Expendable soldiers

Abstract

Foreign Legions in the generic sense have evolved in ways that would surprise Beau Geste. Not only are more foreigners or recent immigrants enlisting in Western military forces, but also the post-Cold War era has seen the revival of warlord militias and Private Military Companies. Western militaries, in particular that of the United States, have also sought to increase their strategic reach through security assistance to regional military forces. While there have been some successes, security assistance has proven to have its limitations, not to mention unintended consequences for civil military relations, democracy promotion, and military efficiency.

Keywords::

• Algeria
• Henry Kissinger
• Marshall Plan
• NATO
• Operation Condor
• David Petraeus
• Vietnam

Notes

^1. Security assistance is defined as a: ‘Group of programs authorized by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, and the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, as amended, or other related statutes by which the United States provides defense articles, military training, and other defense-related services, by grant, loan, credit, or cash sales in furtherance of national policies and objectives. Security assistance is an element of security cooperation funded and authorized by Department of State to be administered by Department of Defense/Defense Security Cooperation Agency. Also called SA. See also security cooperation. Source: JP 3-22, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/data/s/6928.html. Those administering security cooperation in-country: ‘includes military assistance advisory groups, military missions and groups, offices of defense and military cooperation, liaison groups, and defense attaché personnel designated to perform security assistance/cooperation functions. Also called SCO. Source: JP 3-22, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/data/s/21660.html.

^2. Eric Schmitt, ‘U.S. Prepares to Train African Forces to Fight Terror’, New York Times, 19 October 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/19/world/africa/us-prepares-to-train-african-forces-to-fight-terror.html?hp.

^3. Benjamin Disraeli's Crystal Palace speech of 24 June 1872. Quoted in Bennett, The Concept of Empire, 257–9. Disraeli reacted to Liberal assertions that empire was costly, inefficient, and borderline immoral, with an emotional and colorful political and public relations offensive that successfully associated Empire with monarchy, patriotism, adventure, justice, liberty, national security, prosperity and greatness, and the Conservative Party. The problem, as Judd notes, was that while Conservatives wanted empire, they also wanted it on the cheap. Judd, Empire, 9, 8, 115, 121, 141, 232. Isaiah Berlin among others suggested that Disraeli's embrace of empire was also a method to counter ‘sham Englishman’ accusations of his anti-Semitic critics. By becoming the champion of a patriotic British national project, he could ‘triumph within… his English milieu’. Anthony Julius, ‘Judaism's Redefiner’, New York Times Sunday Book Review, 25 January, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/books/review/Julius-t.html?ref = books&_r = 0; Berlin, Against the Current, 252–86.

^4.Hogan, ‘Head and Heart’, 1145–1147.

^5. US Special Operations Command, Budget Highlights FY 2013, 6; Stew Magnuson, ‘Changes on the Horizon for Special Operations Command as Force Grows’, National Defense Magazine, May 2012, http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2012/May/Pages/ChangesontheHorizonForSpecialOperationsCommandasForceGrows.aspx.

^6.Sartre, War Diaries, 290–1.

^7.Bacevich, The New American Militarism, 22.

^8.Strachan, The Politics of the British Army.

^9. Mitchell obituary, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/27/world/colin-mitchell-is-dead-at-70-british-hero-in-aden-battles.html; also his obituary in the Daily Telegraph, 24 July 1996, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/5796166/Lt-Col-C-C-Mad-Mitch-Mitchell.html.

^10.Kitson, Gangs and Counter-gangs. For a critique, see Professor Paul Wilkenson, ‘Frank Kitson and Pseudo Gangs’, 24 September, 2005, http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2005/09/professor-paul-wilkinson-frank-kitson.html.

^11.Porter, Military Orientalism, 85.

^12. Sartre, War Diaries, 292.

^13.Burchett, The Whores of War.

^14.Adams, ‘The New Mercenaries’.

^15. David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, ‘After Profits, Defense Contractor Faces the Pitfalls of Cybersecurity’, New York Times, 16 June, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/us/after-profits-defense-contractor-faces-the-pitfalls-of-cybersecurity.html?pagewanted = all.

^16. Rod Norland, ‘Afghan Forces struggle as U.S. Weans them off support’, New York Times, 18 June, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/world/middleeast/afghan-forces-struggle-as-us-weans-them-off-support.html?pagewanted = all; ‘Karsai's Call to Expel Contractors Poses Big Logistical Hurdles’, PBS, 16 August 2010, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec10/afghan2_08–16.htm.

^17. Mohammed Ibrahim and Jeffrey Gettleman, ‘Parliament takes on Contractors in Somalia’, New York Times, 30 December 2010.

^18. A 2004 law allowed up to 9% of the Spanish army to be made up of Latin Americans and men from Equatorial Guinea. Within five years, approximately 6000 foreigners, attracted by high salaries and the chance for a Spanish passport, had enlisted. They made up half of the Spanish soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, and as a consequence 43% of combat fatalities. ‘Latinos en primera línea del ejército español’, BBC Mundo – Internacional, 10 February 2010, http://anzoateguivive.com/2010/02/11/latinos-en-primera-linea-del-ejercito-espanol/.

