpful.

The reason that these particular aid relationships were chosen was because of the

significant impact the monetary or material donations had on the local and internal policy of the

recipients. In each case, small problems became the loci of leverage for external manipulation,

some more successful than others, wherein the more powerful country attempted to move social

structure, political power balance, or domestic policy towards their own foreign policy aims. The

aid could be covert1 or overt, physical or economic, with the permission of the local government
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or without. The economic side of conflict within the networked2 world means that it may be

more productive for a country to suborn the will of the populace by overpowering their local

economy through targeted infusion of foreign aid. Not merely productive, the very nature of the

manipulation would be, on the surface, innocuous3 and, in its effects, extremely profitable. The

converse is also true, that with careful understanding of the society one wishes to alter, any

profitable endeavor can be an opportunity for political gain. One quick note needs mention,

though. Some of the literature on the topic of aid focuses on the reasons why countries should

invest in foreign aid. This paper avoids that problem entirely as it is my belief that such questions

are the role of politicians, thus this paper is, in a way, a form of engineering. Assuming one

wants to accomplish some of the effects described herein and that foreign aid would not

compromise the policies of the state, this paper describes ways to use aid for more indirect

effects than traditionally expected.

The traditional role of foreign aid is clear and takes three distinct forms. Firstly, the use of

aid to promote ethical restraint. The European Union's Report on Human Rights, for example,

states that “[t]he Union is committed to... the process of “mainstreaming” human rights and

democratisatio0n objectives... It therefor continues to promote the growing international trend

towards integrating the promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law into

development cooperation, trade policies and the promotion of peace and security.” (Tamen 4)

The Burmese government had been massacring its ethnic minorities and the EU was taking steps,

in keeping with its goals stated above, to promote restraint4. The method of promotion chosen

was the carrot-stick offering of aid or sanctions. In 2001, the European Council authorized
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economic sanctions against “countries that seriously and systematically violated any standards

referred to in the [International Labour Organisation] Declaration on Fundamental Principles and

Rights at Work, as was the case for Burma/Myanmar”. A variant on this theme is the donation of

aid to countries to combat a specific crime problem, the problem in recent history being that of

drug production. Billions of dollars were sent to South American countries to tamp down the

druglords but this problem took a political dimension when the druglords allied themselves with

the Marxist guerrillas that had been down there for decades. The 'war on drugs' was further

complicated by state sponsorship from Venezuela and other countries with communist leanings.

This is not to say, referring back to the previous paragraph, that the aid should not have been sent

but rather that there are complicating factors, one of which being the increasing complications in

the Colombian government that seem to be leading away from representative democracy. No

doubt a Colombian presidency that aligns itself with Hugo Chavez will look more suspiciously

on foreign aid from the US designated to fight Marxist rebels5.

A second role of aid is that of humanitarian assistance. After Somalia fell into the civil

war it has continued well into the 21st century, the UN sent troops and food into the country to

keep starvation at bay. The fact that this did not stop the starvation and that the warlords used the

UN food as another point of leverage over the populace is a key point that will be addressed

later. For now6, it is enough to say that one country can give food or money to keep a poor

country from starving wholesale. Thirdly, countries have given money to promote stability in a

region. This description is rather vague and that stems from the hazy definition of 'stability'. The

United States has sent billions to Iraq after 2003 to rebuild infrastructure and the police force in
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the wake of the occupation, several billion dollars to Israel in 1973 to hold off the Arab League

during the Yom Kippur War and billions more to the shah of Iran to maintain his government.

Each of these falls, tentatively, under the umbrella of 'stability'7.

This is not to say that failure is the result if the precise effects desired do not occur. As

mentioned earlier, these are only the traditional roles and success can crop up in more

unexpected corners. Iraq, for example, after the Iran-Iraq War did horrible violence to the

Kurdish minority but their desire to be a local military powerhouse pushed the Iraqi military to

invest heavily in traditional Soviet weapons such as MiGs, tanks and SAMs. I will go into more

depth later but this was a success because of the relative ease with which the US military can and

did sweep aside the Iraqi forces in 1991 and 2003. Similar effects occurred in the 1960s with

Egypt but the 'sweeper' in that case was the Israelis in 1967. The last example of this is Iran after

the fall of the Soviet Union. The regime had high technological8 aspirations that, after the fall of

their benefactor, meant that they were forced to go to the only tech markets available, the

Western ones. Being able to control or monitor the infrastructure of a country through

observation and restriction of imports is a valuable tool, one the US would not have had if the

Soviets were still supporting their Middle Eastern clients.

