Air University Review, September-October 1982

Implications of Security Patterns
Among Developing States

Several key trends in the security policy behavior of developing states have serious long-term implications for Americans security policy. I refer specifically to the diffusion of military and economic power among developing states and the growing decentralization of regional and international security systems. The international system has become increasingly characterized by growing numbers of state participants controlling significant economic and military power. Moreover, developing states, hitherto at the peripheries of international decision-making, are progressively becoming central to the system. More and more they affect the outcomes of interstate conflicts, influence and, at times, even determine the regimes in political control of foreign states and their external relations, and regulate access to strategic resources needed by other states.

In a larger sense, these trends imply an increasing role for military force and the threat of its use in international relations. The decentralization of power increases opportunities for the use of force and intervention in the internal affairs of other states. As a consequence, the international security system and regional subsystems appear to be gradually moving beyond the control of any one state or group of states.

The growing instability and volatility of regional and international security pose serious problems for American interests and security policy. The management of security relations become more difficult as the military, economic, and political requirements of national security increase and become more dependent on the cooperative behavior of larger numbers of rival states. As American security becomes more dependent on an increasing number of states, our ability to control the actions and decisions of allies and nonaligned states has declined even as, paradoxically, our economic and military power has grown .

Patterns of Developing-State
Security Behavior

The diffusion of military power throughout the world and the fascination it seems to have for developing nations deserve attention.¹ First, military spending is growing faster in the Third World than it is in the developed world, including Western Europe. Much of the 14.8 percent growth in world military expenditures between 1968 and 1977 was in the developing states. During this period the military spending of the so-called developed states rose from $305 to $319 billion in constant 1976 dollars, an increase of 4.6 percent, while expenditures among developing states jumped from $54 to $92 billion or 70.4 percent. In the Middle East, military expenditures increased over 270 percent. Many states in Africa doubled their military outlays; in both instances the rate of arms spending exceeded the growth in gross national product (GNP). In three instances, in Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia, a higher percentage of each region’s GNP was spent for the military in 1977 than in 1968. As the ratio of military spending to GNP fell for developed states by almost two percentage points (7.4 to 5.6 percent), the similar spending ratio for Third World states held almost steady, falling only two-tenths of a percentage point from 6.1 to 5.9 percent, while GNP increased by almost 80 percent. These GNP military spending ratios are confirmed, as might be expected, in per capita expenditure data. The developed states declined 2.9 percent on this scale while the developing state percentage was up 38.1 percent.

Second, the developing states account for most of the growth of world armed forces since 1968. While the armed services of the developed countries decreased in manpower by almost 11 percent between 1968 and 1977, those of the emerging nations expanded by an average of 25 percent. In this connection, Africa changed most over the ten-year period. There, armed forces have increased from 635,000 to 1,340,000 or 111 percent. The Middle East follows with a 76 percent increase. Surprisingly, Latin America, although it has had no appreciable military conflicts like those in Africa and the Middle East, registered a gain of almost 36 percent in numbers of men under arms.

Third, developing states are arming themselves with the latest in sophisticated weaponry. In 1950, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, no Third World state had supersonic aircraft or missiles, and only one possessed post-World War II armored fighting vehicles or tanks. (See Table I.) By 1960, 38 countries had heavy armor in their inventories; 26 were manning modern warships; yet only one state (Taiwan) had supersonic aircraft. By 1977, less than twenty years later, almost fifty emerging states had deployed supersonic aircraft, some as advanced as any in the NATO or Warsaw Pact inventories. These included MiG-23s in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and Cuba; SEPECAT Jaguars in Oman and Ecuador; Dassault Mirage IIIs and Dassault Mirage 5s (17 states); and Northrop F-5s (16 states).² The trend continues with the Republic of Korea getting the F-16, Israel the F-15 and F-16, Egypt the F-4 and F-l6, Saudi Arabia the F-15 and the E-3A Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), and Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and India the MiG-25. By 1977, more than 80 developing states possessed heavy armor; 42 had various missile capabilities; and 67 disposed modern warships in their navies, largely fast, light ships with impressive destructive capabilities.

