Irregular Warfare Podcast - Transmitting Values: Can US Security Force Assistance Export Democratic Norms?

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Subscribe to the IWI monthly newsletter by going to www.irregularwarfare.org! What role does promoting liberal values, such as human rights and democracy, play in security cooperation? How should the inherent tension between promoting liberal values and accomplishing national security objectives be managed when working with partner nations? Should policymakers deliberately seek to tie US values to security force assistance in the future? Our guests on this episode, Ambassador Dennis Ross and Dr. Renanah Joyce, share their insights on these questions and more. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

So the idea is you do this tactical and operational training and advising. And again, this idea is that if you succeed in sort of shaping how soldiers think as individuals, this will sort of produce behavioral change. But it's worth questioning each step in that process, is that actually what happens? Because I think that often it's not, right? Often we don't see behavior sort of aggregating up to institutional change. And even if you do succeed in sort of changing things within the military institutions, we often see it failing to sort of shift state-level policy decisions in the direction that we want. The hardest thing for us to do is to pursue a policy that has no relationship to values at all.

There needs to be balance, there needs to be pragmatism. If you pursue values without being informed by the reality or by our interests, you're going to fail. And when you fail, you then become less capable of doing anything at all. Welcome to episode 67 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jebb, and my co-host today is Kyle Atwell. Today's episode explores the interplay between security force assistance and liberal democratic values. Our guests begin by describing the role that promoting liberal values, such as human rights and democracy, play in security cooperation. They then examine the inherent tension between promoting liberal values and accomplishing national security interests when working with partner forces and nations. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the relative impact of advising and influencing

partner nations at the tactical versus institutional levels, and whether policymakers should seek to tie U.S. values to security force assistance in the future. Ambassador Dennis Ross is Counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. As a highly skilled diplomat, he has served at the top levels of government in multiple administrations and was instrumental in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process. Ambassador Ross is the recipient of the State Department's highest award and holds a Ph.D.

from UCLA. Dr. Renana Joyce is an assistant professor of politics at Brandeis University, and she is also a fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative. Dr. Joyce received her Ph.D. from Columbia University and has held positions at Harvard, MIT, and the Pentagon. In 2022, Dr. Joyce published Soldier's Dilemma, Foreign Military Training and Liberal Norm Conflict, which addresses U.S. security force assistance and serves as the anchor for today's conversation. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare

professionals. Here's our conversation with Dr. Renana Joyce and Ambassador Dennis Ross. Dr. Joyce, Ambassador Ross, thanks for coming on the show today for episode 67 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. It's great to be here. Really nice to be with you. Thank you. So Renana, your research has focused on the ways that the U.S. government exports liberal values abroad. You've specifically focused on this in the context of security force assistance, examining whether external actors can actually transmit liberal values like human rights protections to partner militaries. But you've also looked more broadly than the military. Could you start by framing what you mean by transmitting values and why this might be important in an irregular warfare context?

Sure, absolutely. So start maybe by stepping back just for a moment and talking about why the U.S. invests more broadly in security cooperation or security force assistance abroad. And there's many reasons, but they sort of boil down to two key categories. One, build the warfighting capacity of friendly states and allies. And two, influence partner and allies' behavior and policies. And so I think it's useful to distinguish between these categories of goals because they may require different strategies and levels of investment, but it's also important to note that they tend to be related. So once the U.S. builds partner capacity, it has a vested interest in influencing how and when that capacity is used. And this is where the political and the

normative complexities of security cooperation come in. And this is where the U.S. interest in promoting liberal norms and values in its partner security forces come in. So I think the point there is it's worth stressing that promoting liberal values isn't just idealism or altruism. The U.S. also hopes that by creating more liberal partner forces, it can delegate security tasks without worrying about the backlash from arming them. And the U.S. and other Western powers also see this as a way to sort of integrate smaller states into liberal international order by cultivating militaries and security forces that share common values. It's interesting because the role of values in U.S. security

cooperation strategy has also varied historically. So if we think about during the Cold War, for example, where we saw values often taking a back burner, right? There was sort of periodic concern over human rights and client states and partners, but these were often subsumed by strategic imperatives. And then after the Cold War, we had this unipolar moment, the idea that history had ended, authoritarianism was destined for the dustbin. And we saw this sort of U.S. eagerness to cement gains and promote liberal democracy, and particularly when it came to security forces in other countries. And so you had engagement with former Warsaw Pact states, the Partnership for Peace, the Warsaw Initiative Fund. And then in the post-9-11 era, we saw sort of this continued investment in liberal

values and norms for somewhat different reasons. There was a perception that the primary threats to U.S. national security were emanating from weak states that were beset with bad governance. And so the solution was improve the governance, create more democratic institutions and partner states. And so in the last 20 years, we've seen this increased and persistent infusion of value sort of woven into security cooperation initiatives. What you've just outlined, I think, A, captures a reality. And I'd like to take a step back because one of the things I think we experienced over time is a sense that military to military relations were also viewed through a certain lens. In the first instance, I think we were looking to ensure that countries, especially in the Middle East, would be, on the one hand, more capable of defending themselves. And if they had a relationship with us, it meant they became more capable because we would help with training. As they became more capable, they would also be more responsive to us.