The US international aid in the 20th century is rather uneventful9 until the 1950s when the

Marshall Plan began rebuilding Europe. The plan was perceived by the Soviets as being an anti-

communist bribe and, summarily, was rejected out of hand by all Soviet puppet states. The next

major set of aid went to the South Koreans and holding off the North Korean Army and the

Chinese forces. At about this time, the US began accelerating their aid to the Middle East
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countries and Israel in particular. After these expenditures, the overwhelmingly large amount of

attention focused on Vietnam eclipsed everything else at the time10. However, most of the aid at

this time was cash or weapons and the sole discriminator of who should get cash was the

political affiliation. While I will go into detail later why giving business and technology to one's

enemies is not a bad thing, the operative point is that there was no interchange between the US

and the Soviets. After Vietnam, the majority of the aid went, again, to the Middle East. The

countries that received aid were, in descending order of amount, Israel, Egypt, Jordan,

Palestinian refugee groups, Lebanon and a few other countries in the area that received lesser

amounts (Foreign Assistance 3-12). This trend has continued to the present day with one 'hiccup'

that amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars sent to Iraq for rebuilding.

The next section focuses on how aid could alter the structures of the recipient countries in

ways beneficial to the donor. The particular dimensions of change that will be examined are

methods at increasing the potency of sanctions through altering the local market, using the nature

of international corporations to realign social goals, and manipulating infrastructure and policy to

alter the nature of prospective future conflicts. Before I discuss the effect of foreign aid on local

politics, I need to introduce a term I will be using. Within the portions of this paper dealing with

power balances, I will be making use of the phrase “currency of favor”, a term of my own

creation, to describe the ability of one individual to convey to another some measure of

appreciation or deference. The concept is clear enough in an employment context wherein a

supervisor may congratulate or praise a subordinate, promote him, transfer him to more coveted

duties or give him a raise. Within a government, the dynamic is less clear. Obviously, a ruler can
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give money or investment opportunities to his subordinates but more subtle exchanges take place

with the allocation of weapons or other instruments of power. Even the most Machiavellian

individual recognizes that the infusion of weapons represents increasing the ability of the

affected group to impress their will on their neighbors11. However, removal of weapons, such as

through non-proliferation, increases the value of the weapons exponentially and the reverse is

true as well. Where this intersects defense politics is in international aid. Western capitalist

democracies have an abundance of technology, much with military applications. Giving

significant quantities to developing nations, however, produces an effect similar to printing

money. Those with weapons see the effects of their stockpile diminish similar to inflation as the

weapons market becomes more equal-opportunity.

Foreign aid that takes the form of corporate investment skews the local economy

in several ways. The nature of the influence is dependent on whether the corporation invests

money, technology or business practices into the country. An investment of cash accelerates

changes in the economy by several orders of magnitude. An example of this is Burma which

underwent a societal change equivalent to the Industrial Revolution in the course of a 15 year

period. The power figures in the wake of so great a transition are guaranteed to be foreign

businessmen12, persons raised to the station by the good graces of businessmen or individuals

who rose to the position due to opportunism. However they got there, none of them would

jeopardize their position by jostling the newly created position. How does this assist the First

World country that encouraged the corporate investment, one might ask? The radical remaking of

the market structure, by the very nature of it stemming from a foreign entity acting in its own
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interest, means that the new market will be more change-resistant as it seeks to maximize profits.

The new power figures mentioned earlier are also unwilling, by and large, to upset the home of

the corporation that has so enriched the country and the people. Intelligence agencies go through

tremendous trouble to insert agents into foreign countries and businesses when, with the

lubrication of tariffs or trade laws, the country might have several persons brought to power

whose self-interest coincides with the interest of the agency in question.