Table I. Number of Third World countries with
advanced military systems, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1977

Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, World Armaments and Disarmament: 1978 (New York: Crane, Russak & Co., 1978), pp. 238-53.

Fourth, the volume of arms imports can be used to illustrate the rise in military expenditures for the developing states. Using five-year averages for 1968 to 1972 and 1973 to 1977, the Third World countries clearly outdistanced the developed states in the amount and rate of growth of arms imports. From 1968 to 1972, the developing states accounted for 70.1 percent of all transfers; in the next five-year period from 1973 to 1977, the percentage rose to 73.1 percent. The growth rate is all the more impressive since the starting base for developing state imports was greater than that for developed states. The latter increased their imports by nearly 43 percent; the former jumped 163.1 percent. The greatest regional rate of increase in arms imports was in Africa, especially North Africa. Over the last five years, imports into Africa leaped almost 450 percent over the previous five-year period. Additionally, the Middle East is a leader with an increase of slightly more than 300 percent. Latin America ranks third in arms imports, followed by South and East Asia.

Perhaps even more revealing than arms imports is the increasing tendency of developing states to produce their own weapons, either indigenously or under license. These include heavy armor, supersonic and subsonic aircraft, helicopters, missiles, and light warships. The factors prompting this growth are varied and complex, but most prominent is a desire to be independent of foreign suppliers and the pressures they can exert. While these states have not been able to free themselves from foreign dependence, they have been able, for a variety of reasons, to increase their bargaining leverage with the developed states to acquire the weapons they want. Not only are they able to produce more weapons than ever before but they are also able to design and fabricate a larger variety of sophisticated weapon systems. Table II lists the production capacity of 31 states in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. In each of the seven weapon categories listed, the number of states producing a particular item has grown; in most instances the number doubled between 1965 and 1975. At least five states (China, India, Israel, South Africa, and Brazil) were producing military equipment in each category in 1975; developments have not slowed since (with countries like Taiwan and Egypt, capable of producing aircraft, missiles, and light warships or Argentina, which can produce these weapons as well as armor and is enlarging its aircraft engine and electronics capability).

Table II. Number of developing states producing various
military arms and materials in 1965 and 1975, respectively

Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey 1976 (London, 1977), p. 22. Thirty-one countries are listed in the ISS Study.

These figures also imply a high state of technological development since aircraft, missiles, electronics, and aircraft engines require a broad scientific, engineering, and industrial base. Measured by GNP and per capita income, countries like China and India may not be "developed," but they have begun to master the advanced technologies needed to produce ultra-sophisticated weaponry. One can speak metaphorically of a "Belgium" emerging from India or a Skoda arms complex arising from an otherwise underdeveloped China. The same process of modernization, with military technology as the spearhead, is plainly operating in other "undeveloped" states; Pakistan, Brazil, and Argentina are prominent examples.³ The choice perceived by elites in these states is not the traditional one of "guns or butter" but "butter because of guns." Modernization is seen as partially a function of a modern war-fighting and production system linked to a capacity to sell arms abroad.

The proliferation of nuclear technology and weapon production capability is still another indicator of a state reaching military maturity. India’s detonation of a nuclear device in 1974 ended any remaining illusions that nuclear proliferation might be arrested in the developing world.⁴ According to public reports, Pakistan is within reach of exploding the first Islamic bomb.⁵ Other candidates for nuclear status include Taiwan, South Africa, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, and Iraq (after it recovers from the Israeli air raid on the Baghdad nuclear facility in August 1981). Many analysts have long assumed that Israel possesses a significant nuclear arsenal.⁶

The diffusion of military technology has been accompanied and partly propelled by a diffusion of economic power, principally favoring the oil-producing states. Table III outlines the dependency of key Western states on imported oil. All of these states except the United States were dependent on oil imports for over 90 percent of their petroleum needs. Only North Sea oil has made Britain and Norway temporarily self-sufficient. Except for the United States and Denmark, more than half of the oil imports to the states listed in Table III came from the Middle East and Persian Gulf states. Additionally, the Soviet Union and its East European allies are increasingly dependent on imported oil. This dependency is expected to grow in the future, setting the stage for intensified competition for scarce oil resources.