It wouldn't look else for weapons because, in a sense, as you know, when you provide weapons, you're not just providing weapons, you're providing the holistic logistic training package that goes with it. So the use of provision of arms, arms transfers and the like, did have a political element to it, always had a political element to it. Think about it in a historic context. Every president balances interests and values. Different presidents give different weight to the two. Take someone like Jimmy Carter. Human rights were an emblem of the Carter administration. Now how did that work with Egypt and Saudi Arabia? Were they a centerpiece of the policy with Egypt and Saudi Arabia?

It's a rhetorical question. They were not. Particularly in the case of Saudi Arabia, President Carter was very fearful of another oil embargo. So oil was the predominant issue when it came to Saudi Arabia. In Egypt, the issue was peace in the Middle East and with Sadat. So there were very few questions asked about Sadat. are defined as being more important, even for a president like Jimmy Carter, for whom values seem to be the most important element, the interests tend to predominate where we decide our stakes are such that that should be the case. Okay, so how do arms transfers fit into that? Again, in the first instance, if it's driven by concerns about the stability and the well-being of a particular country where we think we have size stakes, we don't tend to raise the values interest very much or the values preoccupation very much. And we look to create the military-to-military ties as something that deepens the connections between us and that country.

Many of these countries, the military plays a prominent role, not just in the military area, but obviously in decision-making and in terms of the weight they have in terms of power structure. We're going to get into the mechanics of whether transmitting values can work and the risks it incurs, and also explore this question of interest versus values much more deeply. But before we do so, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States expended massive amounts of effort and resources trying to build military forces. And I think, you know, an important kind of comment I took away from what you mentioned, Ambassador, is that we're also not just trying to transmit values through the military, but also through other institutions of, you know, our partner governments. And yet,

it seems like this liberal peace building project didn't work definitely in Afghanistan, and maybe was tenuous at best at certain points in Iraq. Given these massive, I guess you'd call them failures, what is the role of transmitting values moving forward in U.S. foreign policy? Do we expect it will continue to play a predominant role or will it actually be lessened? And I'll ask that question to Renana first. That's a great question. So in answering it, I actually want to go back to something the ambassador just touched on and then come back to your question, Kyle. But one thing, too, is when we talk about transmitting values, I think there is sometimes a tendency, the scholarly literature contributes to this tendency, to focus rather narrowly on things like human rights compliance. thinking of liberal values in a somewhat broader way in terms of mindsets and orientation, particularly that are conducive to liberal international order or rules-based international order. And if we consider that under sort of the rubric of values, then now we're talking about

sort of much broader questions of alignment and orientation that I think are pervasive and we can't and won't fully separate from any kind of grand strategy or statecraft and certainly not from security cooperation itself. But to come back to your question specifically, Kyle, about what role should these liberal values play going forward? I think that's a great question and it's not one for which there's an easy answer. national security strategy that was just released was this description of a global contest between authoritarianism and democracy. And so this idea that autocrats are working to export a model of governance that's marked by repression and coercion and this call for the U.S. to strengthen democracy around the world. And so the good news, like I touched on a few minutes ago, is that the U.S. has 30 years of experience strengthening democratic values in partner security forces. But I think there's this internal tension in the U.S. approach to strengthening democracy through security cooperation that global competition is probably going to exacerbate, right? So on the one hand,

there's this worry that strings attached will make U.S. security cooperation less appealing to potential partners, right? Why take U.S. arms with all the conditions and caveats and expectations when you can get them from an autocratic donor who will have no such expectations of you or demands on you? And so there's this fear of moralizing or putting ideals ahead of strategic imperatives. But on the other hand, right, we have this national security strategy that explicitly identifies this contest between models of governance as the heart of competition over future order. And so to the extent that security cooperation contributes to stronger democratic defense institutions, safer populations, stronger protections of human rights, it may actually help to cement the U.S.

position as partner of choice and as leader of global order, of our preferred order, right, an order that is conducive to liberal governance. And so policymakers will need to decide what role these efforts should play and incorporate them into strategies accordingly. I would love to pick up on that because I think these are important insights and observations. First, the appeal of American arms is not so much American values. It's the perception American arms are simply better than anyone else's. And I think the performance of the Russian military right now is probably reinforcing that. I don't just say that idly because I'm hearing it from a lot of those that I deal with, especially in the Middle

