Document created: 10 December 01
Published Aerospace Power Journal - Winter 2001

Military Assistance: An Operational Perspective by William H. Mott IV. Greenwood Publishing Group (http://www.greenwood.com), 88 Post Road West, Westport, Connecticut 06881, 1999, 384 pages, $65.00.

This work provides readers a comprehensive study of the dynamics that affect wartime military-assistance programs. Although most of the author’s eight case studies address American experiences with assistance programs from the twentieth century, he includes examples of French and British assistance from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mott’s premise is that successful assistance programs have certain uniformities that increase the potential for meeting donor aims, while programs that lack these uniformities—what Mott terms “lawlike regularities”—are more likely to fail. For policy makers, Mott provides a touchstone for judging if a given assistance program has the right policy mix to meet its goals. For the operator who is personally involved in military-assistance programs, Mott provides a rich, historical reference that may shed light on why particular initiatives are destined to succeed and others to fail. Personnel involved in the process of providing military assistance in any service branch and at any level will benefit from reading this book. 

Prior to delving into the case studies, Mott, a political scientist at heart, takes time to address the history behind military assistance and the different methodologies commonly employed to analyze such assistance. Authors dealing with the social sciences sometimes attempt to quantify historic data to make their work appear more “scientific.” But Mott manages to address the military-assistance issue through qualitative analysis and does a fabulous job of meeting the multidisciplinary challenge posed by the subject. His paradigm of lawlike regularities between donor and recipient nations is reinforced by the parallels he draws among the case studies.

Mott advances his argument of uniformities among the case studies by asserting that “relevant components of the donor and recipient relationship . . . coalesce in four prominent features that seem holistically associated with achieving donor aims” (p. 21). The following briefly summarizes those features: convergence of donor and recipient goals, control by the donor, commitment of donor combat forces, and coherence or suitable integration of donor military assistance with other donor policies and strategy. Mott later points out that “the presence of all four features . . . provides high confidence that military assistance can be expected to achieve donor aims” (p. 266). Simply put, the more features present in a given donor-recipient relationship, the greater the odds of donor success.

One of two observations I found of interest, as regards the author’s analysis of American assistance, was the tendency for policy makers to recommend greater amounts of economic aid and military assistance even though such assistance, by itself, might not achieve their aims. For example, Mott states that “simply increasing aid and expecting the Vietnamese to help themselves, had not produced results” (p. 196). It follows that, without tying assistance to specific aims, it is unrealistic for donors to assume that increasing the funding for a program will ensure its success. The second flaw, often present in US assistance programs, is the tendency to focus aid efforts on only one group of indigenous elements in a recipient country. In postwar China, “American diplomacy had no means readily available to influence the Communists” (p. 152). In Vietnam, advisors told President Kennedy, “We have virtually no contact with meaningful opposition elements and we have made no attempt to maintain a U.S. position independent of [President Ngo Dinh] Diem” (p. 195). These quotations illustrate how the tendency to focus assistance efforts on one actor limits the ability of donor nations to exert pressure on aid recipients, which may ultimately result in a failure to meet donor aims.

The aforementioned remarks about donor experiences as regards America’s past roles only scratch the surface of the lessons Mott shares with his readers. Assuming that his audience consists primarily of Americans, I have one complaint about the chapter that addresses US involvement in Vietnam. Knowing the different phases of American involvement in Vietnam, the author appropriately divides analysis of US military assistance into three studies. However, he could have included a case study that addressed either Soviet or Chinese military assistance to North Vietnam. Such a juxtaposition would have better balanced the latter part of the book and given readers an opportunity to see Mott’s paradigm fit an example other than American military assistance in the twentieth century. 

Mott includes nine appendices that contain quantitative analysis, tables of assistance funding, and topics ranging from the Strategic Hamlet program to the impact of National Security Council directives on the evolution of US military-assistance programs. Much of the data in the appendices doesn’t fit the case-study paradigm but is essential to further study of variables that tend to affect military-assistance programs.

Military Assistance should be required reading for all personnel involved in military-assistance programs. Mott illustrates aspects of donor-recipient relationships that may indeed lend themselves to lawlike regularities or uniformities, which form the basis for a policy paradigm. Such a paradigm should help policy makers determine if the correct policy mix is being applied to a given relationship, which should increase the chance of attaining donor aims. At a minimum, readers will gain a better understanding of what dynamics are involved in military-assistance programs and how we can avoid the mistakes of our predecessors.

Capt Clifford E. Rich, USAF
F. E. Warren AFB, Wyoming

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.