Dependent state formation and Third Worldhome.gwu.edu/~barnett/articles/1993_militarization_ris.pdfGould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York, 1989),

Review of International Studies (1993), 19, 321-347 Printed in Great Britain

Dependent state formation and Third World militarization*

ALEXANDER WENDT AND MICHAEL BARNETT

The relationship between militarization and state formation in the West has been

the subject of considerable scholarship,1 and there is thus some temptation to

simply transfer concepts and arguments from that domain to the study of Third

World militarization. Yet state formation dynamics in the two contexts were and

are quite different, with important implications for the nature of national security threats. In the West threats tended to be external, rooted in anarchical competition between relatively equal states possessing domestic legitimacy, which meant that

militarization could be understood primarily in terms of the political realist focus

on security dilemmas and action-reaction dynamics. In contrast, Third World state

formation has occurred in a largely dependent context in which relative external

security contrasts with domestic insecurity.2 In this case the external environment, rather than being a source of threat, becomes a source of opportunities for elites

lacking domestic legitimacy to gain support against internal security threats. In

short, national security problems look very different in the First and Third Worlds

because of different trajectories and contexts of state formation. Very different

mechanisms may therefore account for militarization, suggesting the need for

concepts and theories different than those that dominate security studies in the

West.3

The authors wish to thank Simon Dalby, David Dessler, William Foltz, Naeem Inayatullah, Brian

Job, Ethan Kapstein, Aaron Karp, Stephen Krasner, Richard Little, Craig Murphy, Andrew Ross, Bruce Russett, Jan Thomson, and several anonymous referees for their helpful comments, and

Janice Bially and Nancy Neiman for research assistance. 1

See, for example, Otto Hintze, 'Military Organization and the Organization of the State', in Felix

Gilbert (ed.), The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze (Oxford, 1975), pp. 178-215; Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, 1975); and Charles Tilly, Coercion,

Capital, and European States (Oxford, 1990). 2

On the prevalence of domestic security threats in the Third World, see Barry Buzan, 'People,

States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in the Third World', in Edward Azar and

Chung-In Moon (eds.), National Security in the Third World (Aldershot, 1988), pp. 14-43, and

Mohammed Ayoob, 'The Security Problematic of the Third World', World Politics, 43 (1991),

pp. 257-83. 3

On the need for new concepts in Third World security studies, see Jack Levy and Michael Barnett, 'Alliance Formation, Domestic Political Economy, and Third World Security', Jerusalem Journal of

International Relations, 14 (1992), pp. 19^40, and Kal Holsti, 'International Theory and War in the

Third World', in Brian Job (ed.), The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States

(Boulder, 1992), pp. 37-60. A useful discussion of the difficulties of building theory when different

causal processes lead to similar outcomes is Benjamin Most and Harvey Starr, 'International

Relations Theory, Foreign Policy Substitutability, and "Nice Laws'", World Politics, 36 (1984),

pp. 383-406.

321

322 Alexander Wendt and Michael Barnett

This is important to keep in mind as one explores Third World militarization, which otherwise exhibits many of the same qualities as militarization in the West.

Specifically, as in the West, most Third World states have adopted a capital- rather

than labour-intensive military posture?that is, conventional or 'technocratic'

armies in which military capability is based primarily on physical and human

'capital' (advanced weapons systems and highly skilled soldiers) rather than on

unconventional, 'people's armies' in which capability is based more on 'labour' (as in the mass mobilization of militias).4 Our objective in this paper is to offer a

partial explanation for the relative predominance of capital- over labour-intensive

militarization in the Third World. Why this path of military development rather

than the other?

While scholars have directed considerable attention to the quantitative side of

Third World militarization, they have tended to neglect the issue of its qualitative

form. This may reflect a belief that capital-intensive armies are inherently superior from a military standpoint to labour-intensive ones, and that it is therefore natural

for Third World states to develop the former rather than latter. On this view, the

high capital-intensity of Third World militaries is not particularly noteworthy; there

is only one viable form of militarization in the modern world, and so no interesting counterfactual scenario to address. However, it is not obvious that labour-intensive

militarization is inherently inferior to its counterpart. In the 1980s military analysts in the West seriously debated the merits of 'alternative defence', some forms of

which would have relied on the mass mobilization of militias. In the Third World, a few states have implemented such policies to varying degrees?Vietnam, China,

Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, and so on?with which they deterred or defeated states

with more 'modern' armies. Finally, whatever technological virtues capital-intensive militarization does have must be weighed against its developmental costs to

capital-poor economies, and its political costs when it leads to external dependency. These considerations suggest that the rationality of different forms of militarization as policy means are relative to national security ends.

The ends of national security policy are bound up with the process of state

formation. 'State formation' refers to both the building of institutions for territorial

control, and to the process by which one constellation of societal interests achieves state power and international recognition rather than another. Adapting arguments

made by scholars in other domains, we examine the impact of three systemic dominance structures on Third World state formation. The first two affect security ends, the third preferred means. In brief, we argue that: (1) dependency on the

world economy tends to create weak regimes to which the masses are a security threat rather than an asset; (2) dependency on security assistance in geopolitical structures of informal empire tends to create elites whose definitions of security are

those of external patrons rather than the masses; (3) dependency on the global

military culture shapes Third World elites' ideas about what constitutes a 'modern'

army. All three structures generate distinct, though typically articulated, demand

side motivations for capital-intensive militarization?quite different mechanisms

than those that may account for such militarization in the West.

Our overall argument might be represented schematically as follows:

4 The distinction is due to Herbert Wulf, 'Dependent Militarism in the Periphery and Possible

Alternative Concepts', in Stephanie Neuman and Robert Harkavy (eds.), Arms Transfers in the

Modern World (New York, 1979), pp. 246-63.

Dependent state formation and Third World militarization 323

(1) systemic dominance structures

'-> (2) Third World state formation

^(3) definitions of national security

'-^(4) capital-intensive militarization.

Figure 1. Schematic representation of the processes leading to Third World militarization

Like dependency theorists of Third World economic development, then, we argue that the hierarchical structure of the world system conditions the form of Third

World military development via its impact on state formation. As such, our

argument might be seen as one of 'second-image reversed', or as one in which state

identities and interests are constituted by the structures of the international system.5 This is not to say that strictly domestic factors or action-reaction processes in the

states system play no role in Third World militarization; on the contrary, they

undoubtedly play a crucial role. We cannot develop a complete theory here,

however, and choose to focus on systemic mechanisms because of their salience in

the Third World context and because they have been relatively neglected, even in

studies focusing on the 'world military order'.6

It should be emphasized that this approach to Third World militarization is a

counterfactual one that asks 'why this reality and not another?', rather than the

traditional behavioural one that asks 'what accounts for the variance in the Third

World experience?'. Our empirical analysis does reveal some variance in the latter,

particularly along regional lines, but here we are more impressed by, and interested

in explaining, the qualitative similarities in Third World militarization. This

suggests a counterfactual research design, in which one tries to identify and

describe the causal mechanisms in the absence of which the phenomenon would not

have occurred.7 Although counterfactual and actual case methods have important commonalities, in the latter one tests causal claims by expanding the number of

observable instances, whereas in the former one develops arguments about 'what

would have happened' in the absence of hypothesized mechanisms. Our goals, however, are considerably more modest: (1) to call attention to differences between

capital- and labour-intensive militarization and offer some suggestive data on the

dominance of the former; (2) to situate this observation in terms of state formation

dynamics in the Third World; and (3) to develop some hypotheses about three

systemic mechanisms that may help account for those dynamics. Although at

various points we suggest that in the absence of these mechanisms contemporary

5 See, respectively, Peter Gourevitch, 'The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of

Domestic Polities', International Organization, 32 (1978), pp. 881-912, and Alexander Wendt,

'Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Polities', International

Organization, 46 (1992), pp. 391^25. 6 Studies with which we otherwise share much in common; see, for example, Mary Kaldor and

Asbjorn Eide (eds.), The World Military Order (London, 1979), and Asbjorn Eide and Marek Thee

(eds.), Problems of Contemporary Militarism (London, 1980). 7

For good discussions of counterfactual analysis, see James Fearon, 'Counterfactuals and

Hypothesis Testing in Political Science', World Politics, 43 (1991), pp. 169-95, and Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York, 1989), especially chapter 5.


Third World militarization would look quite different, we do not test, even by the

criteria appropriate to counterfactual arguments, the explanatory strength of our

claims. We merely explore a neglected problem and suggest some directions for

future research.

The paper is organized as follows. In the next two sections we differentiate capital and labour-intensive militarization and adduce some empirical evidence that the

Third World has tended heavily toward the former. In the core of the paper we

focus on how economic, political, and cultural dominance structures in the inter

national system condition Third World state formation in ways consequential for

militarization. In conclusion we consider some implications of our argument for

thinking about the impact of Third World militarization on the world system.

Types of militarization

'Militarization' refers to the accumulation of capacity for organized violence, to a

'military build-up'.8 This should not be confused with militarism, which refers to a

disposition to use organized violence, either internally or externally. Militarily

powerful states can be democratic and pacific, while militarily weak ones can be

repressive and bellicose. Militarization and militarism may in some cases by

causally related, but the link is not definitional. The output of a militarization

process is 'military capacity', based on an organizational apparatus charged with

the maintenance of security through the threat or use of organized violence (we defer for the moment the question of security 'for whom'). As such, militarization

includes not only weapons accumulation but the training of personnel, construction

of fortifications, and logistical and productive infrastructure.