East. But I think it's always been true. The perception is our technology is superior. It's embodied in the weapons. And a lot of those around the world who want weapons, they want the best. And so they perceive American weapons to all the bells and whistles on them, much of what they're facing in the Sinai requires actually much more mobility and probably a lot less technology. But nonetheless, many of these militaries sort of measure themselves in terms of we want the best. And so the perception is that what we provide is the best. So that clearly creates an appeal for us. Secondly, I think this issue of the international order, it is a preoccupation of ours. And this gets back to the issue of interest versus values. If we're in a longer-term competition with the Russians and the Chinese, which clearly seems to be the case now, if we're in that longer-term competition, we have an interest

in having countries that are not democracies be part of the coalition, the larger coalition, because they add to the overall means, where we can, in a sense, have something in common with Saudi Arabia and Egypt in particular. Neither one of them have an interest in upending the regional order. Iran is a threat to the regional order. They don't want to see that regional order upset. We don't want to see that regional order upset. That creates a convergence of interests. Now, here the interesting question becomes one of values, and it gets back, I think, to the question that was being asked. You look at our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if that doesn't infuse us with a very strong sense of humility, I can't imagine what would. After those experiences, we should learn some lessons from them. It is not so easy to impart our values as such. We

certainly can't impose our values. And when we try to do that, they're not going to work. They're not going to take. So the question becomes, how do you do this in a way that you impart something that still does matter to us, apart from capability and enhancing their ability to operate? If we make value simply human rights, by definition, we're going to limit what we can do. Because there's obviously different definitions of what constitutes human rights. And when we're dealing with, you take different countries that are obviously more authoritarian than we would like them to be, and yet they believe in the current regional order, and therefore they're prepared to support the kind of things we are, we have to figure out what's the best way to deal with them.

Here I want to go back even more historically, because one of the things I actually was called on to do was, at the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, we were in the process of ending the Cold War. We had all these countries in Eastern Europe that wanted to become part of NATO. And we created a set of principles that we needed them to sign up to. Now here, the potential, you know, look, not to succeed 100%, but you don't measure policy in terms of, gee, if I don't achieve everything, it wasn't even worth trying. It's like what I say about interventions, military interventions. If the definition of intervention is we do nothing or we put a couple hundred

thousand troops on the ground, well, we're kind of missing what is the definition of intervention, because there's so many different things you can do in between. Well, the same applies here. You're not going to transform a country that doesn't have a democratic tradition, that doesn't have a tradition of civil society, that doesn't have a tradition of an independent judiciary. You are not going to turn that country around overnight. But you can create building blocks over time. And one of the issues we're talking about today is what role can the military and

a military support system play in terms of helping build some of those building blocks? So Ambassador Ross, what you just talked about kind of reminds me of an anecdote I've heard with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who in describing U.S. willingness to partner with somewhat unsavory characters. I think specifically it was General Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic by saying, he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch. I guess my question is, how does the U.S. navigate politically sensitive environments and conduct security force assistance with countries where interests may align, but values do not? And I know you've kind of touched

on that a little, but if you could just flesh that out a little more, that'd be great. I think the way we approach this question, and again, you approach it with some degree of humility. You approach it from the standpoint that there's probably not one good answer. You approach it from the standpoint that maybe there's a series of steps that you take. You approach it from the standpoint that maybe there's a series of steps that you take. It has to be informed fundamentally by what are our stakes. If you want to explain an approach to a country, Trujillo was an interesting example. I'm not sure it's one necessarily that you want to use as a model.

But the point is there are relationships we have today. They're important to us for a variety of interests. I'll take as an example Saudi Arabia. Obviously, this is an issue that creates real debate in this country. The killing, the murder of Khashoggi has a profound effect in terms of the way many on Capitol Hill, many in the Congress look at what our relationship with Saudi Arabia should be. But then you also look at a series of issues that relate to our interests and to some extent even our values. I can tell you, years ago, if we'd had a leader in Saudi Arabia who said, we're going to make nationalism and modernization the source of legitimacy and identity, not Wahhabism, which is the ideology

that fueled al-Qaeda and ISIS. If we knew we were going to have a leadership there that was to subordinate the clerics, that was going to focus on modernization, that was going to elevate half of its population, meaning women, that was going to socially liberalize the country, even though they weren't going to politically liberalize it, we would have said, where do we sign up? Because our stakes in the region were going to be served by that. My point is, you start with what are your stakes? Are they really important? Why are they important? And in what ways? And if they're important, then you shape a policy, but then you also have to explain it here. One of the big failings, I think, that is

true of most administrations, they don't spend enough time explaining why something is important to us. I want to follow up on this idea about working with partners where interests may align, but values do not. I want to suggest that one way that may be helpful to think about this is, and I think that in and of itself is a very important thing to think through. I think it's also worth considering, depending on the goals of the security cooperation, what it's trying to accomplish, maybe a helpful way of thinking about this is not only are our interests aligned, even if values are not, but are civilian political interests or values threatened by what the U.S. is trying to accomplish with security cooperation with that partner, right? And so this is part of the challenge and that I've found in my own work. It's sometimes civilians are fine with reform, right? They're fine with security cooperation, improving their defense institutions. That's great. Yes. Give us better supply chains.

