Friendly Persuasion is Not Enough: The Limits of the Lansdale Approach

Walter Ladwig

No r7xyv, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Providing aid and advice to local governments’ counterinsurgency campaigns, rather than directly intervening with American forces, has recently been identified as a more cost-effective way to counter irregular threats to U.S. interests. The challenge that such undertakings have repeatedly faced in the past is that partner governments often have their own interests and priorities which can diverge significantly from those of Washington. Consequently, a host of observers have pointed out that while the United States has provided its partners with extensive assistance to combat insurgents and terrorist groups, an inability to convince them to adopt its counterinsurgency prescriptions or address what Washington sees as the political and economic “root causes” of a conflict has repeatedly emerged as a major impediment to success. In the absence of sufficient influence to convince a local government to address these shortcomings, critics suggest that significant American aid and support can actually reduce its incentives to address domestic discontent or govern inclusively, which can render a supported regime less stable than it would have been without U.S. assistance

Date: 2018-04-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/5e938ff2d697350353be327d/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:r7xyv

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/r7xyv

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().