All militaries make use of both capital and labour. While not infinitely sub

stitutable, these factors can be combined in different proportions.9 The 'intensity' of

factor proportions refers to their respective contributions to the capacity for

organized violence. Factor-intensities lie on a continuum, but since its endpoints are doctrinally and organizationally quite distinct, we elaborate this idea in terms

of two ideal types.10

Capital-intensive militarization generates the typical 'modern' or 'conventional'

army. Such militaries derive most of their capability from the physical and human

capital embodied in advanced weapons systems like armoured fighting vehicles and

combat aircraft and their skilled operators. Because of the significant expenditure and organization necessary to create and sustain such a force, even when filled out

through conscription this sort of military tends to be an instrument of the state and

its security, rather than of (or indifferent to) the people. Despite some variation in

8 See Andrew Ross, 'Dimensions of Militarization in the Third World', Armed Forces and Society, 13

(1987), p. 564. 9 On the problems of measuring this substitutability, see Ron Smith, Anthony Humm and Jacques

Fontanel, 'Capital-Labor Substitution in Defense Provision', in Sadat Deger and Robert West

(eds.), Defense, Security, and Development (New York, 1987), pp. 69-80. 10

The following discussion draws on Adam Roberts, Nations in Arms: The Theory and Practice of Territorial Defense (New York, 1976), Wulf, 'Dependent Militarism in the Periphery', and Barry Buzan, 'Security Strategies for Dissociation', in John Ruggie (ed.), Antimonies of Interdependence

(New York, 1983), pp. 369-420.


the actual level of capital-intensity, most armies in the modern world are organized

along these basic lines. In the West this makes sense from the standpoint of factor

endowments, which are relatively abundant in capital. Nevertheless, because of the

high start-up costs involved in developing modern weapons and the difficulties of

achieving economies of scale, even the largest industrialized states have tended

increasingly toward collaborative and functionally specialized militarization of this

type.11

If 'auto-centric' capital-intensive militarization is difficult for industrialized states

to achieve, it is almost impossible for the capital-poor states of the Third World, which has led many to militarize on a dependent basis, importing arms, arms

production technology, and training from external suppliers. This military depen

dency has been widely studied,12 but in doing so the literature tends to take as

given that Third World states desire capital-intensive armies in the first place. This

may reflect a decision simply to bracket the origins of this desire ('preference formation' if you will), but the fact that so few scholars address the issue suggests that most have not seriously considered the possibility of an alternative.

In the strictly quantitative terms of factor proportions, labour-intensive militariz

ation comes in two varieties (a fact which complicates our story). The first is the

'cadre-conscript' army,13 characteristic of late nineteenth-century Europe and some

contemporary Third World states like Iraq or Nigeria, which consists of masses of

poorly trained conscripts organized around a capital-intensive core of professionals and advanced weapons. Trained to fight like a conventional army and organized by and for the state, it has many of the powers and liabilities of more capital-intensive armies, and we treat it as a mixed case below.

The second, more interesting, case is the 'unconventional' or people's army, the

military capability of which is generated primarily by the mass mobilization of

lightly armed militias. Organized on a more decentralized basis, the 'nation in

arms' makes up for its lack of advanced weapons by organizing for territorial

defence and guerrilla warfare, and cultivating ideology to create a highly motivated

force.14 Guerrilla armies typically start out in this fashion; a few have maintained

this structure after achieving state power. The two types of labour-intensive militarization differ in the extent to which

labour is the real core of their capability, but both rely on mass mobilization, which presupposes something that a capital-intensive military need not, namely that the state have a relatively high degree of political legitimacy. This may be

created and protected coercively by an institution like Iraq's Republican Guard or

11 On this trend, see Pauline Creasey and S. May, The European Armaments Market and Procurement

Cooperation (New York, 1988), Theodore Moran, 'The Globalization of America's Defense

Industries', International Security, 15 (1990), pp. 57-99, and Ethan Kapstein (ed.), Global Arms

Production (Lanham, 1992). 12

See, for example, Stephanie Neuman, 'International Stratification and Third World Military Industries', International Organization, 38 (1984), pp. 167-97, Andrew Ross, 'Arms Acquisition and

National Security: The Irony of Military Strength', in Edward Azar and Chung-In Moon (eds.), National Security in the Third World (Aldershot, 1988), pp. 152-87, and Michael Barnett and

Alexander Wendt, 'Systemic Sources of Dependent Militarization', in Brian Job (ed.), The

Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States (Boulder, 1992), pp. 97-120. 13 The term is Roberts' in Nation in Arms. 14

See, for example: Roberts, Nations in Arms; Buzan, 'Security Strategies for Dissociation', especially pp. 410-11; Gene Sharp, Making Europe Unconquerable (London, 1985); and George Stein, 'Total

Defense: A Comparative Overview of the Security Policies of Switzerland and Austria', Defense

Analysis, 6 (1990), pp. 17-33.


by ideological indoctrination as in China or North Korea,15 but any state that arms

significant numbers of people requires a certain degree of political consent (however

manufactured), since without it the armed masses might revolt.16 And this, in turn,

implies that the masses have been cut in rather than out of the social contract. The

presence or absence of mass support is a crucial element in our subsequent causal

story, since it helps determine the content of national security 'threats' and 'assets'.

The distinction between technocratic and militia armies provides a theoretical

rationale for a counterfactual analysis of Third World militarization: there is in

principle an alternative to the conventional model. We turn now to opera

tionalizing the distinction in order to provide an empirical basis for such an

analysis, to show that Third World militarization tends in fact to be quite

capital-intensive, certainly more so than one would expect on the basis of factor

endowments alone.

The factor basis of Third World militarization

The factor-'intensity' of militarization refers to the relative contribution of capital and labour to overall military capability. Two measurement strategies suggest

themselves, both rooted in the literature on arms races. The first is to examine the

proportion of defence expenditure on weapons procurement (capital), training and

salaries (mostly labour), and operations and maintenance (most capital). Disa

ggregated expenditure data do exist on a few Third World states, but only a few, and in general these are unreliable, since many states under-report or hide portions of their defence spending in other parts of the budget.17 SIPRI has devised a

method for avoiding these problems by calculating the 'value' of major weapons

systems,18 but this still does not address the measurement of 'labour' costs.

These problems led us to adopt the second measurement strategy of focusing on

capabilities themselves. Specifically, using 1985 data on all countries, we computed the ratio of major weapons19 to total active-duty and reserve20 manpower in the

military, in effect trying to capture the amount of physical capital 'carried' by a

unit of labour (see appendix 1). This measure has the virtue of dealing with a

phenomenon more easily observed than expenditure (and thus probably has greater

reliability), but has the important drawback of lacking a 'common currency' for

15 On the latter case, see H. Park and K. Park, 'Ideology and Security: Self-Reliance in China and

North Korea', in Azar and Moon (eds.), National Security in the Third World, pp. 102-35. 16 For discussion of the relationship between political legitimacy and mass mobilization, see Michael

Walzer, 'Political Alienation and Military Service', in Obligations: Essays in Civil Disobedience

(Cambridge, 1970), pp. 153-70, Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley, 1985),

pp. 233^1, and Michael Barnett, Confronting the Costs of War (Princeton, 1992), pp. 29-30. 17 On the reliability problems of Third World military expenditure data, see Nicole Ball, Security and

Economy in the Third World (Princeton, 1988), chapter 3. 18 See Michael Brzoska and Thomas Ohlson (eds.), Arms Production in the Third World (London,

1986). 19 We define such weapons as main battle tanks, light tanks, armoured reconnaissance and

mechanized infantry combat vehicles with at least a 20mm cannon, combat aircraft, combat

helicopters, and major surface warships. Our primary data source on these weapons and on

manpower is Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance (London, 1986 and 1987). 20 'Reserve' manpower needs to be counted because it may be an essential element in a

labour-intensive military strategy.


25

20

15

fc 10

1 JL JL 1 i n n n n n r~i r~i r~i n n nn

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 Weapons to Personnel Ratio

Figure 2. Frequency distribution of Weapons to Personnel Ratio

(see appendix 1, for disaggregated data)

expressing units of capital (and thus may have less validity). While aggregating different types of weapons is problematic, however, imposing an inevitably arbi

trary weighting scheme seemed even less desirable, especially when some less

capitalized systems, like helicopters and light armour, may in fact be more useful than jet aircraft or submarines for dealing with the primarily internal security problems facing most Third World states. The validity issue is real, however, and as such our empirical analysis of the factor-basis of Third World militarization should be seen as merely suggestive, but our purpose in presenting these data is

more to establish the initial plausibility of a 'stylized fact' that Third World militaries look like Western ones than to establish a firm data base for the analysis of variance in Third World experience.

At least two patterns emerge from our data. First, there are some significant regional variations (see appendix 2). Weapons/personnel ratios are highest in the

US-USSR dyad, and fall progressively in the Middle East, Southern Africa, other NATO-Warsaw Pact countries, Central and East Africa, South America, neutral

Europe, and Asia. We are not interested in explaining these variations here, but a

number of potential causes suggest themselves: the existence of action-reaction

regional conflict dynamics, strategic importance to Great Power suppliers, factor

endowments, terrain, and so on. The causal force of some of these mechanisms, however, depends on a preexisting interest in capital-intensive militarization; were

such an interest not present a state might offset an adversary's conventional arms

build-up with more 'alternative' defences, just as it might be less vulnerable to Great Powers purveying their high-tech wares in regions of strategic importance.