Yes. We want more efficient resource management, right? We're cash strapped. We need to do better. We're okay with eradicating some corruption on the margins. And so it's not threatening. strapped, we need to do better. We're okay with eradicating some corruption on the margins. And so it's not threatening. And in that case, you know, then I think that creates space for military to military engagement to start to create the kind of evolutionary change and building blocks approach that the ambassador was describing earlier when he was talking about the vision for engaging with the Egyptian military. And the problem that I think comes in is that sometimes those changes in the defense institutions can be deeply threatening to political interests. And that's where you often run into trouble. So it's not only thinking through sort of general interest alignment, but it's what are the specific implications of reform for the

political incentives in the country, right? And so, for example, the case that I look at in Liberia, U.S. security assistance was quite successful in imparting liberal norms and values in that military because civilian leaders wanted a professional, liberally-minded military as much as the U.S. wanted it. And so as a result, they left it alone, they insulated it from political meddling, and they allowed reforms to flourish. We could look all the way at sort of the opposite end of the strategic spectrum to the Ukraine, where we've seen seven years of pretty successful defense institution building with some painful reforms to their institutional processes that

are now paying off in a significant way. Again, because those reforms weren't sort of threatening to political interests. On the other hand, you could look at the case we were just talking about, Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. security force assistance was trying, among other things, to create liberally minded military that would underpin a democratic state. But in Iraq, for example, that was not aligned with Prime Minister Nouriel Maliki's agenda, who was bent on co-opting and coup-proofing the military. And so as a result, the things that the U.S. was trying to do were pretty systematically undone. And so I think this is one of the blind spots in the U.S. approach to security force

assistance, which tends to focus, as we started by talking about in the military-to-military socialization piece, I think without adequately addressing the civilian institutions. I have some comments, but I'd like to ask, are there other cases you've identified where you see real success in terms of recognizing what the power structure is and having a political leadership that wants the military to develop a certain way, and then maybe the military itself sees a value in that? We have the big success stories in sort of the post-World War II era. But again, those are also in their own way overdetermined, right? There are so many different things that were happening. But those are, I think, the big examples of large wholesale military

reconstruction where the U.S. was successful in building up and shaping professional and sort of liberally-minded militaries. So thinking of Germany after the war of Japan. I view Liberia also as a success story, even though, as I show in my research, that even those gains may be more fragile and reversible than we think. There's really relatively few examples of wholesale sort of starting from scratch military building. I think Iraq and Afghanistan are failures. I think we could probably look at some of the efforts that have gone on in the Balkans more recently as a success. So I'm thinking of U.S. efforts in Bosnia, for example, I think are another comparative success story, not necessarily militaries that have been tested in active armed conflict, but that sort of

show evidence of professionalizing and liberalizing. Ronana, you brought up the idea of how do we organize for security cooperation and security force assistance, essentially between civilian and military agencies. And I think it's something we should dig into more. But another observation I'm making is that we're talking a lot about strategic level kind of decisions right now. But this challenge between interest and values impacts actors at the operational level and even down to the tactical level.

And I have a whole bunch of examples in mind. In Afghanistan, in Iraq, for example, there are many cases of U.S. military personnel watching their partners sell equipment we gave them and then essentially being told not to do anything about it or to let it go out of strategic imperative. We have the very prominent example of the Chai Boys in Afghanistan, the Bacha Bazi, which was the idea that we knew partners we were working with were essentially conducting, you know, child sexual abuse. And then, you know, we have other examples where the U.S. has continued to provide military support to partners who we knew were conducting HR violations on the hope that we could reform them in the long run. And these issues are often felt at kind of a tactical level as well. So given your research, have you found that these challenges reside primarily at the tactical or strategic levels? And how do we organize as a government between the military

and other agencies to have a unity of effort between the role of both security and kind of the rest of government institution building? Yeah. So when it comes down to the question of tactical versus strategic level, I come down pretty much every time on institutions, institutions, institutions, like it's at the institutional level, it's at the strategic level, I come down pretty much every time on institutions, institutions, institutions, like it's at the institutional level, it's at the strategic level. And I'll try to justify that. And I think that's a little bit counterintuitive to the U.S. model. I think the U.S. model of security force assistance today, the implicit theory is, you know, if you change people's minds, right, if you change individuals' minds, then the rest will fall into place. I think that's wishful thinking, right? Values don't just survive in