This is not the end of the role of corporate influence. Corporations can remake the social

structure with the introduction of new business practices such as robotics, assembly lines,

automation or digitization. The industrialization of agriculture in Burma, for example, was

supervised by a weak central authority the inability of which paved the way for rigid

authoritarian dictatorships. This was not a forgone conclusion, obviously, as none of the

European powers underwent similar collapses of democratic rule. The combination of economic,

social and political pressures capable of being brought to bear on a particular country could, with

little direct evidence, push the society and political atmosphere towards something parallel to the

manipulating country. By studying the Industrial Revolution13, the covert defense policy makers

could tailor packages of financial and technological aid to countries to induce certain results in

their social structure. This is not to say, obviously, that this form of aid will replace or negate

traditional forms of misinformation, covert action and information gathering. Rather, this allows

policy experts to use a dimension of foreign policy in a hitherto unmanipulated way to further

state aims. There is, however, a rather clear consequence of this theory: namely that prolonged

embargoes are actually against a nation's interest as it denies the government the possibility of
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creating leverage within the embargoed country14.

Embargoes in the short term, though, are an extremely useful tool after a country's

corporate interests have been injected. Changes in social structure were alluded to earlier with

little explanation but the changes require elaboration here. If the 21st century US economy was

not the relative titan that it is in the world economy but maintained its requirements, the

strangling of the raw materials that the US needs (oil, electronic equipment, machinery or

pharmaceuticals) would cause immediate and critical social unrest. Such a crisis could be

effected by a hostile power with control of the production of these goods; this would similar to

the OPEC oil crunch in 1973 but worse as oil is only one dimension of our reliance on imports. A

economic disaster like that alluded to here could be managed for a short period of time to great

effect. The reason, for example, that the OPEC embargo was so successful was not the troubles it

caused, great though they were, but the vast amount of wealth that the higher prices garnished for

the exporting nations. If short-term shortages are the means to whichever end, embargoes can

accomplish that but the more profitable consequence is the release after the country recognizes

their dependence but before they take steps to alleviate the problem using internal resources.

The effect of embargoes may be multiplied by reorganizing the local market to a state of

dependence on the foreign goods or services and severance of the connection. Timed carefully in

periods of social unrest, the effect could be catastrophic to the party in power. An example of

when this could have been used to maximum effect could have been the reconstruction of

Germany after World War I. The US interests were firmly in the direction of a strong Germany

and they might have contributed more than money towards its rebuilding. If they had, a cutoff of
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business would have snapped the German economy back into the depths of depression. Given

how desperate things were at the time, unrest is the bare minimum that would have occurred;

sweeping social changes would be expected on top of any change in leadership. To reiterate, the

social changes could be wonderful for a country interested in such things but the aftereffects

would be incredibly profitable for the companies involved.

Thus far, the negative effects of this sort of manipulating have gone ignored. To illustrate

these effects, we turn to Cold War politics. Both the Soviet Union and the US policymakers

sought to manipulate the Third World countries on the fringes of each other's sphere of influence.

The Soviets, in particular, spread significant amounts of cash and weapons through the Arab

League states in a desire to curb the strength of the non-Communist Israeli forces. No doubt the

Soviets would have been pleased had the Arab countries contained the Israelis without open

conflict but that desire ran counter to the aims of the Arab countries. The Egyptians, in a bid for

regional recognition, antagonized the Israelis into a preemptive strike that humiliated the Soviet-

trained Arab armies in a matter of days. The Syrians, while participating in that military disaster,

also financed militant groups all over Europe none of which were under Soviet direction. In

effect, for a little money and weapons, the Soviets accomplished a little social unrest and

tremendous loss of face. The United States accomplished something similar with their aid to prop

up non-Communists such as the shah of Iran or the Nicaraguan Contras: little gain and damage to

political credibility at home and abroad.

Previously I had mentioned points of leverage that affluent nations could use for

manipulating their neighbors. Here, though, I how to show a historical example of a third-world
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leader refusing foreign assistance and examine several reasons why acceptance or refusal might

be reasonable under the circumstances of the local politics. Much of these examples make use of

the balance of power and 'currency of favor' concepts mentioned earlier. Egypt was in a

precarious situation in 1962 as was mentioned earlier while focusing on the political sphere.

Syria was on the rise and the Arab League was clamoring for aggressive action against Israel.