Source: Oil statistics for 1980 drawn from OECD Quarterly Oil Statistics, 2d quarter, 1981 (France, 1981); trade statistics from 1978 drawn from International Monetary Fund, Directon of Trade Yearbook (Washington, D.C., 1980).

* Includes Abu Dhabi, United Arab emirates, Algeria Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia

Table III. Oil dependencies and trade balances of selected Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries with
Arab states (oil statistics, 1980, and trade statistics, 1978)

Between 1970 and 1979, the Soviet Union increased its oil imports by 50 percent; the East European states doubled their dependence on foreign oil in the same period.⁷

The rise in oil prices in the l970s from little more than $2 a barrel to over $40 has brought enormous revenues to the petroleum exporting nations and provided funds needed for major weapon purchases. The West has furnished the bulk of the capital for nations like Iran, under the Shah, and Saudi Arabia to become leading arms clients of the United States. France has also sold Libya, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia weapons worth billions of dollars.

European and Soviet dependence on foreign oil, especially from the Middle East, has complicated the meaning of security.⁸ The large and growing trade balances between Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and developed states place the latter in a vulnerable position. They need access to oil and to the oil producers’ markets to sell their products. They are also interested in the monetary and investment policies pursued by the oil-producing states. Progressive loss of control over these economic factors—oil, trade, investment, and monetary fluctuations—shapes trade balances, economic growth, national income, and employment trends in the developed states. To the degree that the social and political fabric of oil-importing states is measured by the strength of these economic indicators, the Arab oil-exporting states in particular have enhanced their bargaining leverage with the developed user nations to acquire arms, technology transfers, and political concessions. On the other hand, a lessened capacity to influence interregional conflicts is suggested by the Iranian-Iraqi conflict. What applies to the nonoil-exporting developed states is magnified in the nonoil-exporting developing states. Many of these states have little except their political support to sell to assure oil supplies.

Decentralization of the
International Security System

The diffusion of military and economic resources and accompanying political influence to the advantage of selected but critically important developing states has fostered a more decentralized regional and international security system. More developing states than ever before are significant actors on the international stage. Their new-found power stems from the greater stock of military and economic resources at their disposal. This stock includes greater national armed forces for direct use or for "lending," large inventories of modern weapons, a growing capacity to produce arms, the ability to sell or transfer arms to third parties, increased control over access to territory, sea lanes, or airspace needed by other states for strategic purposes, large economic reserves by which to purchase arms or finance indigenous or foreign armed forces and operations, and possession of raw materials and economic resources that are needed by other states.

Control exercised by developing states over these assets permits them to play three crucial roles. First, they increasingly influence the outcomes of interstate conflicts. Second, they set limits to the policy objectives and maneuverability of other states, including the big powers. Within varying degrees of significance, they can also define, as the Israelis have recently demonstrated in Lebanon, what kind of political regime will rule another nation—or at least wield a veto over what regimes are unacceptable. They are able to project their power either directly by political or military coercion or indirectly by influencing the socioeconomic structure or foreign relations of a third state. Finally, and flowing from the preceding two roles, the developing states have an enhanced power to define regional and interstate issues, their salience, and the time and pace by which they will be articulated or resolved.

Decentralization unquestionably accentuates the importance of military force in international relations.⁹ Relations between states are increasingly framed by available military power, and clashes are apt to be resolved by threat or by use of force. Relations become more volatile because nations are increasingly unable to exercise restraint on their allies. Conflicts are widened horizontally among developing states and extended vertically to include the developed states and the superpowers. There are then a larger number of competing states with significant military capability involved in international competition. The result is that no one state or group of states can provide regional or international stability. Security issues gain ascendancy over political and economic questions as states tend to their specific security needs in an uncertain world.