This brings us to a second pattern, one we are interested in explaining: the

similarity in levels of capital-intensity across the population. While the 137

observations range from 0 to 32.00, 118 are below 8.00, and fully 100 are between 0.00 and 5.00 (see figure 2), including many Western states. Particularly noteworthy


in this respect is the absence of association between level of economic development and military capitalization. One might expect to find such a relationship, since

economic growth is correlated with a falling relative price of capital to labour,

making capital-intensive militarization 'cheaper' from a societal standpoint. Yet, in

descending order by income group, the ranking of weapons/personnel ratios is

oil-exporting, low-income, middle-income, high-income, and upper-middle income

countries. A regression of per capita GNP (as a proxy for relative factor prices)21 on our dependent variable produced insignificant results. In short, despite a high

price of capital, most Third World states have sustained levels of military

capitalization comparable to all but the most heavily militarized advanced indus

trialized states. Third World states may make greater use of second-hand or

obsolete weapons systems to avoid some costs, but the form of militarization in

which they are engaged seems remarkably similar to that of the West.

In the rest of this paper we suggest some mechanisms that may help explain this

qualitative similarity. In other words, in view of the tremendous economic,

political, and cultural disparities between North and South, why does their

militarization seem to exhibit a single logic, rather than multiple ones? Why a

world of military homogeneity rather than heterogeneity?

The international system and dependent state formation

The standard answer to this question is that the relevant context for militarization

policy is a world military order in which a 'technological determinism' favours

conventional armies. On this view, the security dilemmas that proliferate in

anarchic systems generate dynamics of competitive armament in which A's mili

tarization makes B insecure, inducing it to arm, making A more insecure, and so

on. In response to threats, states in principle have a choice of adopting a similar

strategy (a 'symmetrical' response), or one designed to offset the other's advantage

(a 'counter' response).22 Various factors, however, encourage states to favour the

former: the effectiveness of a counter may be uncertain, counters may lead to

counter-counter measures, symmetrical responses make calculations of 'balance'

easier, and so on. As a result of this dynamic, militarization paths converge toward

homogeneity; as Kenneth Waltz puts it, '[Contending states imitate the military innovations contrived by the country of the greatest capability and ingenuity. And so the weapons of major contenders, and even their strategies, begin to look the same all over the world.'23

We do not dismiss the power of this competitive dynamic, especially in highly conflictual regions like the Middle East. Yet, two considerations suggest it is only

part of the story. First, as Robert O'Connell emphasizes, there are alternatives to

symmetrical responses to threat. Decision-makers may not like them, but this may

21 This assumption is also made by Smith et al., in 'Capital-Labour Substitution in Defence Provision'. 22 The following discussion draws on Robert O'Connell, Of Arms and Men (New York, 1989), pp. 7-8. 23 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, 1979), p. 127; quoted from Matthew

Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race (Ithaca, 1988), p. 7.


be due as much to their cultural ideas about what a military should look like, as

well as to the perceived political costs of alternatives, as it is to the technological virtues of capital-intensive armies. After all, labour-intensive militarization also has

military virtues, albeit different ones than its counterpart.24 This suggests that even

in cases of high external threat we need to address the ends and preferred means of

national security policy in terms of which decision-makers calculate the costs and

benefits of different strategies. Second, the primary security threat to most Third World states is internal rather

than external, from the 'masses' who might try to change the constellation of

societal interests that controls state power rather than from other states. In these

cases capital-intensive militarization presumably does not stem from action

reaction dynamics in the states system but from its superior ability to control

restive publics relative to a strategy of mass mobilization, which presupposes a

higher degree of state legitimacy. This suggests that, whatever the ability of

inter-state competition to explain military capitalization in the North, a different

mechanism may explain it in the Third World, one that might not exist but for the

factors conditioning the nature, and thus security interests, of the Third World

state.

The aspect of state formation in which we are interested is the process by which

certain societal interests secure state power rather than others. This reflects our

concern with the constitution of 'security' in countries where the primary threat is

internal. Security is always for someone or some social order. In a world of purely external security threats this might be the polity as a whole, in which case one

might legitimately speak of 'national' security. In a world of internal security threats, however, the question of who controls state power is crucial to the content

of security 'threats'. The Sandanistas were a threat to 'Nicaraguan' security during the Somoza regime, but not after coming to power; similarly, the United States

threatened 'Nicaraguan' security during Sandanista rule, but not since. The

definition of security, in other words, is always relative to particular interests, the

dominance of which is a function of the state formation process. Our counter

factual claim about Third World militarization, then, rests on one about Third

World state formation: were state-society compacts better solidified, one might see

very different definitions of security and thus different patterns of militarization.25

State formation is typically conditioned by both domestic and systemic factors.

The relative significance of these varies across time and space, and they may interact. We do not address domestic determinants of Third World state formation

in this paper, however, and as such what follows should be seen as a set of

hypotheses about one set of relatively neglected mechanisms rather than as a

complete theory of militarization.

In particular, we argue that Third World state-formation has often proceeded on

a dependent basis, conditioned by relations of economic, political, and/or cultural

24 For a useful comparison, see Buzan, 'Security Strategies for Dissociation', pp. 412-13. On the

limits of deterministic arguments for high-technology strategies, see George Raudzens,

'War-Winning Weapons: The Measurement of Technological Determinism in Military History', Journal of Military History, 54 (1990).

25 Cf. Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States (Princeton, 1988).


Subordination to individual Great Powers or to the world-system as a whole.26 The first two of these structures enable certain societal interests to achieve and hold

state power by virtue of the external resources they make available to those willing to accept dependency, interests which might otherwise be forced to make significant

compromises with other societal groups or even forced from power altogether; to

that extent these dominance structures condition the 'ends' of Third World

security.27 In contrast, the cultural dominance structure conditions elites' ideas

about what constitutes a 'modern' army, and as such affects their 'preferred means'

for achieving security. It too, however, is part of state formation, which includes

efforts to gain legitimacy and status in the society of states.

The world economy and the Third World state

Whatever its limits as an analysis of Third World economic development more

generally, analyses inspired by dependency theory continue to offer a systematic framework for thinking about the impact of the world-economy on Third World

state formation.28 This impact is one of empowering certain elite groups at the

expense of others, creating 'weak' states29 to which significant elements of the

population are a security threat, and thereby helping to create a demand for

capital-intensive militarization. Since our argument here is the most traditional of

the three we offer, we will be brief, beginning with the colonial period. Whether or not explicitly motivated by the prospect of economic gain, colonial

ism almost always had important effects on the development of local economies.

The most important of these for our purposes was the development of certain

sectors of the local economy and their integration into the metropolitan (and

indirectly world) economy. This often created a situation of disarticulation or

dualism in which the local economy became divided into a modern and a

traditional sector, the former linked on supply and demand sides to the world

economy and producing largely for export, the latter lacking such linkages and

producing largely for local needs.

26 We adopt this conventional typology because the three do not seem easily reducible to one

underlying structure. We doubt such a reduction is possible, but before it could occur it seems that

theory should first work to identify distinct mechanisms on the assumption that they are relatively autonomous, and then try to assess their underlying coherence. For similar arguments to this effect, see David Rapkin, 'The Inadequacy of a Single Logic: Integrating Political and Material

Approaches to the World System', in William Thompson (ed.), Contending Approaches to World

System Analysis (Beverly Hills, 1983), pp. 241-68, and Nicos Mouzelis, 'Political Transitions in

Greece and Argentina: Toward a Reorientation of Marxist Political Theory', Comparative Political

Studies, 21 (1989), pp. 443-66. 27 The basic logic of this argument is nicely laid out in Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States,

especially chapter 7. 28 There are various traditions of dependency scholarship; our own, somewhat eclectic, discussion

draws on Johan Galtung, 'A Structural Theory of Imperialism', Journal of Peace Research, 8

(1971), pp. 81-109, Fernando Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin

America (Berkeley, 1979), Peter Evans, Dependent Development (Princeton, 1979), Clive Thomas, The Rise of the Authoritarian State in Peripheral Societies (New York, 1984), and Ronald

Robinson, 'The Excentric Idea of Imperialism, with or without Empire', in Wolfgang Mommsen

and J?rgen Osterhammel (eds.), Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities (London,

1986), pp. 267-87. 29 On the distinction between strong and weak states, see Buzan, 'People, States, and Fear', and

Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States.


This process of disarticulating the colonial economy was intimately related to

processes of colonial state formation.30 An important function of the colonial state was to facilitate the penetration of foreign capital into the colonial economy. At the same time, most imperial powers wanted to maintain their empires 'on the

cheap'. This meant that colonial states had to be as self-sufficient as possible within the constraints of their mission, which meant collecting taxes locally and nego

tiating with local elites. The most important of these elites were those with ties to the modern sector, since it was these which enabled that sector to function as a source of capital for the centre and of taxes for the colonial state. This arrangement benefited local elites materially and in so doing created ties to the colonial state

(and thus to the centre and world-economy), while breaking down ties to the mass

population. In contrast, other social classes, especially in the traditional sector

(except landed elites), were less important from the standpoint of administering colonial rule and thus less able to exploit the relative weakness of colonial states.

As a result they did not develop interests in ties to the centre and, indeed, typically became victims of the alliance of local elites, foreign capital, and the colonial state.

