The Strategic Logic – and Historic Rise – of Military Capacity Building

• In Event: Fighting with Friends: Alliances and Military Effectiveness

Abstract

To reduce costs and magnify power, states frequently turn to partners – allies, clients and non-state proxies – to undertake part, or sometimes all, of the burden of employing military power to defend territory, deter aggression, compel policy concessions, overthrow leaders and fight wars. In this context states will often build the coercive power of these military partners through arms transfers and military training. This military capacity building is puzzling for two reasons. First, military capacity building is risky because the partner can use transferred capability in whatever way it wants. Why do states build capacity when there are less-risky ways to induce partners to help advance some military objectives? Second, though states have always leveraged military partners, they have only engaged in large-scale efforts to build the military capacity of these partners since World War II. Why has military capacity building emerged as a ubiquitous feature of post-World War II international politics? This paper offers a theoretical account of why states (principals) build the coercive power of their military partners (agents) and situates the rise of military capacity building historically in the context of qualitative changes in international relations after World War II. I argue that capacity building reduces the opportunity costs agents are forced to incur in redirecting their resources to the principal’s objectives. When the principal has a comparative advantage in the production of (or a surplus of) the requisite capability, it is cheaper for the principal to provide capability to the agent than to induce the agent to generate the requisite capability itself or to reallocate the requisite capability from its other priorities. I also argue that the post-World War II rise of military capacity building is due largely to changes in the distribution of power, the nature of power politics, and the makeup of the state system. In these contemporary military partnerships, the principal almost always has a comparative advantage in the production military power and thus incentives to build the military capacity of its agents.

Author

• Marc Toby Grinberg, Brown University