Regionally, local states have a great say over their security arrangements. With varying control over the economic and military instruments of power noted earlier, they define their own interests and seek to influence their neighbors. In the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli struggle dominates a region transformed by political mutations among Israel’s Arab antagonists. The Egyptian-Israeli peace accords are clear evidence of the changing nature of regional security arrangements that have restructured regional alignments. Even before the Sinai and Camp David agreements, it was apparent that neither of the superpowers, however important as protector, could dictate policy to its clients. Israel took matters into its own hands in 1956 and again in 1967. If in the Suez War it was forced to withdraw, in the Six-Day War its preemptive attack and swift victory precluded foreign intervention. If under American prompting and blandishments it accepted the Camp David process and relinquished the Sinai, it also secured its flank from Egyptian attack and freed its forces to deal with the PLO and Syrian threats in Lebanon.

The Soviet Union has also had trouble disciplining its clients in the Middle East. Although Egypt and Syria received assistance from the U.S.S.R. in launching their Yom Kippur attack in 1973, they were not under the direction of the Soviet Union. A year earlier, indeed, Egypt had ordered Soviet military personnel to leave the country, and President Anwar Sadat berated Moscow for not furnishing enough weapons to impose a military solution on Israel.

Regional quarrels in the Middle East cannot be reduced to the global struggle between the superpowers. They arise from sources deeply embedded within the warp and woof of the history, culture, political development, and religious fabric of the region. The Iranian-Iraq War of 1980 had little to do with American, Soviet, or European penetration of the area although their arms contributed to the lethality and scope of the hostilities. Differences between Syria and Iraq also run deep despite the fact that different wings of the Baath socialist party rule in both countries. Rivalries have become so bitter that even traditional adversaries appear at times to be more desirable, if passing, allies than fellow Arabs. At one point in the struggle for the control of Lebanon in the l970s, Syrian forces armed by the Soviet Union were aligned with Lebanese Christians against Muslim Arabs fighting for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Earlier, King Hussein’s forces mauled PLO units to assure his rule in Jordan.¹⁰

Client-sponsored relationships in the Middle East have also become blurred in recent years. American-Saudi relations are a touchstone. If Riyadh depends on American arms and protection, it has not followed that Washington has the final say over Saudi foreign and security policy. The Saudi demand for F-l5s (and later for their enhancement in range and armament) as well as for the AWACS system pitted U.S. and Israeli security interests against each other and generated serious splits in Congress over the sale of this sophisticated equipment to Riyadh.¹¹ Saudi money has, furthermore, found its way into the hands of Middle East antagonists of the United States, including the PLO. Saudi influence exerted in Washington also resulted in President Carter’s use of his emergency powers to send arms to North Yemen, thereby shortcircuiting congressional objections and opposition.

The superpowers seem unable to prevent many of their client states from using, more or less at will, weapons that they have provided. In August 1981, Israeli F-l6s destroyed the Baghdad nuclear reactor without prior knowledge or approval of the American government. Israel is accused of using cluster bombs in Lebanon, which resulted in civilian casualties contrary to the intent of authorizing legislation approving the transfer of these weapons. In 1980, Iraq attacked Iran, apparently without securing Russian consent to use Soviet arms. In 1974, Turkey used American arms without American approval in invading Cyprus. The subsequent American arms embargo had little restraining effect on the Turkish government. Washington backed down when Turkey closed several U.S. bases, threatened to withdraw from NATO, and warned that American monitoring sites used to track Soviet missile tests might be removed. Libya transferred some of its French-built Mirages to Egypt during the 1973 Yom Kippur War despite French proscriptions against retransfers. In each of these cases, arms provided by the big powers did not assure control over the behavior of their clients.

A similar pattern of local initiative can be found in North Africa. Algeria provides sanctuary for the Polisario and, with Libya, arms the insurgents. France, the United States, and Saudi Arabia provide money and arms to Morocco.¹² Meanwhile, Libya used its wealth to arm the Chadian government and moved over 6000 troops into N’Djamena in late 1980 to tip the civil war in favor of the Chadian president. Libya also spends its oil wealth to finance revolutionary and terrorist activities in several regions of the world. The extent of Libyan influence is dramatically illustrated by Libyan support of the Muslim separatist Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in the southern Philippines. Libyan support of the insurgency, long rumored in the world press, was implicitly confirmed when Libya sponsored negotiations between the Philippine government and the MNLF in Tripoli in 1976.¹³

In Asia, Vietnam and India have exercised considerable influence over their respective spheres of influence. In 1975, North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam and established a satellite government in neighboring Laos. In 1978, Vietnam extended its rule over Cambodia and, in bloody border clashes with its former Chinese ally in 1979, proved its military prowess to the extent that other nations in the area formed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). While this association has other objectives besides containing Vietnamese expansionism, it is clearly concerned with the problem.