The formation of disarticulated economies and weak states created a situation in which the primary security threat was internal. Colonial military and bureaucratic

development reflected this fact. Lacking political legitimacy, the colonial state's

power was always underwritten by the actual or threatened use of force. Significant military resources were typically not available from the centre, however, and since mass mobilization was not viable for an army of occupation, colonial states tended

to militarize coopted groups or ethnic minorities.31 A similar process occurred in colonial bureaucracies, which were staffed by persons with a vested interest in

upholding the authority of an alien state. The character of colonial military and bureaucratic development, in other words, was shaped by the security needs of

foreign actors and their domestic clients rather than of the mass population. A few Third World states achieved independence by mobilizing the masses for

armed revolt, and in these cases the constellation of interests that had benefited from the structures of colonial rule was broken down.32 In most cases, however, decolonization merely handed the reins of power over to the local elites who had been created by the colonial political economy, and in these cases economic disarticulation and an external-orientation have continued to affect the definition of 'national' security ends. Theses effects tend to vary with the type of economic

development strategy that elites pursue, however, so let us briefly describe two

stylized cases.

30 On colonial state formation see, for example, Hamza Alavi, 'The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh', New Left Review, 14 (1972), pp. 59-82, and Crawford Young, 'The Colonial State and the Post-Colonial Crisis', in Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan (eds.), The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa (Boulder, 1988), pp. 25-66.

31 See Cynthia Enloe, Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies (Athens, 1980). 32 Although this by no means guaranteed the elimination of internal security threats, since the boundaries inherited from colonial powers often contained antagonistic ethnic groups. The role of the states system in upholding these boundaries can be seen as an external empowerment of Third

World states; see Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg, 'Why Africa's Weak States Persist', World

Politics, 35 (1982), pp. 1-24, and Jeffrey Herbst, 'War and the State in Africa', International

Security, 14 (1990), pp. 117-39. Insofar as this process empowers Third World states against the

security of societal or ethnic groups under their control, however, the institution of sovereignty can

also be seen as a fourth, 'heteronomous' dominance structure in the international system; see

Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making (Columbia, 1989).


Export-oriented industrialization is in many respects a continuation of colonial

strategies of economic and political development. Multinational corporations have

replaced colonial venture capital, and markets are no longer limited to those of the

imperial centre, but the economic effect is largely the same: the continued

development of the modern sector and its further integration into the world

economy, and relative neglect of the traditional sector. This may be compatible with 'development', but it is a dependent rather than self-sustaining development, and in the absence of strong linkages to the rest of the economy its benefits are

typically poorly distributed in society. This has a dual effect on state formation processes. On the one hand, it

reproduces the colonial situation in which a large class of people have little stake in

the existing economic order, and thus to which they pose a potential 'threat'. And, on the other, it enables economic and political elites to consolidate their internal

security position vis-?-vis that threat by relying on the revenues provided by external

economic ties, rather than by bargaining with the masses, as was characteristic of

state formation in the West.33 This combination of redistributive demand from the

bottom and lack of need to meet it from the top reproduces the illegitimate regimes inherited from colonialism, and induces local elites to follow the colonial path of securing themselves by capital-intensive coercion rather than consent.34 This

argument might also be stated in counterfactual terms: in the absence of the gains accrued from the world market, elites might have been forced to renegotiate economic and political power with the masses, in the process constituting very different definitions of security threat. This does not mean that in the absence of

export-oriented industrialization we would see liberal democracy in the Third World

(which only emerged in the West in the twentieth century), but it does suggest that

the process of state formation would have had a broader popular basis.

The situation is more ambiguous in the case of states that have pursued policies of import-substitution industrialization. In principle such policies can lead to a

more even distribution of the benefits of development, since insofar as they rely less on external markets they must cultivate demand and supply-side linkages to the

domestic economy, and this may in turn provide the basis for a more inclusive

social contract. In practice, however, such policies have tended to focus on the

production of luxury goods that previously had been imported for consumption by local elites, often relying on imported technology to do so, rather than on

redistributing national income in ways that would make possible a truly self

sustaining economic base geared toward mass demand. This failure to expand the domestic market has typically led to the eventual 'exhaustion' of import substitution policies and assertion of military-bureaucratic rule to deal with the

threat of pressure for further redistribution.35 Indeed, the wave of economic

liberalization in Latin America during and after years of military rule suggests that

33 See Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, pp. 207-8. 34 On Third World states' lack of legitimacy and recourse to coercion, see John Saul, 'The State in

Post-Colonial Societies', in David Held et al. (eds.), States and Societies (New York, 1983),

pp. 457-75, Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics (Madison, 1984), and Eboe Hutchful, 'The

Modern State and Violence: The Peripheral Situation', International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 14 (1986), pp. 153-78.

35 For this argument, see Guillermo O'Donnell, 'Comparative Historical Formations of the State

Apparatus and Socio-Economic Change in the Third World', International Social Science Journal, 32 (1980), pp. 717-29.


when faced with a choice between generating new revenues through a renegotiation of the social contract or through a new dependency on external demand, Third

World elites tend to prefer the latter to the former. In sum, the availability from the world economy of external sources of revenue

has enabled elites controlling state power to avoid or at least significantly moderate

the painful process of accommodation with disenfranchised interest groups that

elites in the First World experienced. This has helped reproduce problems of

political legitimacy inherited from colonialism, and thereby helped constitute the

typical security threat as an internal one requiring a capital-intensive response. The

fact that Third World states often face internal security problems, in other words, should not be explained simply in terms of their being 'weak'. Such weakness is

itself an artifact of the narrow constellation of societal interests that are often

embodied in such states, and which is in part created by a world economy that

empowers certain groups at the expense of others.

Informal empire and the hegemonic constitution of security

The interest of Third World states in capital-intensive militarization may also be

conditioned by dominance structures in the states system. This mechanism differs

from the first in that it concerns relations between states rather than between states

and the world economy, but is similar to the first and different from the third in

that it also affects the constitution of national security ends by creating an external

base of support for local elites that distorts the state formation process. Dominance structures in the states system have received comparatively little

attention from either radical theorists of Third World militarism or neo-realist

theorists of international politics. Neglect from the former may stem from an often

neo-Marxist theoretical orientation, which discounts the importance or at least

relative autonomy of political-military relations compared to economic ones. We

believe such economism is a mistake. The institutional separation of the states

system from the world-economy is not an ideological mystification the dynamics of which can be subsumed under the 'single logic' of the global mode of production: it is a real feature of the contemporary world-system that generates a distinct logic of interaction, and which needs to be analyzed as a sui generis determinant of

Third World military development.36 Neo-realists, of course, would endorse this argument, but in studying Third

World militarization they have tended to focus on the role of competition rather than hierarchy between states.37 This may stem from their commitment to the

36 Cf. Christopher Chase-Dunn, 'Interstate System and Capitalist World-Economy: One Logic or

Two?', International Studies Quarterly, 25 (1981), pp. 19-42. Our own emphasis on the relative

autonomy of the states system within the world-system is indebted to Aristide Zolberg, 'Origins of

the Modern World-System: A Missing Link', World Politics, 33 (1981), pp. 253-81, and Rapkin, 'The Inadequacy of a Single Logic'.

37 See, for example, Edward Kolodziej, 'National Security and Modernization: Drive Wheels of

Militarization', Arms Control, 6 (1985), pp. 17-40, Robert Rothstein, 'The Security Dilemma and

the Poverty Trap in the Third World', Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, 8 (1986), pp. 1-38, and Robert Rosh, 'Third World Militarization', Journal of Conflict Resolution, 32 (1988), pp.

671-698; on neo-realism more generally, see Waltz, Theory of International Politics. For a

neo-realist analysis of systemic hierarchy much closer to our own argument, see John Ikenberry and Charles Kupchan, 'Socialization and Hegemonic Power', International Organization, 44 (1990), pp. 283-316.


principle of anarchy as the constitutive basis of the states system and the resulting

tendency to treat states as spatially differentiated 'billiard balls', which tends to

produce an exchange-theoretic analysis of political-military dependency as a func

tion of bargains between free actors with exogenously and independently given ends. We believe this obscures the extent to which Great Power authority

penetrates, and thereby constitutes, Third World states. We call these hierarchical

structures 'informal empires'.38

An informal empire is a socially structured system of interaction among

juridically sovereign states in which one, the 'dominant' state, has a significant

degree of de facto political authority over the security policies of another,

'subordinate', state. Sometimes called spheres of influence or systems of patron client relations,39 the three principal informal empires in the contemporary states

system have been those of the US in the Caribbean and, to a lesser extent, South

America, parts of the Middle East, and assorted Asian states; of France in West

Africa; and until 1989 of the USSR in Eastern Europe; more localized but

(arguably) structurally similar relationships are dominated by Middle Powers like

Vietnam, South Africa, perhaps Nigeria and Brazil, and so on. Apart from the lack

of legal recognition, the authority relations characteristic of informal empires differ

from those of formal empires in that the influence of dominant over subordinate

actors is concerned primarily with security (although this may include economic

arrangements), and as such does not involve day-to-day administrative control.