the ether. Like, they have to be tethered to institutions. And if you don't have the institutional frameworks and guardrails in place in which to embed norms, in which to embed standards of behavior and practices, then why are we surprised when they fail to transform behavior, right? Even if you succeed in changing people's minds about what's right and wrong, for example, or what's efficient or what's inefficient at the tactical level, if you don't have the processes, the policies, the plans in place at the institutional level to create accountability and to create consistency, then how should we expect behavior you know, behavior to actually transform, particularly when you're talking about military institutions, which are sort of large hierarchical,

in many ways, centralized organizations in which decisions and resources flow from the top down, not to mention connectivity with the political institutions. And so that's why I think that, you know, we tend to address symptoms at the tactical and operational level, but the root causes are often at the institutional level. You know, an interesting observation is at the tactical level, and this isn't just for military personnel, I imagine this is at the embassy as well and other U.S. actors in a foreign country. A lot of times you're trying to gain access, you know, to the partner, you're trying to build relationships. And to do that, it feels like being able to provide things would be

helpful. And yet actually from higher with things like being able to provide things would be helpful. And yet actually from higher with things like Leahy vetting, which prevents us from partnering with certain people, that institutional framework is what keeps us in line with our values when otherwise we're looking for expedient forms of access, essentially. That's just an observation, but I don't know if that has resonated with what you've seen or Ambassador, what you've also seen in your practical experience. I think that's right. For example, some of the areas where I think the U.S. or some of the other providers that I've looked at have had the most success is when they actually succeed in changing those institutional policies and practices that then start to actually govern behavior within the institution. So I've done some historical research on efforts to train the

Tanzanian military during the Cold War, and there was this competition for influence between Canada and China. And, you know, spoiler, China eventually won this sort of macro battle for influence. But at the institutional level, Canada actually succeeded in doing some far-reaching things, primarily by basically designing the defense doctrine and regulations that sort of governed the Tanzanian military. And so the first thing they did was they created the framework for court-martials. They set up the disciplinary system, and then they set up the promotion system, and now they had set the processes in place for who was retained, who was promoted, and who was disciplined, and for what within the military. And so that sort of had very long-term effects in

terms of sort of military organization and discipline. And so that's an example of how those institutional-level structures then sort of govern behavior down. I think maybe an example of how those institutional level structures then sort of govern behavior down. I think maybe an aspect of U.S. approach to security force assistance to be aware of is that if we think about it in many ways, it's more of a bottom-up than a top-down approach, right? So the idea is you do this tactical and operational training and advising. And again, this idea is that if you succeed in sort of shaping how soldiers think as individuals, this will sort of

produce behavioral change. And then there's these institutional engagements. And the idea is, well, if you can engage with the military as an institution, you can sort of help to liberalize the state, right? Liberalize the military, liberalize the state. And so it's sort of constantly moving up. And maybe, I'm not saying that the other way is the right way, but it's worth questioning each step in that process. Is that actually what happens? Because I think that often it's not, right? Often we don't see behavior sort of aggregating up to institutional change. And even if you do succeed in sort of changing things within the military institutions, we often see it failing to sort of shift state-level policy decisions in the direction that we want. And it's, again, it's because these broader political

institutions aren't buying into what's going on or have their own agendas. So I think it's worth challenging some of the assumptions that underlie much of the way that the U.S. approaches, particularly its foreign military training and advising. Even an institutional approach requires a pretty careful review before you get very heavily involved. careful review before you get very heavily involved. And you almost want to identify within the institution, say within the military, what is a low-hanging fruit that you might be able to affect now? It's a kind of baseline approach where you don't try to transform the whole institution because you can't succeed if you do that, but you go in and you identify what are the kind of things that you might be able to affect now that we might also be pretty good at doing, and that once you've done that, it gives you a base from which to work.

I like the court-martial approach you described because it begins to create a different set of routines. And in light of that, okay, then there's some implications for, well, what are some of the other routines you want to be able to affect? And that also strikes me, I think for operators, for our military guys, it becomes easier for them to do the things that they are good at themselves and that they talk about purely from a professional standpoint. When you're dealing with another military, one of the things I will tell you from a lot of years of observation and some experience, everyone I've ever dealt with wants to be seen as a professional. It doesn't matter where they're coming from. They want you to see them as being professional. From the military standpoint, if you can identify,

this is what professional militaries do, this is how they operate, that might be the most natural way to begin to affect the institution. You're more likely to get a hearing. And it lends itself also to what it is that I think our own forces are trained to do. You are socialized a certain way. And this may be the easiest thing for you to transmit. And it doesn't put you in a position where you're asked to do something that you're not going to be able to do. Just as we go through this conversation, I'm kind of struck by that. It falls in line with my overall strategic approach, which is don't set your sights too high to begin with.