India similarly dominates South Asia. Its defeat of Pakistan in late 1971 led to the creation of Bangladesh. India’s explosion of a nuclear device and development of a sophisticated arms industry place it in an ascendant regional position since no other state can effectively challenge its military position. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) produces the Kiran ground attack fighter and has built the Marut fighter-bomber, the Pushpak trainer, and MiG-2ls under license. An improved version of the British Gnat lightweight fighter, called the Ajeet, is currently in production. In the spring of 1980, India signed a $1.6 billion arms agreement with the Soviet Union.¹⁴ As a part of this deal, India has received MiG-23s and a reconnaissance version of the MiG-25. It has also purchased SEPECAT Jaguars and has recently ordered Mirage 2000s from France. Additionally, New Delhi gained approval for the purchase of enriched uranium from the United States despite considerable congressional reservations about the absence of effective safeguards required by American law.¹⁵

Although weaker than India and hard pressed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan continues to play an important international role. There are reportedly 22 Pakistani military missions in foreign countries. Pakistani Air Force pilots serve widely throughout the Muslim world as instructors and advisors. Sizable detachments can be found in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, and Abu Dhabi. In all, approximately 10,000 Pakistani military are serving abroad. Another 20,000 are reportedly earmarked for duty in Saudi Arabia should the need arise. Indeed, Pakistan is second only to Cuba in the number of military personnel supplied to Third World states.¹⁶

High training standards, the professionalism of the officer corps, and excellent discipline make Pakistani soldiers and airmen desirable guests in much of the Muslim world and beyond. Pakistani pilots have been engaged by France to train Arab forces in French Mirages. Pakistani military personnel have flown for Libya and currently fly for Abu Dhabi. Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq distinguished himself earlier in his career as a military advisor in Jordan, where he commanded a Pakistani brigade that played an important part in suppressing the Palestinian guerrillas in l970.¹⁷

In Latin America, a number of states are also playing critical regional and transregional roles. Cuba is most prominent.¹⁸ It has about 40,000 troops serving in eleven countries.¹⁹ Its involvement in Africa is longstanding.²⁰ As early as 1963, Cuba sent 300-400 troops to Algeria to support that country in its border dispute with Morocco. The next year, Castro’s regime contacted the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Support for the MPLA grew, and 14,000 Cuban troops were sent to Angola to assist in the struggle against remnants of Portuguese colonialism and, later, to fight to establish Agostinho Neto’s regime against the forces of Holden Roberto and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. Additionally, about 17,000 Cubans aided the Ethiopian government in its war against Somali in the Ogaden. According to one listing, Cuba has ten other missions of varying size in Africa besides those in Angola and Ethiopia.²¹

Brazil, strongly nationalist and ruled by a military and technocratic elite, has embarked on an ambitious military modernization program to become self-sufficient in arms production and expansion in foreign arms sales. The views of Brazilian Air Force Minister Joelmir Campos de Araripe Macedo typify the attitude of Brazilian leaders: "The time has come to free ourselves from the United States and the countries of Europe. It is a condition of security that each nation manufactures its own armaments."²² In 1980, Brazil reportedly sold $500 million in military equipment. Its armored car, Cascavel (Rattlesnake), which mounts a 90-mm cannon, has appeared in Libya and Iraq. Brazil is, additionally, the world’s sixth largest manufacturer of aircraft. Its twin-prop Bandeirante transport has been sold to Uruguay, Chile, and Gabon and is used by several commuter airlines in the United States. The Xavante AT-26 ground attack fighter has been purchased by Togo and Paraguay.²³ France’s decision to buy fifty Xingu transports, valued at approximately a million dollars apiece, signals a breakthrough into the European aircraft market.²⁴

Argentina is also an important weapon producer and appears to be preparing to export its weapons. It has developed the twin-turboprop Pucará counterinsurgency aircraft, which saw service in the Falkland Islands War, as well as small naval craft, tanks, helicopters, and trainers.²⁵ Argentina’s defeat at the hands of Great Britain in the South Atlantic suggests the limits of its capacity to challenge a determined developed state, but the losses inflicted on British forces, especially warships, by Argentinian aircraft also indicate that the gap between developed and developing countries with respect to the availability and use of advanced military systems is closing.