Informal empires have their roots in the interests and practices of dominant

states and the local actors willing to act on their behalf. Dominant states are likely to have one or both of two basic motivations in trying to create an informal

empire: (1) a desire to create the political basis for economic expansion overseas, in

which case structures of informal empire will be articulated with (though not

reducible to) dominance structures in the world-economy, and (2) a desire to block

the penetration of Great Power rivals into geopolitically sensitive areas. Apart from

overt military intervention, the principal mechanism by which they pursue these

objectives is provision of 'security assistance', defined broadly as military and

security relevant economic aid, to groups that will pursue domestic and/or foreign

policies that reflect dominant state security interests.40 This 'arms for influence'

enables these groups to acquire state power rather than others, thereby altering the

38 On informal empire, see Michael Doyle, Empires (Ithaca, 1986), and Robinson, 'The Excentric Idea

of Imperialism'; the following discussion is elaborated more fully in Alexander Wendt, 'The States

System and Global Militarization', unpublished PhD dissertation (Minneapolis, 1989). 39 On spheres of influence, see Paul Keal, Unspoken Rules and Superpower Dominance (New York,

1983), and Jan Triska (ed.), Dominant Powers and Subordinate States (Durham, 1986); on

patron-client relations in world politics, see Michael Handel, 'Does the Dog Wag the Tail or

Vice-Versa? Patron-Client Relations', Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, 6 (1982), pp.

24-35, and Christopher Shoemaker and John Spanier, Patron-Client Relationships: Multilateral

Crises in the Nuclear Age (New York, 1984). We prefer 'informal empire' because it emphasizes what we believe is a central aspect of such systems that is downplayed in other formulations,

namely that the relationship between dominant and subordinate states is one of authority (see

below). 40 Note that not all military and economic aid constitutes 'security assistance' in this sense, despite

the fact that it may ultimately have similar effects. Security assistance is defined by its relationship to Great Power influence over state formation and national security; Swedish arms sales to India

are not part of such influence and thus fall outside our argument here.


definition of national security ends in that state.41 The postwar regimes in much of

Latin America and Eastern Europe, for example, were in important part created

and sustained by security assistance from the United States and Soviet Union; this

assistance constituted communism as a security threat to the former, and capitalism to the latter.42 The recent collapse of Soviet clients in Eastern Europe, in turn, evokes the counterfactual claim implicit in this argument. In the absence of external

security assistance the constellation of societal interests represented by the sub

ordinate state would either not have come to dominance in the first place or would

at least have been forced into different bargains with other interest groups?either of which would have yielded different state structures and thus definitions of

security.

It should be noted that the presence of such structural coercion implies neither a

simple force nor a simple exchange relation between dominant and subordinate

states. It is not the former because subordinate states 'consent' to the hegemonic role of the dominant state in defining their security. This consent may be created

and backed up with the threat of intervention, but there remains a 'bargain' with a

local actor pursuing its own interests. At the same time, however, the bargain is not

an exchange relationship between exogenously given actors, since the bargain constitutes the powers and interests of dominant and subordinate states as such.

Informal empires, in other words, are constituted by a fusion of power and social

purpose in which the authority of dominant states penetrates the territorial space of subordinate states. In effect, we are suggesting that the formal authority structure of the Westphalian system of sovereign states, which is 'anarchic' in terms

of Weber's bureaucratic-legal definition of authority, is overlaid by informal

authority structures that correspond to something more like 'feudal' authority (and which in those terms are not 'anarchic').43

Structures of informal empire generate both supply- and demand-side incentives

for capital-intensive militarization in the Third World. On the supply-side, domi

nant states have an interest in preventing their clients from becoming militarily self-sufficient?that is, from developing a capacity to deter security threats, in

cluding those from rebuffed patrons, with their own resources. They may also have

an interest, however, in defraying their costs (and enlarging their export markets)

by encouraging their clients to become 'self-reliant' (e.g. the Nixon Doctrine).

41 Arguments of various types to this effect include Miles Wolpin, Military Aid and Counterrevolution

in the Third World (Lexington, 1972), J. Samuel Fitch, 'The Political Impact of U.S. Military Aid

to Latin America', Armed Forces and Society, 5 (1979), pp. 360-86, Michael Klare and Cynthia

Arnson, 'Exporting Repression: U.S. Support for Authoritarianism in Latin America', in Richard

Fagen (ed.), Capitalism and the State in U.S.-Latin American Relations (Stanford, 1979), pp.

138-68, Asbjorn Eide, 'Militarisation with a Global Reach', in Eide and Thee (eds.), Problems of

Contemporary Militarism, pp. 299-322, and Condoleeza Rice, 'The Military as an Instrument of

Influence and Control', in Triska (ed.), Dominant Powers and Subordinate States, pp. 239-60. 42 For overviews of US military and security influences on Latin American state formation, see Alain

Rouquie, The Military and the State in Latin America (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 117-50, and David

Pion-Berlin, 'Latin American National Security Doctrines: Hard- and Softline Themes', Armed

Forces and Society, 15 (1989), pp. 411-29; for contrasts between this case and that of Eastern

Europe, see Triska (ed.) Dominant Powers and Subordinate States, and, on the French West African

case, John Chipman, French Power in Africa (Oxford, 1989). 43

Compare Galtung, 'A Structural Theory of Imperialism', and Nicholas Onuf and Frank Klink,

'Anarchy, Authority, Rule', International Studies Quarterly, 33 (1989), pp. 149-73; for discussion of

Weber's types of authority, see Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber (Garden City, 1962), and Peter Blau, 'Critical Remarks on Weber's Theory of Authority', American Political Science Review, 57 (1963),

pp. 305-16.


Dominant states typically, if not necessarily self-consciously, follow a two-pronged strategy for dealing with this tension. The first is to limit clients' access to weapons that might enable them to deter or defeat military intervention by the patron,

particularly weapons of mass destruction. The second is to give access to techno

logies that will encourage dependent militarization, in effect encouraging the

development of certain security means to reinforce hegemonic security ends. In the case of the capital-poor Third World this means making available arms and

technology that will encourage capital-intensive militarization. Such access en

courages self-reliance while helping to create new forms of dependency.44 On the demand-side, the creation of states that depend materially and ideo

logically on external security assistance rather than on domestic legitimacy helps constitute the societal interest groups that might oppose such bargains?usually the

mass population?as a security threat rather than asset. And as we have argued, once the masses are defined as a security threat, a capital-intensive military is likely to be preferred. The dependency this involves may be quite prickly?a 'love-hate'

relationship as it were?and it may vary in strength even within a single informal

empire. But informal empires may nevertheless condition state formation in the Third World in such a way that, despite its economic and political costs, capital intensive militarization becomes a rational solution to 'national' security problems.

Conversely, when these solutions occasionally fail and client regimes are over

whelmed, the new leadership may shift quickly to a labour-intensive policy of mass

mobilization as another rational solution to a new security problem?one in which an erstwhile patron is now a security threat.45

Modernity and the global military culture

Our argument so far has focused on how systemic dominance structures affect the distribution of political power in Third World states and, through that process,

help create a situation in which elites define security threats in primarily domestic terms. Yet, state formation is not only the acquisition of state power by some

groups rather than others: it is also a matter of being recognized as a member of the society of states. In any society the identity of the self is in important part constituted by the expectations of others, and as such state formation is also a

process of identity formation.46 States which feel their identities lacking?because their autonomy is not respected by Great Powers, because they are unable to assert

their control in all areas of the country, because their governments are corrupt or

inefficient, or simply because of their relative youth?may try to compensate for

such 'incompleteness' by acquiring the trappings of the modern state by a process

44 On this latter point, see Andrew Ross, 'Arms Acquisition and National Security: The Irony of

Military Strength', in Azar and Moon (eds.), National Security in the Third World, pp. 152-87. 45 Cuba and Nicaragua are instructive cases in point. The Batista and Somoza regimes had external

bases of support that constituted the principal security threat as internal, whereas the Castro and Sandinista regimes had greater popular legitimacy and saw the US as the principal security threat; the former pair relied on conventional armies, the latter on mass mobilization to deal with these

differing threats. 46 See Wendt, 'Anarchy is What States Make of It'.


analogous to conspicuous consumption. The things acquired by such 'symbolic

self-completion'47 are valued not so much for their instrumental virtues as for what

they symbolize?in this case status and membership in modernity. One of the most important symbols of the modern state is the 'modern' army,

which we argue is constituted by two basic attributes, 'professionalism' and

'technologism'. These attributes may be instrumentally useful for dealing with

certain kinds of security threats, but often there is no threat requiring immediate

attention, or sometimes when there is a labour-intensive policy might be able to

offset it. In these cases, states' ideas about what counts as a 'modern' military

organization may play a crucial role in shaping military policies. These ideas are

shaped by a 'global military culture'48 that is a relatively autonomous determinant

of Third World military development.49 This culture constitutes a dominance

structure because Western definitions of modernity are its centre, the reference

point for Third World elites, and these ideas fuel dependent (because capital

intensive) patterns of militarization. As such, it involves a cultural dependency or

imperialism 'through which symbols and systems of meaning prevalent in advanced

capitalist societies are imposed on other societies'.50 This does not mean Third

World states are passive objects forced to accept Western military ideas against their will, or that there is nothing original in their appropriation of them. But the

structure of the global military culture is fundamentally asymmetric, a mostly

one-way process shaping Third World military development in ways different than

would be the case in its absence.