Nasser, the leader of the Egypt at the time, made moves to take advantage of the popular mood

but he had a fiscal bottleneck. He had recently nationalized the Suez Canal and had spent the

capital from this maneuver to finance public works projects, namely the Aswan Dam. Nasser did

not have the money to expand the military the necessary amount to take the primary role in the

Arab League military politics. Or, to be more precise, Nasser did not have the money without

raising taxes, borrowing heavily or petitioning for foreign aid. “Military spending can... reduce a

state's ability to satisfy important domestic welfare goals in the short term... and the inability to

satisfy these goals at some minimal level can general social discontent and undermine political

support for the regime in power” (Barnett 375-6). These pitfalls are dangerous in themselves but

above were noted the effects an infusion of cash would have on a developing economy,

particularly in regards to persons of influence. Barnett refers to them when he says that “there are

political and economic structures that limit the access of political authorities to the resources of

society and generally impose substantial political costs on access to those resources” (376).

These are precisely the sort of issues that can magnify the effects of embargoes because the 'new

managers' will want, as a means to expanding their profits again, an end to the embargo. Keep in

mind that the context that put these individuals in power was erected by the corporate influence.
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Self-interest puts them there, keeps them there, and keeps their motives aligned with the

corporation. So Nasser's eventual decision to seek support from the US and the Soviets was, in

effect, an investment of personal reputation (lessened as a result of needing help) in an effort to

reap a return of regional influence. The 1967 War ruined all of this with terrible finality.

While the corporate effects on political interests were introduced above, herein I will

examine the effects on the economy and the interests foreign powers could have on the

economies of developing nations. Some of the more robust US-based companies have income

large enough to overwhelm the GDP of some countries and investment could accomplish the

same thing. More than cash, though, the companies could effect significant social change by

centralizing the electrical and data networks and instituting efficient industrial practices such as

assembly lines and automation. Wages would be depressed, the middle class would be

eviscerated and the local job market would be competing with the steady (but low) wages of the

factories. The speed at which this occurred would mean certain technological breakthroughs that

allowed society to keep pace with the industry would be bypassed as the pre-built technology

would be cheaper than developing the items internally15. The result would be an empirically

based tech-society incapable of developing and, at best, forced to reverse-engineer. This is

similar to the nuclear ambitions of the Iranians who received all their centrifuge systems from

the Pakistani A.Q. Khan but did not develop the infrastructure to maintain them independent of

the control systems they bought from Siemens (Broad 4). Not only does this give control over

the economy to the country and company that supply the parts, but it significantly enriches both

at the expense of the developing nation. The US was able, in the Iranian example, able to keep
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the Iranians trapped on a particular type of outdated hardware far beyond the time when the US

systems had been upgraded by enacting an embargo against Iran forbidding all of these

'controllers'. In a word, by spreading open-market capitalism, the western world may gain a

“fulcrum whereby they might move the world”.

However, there are times when, contrary to the plans of mice and men, forces may take

hold of a country and turn it against those it had formerly counted as allies. One must never be

surprised that the best interest of the country that had previously been an unwilling but impotent

recipient of the sort of aid mentioned before should be refusal and aggression. This too is

accounted for within the framework of using aid as a defense policy tool. First, those mentioned

earlier who had enriched themselves within the new system will take up arms (not necessarily

literally) to defend it. Whether they succeed in stopping the relapse is somewhat unnecessary

because the damage the conservative leadership will cause in shutting down the heads of local

industry will be great enough. Next, to protect the new government from sanctions, the leaders

will need substitutes for the items on which the people and the industry had grown dependent.

This is expensive if it is even possible and social upheaval will follow when the standard of

living drops. Lastly, the country will need to independently develop the technology and

foundation for invention and production of the items that, hitherto, it had relied on Western

countries to provide. The sum of these changes are massive and, as a survey of recent

revolutionary countries will provide, not accomplished in full. Most countries stop somewhere

halfway through the second step as the current state of Iran indicates (Broad 4). This brings the

question of how to halt the aggressive intent of a country built, for the most part, by your
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industry from the ground up. That question requires some context.

As an elementary historical survey shows, the United States has had, with one major

exception, a flawless record in large-scale combat. At the end of the Second World War, the US

army was a gigantic, mechanized fighting force capable of destroying similarly mechanized and

centralized forces. Although the Army shrunk markedly, the mission remained much the same.

