Editor’s Note: The United States has invested heavily in training armed forces around the world with limited success at best. Renanah Miles Joyce of Brandeis University examines the pitfalls of different approaches, with particular emphasis on when US efforts to advance human rights standards and civil control are successful and unsuccessful, and how the US can do better.
In May, President Biden quietly signed a decree authorizing a permanent US military presence in Somalia. US troops do not conduct direct combat there; instead, they train and advise the partner forces of Somalia and the African Union in the fight against the terrorist group al-Shabaab. These training efforts are part of the US global military training and advisory network that aims to both build the combat capabilities of partner troops and influence when and how they fight.
The United States has a variety of tools to influence its security partners: it can provide material goods such as weapons and equipment to encourage good behavior, or it can make support conditional on partners doing what they want. Both approaches have problems. Abundant flows of help rarely motivate partners to change, especially when they get what they want without having to make painful changes. Conditionality does better, but can backfire. Pushing weak partners too far risks their collapse, and alternative suppliers such as China and Russia create external options to avoid compliance.
Military training offers another way to influence: changing the minds of soldiers so that their preferences align with those of the United States. Shaping the mindset of partner forces and what they want offers a cheaper and more permanent path of influence as partners who share American values should need less monitoring and motivation to do what the United States wants them to do.
The two problems in which the United States is trying to convey its preferred norms and values are human rights and civilian control of the military. The prioritization of these norms has increased over time – the United States has not always been a champion of liberal norms in its trained armed forces (the coup-producing school of America is a notorious example). But US law now requires that all partner force-building efforts include training in “adherence to and respect for the laws of armed conflict, human rights and fundamental freedoms, the rule of law, and civilian control of the military.”
In theory, the production of a more liberal and competent armed force should go hand in hand. Research has shown that illiberal civil-military relations often lead to ineffective armed forces, and that abuses of armed forces can fuel rebellions by alienating local populations. But despite enormous funding for overseas military training – including nearly $ 15 billion to train more than 2.3 million military students worldwide between 1999 and 2016 – the United States struggles to build armed forces that are either competent or liberal especially in weak and unstable states.
In recent years, US-trained forces have carried out coups in Mali and Guinea and committed human rights violations in, inter alia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cameroon. Politicians and academics disagree on why training fails to convey American values. Politicians and military officials often point to an insufficient focus on standards, while scholars often point to fundamental issues of disagreement of interest – the United States and its local partners often want different things, resulting in partners misusing or diverting resources to their own ends. A common policy solution is to increase the amount of training, while scientists suggest choosing better partners (and, at least implicitly, not selecting those that are unlikely to be successful). Both recommendations are worthwhile, but the wrong assumptions in the US approach will undermine the results even with increased investment or better selection.
Training and counseling as a way to make an impact
Standards training tends to take place in places where policymakers feel that more liberal and professional troops are key to long-term stability. Training in standards is especially useful in countries where the main threats are related to the internal weakness of the state. The armed forces in these countries often have a history of human rights violations and interference in politics. The United States seeks to build capacity for counter-terrorist or counter-insurgency missions while instilling norms of restraint to prevent abuse of military power.
The US Guide to Training and Advising Foreign Armed Forces relies heavily on socialization to change partners’ preferences. Teaching and persuasion are the basic mechanisms of socialization by which people adopt new norms and rules of behavior.
The American approach places emphasis on interpersonal relationships and building relationships as the basis of persuasion. Training and counseling build on this foundation in several different ways. First, trainers and advisers provide the soldier partners with ready-made “templates” for operational or tactical activities. During my visits to Liberia, I saw that the walls of the Liberian Armed Forces (AFL) headquarters conform to American doctrine, imported in bulk and adapted for use by the Liberian military.
Second, trainers use classroom and field training to teach partner troops what constitutes appropriate behavior. Training ranges from tactical and operational instruction to regional seminars and courses at US professional military education institutions. In Liberia, for example, American coaches spent weeks teaching the new AFL Citizenship Program, which one coach said emphasized that “human rights are the key to everything.” Finally, the trainers and counselors try to demonstrate appropriate behavior in the hope that the partners will see the sense in doing things differently and will try to imitate the new behavior. Many counselors describe showing partners “what the law looks like” as their main persuasion strategy.
The socialization theory behind these efforts predicts that when soldier partners are exposed to new ways of thinking, they will see the benefits of these ideas and begin to adapt their behavior to new standards. Eventually, they will adopt new standards, their beliefs will change, and their preferences for certain policies will reflect these changed beliefs and values.