Professionalism. There is a large scholarly literature on military professionalism, much of which derives from work in the 1960s on the role of the military in

development.51 This role is much debated, but mainstream and radical scholars

alike share a belief that professionalism is constitutive of the 'modern' army: full-time officers and NCOs who see themselves as military men first, a centralized

command structure, high levels of internal differentiation, and promotion based on

technical expertise and merit. Such armies, in other words, are intensive with

respect to human capital. Professional armies are normally defined in opposition to

the aristocratic armies characteristic of pre-industrial societies?in which officers

47 Ottmar Braun and Robert Wicklund, 'Psychological Antecedents of Conspicuous Consumption', Journal of Economic Psychology, 10 (1989), pp. 161-87. For an excellent discussion of the role of

material goods in sustaining social identities, see Helga Dittmar, The Social Psychology of Material

Possessions (New York, 1992). 48 Our discussion of the systemic cultural determinants of militarization draws on R. B. J. Walker,

'Contemporary Militarism and the Discourse of Dissent', Alternatives, 9 (1983), pp. 345-64, and

Walker, 'Culture, Discourse, Insecurity', Alternatives, 11 (1986), pp. 485-504; Robin Luckham, 'Of

Arms and Culture', Current Research in Peace and Violence, 7 (1984), pp. 1-64; Kolodziej, 'National Security and Modernization'; and Mary Kaldor, 'The Atlantic Technology Culture', in

Mary Kaldor and Richard Falk (eds.), Dealignment: A New Foreign Policy Perspective (Oxford,

1987), pp. 143-62. For an argument stressing the domestic cultural sources of militarization, see

James Payne, Why Nations Arm (Oxford, 1989). 49 On the relative autonomy of cultural forms, see Raymond Williams, The Sociology of Culture (New

York, 1982). Our conception of the role of ideas in social life is based on Emile Durkheim, 'Individual and Collective Representations', in D. Pocock (trans.), Sociology and Philosophy

(Glencoe, 1953), pp. 1-34, and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of

Reality (New York, 1966). 50

Luckham, 'Of Arms and Culture', p. 32. 51

See, for example, J. Johnson (ed.), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Societies (Princeton,

1962), and Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968). For a

more recent discussion, see Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, 'The Concept of Military Professionalism',

Defense Analysis, 6 (1990), pp. 117-30.


were aristocrats first and military men second, the military had low levels of

differentiation, and promotion came from ties to political authority52?but they

might also be contrasted with the decentralized, part-time, militia army. The evolution of military professionalism in the Third World began with the

destruction of indigenous military institutions and political subjugation by Western

armies. After establishing their rule, most colonial authorities sought to make up for shortages of white manpower by creating military auxiliaries composed of

indigenous 'labour' but officered and organized by Europeans.53 These auxiliaries

were put through training and socialization the goal of which was to create local

copies of European privates and NCOs. Given this intention and given that their own armies had been destroyed by European ones, it is not surprising that through their training recruits quickly internalized Western military values as superior to

their own and constitutive of 'modernity'. The creation of native auxiliaries, in

other words, became the basis for a new, 'invented' military tradition54 in which the

meanings attached to military organization were those of the colonial authorities.

The learning and behavioural modelling that resulted from this kind of socializ

ation were outlined by Robert Price in his work applying 'reference group theory' to the Ghanaian military.55 In contrast to studies emphasizing the organizational structure of the military, Price showed that the behaviour and attitudes of

Ghanaian officers were heavily influenced by their training in Britain or the

Commonwealth. Once internalized, the standards of this external reference group became locally self-perpetuating as they became the basis for promotion and

leadership. The process of external modelling, then, created a domestic constituency with a vested interest in Western military values and consumption patterns, and as

such initiated a 'path-dependency' that helped prevent a move toward alternative

styles of military organization after independence.56 This initial reluctance has since

been reinforced by two factors operating in the post-colonial context.

The first is the continuing dependence of most Third World states on the military to maintain their rule. A military able and willing to confront domestic security threats is essential to the survival of most Third World regimes, and a professional army is ideally suited for this purpose. Until these security threats are eliminated

(or the domestic distribution of political power reconstituted), most Third World

states will not be interested in reorganizing their militaries on an alternative basis.

In this respect, then, the cultural and organizational interests of the military dovetail with the political interests of the state.

The second is the continuing military training of Third World military personnel in the West. In addition to technical training in modern weapons, these pro

grammes are often explicitly intended to promote the political and military interests

52 See Alfred Stepan, The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil (Princeton, 1971), pp. 57-8. 53 For a good discussion of the African case, see David Killingray, 'The Idea of a British Imperial

African Army', Journal of African History, 20 (1979), pp. 421-36. 54 See Terence Ranger, 'The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa', in Eric Hobsbawm and

Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 211-62. 55 See Robert Price, 'A Theoretical Approach to Military Rule in New States: Reference Group

Theory and the Ghanaian Case', World Politics, 23 (1971), pp. 399-429. For a critique of the

tendency to treat Third World military elites as 'modernizers', see Ali Mazrui, 'Soldiers as

Traditionalizers: Military Rule and the re-Africanization of Africa', in Mazrui (ed.), The Warrior

Tradition in Modern Africa (Leiden, 1977), pp. 236-58. 56 On the transition from colonial to postcolonial armies, see A. F. Mullins, Born Arming (Stanford,

1987).


of the host. One of the explicit goals of the International Military Education and

Training (IMET) programme, for example, is to help spread US conceptions of

security and military policy.57 While the effectiveness of these programmes in this

respect is hard to determine, the size and durability of US commitment to IMET is

impressive. Nearly one-half million Third World military personnel have been trained under this programme since the Korean War, and these have presumably gone on to train more personnel in 'modern' military ideas?and this does not

include soldiers (and police) trained by Britain, France, and the former Soviet Union.

The professionalization of Third World militaries, then, has its roots in the creation by colonial authorities of armies the purpose of which was the main tenance of internal security and the reproduction of colonial power. This process

implanted ideas about what constitutes a 'modern' army that have become

self-perpetuating in the post-colonial period, helping Third World militaries become

part of an 'international profession'?one in which 'the similarities between

military elites, the brotherhood of arms, the multiple inter-connections between them created by training and service abroad might seem to suggest that they are an

important element in the new international class structure'.58 And by the same

token it has helped ensure that alternatives to professionalism, such as the

part-time less technocratic ethos embodied in militia armies, are viewed by Third World elites with skepticism or contempt. A similar globalization of Western

military culture is evident in the case of technologism.

Technologism.59 Technologism refers to the symbolic valuation of advanced over

alternative technology. This might seem inevitable given the instrumental virtues of the former, but as we argued above instrumentalities may also be liabilities, and as

such are relative to the goals being pursued. Jet aircraft, main battle tanks, and

nuclear weapons are instrumental if one is interested in a professional and offensive

military posture capable of generating fear and respect from other professional armies, but less so if one is interested in a militia-based, defensive military posture.

We want to suggest that the structure of the global military culture socializes Third World elites to attach symbolic value to advanced weapons technology, and in so

doing advances certain 'instrumentalities' over others?ones that Third World states cannot meet on their own.60

Once again the colonial experience is crucial. The first exposure of most

non-Western peoples to 'modern' weapons was the destruction of their military institutions and loss of political independence. It is not surprising (but not

57 See Luckham, 'Of Arms and Culture', p. 241; Bj?rn Hagelin, 'Military Dependency: Thailand and the Philippines', Journal of Peace Research, 25 (1988), p. 441; and Michael Shafer, Deadly

Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counter insurgency Policy (Princeton, 1988), pp. 93-5. Such

programmes have a long history; see Frederick Nunn, Yesterday's Soldiers (Lincoln, 1983). For a

general discussion of their effects, see Miles Wolpin, 'External Political Socialization as a Source of Conservative Military Behavior in the Third World;, in K. Fidel (ed.), Militarism in Developing Countries (New Brunswick, 1975), pp. 259-82.

58 Robin Luckham, 'Militarism: Force, Class, and International Conflict', in Kaldor and Eide (eds.), The World Military Order, p. 239.

59 The term is Robin Luckham's, although we use it somewhat differently than he; see his 'Of Arms and Culture'.

60 The following discussion draws particularly on Luckham, 'Of Arms and Culture', and Mark Suchman and Dana Eyre, 'Military Procurement as Rational Myth: Notes on the Social Construction of Weapons Proliferation', Sociological Forum, 7 (1992), pp. 137-61.


inevitable)61 that survivors of this experience valued access to such weapons as

symbols of strength and modernity; indeed, 'perhaps no invention elicited as much

astonishment and respect from Africans as European firearms'.62 In most Third

World societies the resulting process of cultural absorption was so rapid that

'technologies introduced from . . . more instrumentally powerful cultures[s] into

traditional societies] "burned like a cigarette on a silken fabric" into the wholeness

of cultural patterns that existed before'.63 Indeed, this was often the intention

behind the introduction of new technology, which Western elites believed would

assist in the civilizing mission, transforming 'backward' societies into modern

ones.64

This transformation in attitudes toward advanced technology was reinforced by

military socialization in colonial and post-colonial armies. Status groups are

defined in part by their consumption patterns, and as such Third World elites'

efforts to acquire the technological symbols of the modern army may be an attempt to maintain the consumption patterns of their peers (and teachers) in the West.