However, the failure in Vietnam proved a harsh lesson. Even if one were to accept the thesis that

the failure of nerve of the American public at large was the impetus for failure, the Army

demonstrated it was categorically incapable of winning a decentralized battle with anything

resembling haste. Given the ease with which the Army has since battered the Iraqi Army twice,

the US has maintained its ability to destroy Soviet-style mechanized forces and one could say

that the only chance an opponent has of winning is decentralization. This brings me to the last

way that foreign aid could assist the defense aims of a first world power: by inducing within a

recipient nation a impetus towards a centralized or mechanized military if the first world power

in question has a military tailor-made to destroy a centralized force.

For military theorists who anticipate future conflicts between the United States armed

forces and decentralized combatants such as those faced in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq (post

occupation), the continuing focus of the upper echelons on preparing to defeat a Soviet-style

military is counterproductive. This, however, is shortsighted16 and ignores a point that this

portion of the paper will attempt to present. Through specific and targeted use of international

aid, the United States could induce in prospective enemies the societal factors and economic

structures that lead towards a traditional, centralized military. This is yet another area where
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historians would make themselves useful. Through a trickledown effect, international aid could

produce the companies or intellectual foundations for conventional combat, the sort that were

encouraged in times when specific forms of honor dictated how combat was to look. The

policymaker intent on creating these effects could attempt to induce a culture that revered

individuality and personal achievement similar to that which existed in the United States in the

1950s or, perhaps, the Soviet Union in the 1940s. The goal is to strongly encourage production of

traditional weapon systems and conventional strategic applications. The reasons why should

become obvious after a brief reflection on American military successes. The stubbornness of the

American strategic planners in preparing for future conflicts is only severely detrimental if the

opponents continue to use decentralized nontraditional force structures and deployments. The

solution that does not involve remaking the strategic mindset of the entire American military

establishment is to push potential enemies into a direction for which we are prepared17.

While the ideal opponent might be similar to the 1991-era Iraqi army, this is not to say

that the only component of this ideal society is mass armored strikes. The United States has

proved itself far superior in development of new military applications of technology, a factor that

could be potent if, along with the ‘hero’ society mentioned earlier, the love for centralized,

digitized infrastructure was spread to these developing nations. With the Western superiority in

precision-guided munitions, centralized infrastructure in countries incapable of defending against

these airstrikes is a weakness that any sufficiently capable country cannot afford to overlook.

However, as mentioned before, certain developing countries are susceptible to cultural

interference and, thus, are susceptible to manipulation for the foreign policy of countries active
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enough to meddle. The prime example of this in recent history seems to be the Iranian nuclear

facility and the ongoing security problems. The Iranians, as mentioned earlier, had the

foundations of their nuclear dreams fulfilled by centrifuges bought in the late 1970s (Broad 6).

This equipment was not directly produced by the West but the Iranians needed computers of a

specific industrial make to operate them. For those, they turned to the German firm Siemens who

sold them a series of terminals known as controllers. The US and Israel got their 'way in' when

Siemens came to the US Department of Energy with several of these controllers in an effort to

root out several security issues deep within the architecture. The data learned from these tests

were passed on, covertly, to the intelligence services of the US and Israel who, collectively,

developed a virus designed to selectively destroy the centrifuges of the Iranian facility. While not

wholly successful, the damage was immense and was compounded by the subsequent

assassinations of key members of the nuclear physics and computer security research

establishments by, at the time of this writing, parties unknown. This attack was as potent as it

was because of the use of Western technology inside a technological culture that could not root

out the problems inherent in every digital device without having first had the weaknesses

exposed to disastrous effect.

While not as groundbreaking as cyberwarfare, the efficiency and potency of smart

weapons is increased dramatically when the targets grow more consolidated. The relative

impotence of modern defensive systems was shown to startling effect in Desert Storm in 1991

and Iraqi Freedom in 2003 when US stealth aircraft had complete dominance of the airspace and

would land their laser-guided bombs with an error margin of less than a few feet in the dead of
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night. Combine pinpoint destruction of power and command networks with the social

dependence on those networks and the effect becomes catastrophic. To understand how this

would feel, imagine a social infrastructure similar to the US in the 21st century but without the

military dominance. An attack that wiped out data, power and phone networks would paralyze

and blind the populace. If the US could induce this sort of information-dependence on the

developing world, the fight for the success of the US policy goals is halfway won already

because the targets are already chosen. This is an idea that falls, very loosely, under the umbrella

of “battlefield preparation”. The Soviets had primarily feared a form of battlefield preparation

that was encapsulated in the damage possibilities of the electro-magnetic pulse of an upper-

atmosphere nuclear blast or covert disabling of missile launch capabilities. Instead of directly

negating the desires of the upper echelons, this expansion of the definition focuses more on

increasing the potency of one's own weapons and decreasing the efficacy of the opponent's

forces.

