Aid to Help the Recipient Achieve Its External Objectives

Donors may grant economic or military aid enabling the recipients to fulfill more easily their foreign-policy goals. This would include military aid to help deter a threat from an external enemy, enhance the recipient's international prestige, or build up its military capabilities to prosecute expansionist policies. Of the last type, a good example was Soviet military aid to Indonesia, which was used by the Indonesians to acquire West Irian under threats of force and to prosecute its policy of confrontation against Malaysia. Although the Soviet

¹³ Nelson, Aid, Influence, and Foreign Policy, p. 94.

37 Economic Instruments of Policy

Union made few outright grants of military equipment to Indonesia, it provided extensive credits with which the Indonesian armed forces could secure new equipment. Similar assistance for Syria in recent years has allowed the Syrians to adopt a very tough position regarding the terms of a Middle East peace settlement. No longer can Egypt unilaterally define the conditions under which an agreement with Israel might be possible.

he Problem of "Strings" in Foreign Aid

As the examples cited suggest, almost all aid used primarily to sustain or change internal and foreign policies of recipients has strings attached. Any regime that receives large quantities of economic and military goods to help it remain in power will obviously feel that it must coordinate at least some of its policies to fulfill the expectations—implicit or explicit—of the donor. Even long-range development aid contains a wide variety of economic "strings" or technical standards that the recipient must meet if it wishes to qualify for assistance. Despite what they claim in their propaganda, donors—including multilateral agencies—always insist that their goods and funds be used in a manner consistent with their own purposes. As a minimum, donors maintain rigorous economic and technical requirements. Policy makers thus seldom pose the question of whether their aid should or should not have "strings" attached to it: They are concerned only with defining the types of mutual expectations, commitments, and obligations that any aid agreement will impose on both parties.

Since the elites of developing nations place such emphasis on industriali­zation and modernization, they need the resources and assistance of major indus­trial countries. In turn, the donors of aid can use these needs for their own purposes and can, in many cases, use aid as an effective instrument for supple­menting their diplomacy, propaganda, and military programs. But the recipients are not without influence in their relationships with the donors. Occasionally they are able to obtain external assistance without making explicit commitments to any particular actions or policies. Ruling regimes can also argue that if they do not receive more aid, domestic tranquility will be jeopardized and local Com­munists will take over. In what has become a frequent bargaining tactic, the potential recipient can always threaten to go to another major power to receive aid if one donor is unwilling to grant it on favorable terms. Any donor, if asked to terminate aid policies, will suffer a blow to its prestige in the recipient country, while the regime, if it succeeds in obtaining goods and services from an alterna­tive source, can demonstrate to both domestic political groups and other nations that the country is independent enough to obtain aid and concessions from a variety of sources. As in any economic transactions where an alternative supply is available, the donor-recipient relationship can be exploited by the recipient for its own purposes. There are, therefore, definite limitations on the use of foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy to achieve short-run political and military advantages.

Moreover, foreign aid has not accomplished many of the political pur-

238 Economic Instruments of Policy

poses for which it was originally designed. In the early years of the cold war, many assumed that aid could "buy" allies, or at least keep them from joining the opposite camp. Undoubtedly, military assistance has played a role in local deterrence (it has also allowed some client states to engage in aggressive foreign policies), but there are few examples of a country's changing its major foreign-policy orientations just because of offers of aid or threats to reduce aid.¹⁴ Com­mercial opportunities and diplomatic influence over the domestic policies of recipients have also been created through aid. But the small sums of money involved and the frequent availability of alternative sources of supply have proba­bly reduced the extent to which aid programs can be manipulated for diplomatic purposes. There is little evidence, besides, that economic assistance has pro­moted political stability, democratic institutions and practices, or a more "reason­able" foreign policy. Quite the contrary. Many recipients of arms from the major powers have used them to engage in conflicts with neighbors, or to destroy domestic political opposition. And there is some evidence that American military assistance has promoted military coups and the institutionalization of military rule, rather than democratic politics.¹⁵

Disillusionment with aid programs among recipients arises from the fact that loans have to be repaid and funds have to be used to purchase goods from the donor. Economists and government officials increasingly realize, more­over, that there is no strong relationship between the amount of aid received and the rate of economic growth. Indeed, some studies show that aid correlates negatively with growth: Those countries that have received the most aid also have had subsequently unimpressive growth rates.¹⁶ By creating dependence, by slowing down local initiative, or by the misallocation of scarce resources in ill-conceived aid plans, development may very well be distorted or slowed down. Certainly the Western and Soviet fixation with industrialization rather than agri­cultural development has led many recipients seriously to distort their economies in favor of heavy industry and to neglect, relatively speaking, the agricultural sector. Massive urban congestion and inadequate food production are among the unfavorable consequences.