Have a lot of humility in terms of how you go about this. Recognize that you should identify those areas where you have some potential to succeed. I think that's true not only in the military-to military to military relationship, but it would be true if, for example, I was giving advice to the Justice Department here, and they're dealing with a fledgling Ministry of Justice in a developing country. Professionalism, professionalism being kind of the criteria. So Dennis, given what you and Renata just said about reforming institutions, I'd like to ask a question about where the U.S. should focus on investing its foreign policy efforts. Is it more important to focus on establishing security in a partner country and then reforming other institutions of governance?

Or maybe is it more important to get the political questions right before investing in that sort of military-to-military cooperation? I realize this might be sort of a chicken-versus-egg type of question, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter. Look, I would say an awful lot depends upon what's going on in the country you're talking about. To give you an example, kind of an extreme one, but obviously a good example where we, I think, learned none of the lessons from Iraq. We produced, not by design, but by result,

regime change in Libya. But at the same time, we made a decision we would put no boots on the ground. When we made a decision to put no boots on the ground, it meant we couldn't mobilize others to do the same. They weren't prepared to put boots on the ground unless we did. And why do I raise this in answer to your question? Because if there's no security at all, your ability to carry out institution building disappears. There's a vacuum that is created. In Libya today, we still have multiple militias. There is still no security. There is a political process that was agreed upon that the UN basically was responsible for overseeing. No one can pursue the political process because there's no security. So a lot depends upon what is the country you're talking about. If there's a modicum of security, then you don't necessarily start with the military.

But here again, I would say, what's the role of the military in the decision-making process? The more prominent the role of the military in the decision-making process, the more I'm going to think about, all right, how do I build a military to military relationship, both for influence writ large, but also with an eye towards trying to professionalize that military from the standpoint of what we were talking about before. Yeah, I think this is an important point. And I think to build on what the ambassador was saying, so much of this is going to depend on what you are trying to achieve in the first place and on the context of the particular country. Right. And again, you know, if you're at the extremes, if you have no security or no stability, those are things that are sort of baseline prerequisites for other things. which I think you'll be occupying the large majority of the time, then I think the answer is going to be driven or should be driven largely by a firm understanding of what it is that we're

trying to accomplish in the first place. And this is sort of one of my broader points about principles for guiding U.S. security cooperation is I do think in addition to, I also agree with what the ambassador was saying earlier about modest goals and expectations. I think they also need to be clear. And so one takeaway that I have from my work, and I've done dozens of interviews with U.S. military advisors who are dispatched around the world to work with partner forces in different capacities and different levels of operation. And one of the most common themes that has come out of this research that I've done is that most advisors seem to arrive in the field without a clear understanding of what exactly they are there to accomplish or how their activities are aligning to strategic goals or even what the key U.S.

strategic goals are for that country. And then they sort of go through this process of discovery. And by the time they feel very confident that they have ascertained exactly what they're supposed to be doing and why this matters for U.S. strategic interests, they, of course, are done with their tour and they leave and go home. And the process starts again. And so I think, you know, sometimes the strategic goals aren't clear, but more often the problem is that there's multiple goals. And so generally the problem is figuring out like, okay, there's a sense of here are things that are important, but what things take the most priority? You know, which is the primary goal? And this matters too, when we're talking about, you know, under what conditions do these efforts work? Well, to ask whether something works is to ask about effectiveness.

And you can only evaluate effectiveness if you know what something is supposed to achieve in the first place. And I think that's also something that often gets lost in these conversations. And so, for example, you have some literature in recent years in which scholars have argued that security cooperation is ineffective because it contributes to coups. And we could talk about that finding, whether it does or not. But the point there is we can only conclude that these efforts are ineffective or don't work because they contribute to coups if avoiding coups was the policy objective, right? Or if a coup represents an unacceptable policy cost. So, for example, right, one of the, I think, success stories for the U.S.

in building a professional military is South Korea. The U.S. succeeded in building a competent professional military organization in South Korea. This is a big success story for U.S. Security Force assistance. That military also overthrew the civilian president in 1961 in a coup, leading to decades of military intervention and politics. in a coup, leading to decades of military intervention in politics. The objective was to create a capable military that was able to withstand communist forces and defend South Korea with assistance from U.S. forces. And along those measures, yes, this was a wildly successful undertaking. If your goal was to liberalize that military and create deference to legitimate civilian authority, then no, it wasn't successful. And so this, I think, really, again, gets at this key point that to understand whether something