Now I add a brief mention of times when foreign aid failed miserably and direction,

perhaps, to what the judicious student of history might learn from this. The USSR, in the wake of

World War Two, had hoped to demonstrate its technological and military prowess equal, if not

superior, to that of the NATO and Western-style militaries. The Soviets, then, were far from shy

about spreading military assistance18 all over the globe to whichever proxies of theirs were

feeling particularly anti-western. The Syrians, in the 1960s-70s, were vying with Egypt for the

nominal leadership of the Arab League and had gained some advantage by playing to the

aggressive elements within the Arab populace at large by antagonizing Israel. The Soviets
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decided that the thorn in the side of the Americans, by way of causing trouble for the Israelis,

was worth some monetary risk so they sent equipment to Syria, Jordan and Egypt through

intermediaries such as Czechoslovakia. The Syrians, with the extra money and equipment,

ramped up their support for the revolutionary groups in Israel and Europe. Israel, as was their

trend, responded with extremely aggressive raids into their neighbors. When Nasser attempted to

regain the favor of the people, the Israelis struck preemptively and the Syrians were forced into

action by both their alliance ties and their desire to act the counter to the Israelis. The military

debacle that followed proved to the world that a properly led Western army could steamroll a

more numerous Soviet-style military, a result directly contrary to the goals of the Soviet

establishment in regards to their desire to be seen as peers of the Americans19.

A second failure was the US aid to the shah of Iran until he was overthrown by a popular

rebellion. Ignoring the effects of possible covert Soviet machinations20 for a moment, the US had

no plan for a post-shah Iran and, if thought had been given to that idea, someone would have

realized that the US had no control over any of the country. Instead, they had the promise of a

tyrant that he would not turn to the USSR for assistance, a promise he kept for the short time he

was in office. Although Iran never turned communist, the country that emerged from the

revolution was decidedly anti-western and, as time has proven, a bigger headache than any

communist country since the fall off the USSR. How this might have been handled with more

vision is to have reined in the shah's tyranny and focused on reforming the economy. With this

focus, if the shah were deposed or removed, the conservative elements would have to destroy the

economy to expunge the Western influence from the country instead of merely destroying the
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modern Iranian culture.

This problem of blind actions has led, indirectly at best, to a distaste in the collective

mouths of the countries trapped in between the Soviet-US polar power continuum. Direct action

and direct support for tyrants had exposed US influence in a way that, in the long term, would

prove detrimental. This is precisely the sort of exposure and the dangers of it that this paper is

supposed to broadcast. Daugherty's entire book is an expose on the thoughtless shortsighted

behavior of American presidents in the Cold War and, with application of historical study of

societal and economic factors, future aid allocators should be able to avoid the pitfalls of the

past.

With the Western dominance of information technology, the spread of centralized control

of both the military and civilian infrastructure benefits the West in a multiplicity of ways. More

research is required but it may be advantageous to leak certain military secrets to competing

militaries to incentivize them towards a particular technological and strategic structure. Points of

interest to study would be Japan after the 'visit' from Cdre. Perry, England and Europe more

broadly during the Industrial Revolution, Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, and similar

periods of rapid technological invention paired with rapid social change. Areas of concern on the

current state of affairs would include Colombia, which has recently elected a president far more

leftist than previously, Cuba in its current state of flux, Iran for the same reasons as always, and

perhaps some southeastern Asian countries that have somewhat recently been buying tech from

their northern neighbors. The objectives, by way of reminder, are to foster economic growth

within these fledgling economies, encourage private sector investment in the military, and
Chris Frueh
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develop strong infrastructure within the public and private sectors.