Liberal norms are not the only problem areas in which the US military is trying to shape the preferences of its partners. But they are a dominant topic in parts of the world like Sub-Saharan Africa, where the main goals of US military training for almost every country include respect for human rights and civilian control of the military.
Erroneous assumptions in the American approach
Considering the investment, why the modest results? Honestly, it’s unclear how meager the results are – the US government has yet to figure out how to measure the effectiveness of its standardization efforts. But anecdotal evidence suggests the results are mixed at best. There are at least three misconceptions in the US approach to training and counseling that help explain why efforts to form a soldier’s partnership belief may not translate into a lasting impact.
First, the American approach assumes that socialization is cheap and easy. Is not. Socialization can cut costs in the long run by reducing the need to monitor partners or force them to comply with regulations, but military socialization typically requires intense and sustained interaction over time. In other words, it is least likely to work when the United States is trying to get results quickly and cheaply – which is often the case when it uses a foreign troop training tool in its foreign policy toolbox. In a poll I conducted on the Liberian military, I found that those soldiers most at risk of training to US standards expressed the strongest support for liberal standards, but these effects quickly faded away in less trained soldiers.
Second, the American approach assumes that liberal norms reinforce each other. This is not necessarily true in the fragile states where the most training of standards takes place. In a recent study published in International Security, I investigate the problem of the contradiction between liberal norms, in particular the tension between the norms of respect for human rights and the civilian control of the military. Soldiers are taught to obey civilians and protect the population, but what if civil leaders order them to repress the population? Experimental evidence suggests that the answer is wrong for liberal norms. I found that soldiers who heard a scenario where a civilian commander orders the military to suppress protests were less likely to prioritize human rights and more likely to prioritize internal cohesion – that is, do whatever best served the military organization at the moment. And the results were strongest for more trained soldiers in the US.
Third, the American approach assumes that individual change of belief seamlessly translates into institutional change. However, there is a gap between training at the operational and tactical levels and the types of strategic actions needed to block changes to institutional design. My research suggests that norm gains are fragile and easily reversible without proper institutions. The US Department of Defense has begun to incorporate institutional capacity building into its repertoire as it works to improve management and organizational processes such as planning, logistics, and resource management at partner defense institutions. But these efforts remain too small and detached from the main focus on the individual and unit-level training that consumes most of the security aid resources deployed by the Department of Defense. The department’s institutional capacity-building efforts largely focus on the technical aspects of defense institutions, leaving the political aspects intact.
The US approach is neither irrational nor fatally flawed. Under the right conditions, training and counseling can shape when and how partners struggle. But these conditions are narrower than expected, not least because the impact is two-way and the partners influence the results. Despite these limitations, refinement of the assumptions that underpin the US approach may still make it a more useful tool.
Above all, US policymakers should relax their expectations when it comes to training and counseling. There is no silver measure for compliance. Belief formation can be the most enduring form of influence when it works, but it takes time and sustained commitment that is lacking in US foreign policy, especially in “power economy” theaters such as sub-Saharan Africa. It also requires open political partners, open to new standards. Reforming the military will not do much good if the country’s political leadership continues to view it as a threat or instrument of repression.
Second, coaches and advisers should deal with the conflict of liberal norms. Expecting soldiers to respect human rights and obey civil authorities only works when civilians demand the right things. If civilians are not, US policymakers must consider whether they really want soldiers to put human rights over civil power, and what that means in practice. At the moment, the US’s declared stance on putting human rights first is seldom clearly communicated to trainees. This is not surprising as policymakers may not want to tie their hands depending on whether or not the regime is a friend. Clearer messages on standards preferences can help provide a roadmap when standards conflicts arise.
Finally, the United States should place the emphasis on institution-building over individual training – or at least give them a similar weight. This shift may require a profound shift in the US approach to working with partner forces. First, it would require a holistic focus on security management, with operations and tactics subordinated to, rather than dominating, strategy. It would also require tackling local political dynamics and civilian institutions, as military and defense institutions are ultimately linked – and subordinated to liberal democracies – by civilian political power.