Donors, too, show lagging enthusiasm for aid programs. Most of the governments of the major powers have reduced bilateral aid programs or kept them static. Some countries, like Sweden and Canada, have dramatically in­creased aid allocations, but these have not been adequate to compensate for lower commitments by the major powers. In an era of inflation, high taxes, and the seeming ingratitude of recipients, foreign aid is not a politically popular issue for most donors.

¹⁴ One example would be Uganda, which, after having failed to obtain increased support from Israel, turned to Libya. Libya's economic and military assistance to Uganda helps explain the latter's conversion to a strong anti-Israel policy.

¹⁵ Edward T. Rowe, "Aid and Coups d'Etaf. Aspects of the Impact of American Military Assistance Programs in the Less Developed Countries." International Studies Quarterly, 18 (1974), 239-55.

¹⁶ See, for examples and citation, Tibor Mende, From Aid to Recolomzatwn: Lessons of a Failure (New York: Pantheon, 1973), Chap. 7.

239 Economic Instruments of Policy

If aid as an instrument of diplomatic influence has only a mixed record, it matches that of other economic techniques. Yet, because trade and resource issues are increasingly coming to the fore in the international system, replacing many of the security and military problems of the cold war, we could expect economic means of conducting diplomacy to become increasingly prominent. Talk of trade wars, economic retaliations, cartels of producers, and boycotts fills newspaper headlines. Past experience suggests that little is to be gained from using these instruments, but many governments cannot resist the tempta­tion to coerce by economic means those who are in a dependent position. Com­pared to other techniques, particularly subversion and warfare (discussed in the following chapters), they might seem particularly inexpensive. That is not to say, they are more effective.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bailey, Martin, Oilgate: The Sanctions Scandal. London: Coronet/Hodder &

Stoughton, 1979. Baldwin, David A., "Foreign Aid, Intervention and Influence," World Politics,

21 (1968), 425-47. Barber, James, "Economic Sanctions as a Policy Instrument," International Affairs

(London), 55 (July 1979), 367-84. Beim, David, "The Communist Bloc and the Foreign Aid Game," The Western

Political Quarterly, 17 (1964), 84-99. Black, Lloyd D., The Strategy of Foreign Aid. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,

1968. Clarkson, Stephen. The Soviet Theory of Development: India and the Third World

in Marxist-Leninist Scholarship. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978. Doxey, Margaret P., Economic Sanctions and International Enforcement. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1971. Frank, Lewis A., The Arms Trade in International Relations. New York: Praeger,

1969. Galtung, Johan, "On the Effects of Economic Sanctions, with Examples from

the Case of Rhodesia," World Politics, 19 (1967), 378-416. Goldman, Marshall L., "The Balance Sheet of Soviet Foreign Aid," Foreign

Affairs, 43 (1965), 349-61. Graber, Doris A., "Are Foreign Aid Objectives Attainable?" The Western Political

Quarterly, 19 (1966), 68-84. Hammond, Paul Y., David J. Louscher, and Michael D. Salomon, "Controlling

U.S. Arms Transfers: The Emerging System," Orbis, 23 (Summer 1979),

317-52. Hirschman, Albert O., National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade. Berkeley,

Calif.: University of California Press, 1945. Chap. 2. Hoadley, J. Stephen, "Small States as Aid Donors," International Organization,

34 (Winter 1980), 121-38.

240 Economic Instruments of Policy

Huntington, Samuel P., "Foreign Aid for What and for Whom?" Foreign Policy, 1 (Winter 1970-1971), 161-89.

Jaster, Robert S., "Foreign Aid and Economic Development: The Shifting So­viet View," International Affairs, 45 (1969), 452-64.

Joshua, Wynfred, and Stephen P. Gilbert, Arms for the Third World: Soviet Military Aid Diplomacy. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.