In conclusion, there are a number of varied ways in which study of the social history

might make itself useful to the aggressively-minded defense policymaker. Further research

should first go into understanding the causal relationships between technology and social

structures and, only after the causal nature is known, attempt basic manipulations of simple

economies. All of this is, primarily, to guide more deliberate foreign aid usage and, secondarily,

the direction and application of social history research. Other uses might be direction of

intelligence assets to predict responses, insofar as they are able, of local leaders to specific types

of intrusions. I believe that this sort of actions are possible but, as with all sorts of covert actions,

will be fraught with problems in execution. Only careful analysis will hammer out whether these

problems can be eliminated or controlled for or if this type of aid philosophy is doomed from the

outset.
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End Notes
1. Covert not in the sense that the receiving country does not know they are receiving aid
but rather that the public of either country is unaware. The other kind is possible but the
uses are doubtfully effective if they exist at all.
2. The networks referred to here are both the economic ties that have bound economies
together since the Great Depression and the information networks that lace the planet
today.
3. The aid is innocuous because any action taken can be seen as the deniable action of an
individual corporation that, perhaps, was encouraged privately towards a specific
direction but is acting in its own interest.
4. Restraint is clearly not the most precise word but, assuming that killing one's people
might be legitimate at some currently unforeseen point in time, restraint describes the
response. The word also implies a sarcastic twist at the ineffectiveness of sanctions to
produce effects in a country that has stooped so far as to begin genocide. Sanctions will
not even dent the death toll.
5. The US has been less involved now than they were in the early '90s but the point made is
that the perception of US meddling could mean that the local government might
voluntarily roll back the effects of the US aid.
6. As was portrayed in the popular Ridley Scott movie Black Hawk Down and in the book
on which it was based, the warlords were stealing the food and using the threat of
starvation as a weapon against their enemies or the neutral populace.
7. This also is a very shortsighted view of international conflict, albeit one almost forgivable
in a world where one expects to be obliterated by thermonuclear weapons at a moment's
notice.
8. One technological aspiration, really: that of owning a thermonuclear bomb large enough
to threaten Israel.
9. This is not to say that European politics was uneventful but rather that the politics in this
region was dominated by events far larger than monetary aid, and it was solely monetary,
could hope to avert.
10. This brings up an interesting side point, the role of advisers in local politics. Advisers in
local business could produce some of the desired effects without much monetary
investment but with less deniability. Advisers in the military are far more useful as they
could direct the general staff towards the strategic mindset desired, that of big tanks, big
battalions and big charges.
11. I assume that an intelligent ruler will have maintained the balance between this 'affected
group' and the individual supplying his weapons. The type of weapon is also an issue. No
warlord will be happy if, while he receives assault rifles, his rival receives surface-to-air
missiles. That, in a way, inflates the 'currency'.
12. There is an extremely unlikely chance that some local individual capitalizes on the social
change and becomes the local powerbroker you had wished to have been a foreign
businessman but the outcome will be much the same. He will want profit for profit is
what put him there and the company will bring him profit.
Chris Frueh
War, Peace and the Military, Pt. 2
Page 21

13. If one wishes to disenfranchise an entire class, the area to study would be the post-WWII
American urban upheaval.
14. This would also erode the financial and social reputation of the 'middle managers' that
had been acting, obliquely, for your benefit.
15. Essentially this would be the developing nation buying assembly robots, for example,
from the US instead of learning the science of robotics and building their own.
16. Shortsighted not necessarily because there is no replacement, currently, for the Soviets
but because our superiority in 'conventional' combat is rewarding the groups that avoid it.
17. This is probably best described as instilling in our enemies a love of knighthood, for
example, while we develop more efficient armor-piercing firearms. They are honor-
bound to be the heroic soldier until they lose enough face in combat to make the loss of
honor due to leaving that situation negligible.
18. This assistance was primarily weapons and cash although advisers did make notable
appearances in Egypt and North Vietnam.
19. No doubt the Soviets would claim, if asked, that the Arab failures were due to hideous
communication problems and a lack of discipline from the troops and they would be
right. It would not matter, however, in the same way the post-Vietnam rationalizing by
the American military was ignored by the American public up until the point of repeating
references to Vietnam during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
20. The Soviets had proven themselves willing to dabble in the complexities of religious
politics in Syria and Jordan, for example, but their presence in Afghanistan would
probably negate any legitimacy they had gained there as would appear they were there for
their own benefit, a result as bad as the shah.