works, we have to have real clarity about what it's trying to achieve in the first place, number one. And number two, when it's trying to achieve multiple things, which security cooperation usually is, it's a very flexible tool that the U.S. likes to throw against a lot of different problems. Which of those problems take priority? And if you have to sacrifice some things, which things are you most willing to sacrifice? The U.S. may want a capable partner military that operates independently and a compliant partner military that operates only as directed. But if you have to choose one, which one are you going to choose? You know, I'm smiling because what's the essence of good statecraft? Marrying objectives and means. Now, the reality is we very rarely seem to do it. This is one of the courses I teach, and I always start off by saying marrying objectives and means, obvious, right? Given, right? Always happens, right? Problem is, it almost never happens. Now, why does it almost never happen? Partly because we don't define objectives clearly, or there's a tension we have between

objectives and we don't choose, even though eventually we will. When you have a tension in objectives and you choose one, well, you've just determined what your priority is. So Renata, I think the points that you're making about also multiple goals and how do you reconcile the multiple goals, it seems so basic that you establish what your objective or your goal is before you go down that road. But so often, policies are pursued by habit. And the assumptions that have driven those objectives that created those policies don't get questioned until it becomes clear that something's gone dramatically wrong. So it is a reminder that the lessons for us are be much clearer on the objectives and the priorities. counterinsurgency intervention success was operationalized, you might read three different arguments and say, oh, these people argue COIN does work and these people don't. You know,

I'm going to choose one. But really what you read was three different outcomes of counterinsurgency. One was, did we build a liberal democracy? The other was, did we just reduce insurgent attacks in a five-month period? And these are not the same thing. One thing before we kind of go to our closeout, I wanted to ask though, is, you know, we've kind of hinted at the mechanisms for why one specific outcome, which is, can we reform a partner force that maybe had a poor track record on human rights, for example, into a partner force that values human rights, which is kind of at the core of your research and a core at, I'd say, U.S. foreign policy, given it's in our laws, in the Leahy laws, that we will only work with human rights appreciating partners.

What are the mechanisms for how we actually transmit these values? Is it socialization, or are these just more transactional, where we're essentially buying a partner off with equipment, and then they'll change their behavior while we're providing that? And I think why it's really important to ask this is because it comes down to this question of, are we affecting long-term transformation that will outlast our presence, as in we can invest and then we can withdraw? Or if it's transactional in nature and we want partner forces to act in a certain way, are we essentially committing to be there forever, knowing we're up to continue to kind of exert our influence through this transactional means? Yeah, so I think you're absolutely right. The U.S. uses two different kinds of strategies

to influence partners through security cooperation, right? There's material and non-material strategies. And we've talked about both in this conversation. So material influence strategies shape preferences by manipulating material incentives so that the target is better off complying with what the U.S. wants. So in this example, human rights compliance. And so in other words, you're giving or you're withholding, you're structuring security cooperation as carrots and sticks. The problem is that approach is usually only as good as the carrots and sticks last. The other way is to influence partners through non-material or through these socialization strategies of influence. And so the U.S. uses military training and advising to build rapport and to shape how their partner militaries think through socialization-based mechanisms like

teaching, persuasion, emulation, social influence. And so the expectation is that as militaries adopt new ideas and new norms, their beliefs will shift. And then in turn, their preferences over specific policies will shift. So in this case, again, human rights compliance. So that's the theory. My broader argument is that you need both, right, human rights compliance. So that's the theory. My broader argument is that you need both, right? You need the carrots and sticks and the material incentives, but you also sort of need these socialization-based mechanisms if you're going to create sort of enduring shifts in mindset. And I think the good news is I do find some evidence that under the right conditions, training can transmit values. So I surveyed the armed forces of Liberia, a military built from scratch by the U.S., and I found that a decade onwards,

Liberian soldiers who received more U.S. training expressed more support for liberal values and norms than soldiers with less U.S. training. And what's more, when I compared that survey data to surveys of the general population, I found that soldiers who had received more U.S. training were more liberally minded than their civilian counterparts, whereas soldiers with less U.S. training were actually less liberally minded than their civilian counterparts. And by liberally, here I'm talking about attitudes over a range of things like prioritization of human rights and support for democracy. And so there is evidence that training can transmit these values. Now,

unfortunately, and this is, I think, the piece that we've been talking about in this conversation, these attitudinal shifts, these belief shifts, if they're not embedded in the right institutions, can be reversed under pressure, right? And so in that same study, I used a survey experiment in which soldiers are presented with this scenario in which civilian leadership is ordering them to repress human rights, to repress protests. And so kind of pitting these norms against each other. Do you obey civilian leaders or do you protect people? What do you do if you have to choose? And the answer is actually that they tend to choose neither. And instead, they prioritize protecting the military organization. They prioritize cohesion, which is also sort of a