Keyfitz, Nathan, "Foreign Aid Can Be Rational," International Journal, 17 (1962), 247-50.

Lyon, Peyton V., and Brian W. Tomlin, chap. 8 in Canada as an International Actor. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada Ltd., 1979.

Mende, Tibor, From Aid to Re-Colonization: Lessons of a Failure. New York: Pan­theon, 1973.

Montgomery, John N., Foreign Aid in International Politics. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967.

Morgenthau, Hans, "A Political Theory of Foreign Aid," The American Political Science Review, 56 (1962), 301-9.

Nelson, Joan M., Aid, Influence and Foreign Policy. New York: Macmillan, 1968.

Olson, Richard Stuart, "Economic Coercion in World Politics: With a Focus on North-South Relations," World Politics, 31 (July 1979), 471-94.

Packenham, Robert A., Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development Ideas in Foreign Aid and Social Science. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973.

Smith, Hedrick, "The Russians Mean Business . . . About Business," The Atlan­tic, 234 (December 1974), 41-48.

Triantis, S.G., "Canada's Interest in Foreign Aid," World Politics, 24 (October 1971), 1-18.

Wallensteen, Peter, "Characteristics of Economic Sanctions," Journal of Peace Research, No. 2 (1968), 248-67.

Walters, Robert S., American and Soviet Aid: A Comparative Analysis. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Pittsburgh University Press, 1970.

Wolf, Thomas A., U.S. East-West Trade Policy: Economic Warfare versus Economic Welfare. Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1973.

Wriggins, Howard, "Political Outcomes of Foreign Assistance: Influence, In­volvement or Intervention," Journal of International Affairs, 22 (1968), 217-30.

Clandestine Actions

And

Military Intervention

It was a theme of Chapter 3 that social and technological changes in the political units that make up any international system may have important consequences for the processes that occur within that system. Development of sovereign na­tional states and simultaneous decline of other forms of political organization— such as city-states—brought forth new techniques, institutions, and norms of statecraft in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Just as gunpowder helped destroy the foundations of the feudal order, and the growth of dynastic absolut­ism reduced the international political influence of the Catholic church, mass media of communication, rapid transportation, a complex and interdependent international economy, weapons technology, and mass politics have helped to diminish the "impermeability" of the nation-state. The possibility of obtaining informal or nonofficial access to foreign societies has grown as the size of govern­ment missions abroad—once confined to a few diplomats and consular agents— has increased. Short of building walls or iron curtains, most states have relatively, few effective means of preventing outside infiltration or the movement of funds, propaganda, or military materiel from abroad. States with lengthy frontiers pass­ing through forests, jungles, deserts, or mountains are often incapable of pre­venting outside penetration.

As means of achieving objectives, defending interests, or promoting social values abroad, governments may—instead of sending diplomatic notes or making military threats—infiltrate foreign voluntary organizations, sponsor strikes and riots, create political scandals, attempt a coup d'etat, or, on their

242 Clandestine Actions and Military Intervention

own territory, organize, train, and arm a group of foreign dissidents and then send them home to conduct guerrilla warfare or subversion. States that are relatively weak in conventional military capabilities are able to mount campaigns of external subversion and infiltration at little cost, either in funds and materiel or in the risks of military retaliation by the target country. In our era, the capacity to penetrate politically and quasi-militarily into foreign societies may be as impor­tant as a capability to make military threats, impose naval blockades, or carry out conventional military assaults. In particular, weak states (militarily speaking) with revolutionary or expansionist objectives may attain objectives by conducting clandestine actions abroad. Certainly a state is no longer powerful only if it possesses a vast conventional or nuclear military establishment.¹

Clandestine activities are not, of course, entirely a product of the modern age. They were organized as well in China during the Chou dynasty, in Greece, and particularly in fifteenth-century Italy. In the dynastic international system of the eighteenth century, intervention for ideological principles seldom oc­curred, and monarchs were not generally concerned with the domestic policies of their brethren.² Louis XIV occasionally conspired to interfere in British consti­tutional issues, but the main concern over other states' internal political life was with questions of inheritance and royal affairs. Dynasts concluded military alliances, as in the Triple Alliance of 1717, to place certain candidates on foreign thrones, and indulged in all sorts of court intrigues for the same purposes. But there were no attempts to subvert foreign societies in the name of ideological principles, and governments had not yet developed the techniques of mass per­suasion or guerrilla warfare commonly observed today in international politics. States were, on the whole, "impermeable" to outside influences.