^19.http://slowdecline.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/us-offer-green-cards-to-foreign-nationals-if-they-will-risk-their-lives-in-iraq-for-the-army/; ‘U.S. Military Will Offer Path to Citizenship’, New York Times, 14 July, 2009.

^20. Bacevich, The New American Militarism, 99, 106, 111, 217–18.

^21. As most of the eight full and three partial French divisions trained by US forces from 1943 were raised initially from France's imperial army, the complaint was that the overwhelmingly illiterate North and West African soldiers were suitable only in light infantry roles, which meant that the US Army had to shoulder many supply and support tasks. Gaullists and pro-Vichy and subsequently pro-Giraud soldiers harbored a bitter loathing for each other, one intensified by clashes in Syria in 1941, which led to refusals to cooperate in combat operations. Roughly one-third of Resistance forces refused de Gaulle's orders to disband or join the regular army on Liberation. André Martel, ‘La Libération et la victoire: “Quoi? Les français aussi?”’, in Martel, Histoire militaire, volume 4, 205–10, 234. Numbers are elusive, but Martel reckons that of a pool of 300,000 FFI on the liberation, approximately 190,000 joined the regular forces from August 1944. Resistors in the communist dominated Franc-tireurs et partisans (FTP) were the least likely to enlist. De Gaulle maintained his own political agenda, which on occasion led to refusal to cooperate with Allied operational priorities, in particular over the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, and the retention of Strasbourg in December of that year in the face of the German Battle of the Bulge offensive. Vigneras, Rearming the French. For the political context of rearmament, see Berthon, Allies at War; Cobb, The Resistance.

^22.Pach, Jr., Arming the Free World, 4.

^23.Stimson, On Active Service, 533–5.

^24. Pach, Arming the Free World, 4–6; Kaplan, A Community of Interests, 171.

^25. Lawrence J. Korb, ‘Well-Trained Locals can be Vital’, New York Times, 24 April, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/07/a-lesson-in-futilty-for-the-pentagon/well-trained-local-forces-can-be-vital-for-the-us.

^26. On Vietnam, see Wiest, Vietnam's Forgotten Army.

^27.Maitland, A Contagion of War, 11–98.

^28. ‘Mali: Malian Army, Islamist Groups Executed Prisoners’, February 1 2013, Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/01/mali-malian-army-islamist-groups-executed-prisoners.

^29. Eric Schmitt, ‘Terror Haven in Mali Feared after French Leave’, New York Times, 24 April 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/world/africa/west-fears-for-malis-fate-after-french-forces-leave.html?pagewanted = all&_r = 0.

^30. John Norris, ‘American Assistance is Spread too Widely’, New York Times, 24 April 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/07/a-lesson-in-futilty-for-the-pentagon/american-military-assistance-is-too-widespread.

^31. Arms sales are governed by a ‘Conventional Arms Transfer Policy’ of 1995, which lays out the conditions that must be met before arms sales can be made – human rights guarantees, interoperability with US forces, strategic interests, and so on. http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rsat/c14023.htm. Congress is given a 15 to 30 day notification when an arms sale is being made. In theory, Congress may pass a joint resolution to oppose it, although this has yet to happen. Arms sales that are given the greatest degree of Congressional scrutiny are those to the Middle East and North Africa where the United States has undertaken to ‘take account of Israel's qualitative military edge’, so that Israel is usually consulted before new weapons are introduced by the Washington into the region. However, Washington will often overlook human rights issues if it is determined that strategic interests are in play – Pakistan and Egypt offer two salient examples.

^32. Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 streamlined and clarified the chain of command in the US military.

^33. Nor is the in-country chain of command clear, as the Chief of the SAO answers to the Ambassador as head of the country team, the Combatant Command, and the Director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The attaché reports also to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

^34. These deficiencies were pointed out by some of my students at the Naval Postgraduate School, Americans who have executed security assistance missions, or international officers who been on the receiving end of them.

^35. Olaf Bachman, ‘Civil-Military relations in Francophone Africa’.

^36. Catherine Guicherd, ‘L'investissement de l'UE’, 5–6, 25–32.

^37. On Operation Condor, see Dignes, The Condor Years.

^38. Elizabeth Malkin, ‘In Testimony, Guatemalans give Account of Suffering’, New York Times, 14 April 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/world/americas/in-rios-montt-trial-guatemalans-give-account-of-suffering.html?ref = efrainriosmontt. The School of the Americans has been transferred from Panama to Fort Benning, Georgia, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), and its curricula leavened, at least, with courses in ethics, human rights, peacekeeping and peace support missions. http://www.benning.army.mil/tenant/whinsec/content/PDF/WHINSEC%20Course%20Catalog%202014-2015.pdf.