The principal military powers in Sub-Saharan Africa are Nigeria and South Africa. South Africa, easily the most powerful nation in the region, has in recent years sent troops into Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. Its arms industry is impressive and growing. Through licensing agreements, such as those with France for building Mirage aircraft, South Africa has been successful in circumventing the United Nations arms embargo. ²⁶

Nigeria is almost totally dependent on foreign arms suppliers. However, it has lucrative oil resources, a large population, and a leadership anxious to be active in African affairs. It is also an attractive alliance partner. Fifteen percent of U.S. oil imports come from Nigeria, and officials in Lagos have hinted that the flow of oil to the United States could depend on U.S. policy toward South Africa.²⁷

The capacity of some developing states to influence the kinds of regimes that will govern abroad and, as in Indochina, to install a government or leadership group in power is another mark of the growing importance of developing states. One is impressed by the level of activity of developing states in penetrating politically and intervening militarily in the affairs of other states. Equally impressive is the array of assets at their disposal to shape political events and influence security policies abroad.

Vietnam’s successes in Southeast Asia have been noted. The large arms cache taken in its 1975 offensive provides a means to influence events in the Persian Gulf and Central America where American-made weapons are in demand. While Soviet economic and military assistance gives Moscow some leverage, Hanoi has attractive bases to offer the Soviets and can, with these assets, maintain a measure of distance from Moscow.

The Middle East is rife with intrigue. North and South Yemen are going in opposite directions. As suggested above, Saudi money and American-bought arms keep the North Yemen government afloat while Soviet arms and Libyan funds support the Marxist regime in South Yemen. Elsewhere, Syria has not recoiled from using its superior military strength, based on Soviet arms, to impress its will on a recalcitrant PLO. For its part, Israel challenges PLO and Syrian influence in Lebanon and extends a protective cover over Lebanese Christians.

From North Africa, Libya stirs up mischief throughout the region and the world. It has reportedly been implicated in assassination plots in Egypt, in the attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life, and is alleged to have targeted top U.S. officials for elimination. We know that Libyan troops kept Idi Amin in power until domestic opponents, supported by an expeditionary force from Tanzania, overthrew him. Libya also partially underwrites the Polisario insurrection that threatens the Hassan II regime in Morocco.

The most dramatic success of Colonel Muammar el Qaddafi’s government to date has been in Chad. The extension of its power has seriously embarrassed both France and Nigeria. France withdrew its troops from Chad in 1980, but there was no presumption that the void would be filled by Libyan forces. For over a decade the French tried to resolve the civil war, but without success. Its failure in Chad to prevent the Libyan intervention and the temporary withdrawal of defeated elements to the south undermined the credibility of France in Francophone Africa.²⁸ Various factors explain the French vacillation—presidential elections, the cost of moderating a seemingly intractable civil war, and interest in Libyan oil—but none is sufficient to conceal the setback to France’s prestige relative to an assertive Tripoli.²⁹ Meanwhile, Nigerian aspirations in the region were frustrated. The Nigerian-inspired Organization of African Unity resolution to settle the Chadian conflict was predicated on the dubious assumption that Libya would become a stabilizing influence in the region. Libya’s assault on N’Djamena dashed these expectations and in the bargain diminished Nigeria’s claim as a participant in the Chadian solution. Libya’s withdrawal of its troops from Chad in 1981 eased tensions with its neighbors, but it remains a major regional player and a force to be reckoned with.

On the other hand, France, in league with Moroccan troops, ferried by American transports, and partially financed by the Saudis, intervened in Zaire to save the Mobutu regime.³⁰ Morocco’s assistance in Zaire also earned credit for the government of Hassan II in both Washington and Paris in its struggle against the Polisario rebels. By supporting Morocco, the United States and France can influence the outcomes of the war, but veto power over its resolution seems to lie with Algeria.