This is a much more political understanding of institutional capacity building than is presently typical of many Department of Defense efforts and would require an interagency approach from both the US and partners. The United States has taken steps in this direction, and Congressional officials have extended the Department of Defense institutional capacity-building to all security force institutions. In recent years, the Department of State has made targeted efforts to improve safety management. Much more needs to be done to integrate these activities and ensure that the political context and institutional structure influence all efforts to train and advise partner forces. Such an approach would be complex and time-consuming, but it is also the only way to translate individual changes in preferences into permanent changes in the timing and manner of military combat.
Among the Russian losses mentioned by Oryx, there are 916 tanks, 556 of which are estimated to be destructible. #UkraineWar: # It has been visually confirmed that Russia has lost 5,000 vehicles and other heavy equipment since the invasion of #Ukraine on February 24.
Who wins USA or China?
And a significant level of their expenses does not appear “in the public books”. Overall, in terms of resources, the United States has an advantage, but it’s not as overwhelming as it seems. To see also : Science shows you can go further and faster with music. When it comes to the sheer number of warships, China already leads the US, numbering around 350 to 300 when it comes to battleships.
How strong is the Chinese army? According to the Pentagon’s latest annual report on China’s military might, the country now has the world’s largest navy by number of ships, with a total of around 355 ships, including over 145 large warships by 2021.
Who will win in a war US or China?
In a full-scale war, China would be decimated by the US nuclear and conventionally better army. China has not dealt with any external crisis, nor has it fought full-scale wars in modern history. There is a technological gap between the US and China. They’re definitely not in the same league.
Who is stronger China or USA?
China has by far the largest army in the world, with 2.8 million soldiers, sailors and airmen – twice as many as Americans. See the article : United States-Philippines Relations – United States Department of State. (The United States is number two; the only other countries with over a million active troops are China’s neighbors Russia, India and North Korea.)
How many tanks does NATO have?
| Characteristic | Number of main battle tanks |
|---|---|
| United States | 6612 |
| Turkey | 3022 |
| Greece | 1.243 |
| Poland | 863 |
How many troops could NATO have? On June 9, 2015, the VJTF was stationed in Poland for the first time during the Noble Jump exercise, which was attended by over 2,100 soldiers from nine NATO countries. Read also : Memorandum on the extension and extension of the powers to postpone forced departure for Liberians. In June 2015, NATO defense ministers made decisions on the air, sea and SOF components of the reinforced NRF, determining that it may consist of up to 40,000. staff.
How strong is NATO military?
Since 1949, NATO has increased its collective military strength. Today, it can count on nearly 3.5 million workers, soldiers and civilians in total. Each Member State agrees to make contributions of varying strategic importance and impact.
Who has the largest army in NATO?
In 2021, the United States had the largest number of military personnel of any North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) country, with 1.35 million troops. The country with the second largest military personnel was Turkey, with just over 445,000.
What will replace Abrams tank?
The Abrams was to be replaced by the Future Combat Systems XM1202, but due to its cancellation, the US military decided to continue the maintenance and operation of the M1 series for the foreseeable future by upgrading with improved optics, armor and firepower.
Is the Leopard tank better than the Abrams?
Is there a better tank than the Abrams?
Overall, the Russian Armata may be slightly better in terms of crew survivability due to its protected crew cell and completely isolated ammunition. The Abrams is armed with a 120mm / L44 smoothbore gun.
Is the US developing a new tank?
General Dynamics Land Systems has been awarded a $ 1.14 billion contract to develop new light tanks for the U.S. Army. As part of the agreement, the company will begin low-cost initial production of 96 Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) vehicles that will increase the survivability of the infantry brigades.
Is there a replacement for the M1 Abrams?
Promotional material provides glimpses of the new version of the M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. General Dynamics Land Systems announces a new generation of the Abrams tank, the original variant of which entered the US military service in 1981.
How strong is NATO military?
Since 1949, NATO has increased its collective military strength. Today, it can count on nearly 3.5 million workers, soldiers and civilians in total. Each Member State agrees to make contributions of varying strategic importance and impact.
How many troops does NATO have? NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an international military alliance made up of 30 member states from Europe and North America.
How big would NATO army be?
“We will transform NATO’s reaction force and increase our number of high readiness forces to well over 300,000,” Stoltenberg told reporters ahead of the NATO summit in Madrid on Tuesday. Stoltenberg said it was the “largest overview” of NATO’s defense units since the Cold War.
How powerful is NATO combined?
Currently, NATO has a total GFP rating of 3.8900. The different categories are listed here. A total of 30 countries were included in the annual defense review of NATO member states (2022).
