Reconsidering the Political Effects of Foreign Military Training

• In Event: Ideational Factors in Civil-Military Relations

Abstract

Foreign military training (FMT) is a common tool of military diplomacy: nearly all countries have participated in some form of foreign military training in the modern era. Despite the prevalence of these programs, we still know little about their effects on recipient armies. In many cases, the political role of authoritarian armies raises questions of whether FMT can produce political outcomes (e.g. protest response and coups d’état) as well as military ones. In this article, I argue that foreign training affects military politics only when the training reaches a critical mass of soldiers over time to cause change in the organizational culture of the recipient.
Professional military education has become deeply internationalized, with soldiers from around the world receiving training in foreign military academies. Run by Western powers and formerly the Soviet Union since decolonization, these programs have helped educate the officer corps of virtually every developing country. Education and socialization in these systems generates a diffusion of ideas regarding political intervention, including mass protests and coups d’état. FMT is especially concentrated within a few Western military establishments, especially those of the United States and France, where transmission of liberal norms related to democracy and human rights are formally included in military curricula. In the long term, foreign military training (FMT) may facilitate the transfer of these norms, for example against using military force to suppress protests.

Author

• Nicholas John Lotito, Yale University