This has led to a symbiotic relationship between professionalism and technologism: the former defines a culturally valued end of 'software' development that creates a

domestic constituency for modern weapons, and the latter defines a culturally valued end of 'hardware' development that reinforces professionalism. In noting the similarities between the militaries of developed and developing states Morris

Janowitz argued that 'because their technology is relatively similar, they have

relatively similar organizational features, particularly in their systems of hierarchy, status, and authority', but he might just as well have reversed the emphasis.65

The globalization of Western attitudes toward military technology is nowhere

more evident than in the case of weapons of mass destruction. Western states attach

great symbolic value to nuclear weapons, the holders of such weapons belonging to

an exclusive 'club'. This is one reason why many Third World states are wary of the

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: not only because it is viewed as a further attempt

by the First World to control the policies of the Third World, but because it might

deprive these states of one avenue towards status.66 In contrast, Western states do

not attach such status to chemical and biological weapons and, interestingly, despite the cost-effectiveness and instrumental virtues of such weapons only 'pariah' states

in the Third World do not accept the Western attitude that these technologies are

'uncivilized'. There is no biological or chemical weapons 'club'.

Advanced military technologies, then, have become a measure of status and

modernity in the global military culture above and beyond their instrumental value.

Third World elites have been conditioned by this culture to attach symbolic value

to such technologies, to see them as a preferred means for addressing security

61 In a fascinating study that belies the necessity of such cultural change, Noel Perrin shows how the

Japanese 'gave up the gun' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries after having had Western

firearms for 100 years. See his Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1'879

(Boston, 1979). 62

Michael Adas, Machines as a Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western

Dominance (Ithaca, 1989), p. 160. 63

See Stephen Hill, The Tragedy of Technology (London, 1988), p. 75. 64

Adas, Machines as a Measure of Men, pp. 221-30. 65 Morris Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations (Chicago, 1964), p. 27. 66 Mohammed Ayoob, 'The Third World in the System of States: Acute Schizophrenia or Growing

Pains', International Studies Quarterly, 33 (1989), p. 74.


problems.67 The problem for Third World states is that they are poorly endowed to

produce modern weapons. And although the final result is over-determined, it is some measure of the hegemony of the global military culture that so many Third

World states have tried to overcome this problem?to complete their identity as

modern states?through dependent militarization rather than by settling for less

advanced but indigenously produced solutions to security problems.

Conclusion

In this paper we have made a case for considering the effects of systemic dominance structures on Third World state formation and military development. These structures may be articulated, and so their effects hard to separate in

practice, but we believe the mechanisms they generate are distinct. Their im

portance undoubtedly varies from case to case, and may sometimes be nil; an

obvious next stage of research would be to try to assess how much of the variance

in Third World military capitalization each can explain. We have not done this

here, however, believing that the first step is simply to describe potential causal

mechanisms.68 This depends on the distinction between capital- and labour

intensive militarization, which suggests a counterfactual alternative to the current

global military order. If we ignore this alternative by taking capital-intensive militarization as given, natural, and/or subject to the same forces used to explain First World militarization, the mechanisms on which we have focused vanish from

sight. We think that the question of why Third World states pursue one form of

militarization rather than another is an important issue for future research, and

that such research should use categories and concepts more consistent with what we already know about the Third World state and security.

Besides the systemic mechanisms upon which we have focused here, an essential

element of such research should be domestic factors. State formation?the key link

in our causal argument?has both domestic and systemic determinants; this follows

from the nature of the institution of sovereignty, which separates 'domestic' from

'foreign' policy and thereby encourages states to play 'two-level games'.69 We have

been interested here only in the systemic determinants of Third World state

formation, but we in no way intend this to suggest?as did some crude dependency theories?that domestic factors can be 'read off' of systemic positions. Domestic

factors are relatively autonomous causes, and as such the pattern of Third World

militarization is under determined by systemic dominance structures.

Throughout this paper we have treated military capitalization as a dependent

67 A good example of the power of such symbolic attachments is the Israeli effort to develop the

Lavi, a key motivation for which was its value as a symbol of military-industrial prowess; see

Gerald Steinberg, 'Large-Scale National Projects as Symbols: The Israeli Case', Comparative Politics, 19 (1987), pp. 331^6.

68 This reflects a scientific realist conception of social inquiry; see David Dessler, 'Beyond Correlations: Toward a Causal Theory of War', International Studies Quarterly, 35 (1991), pp.

337-55, and Ian Shapiro and Alexander Wendt, 'The Difference that Realism Makes: Social Science

and the Politics of Consent', Politics and Society, 230 (1992), pp. 197-223. 69 See Robert Putnam, 'Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games',

International Organization, 42 (1988), pp. 427-60.


variable; we want to conclude by reversing this emphasis and briefly considering the implications of our argument for contemporary debates about the 'effects' of

Third World militarization, since it is ultimately these that make the issue of

capitalization interesting. One debate concerns the tendency for Third World militaries to intervene in

domestic politics. Military intervention, and the repression to which it often leads, is

frequently treated as a necessary evil required by an inevitably disruptive develop ment process.70 Our argument, in contrast, suggests that the domestic security threats to which intervention is a response are much more likely to arise in contexts

in which local elites rely on external support in an effort to avoid redistributive

policies. This leads to the creation of particular kinds of militaries that will identify with this goal and intervene in politics when its security is threatened. In contrast to

the more democratic nature of the militia army, in other words, a conventional army in a weak polity may become something of a 'loose cannon', the powers and

interests of which may affect subsequent political development in ways contrary to

the interests of the masses.71 In the absence of the systemic dominance structures

that encourage the emergence of such militaries, Third World elites might have been

forced long ago to renegotiate the social contract.

A second area in which differences among militarization policies might matter

is in guns-butter trade-offs in resource allocation. The opportunity costs for

economic development of the diversion of societal resources and foreign exchange are much greater if security requires a capital-intensive military, since whatever its

military virtues it is 'factor inappropriate' in the Third World.72 The 'price' of such

militarization may be reduced by subsidies or grants from suppliers, or by starting an arms export industry of one's own (the Brazilian route), but it will still be higher than if structures that created a 'demand' for conventional militaries were not

present in the first place. This relates to the issue of dependent militarization and the global arms market.

Most Third World states are unable to meet their demand for modern weapons

domestically, and thus seek either the weapons or their production technologies abroad. Depending on the nature of the demand and the number of potential

suppliers, this dependency may undermine the autonomy of Third World states, and reinforce the impact of dominance structures on them. And in systemic terms, it has been a crucial factor in the rapid expansion of the global arms trade since the

1960s; in effect Third World demand for capital-intensive militarization has

combined with Western supply side incentives to add a fifth layer to figure 1: the

global arms market. In a world of weaker systemic dominance structures, in

contrast, one would expect the demand for imported arms and technologies to be

less, and the autonomy of Third World states correspondingly greater.

70 See, for example, Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968).

71 See Felipe Ag?ero, 'Social Effects: Military Autonomy in Developing Countries', Alternatives, 10

(1984), pp. 75-92, J. Samuel Fitch, 'Military Professionalism, National Security and Democracy: Lessons from the Latin American Experience', Pacific Focus, 4 (1989), pp. 99-147, J. Patrice

McSherry, 'Military Power, Impunity, and State-Society Change in Latin America;, Canadian

Journal of Political Science, 25 (1992), pp. 463^188, and David Pion-Berlin, 'Military Autonomy and Emerging Democracies in South America', Comparative Politics, 25 (1992), pp. 83-102.

72 On the developmental costs of militarization, see Ball, Security and Economy in the Third World, and Brad Bullock and Glenn Firebaugh, 'Guns and Butter? The Effect of Militarization on

Economic and Social Development in the Third World', Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 18 (1990), pp. 231-66.


The constitution of the global arms market relates, finally, to the impact of Third

World militarization on the 'stability' of regional and global systems. Stability is

threatened by the fact that many modern weapons are particularly useful in an

offensive role. On a regional level, the proliferation of such weapons may increase the likelihood of war by aggravating security dilemmas or by making aggression

more feasible. And on a global level, it may also gradually undermine the

West's military dominance of the international system.73 In that sense the 'inter

nationalization' of modern weapons systems is akin to the internationalization of

capital: highly uneven, but holding out the prospect of some upward mobility.

Despite this long-term threat to the existing world order, however, our argument also suggests that capital-intensive militarization may, on a deeper level, actually

help perpetuate Western dominance of the international system by undermining the

capacity and will of the Third World to 'resist'. The diffusion of modern arms

reinforces the internal security position of state-centric elites in the Third World

that benefit from that dominance, and weakens the position of groups that might benefit from alternative, more society-centric definitions of security and develop

ment. By inhibiting the democratic reorganization of state-society relations, capa

bility diffusion inhibits development of more factor-appropriate and self-sufficient

military postures, and thereby ultimately weakens the ability of the Third World to

resist the real threat to 'its' security: systemic dominance structures. The modern

Third World military, in other words, has become a key element in the 'chain of

domination' that links the international system to Third World peoples.74 In more general theoretical terms we might conclude from this argument that

while the diffusion of modern arms and arms technologies is gradually changing the distribution of certain kinds of power in ways that undermine Western

dominance, in so doing it is reinforcing a particular distribution of interest in which Third World countries are coopted into a hierarchical international system.75 This is not to deny the potential for instability as military capability becomes decon

centrated, which is a real problem for ideologies of 'international' security that seek to incorporate the Third World on a subordinate basis into the world system rather than have them withdraw or 'revolt'. What we have tried to suggest, however, is that the hierarchical structure of that system itself conditions Third World political and military development in ways which give Third World states (as opposed to

societies) a vested interest in such a notion of 'security', that is, in the priority of order over justice.