Robert Mugabe’s victory in Zimbabwe can be partly attributed to the support the black independence movement received from developing states. Soviet arms filtered through the surrounding states to Joshua Nkomo’s forces while Mugabe’s movement enjoyed Chinese patronage. Moreover, the willingness of the two revolutionary leaders to accept a negotiated solution derived in considerable measure from the pressures exerted by the front-line states of southern black Africa. Mozambique was particularly strained by the war by having to provide sanctuary and resources for the competing sides and along with its neighbors put pressure on the rebels to negotiate a peace settlement with the white-dominated Salisbury government.³¹

When attention turns toward Latin America, Cuban foreign policy provides the most striking example of a developing state charging onto the international stage. Marxist governments in Angola and Ethiopia are there in large part because of Cuban intervention. Cubans may also be found in Congo-Brazzaville, Libya, Mozambique, and Benin.³² In Latin America, Cuban attempts to export revolution have so far been less successful despite closer geographic and ethnic affinities. If State Department charges are correct, Havana is also shipping arms through Honduras and Nicaragua to the rebels in El Sa1vador.³³

As the superpowers and the European states have settled their differences in Europe, the developing world has become the focus of big-power and middle-power competition. But developing states are now exercising more influence over the scope, timing, and articulation of regional and international security issues. Their increased influence derives from impressive security assets that many developing states have at their disposal to invest in other developing states, to support revolutionary movements, or to lend to developed powers in return for favors. Their bargaining leverage and maneuverability vis-à-vis the developed world, including the superpowers, have grown proportionately.

Through their control of needed raw materials, sizable monetary reserves, large armed forces, and key geographical locations, the developing states can extract greater concessions than ever before from the developed nations, particularly modern arms. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, India, and Pakistan have diversified their arms supplier portfolios. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has bought much of its ground equipment from France and its naval material from Britain while the United States furnishes much of Saudi Arabia’s aircraft, missiles, and electronics. The reverse situation of supplier dependency on its client is exemplified by the Iranian situation. In an effort to tie irreversibly the Shah’s Iran to American security interests, successive Washington administrations furnished Tehran with the most sophisticated equipment in the U.S. arsenal. The unintended result of these shipments was to undermine the Shah’s regime and turn over American arms to a hostile government bent on eliminating American influence in the Middle East.

France has risked domestic division and international criticism by selling to all comers. It abandoned its own proscription against selling arms to states "on the field of battle" when the Saudi trade was opened in the middle l970s. Saudi money financed the purchase of Mirage aircraft that were subsequently transferred to Egypt. French Mirage F-1s were sent to Iraq after the outbreak of war with Iran. Moreover, only strong pressures from friendly black African states were sufficient to terminate sales of French military equipment to South Africa.³⁴

Bases and access to territory, facilities, or strategic material, like oil, are important assets of the developing states. Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, and South Africa have assumed greater importance in American policymaking circles as Soviet expansion has grown apace. Cooperation with these states often carries a stiff economic and political price tag. The United States risks being drawn into support of an expansionist Marxist regime in Somalia and a racist government in South Africa in exchange for bases, port facilities, flyover rights, staging points, technical facilities, or monitoring and tracking sites.

An example of the pivotal importance of such issues can be seen in the Carter administration’s flawed experiment with human rights as a major foreign policy tool. The presence of key U.S. basing and staging areas in South Korea and the Philippines, for example, set limits to the Carter administration’s human rights policies. The resultant self-contradictory posture subjected the Carter administration to renewed criticism at home and abroad, further eroding its credibility among the electorate.