^39. Kate Doyle, ‘A Wretched Record of Military Cooperation;’Boubacar N'Diaye, ‘Learning to Kill Terrorists Isn't Enough;’ New York Times, 25 April 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/07/a-lesson-in-futilty-for-the-pentagon/well-trained-local-forces-can-be-vital-for-the-us. This requires more interagency coordination than hitherto appears to have been the case, a closer working relationship between ambassadors and security assistance teams in-country, and a better understanding of the purpose, limits, and potentially unsettling effects of military upgrades on local politics. A DSCA representative explained to the author that ‘end use monitoring’ of US supplied weapons forbade their use by militaries against their own people. If such incidents were pointed out by an NGO, an Incident Review Board would be set up composed of an officer from the Judge Advocate General, a State Department Representative, and a SAO to investigate. Units identified as violators of HR are denied security assistance dollars. Soldiers push back that restrictions on providing security assistance until units or individual officers and soldiers can be ‘vetted’ for human rights violations, known as the Leahy Amendment tacked on to the 1997 Foreign Relations bill by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, has complicated their task to the point of undermining security assistance. Leahy's retort is that security assistance should deter human rights violations, not reward them, and rather than weaken the law, it should be strengthened and uniformly applied. Eric Schmitt, ‘Military Says Law Barring U.S. Aid to Rights Violators Hurts Training Mission’, New York Times, 21 June 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/us/politics/military-says-law-barring-us-aid-to-rights-violators-hurts-training-mission.html?pagewanted = all&_r = 0. In 2005, the United Nations passed a set of norms and principles known as Responsibility to Protect, that aims to prevent genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity like ethnic cleansing; http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org. This justified the intervention in Libya in 2011.

^40. Oscar Naranjo, ‘Colombia Shows the Value of Cooperation’, New York Times, 25 April 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/07/a-lesson-in-futilty-for-the-pentagon/colombia-shows-the-value-of-military-cooperation.

^41. Andres Schipani, ‘Security for Export’, ‘The New Colombia’ supplement, Financial Times, 4 June 2013, 16, 18. http://www.ft.com/intl/reports/new-colombia-2013.

^42. Adam Isacson, ‘Re-Sheathing the Sword: the Uncertain Future of Colombia's Civil-Military Relations’, World Politics Review, 30 April 2013, 3. http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12902/re-sheathing-the-sword-the-uncertain-future-of-colombias-civil–military-relations. Another estimate lists 320 helicopters; http://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id = Colombia. By contrast, the USMC focused on improving the basic training of Colombian marine conscripts, improving counter-IED capacity, and personnel management, among other things.

^43. Isacson, ‘Re-Sheathing the Sword’, 3–4.

^44.Stanley, ‘El Salvador’, 101–14.

^45. Isacson, ‘Re-Sheathing the Sword’, 5.

^46. Apart from the considerable higher salaries promised by Blackwater, the speculation that a significant attraction of this new foreign legion is, like the original, that it promises a refuge from judicial pursuit. Schipani, ‘Security for Export’, 18. See also: Marc Mazzetti and Emily B. Hager, ‘Secret Desert Force Set up by Blackwater's founder’, New York Times, 14 May 2011; ‘The UAE Military is Recruiting 3,000 Colombians’, http://feraljundi.com/5064/uae-the-uae-military-is-recruiting-3000-colombians/; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15prince.html?pagewanted = all&_.

^47. Michael Peel and Andres Schipani, ‘Bogotá Alarmed by Exodus of Soldiers to UAE’, Financial Times, 3 June 2013, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/21c1af74-cc5c-11e2-bb22–00144feab7de.html#axzz2hu21GRBF. Matthew Rosenberg, ‘With Bags of Cash, CIA seeks Influence in Afghanistan’, New York Times, 29 April 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/world/asia/cia-delivers-cash-to-afghan-leaders-office.html?hp.

^48. Michael Hirch, ‘Blackwater and the Bush Legacy’. Newsweek, 20 September 2007, 2.

^49.P. W. Singer, ‘Can't Win With ’Em’, 5, 8.

^50. Peter Beinart, ‘Send in the Contractors’, New York Times Book Review, 5 May 2013, p. 9. The article is a review of David Rohde, Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in the New Middle East (New York: Viking, 2013).

^51.Chandrasekaran, Little America, 86.

^52. Tim Shorrock, ‘Put the Spies Back under One Roof’, New York Times, 18 June 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/opinion/put-the-spies-back-under-one-roof.html?partner = rssnyt&emc = rss.

^53. Quoted in Russo, The Vichy Syndrome, 30.

^54. Bacevich, The New American Militarism, 78, 83–4, 87.

^55. Andrew J. Bacevich, ‘Robert Kaplan: Empire without Apologies’, The Nation, 6 September 2005, http://www.thenation.com/article/robert-kaplan-empire-without-apologies.