73 For examples of this concern, see D. Devitt (ed.), Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Global Security (New York, 1987), Ross, 'Arms Acquisition and National Security', Klaus Knorr, 'Military Trends and Future World Order', Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, 11 (1989), pp. 68-95, and

Gerald Steinberg, 'Technological Transfer and the Future of the Center-Periphery System: A

Realist Perspective', Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, 11 (1989), pp. 96-117. 74

See Luis Herrera, 'The Military as a Link in the Domination Chain of Latin America', Instant Research on Peace and Violence, 5 (1975), pp. 197-206.

75 For a thoughtful discussion of the tensions in this cooptation, see Mohammed Ayoob, 'The Third World in the System of States'.


Appendix 1

Countries Sub-Reg.

GNP P/C (US$)

Personnel

(1,000s) Weapons Weapons/

Personnel Rank

Albania** 3 930 209 298 1.426 96

Algeria** 8 2,680 319 2,097 6.574 25

Angola 6 600 207 904 4.367 47

Argentina 5 2,390 500 1,205 2.410 69 Australia 10 11,100 98.8 267 2.702 63

Austria 3 11,980 296.7 193 0.650 116 Bahamas 4 10,320 1.2 0 0.000 126

Bahrain** 8 8,110 5.1 118 23.137 3

Bangladesh 9 160 186.5 145 0.777 109

Belgium 2 11,480 515.7 1,260 2.443 68 Belize 4 1,250 1,050 0 0.000 126

Benin 7 310 8.35 43 5.150 36 Bolivia 5 580 48.6 105 2.160 76

Botswana 6 1,050 4.25 27 6.353 27 Brazil 5 2,020 1,659.2 1,007 0.607 117

Brunei** 10 10,970 6.8 22 3.235 60

Bulgaria** 2 6,800 546.8 3,267 5.975 30 Burkina Faso 7 190 55.45 89 1.605 90

Burma** 10 210 259 92 0.355 123 Burundi 7 250 7.2 28 3.889 52

Cameroon 7 970 11.6 43 3.707 56 Canada 2 15,160 108.3 716 6.611 24

Central African Republic 7 330 6.5 14 2.154 77 Chad 7 150 22.9 67 2.926 61

Chile 5 1,310 228 424 1.860 83 China 11 290 16,400 17,965 1.095 99

Colombia 4 1,240 297.2 220 0.740 113

Congo 7 870 14.9 127 8.523 18 Costa Rica 4 1,610 9.5 0 0.000 126

Cuba** 4 1,800 1,779.5 1,333 0.749 111

Cyprus* 2 5,200 76.7 132 1.721 86 Czechoslovakia** 2 9,280 608 6,295 10.354 11

Denmark 2 14,930 169 360 2.130 78

Djibouti** 7 1,067 4.2 37 8.810 16 Dominican Republic 4 730 21.8 42 1.927 82

Ecuador 5 1,040 40.2 99 2.463 67

Egypt 8 680 1,428 3,749 2.625 64 El Salvador 4 860 79.6 110 1.382 97

Ethiopia 7 130 484.8 1,167 2.407 70

Fiji* 10 1,570 8.5 0 0.000 126 Finland 3 14,470 739.6 269 0.364 122 France 2 12,790 900.3 4,391 4.877 40

Gabon 7 2,700 7.8 79 10.128 13

Germany, East** 2 11,300 654.5 5,287 8.078 19

Germany, West 2 14,400 1,359.7 8,224 6.048 28 Ghana 7 390 15.6 37 2.372 72

Greece 2 4,020 648 3,025 4.668 41


Appendix 1?continued

Countries Sub-Reg.

GNP P/C (US$)

Personnel


Personnel Rank

Guatemala

Guinea**

Guinea-Bissau*

Guyana*

Haiti Honduras

Hungary India Indonesia

Iran**

Iraq**

Ireland Israel

Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica

Japan

Jordan

Kenya

Korea, North**

Korea, South

Kuwait

Laos

Liberia

Libya Luxembourg**

Madagascar

Malawi

Malaysia Mali Malta*

Mauritania

Mexico

Mongolia** Morocco

Mozambique

Nepal Netherlands New Zealand

Nicaragua

Niger Nigeria Norway

Oman

Pakistan Panama

4

7

7

5

4

4

2

9

10

7

4

11

8

7

11

11

8

10

7

8

2

6

6

10

7

3

7

4

11

8

6

9

2

10

4

7

7

2

8

9

4

950 250 160 380 360 810

2,240 300 450

1,756 2,400 6,120 6,800

10,350 740 940

15,760 1,560

330 910

2,690 14,610

170 450

5,460 12,570

210 160

1,810 210

4,020 440

1,830 880 610 170 160

11,860 7,750

830 260 370

17,190 5,810

350 2,240

72.6

19.5

9.2

11

7.6

73.7

302

2,257 1,199 3,511 1,654.8

29

649.5

1,374 34.7

3.3

303.4 140.3 24.8

6,420 8,632

20.3

55

57.8

114 1.3

28.5

7.3

356.3 15.1

1.9

17.4

558 239.5 238.5

96.2

63

290.1 22.5

202 7.8

106.5 320

29

1,157.6

19.6

50

89

40

0

16

124

2,625 4,800

419

1,793 6,255

80

4,907 2,247

34 0

1,778 1,257

186

4,470 2,290

553 85 0

3,648 0

97 36

386 57 0

85 328

1,235 779 396 25

2,159 76

243 50

483 285 132

1,963 29

0.689 4.564 4.348 0.000 2.105 1.682 8.692 2.127 0.349 0.511 3.780 2.759 7.555 1.635

0.980 0.000 5.860 8.959 7.500 0.696 0.265

27.241

1.545 0.000

32.000 0.000 3.404 4.932 1.083 3.775 0.000 4.885 0.588 5.157 3.266 4.116 0.397 7.442 3.378 1.203

6.410 4.535 0.891 4.552 1.696 1.480

115 43 49

126 80 88 17 79

124 120 53 62 21 89

102 126 33 15

22 114 125

2

92 126

1 126 57 38

100 54

126 39

118 35 59 51

121 23 58 98 26 45 106 44 87 94


Appendix 1?continued

Countries Sub-Reg.

GNP P/C (US$)

Personnel


Personnel Rank

Papua New Guinea

Paraguay

Peru

Philippines Poland

Portugal Qatar**

Romania**

Rwanda

Saudi Arabia

Senegambia

Seychelles* Sierra Leone

Singapore Somalia

South Africa Soviet Union**

Spain Sri Lanka Sudan

Suriname**

Sweden

Switzerland

Syria Taiwan**

Tanzania

Thailand

Togo Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia

Turkey Uganda

United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States

Uruguay

Venezuela

Vietnam**

Yemen, North

Yemen, South

Yugoslavia

Zaire

Zambia

Zimbabwe

10 5 5

10 2 2 8 2 7 8 7 6 7

10 7 6 1

2 9 7 5 3 3 8

11 7

10 7 4 8 2 7 8 2 1 5 4

10

700 990

1,370 590

1,930 2,830

15,723 6,030

300

6,200 520

3,170 300

7,940 290

1,890 8,735 6,010

400 330

2,290 15,550

21,330 1,640 3,750

180 850 290

4,210 1,180 1,210

260

15,830 10,420 18,530 2,190 3,230

200 590 420

2,480 150

250 580

7.8

59.8

377.6 240.5

1,362 306.2

7

1,025 6.4

92.3

10.7

6.3

3.9

337.1 94.5

613

5,096 2,829

68 60.7

3.9

776 628.5 678.3

2,088 151 879.7

5.9

6.7

47

1,711 35 43

636.5

2,163 27.1

69

4,812 81.6

117.5 713 101

17.4

85

0

88

662 195

5,925 288 105

2,540 14

1,290 82 14 4

537 414

3,688 93,168

2,104 66

358 6

1,561 1,122 7,498 1,587

138 774

79 0

251

4,060 0

405

2,682 31,735

124 354

2,490 887 699

2,677 233 178

214

0.000 1.472

1.753 0.811

4.350 0.941

15.000 2.478 2.188

13.976 7.664 2.222 1.026 1.593

4.381 6.016

18.283 0.744 0.971

5.898 1.538

2.012 1.785

11.054 0.760 0.914

0.880 13.390 0.000 5.340

2.373 0.000 9.419 4.214

14.672 4.576 5.130 0.517

10.870 5.949 3.755 2.307

10.230 2.518

126 95 85

108 48 104

5 66 75

7 20 74

101 91 46 29

4 112 103 32 93 81 84

9 110 105 107

8 126 34 71

126 14 50

6 42 37

119 10 31 55 73 12 65

*Source for GNP p/c is World Tables, 1988-89 (Baltimore). **Source for GNP p/c is World Almanac.


Appendix 2 Regional breakdown of weapons/personnel ratios

Region W/P mean W/P median Stand, dev.

1. US-USSR 16.47 0.00 2.55 2. Other NATO-WTO 4.25 4.21 2.97 3. Neutral Europe 1.59 1.42 1.26

4. Caribbean Basin 1.11 0.74 1.30 5. South America 1.88 1.75 1.22

6. Southern Africa 4.91 4.37 2.44 1. Cent./East Africa 4.36 3.89 3.19

8. Middle East 10.18 7.56 8.76 9. South Asia 1.19 0.97 0.70

10. SEAsia&Aust. 1.27 0.88 1.17 11. NE Asia 2.31 0.76 2.51

Note: See the regional code numbers of each country in Appendix 1 for detailed breakdown.

Documents

Dependent state formation and Third Worldhome.gwu.edu/~barnett/articles/1993_militarization_ris.pdfGould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York, 1989),