norm that is imparted indirectly through training. And so the point is that even if these norms are transmitted, if we don't have all the rest of these pieces in place, I think we should not have very high expectations that they're going to carry the day when the military is under pressure, particularly in a domestic crisis. So, Renana and Dennis, I'd like to end the show with a few implications for the academic policymaking and practitioner communities. Based on today's conversation, how can Washington better balance its national security interests and democratic values to optimize its approach to foreign security force assistance going forward? forward? First, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this is an interest of ours, meaning we want to produce greater embrace of democratic values, of human rights, of the rule of law, of separation of powers, of civil society. We want to do what we can to encourage that, but we have to have a sense of balance about it. We cannot impose it on anybody else. And the more we try, the more we're going to produce resistance. So it needs to be part of our approach, but our approach has to start with defining our objectives very clearly,

understanding the situation, the reality of the country that we're dealing with. And then given that assessment, making a judgment about where we are likely to be more successful in terms of trying to begin to socialize a set of values. Going in too hard in a way that is likely to produce a backlash isn't going to help, but ignoring it is also not going to help because it promises no possibility of change. And we get tied to leaderships that may themselves, not over time, be particularly stable. So, yes, I think it needs to be a part of what we do. But it starts with defining objectives clearly and having very good assessments of what's possible.

And then prioritizing about what we're trying to do based on that assessment of what's possible. So, yes, everything the ambassador just said, completely agree. And building on the new national security strategy and the idea that there is this contest between authoritarianism and democracy and that the future direction of the international order is at stake, if we believe that, if we buy that, if that's our operating premise on which our strategies are developed, then liberal values need to somehow be a part of U.S. strategy going forward. But as the ambassador was saying, this has to somehow be a pragmatic promotion of values because, again, this has to be reconciled with the need to work with all sorts of partners, including partners who may not have the same political system as the United States.

And so how do we pragmatically promote the values that we want to underpin the international order without trying to impose a particular institutional form on our partners, particular types of governments, and also the need for clarity of goals, for prioritization of goals. When you can't have everything you want, what is it that you want the most? And being able to identify that in advance rather than policy by revelation. And then when you understand what it is that you're trying to achieve, then considering when and whether security cooperation is the right tool through which to achieve it, right? When we talk about whether this works, we also need to ask

relative to what. And so that requires an assessment of the costs and likely effectiveness of other instruments of statecraft. There may be situations in which economic or political instruments are preferable to security instruments of state investment. And so thinking with clear eyes about what security cooperation can accomplish and being aware of its limitations will be the most promising way forward for a successful security cooperation strategy. Dennis, if security force assistance is a tool to influence partnership and reform with countries around the world, And we might be competing to be the partner of choice now with, you know, a rising China or other powerful countries. Do you think that'll drive pressure to compromise on our values increasingly? Like, is our willingness

to impose conditionality on partners based on their human rights track records something that's going to be less easy for us to pursue? I guess another way of putting it is promoting our liberal values, essentially a luxury we have had because we have been so dominant in the international system. The hardest thing for us to do is to pursue a policy that has no relationship to values at all. It won't be sustainable given the self-image. Even if you look at the American firsters, many of them are driven by a sense of American exceptionalism. And the only reason they want to be unilateral, they don't want to be sullied by contact with others. But the vast majority of Americans still fundamentally view us as being selfless and having values that others would like to have.

So for us to pursue policies without any connection to values is itself going to be subject, I think, to criticism and questions. Henry Kissinger had a hard time pursuing detente because detente was seen as an accommodation of the Soviets without regard to what they were doing domestically. So I think we have to preserve some sense of values, but it gets back to what Renata was saying. There needs to be balance. There needs to be pragmatism. If you pursue values without being informed by the reality or by our interests, you're going to fail. And when you fail, you then become less capable of doing anything at all. So you're looking at how do you balance your interests and your values? I just think there's a whole series of different questions. If the one thing that should come through out of this podcast, if anyone learns

anything from this podcast, it should be understand the context in which you're operating, understand we have multiple tools, understand you have to be pragmatic how you pursue them, and recognize that this is very much a step-by-step process. And by the way, one shoe doesn't fit all. Different countries, you'll be able to do more in. Other countries, it'll be much less. Well, Dr. Renana Joyce, Ambassador Dennis Ross, thank you for coming on the Irregular Warfare podcast today. That was a fascinating conversation about the role of liberal democratic norms

and values in U.S. military intervention. Thanks for everything. Thank you. It was a pleasure to join you all today. Thanks. I very much enjoyed it as well. Thank you again for joining us for episode 67 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Laura and Jeff discuss air advising with Air Force Colonel Tobias Switzer, another Irregular Warfare Initiative fellow, and Brigadier General

John Techert. Following that, Ben and I will discuss the impact of the recently released national security strategy on irregular warfare with Dr. Corey Shockey. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. We are a team of all volunteer practitioners and researchers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. You can follow and engage with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn.

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