The Forgotten Front: Patron-Client Relationships in Counterinsurgency

by Walter C. Ladwig III

After a decade and a half of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, US policymakers are seeking to provide aid and advice to local governments' counterinsurgency campaigns rather than directly intervening with US forces. This strategy, and US counterinsurgency doctrine in general, fail to recognize that despite a shared aim of defeating an insurgency, the US and its local partner frequently have differing priorities with respect to the conduct of counterinsurgency operations. Without some degree of reform or policy change on the part of the insurgency-plagued government, American support will have a limited impact. Using three detailed case studies - the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines, Vietnam during the rule of Ngo Dinh Diem, and the Salvadorian Civil War - Ladwig demonstrates that providing significant amounts of aid will not generate sufficient leverage to affect a client's behaviour and policies. Instead, he argues that influence flows from pressure and tight conditions on aid rather than from boundless generosity.

348 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 9, 2017

Reviews

[TS Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ladwig provides a rewarding theory-driven account of US counter-insurgency in the Philippines, Vietnam before 1963 and El Salvador. He draws interesting conclusions about the value of conditionality in aid, and argues it is the only effective means of generating influence. This book is deeply unsatisfying, however, because it mis-applies principal-agent theory. The idea that US allies, which are sovereign states, are "agents" of American power within their own territory is simply colonialist, and moreover does not really describe Ladwig's cases (the US was never an occupying, sovereign power in any of them). Nonetheless, Ladwig declares America the "principal" without explaining why. To Ladwig, perhaps it is self-evident that the Western "great power" (to use his phrase) is the key actor and its objectives are paramount, especially from Ladwig's "policy" perspective. In fact, its probably better said that the USG is functionally one of several agents of the host nation governments in all the cases Ladwig addresses.