Intervention became more common in the nineteenth century, particu­larly as a method of promoting or putting down revolutions inspired by liberal and nationalist movements. The wars of the French Revolution were revolution­ary wars, often different in objectives and techniques from the wars in the preced­ing century. Conservative regimes, following their victories over Napoleon, as­signed themselves the obligation to intervene militarily against societies that were experiencing domestic liberal revolutions. Later in the same century, the United States frequently sent contingents of marines to Latin American and Caribbean states to influence the course of local politics and revolutions. In general, however, the principle of nonintervention in other states' internal affairs was observed with considerable regularity.

The record of the twentieth century is a remarkable contrast. In some 200 revolutions that occurred during the first half of the century, some form of foreign intervention took place in almost half; in approximately fifty of these

¹ Andrew M. Scott, "Internal Violence as an Instrument of Cold Warfare," in International Aspects of Civil Strife, ed. James N. Rosenau (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 154-69.

² See Edward V. Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1955), pp. 62-65.

243 Clandestine Actions and Military Intervention

revolutions, more than one outside power intervened. Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy interfered in their neighbors' domestic political life with unprec­edented regularity. Since the end of World War II, the record has not improved. Most international crises of the period have started basically as internal revolutions or civil disturbances, in which one or more external states eventually became involved. This list would include Greece, China, Algeria, Laos, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Yemen, the Congo, Angola, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Czechoslovakia, Cambodia, and Ethiopia. Istvan Kende, in one study of revolu­tion, war, and intervention, records sixty-seven "internal regime" wars between 1945 and 1970.³ Outside intervention by one or more powers occurred in fifty-two (77 percent) of these civil disruptions. The United States and the Soviet Union, with fourteen interventions each, were the most active foreign powers. But by no means does it follow that only the great powers practice subversive techniques or the use of controlled military means to influence the domestic politics of another country.

True, the clandestine and interventionary actions of the large states are usually the most dramatic because they are the most highly organized or the stakes are bigger, but smaller nations have not failed to use these techniques to achieve objectives or promote political values. Libya and Saudi Arabia have frequently employed propaganda against foreign audiences in efforts to under­mine support for certain Middle Eastern regimes; they have financed and orga­nized assassination plots, bribed government officials in neighboring territories, and, as in the Yemen civil war in the 1960s, intervened with their own military troops. Many of the new states in Africa have been no less active. Opposition parties—often driven underground—establish headquarters in neighboring states and even accept foreign nationals in leadership positions. They are given not only sanctuary in foreign territories but, frequently, funds, training, and arms as well. Tunisia and Algeria have provided platforms and headquarters for Morrocan opposition elements, and Morocco has been active in organizing guerrilla activities in Mauritania and neighboring Spanish Sahara. Until President Nkrumah was ousted in a coup d'etat in 1966, Ghana had both party and govern­ment organizations charged with ideological and military training of opposition groups from Nigeria, Togoland, and the Ivory Coast. Ghana was seriously impli­cated in subversive attempts in both the Ivory Coast and Niger in the early 1960s. Until Premier Ben Bella's demise in 1965, the Algerian government served as perhaps the most well-organized and widespread center in Africa for financing, organizing, and training foreign nationals in the techniques of clandestine politi­cal action, subversion, and guerrilla warfare. More recently, the government of Libya has been charged with financing terrorist activities, such as the kidnap­ping of some OPEC oil ministers from a meeting in Vienna in 1976 and organiz­ing an attempted coup against the Sudanese government, also in 1976. And

³ Istvan Kende, "Twenty-Five Years of Local Wars," Journal of Peace Research, 8 (1971), 5-22.

244 Clandestine Actions and Military Intervention

Cuba sent a force of an estimated 10,000 troops in support of the M.P.L.A. faction in the Angolan civil war.

Domestic plots and intrigues in which foreign African and Middle East governments or parties have been involved thus have been and continue to be numerous. What has been distinctive about these efforts is their general ineffectiveness, which can be explained in part by lack of public support among target groups for externally directed operations, political apathy, poor communi­cations, and lack of experience and capabilities on the part of the sponsoring states.⁴

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