The Soviet Union has also sought to extend its access to bases and resources in the developing world as parts of its global expansionist policy. It enjoys privileges in Iraq, Syria, South Yemen, and Ethiopia. In exchange, Moscow supplies needed arms and military advice. States like Cuba, in exchange for weapons and economic assistance, provide troops for adventuristic international projects which Moscow would find too risky for Soviet forces.³⁵

Implications for
United States Security Policy

The growing military weight, economic power, and political influence of developing states require a reexamination of prevailing security policy assumptions as well as adjustments in current alignment and alliance strategies. As the Reagan administration affirms its apparent commitment to an East-West interpretation of global events and the basic mode by which security issues will be defined, local states falling along a North-South axis have never been more important in determining regional and global security issues. Conflicts and disruptive influences around the world are not easily traced to either superpower. The latter and their allies are as much prisoners of events and initiatives taken elsewhere by developing states as they are disruptive elements themselves. For example, the Soviet Union quickly recognized India’s dominant position in South Asia and furnished New Delhi with the arms it wanted. India, in turn, has provided valued diplomatic support for the U.S.S.R. in its struggle with China. The recent sale by the United States of enriched uranium to India is a belated recognition of India’s political and strategic importance in South Asia. A tilt toward India implies a different approach to Pakistan, which, as a buffer to Soviet expansion, is also important for American strategic planning. America’s dilemma is that any infusion of arms to Pakistan threatens relations with India and holds the potential of weakening U.S. diplomatic efforts to induce a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The regional preeminence of Cuba and Brazil in Latin America, Vietnam in Southeast Asia, Nigeria in Africa, or Algeria in North Africa are now common features of the security landscape. The rising claims of Mexico, with its large petroleum reserves, promise to add another actor to regional and global security relations. Witness the joint French-Mexican resolution calling for peace in Central America and recent Mexican initiatives to resolve the conflict in El Salvador. Lesser but still crucial players like Argentina and Venezuela in Latin America, Pakistan in South Asia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel in the Middle East, the ASEAN bloc in Asia, and South Africa and Nigeria in Sub-Saharan Africa are currently playing important security roles and have a demonstrated capacity to influence security prospects for themselves and others.

Notions like an East-West split or a North-South division serve to hinder, not help, the construction of regional and international alignments with states and political movements responsive to American security imperatives. Even the concept "Third World" serves poorly as a vehicle to understand the emerging forces of the developing world and how they impact on American interests. Three illustrations—drawn from regional struggles in North Africa and the Middle East and from the competition for oil—highlight the problems of complex interdependence. They also suggest the need for strategies of equal complexity and sublety to piece together a network of exterior alignments that achieve a modicum of order in support of U.S. security objectives.

The North African case defies reduction into North-South or East-West terms. The polarities are not simply between the rich and the poor or between capitalistic and collectivist societies. Nor is it the free world, including Western Europe and the United States, against an expansionist Soviet Union and its clients. It is all of these things and much more besides, and the political alignments in the region do not fall neatly along ideological lines. Consider the protagonists and their divergent aims. Moroco’s situation suggests just how misleading and simplistic the North/South and communistic/capitalistic models are. Morocco seeks to impose its sovereignty on the western Sahara, which is weaned form Spanish control, in the pose of a defender of decolonization. While the viability of Hassan II’s government depends on vigorous pursuit of the war because of the current domestic popularity of the cause, King Hassan also needs to end the war as soon as possible to preclude the erosion of his internal support. As allies, Hassan’s Morocco has a reluctant Washington, which furnishes arms, diplomatic support, and economic aid—albeit over the protests of several important factions in Congress and the press—and Saudi Arabia, which helps to finance the war. To round out the picture, recall that Morocco supported Syria with combat troops during the Yom Kippur War and sent an expeditionary force to the Congo with French and American logistic backing to oppose a Cuban and Soviet-backed invasion from Angola.

France, a traditional ally of Morocco, supplies most of its arms (through sales, not grants) and furnishes diplomatic and presumably intelligence support. On the other hand, France seeks to remain on good terms with Libya and Algeria. (Note the recent gas contract with Algeria at prices above the world market.) It wants to avoid an open split with either the Soviet Union over the western Sahara or with the nonaligned world, which tends to side with the Polisario.

Algeria and Libya have overlapping but hardly congruent aims. Algeria provides the Polisario with sanctuaries. Along with Libya, Algeria arms the rebels with weapons largely supplied by the Soviet Union. Algerian support of the Polisario cause variously services a mix of goals. In keeping the Hassan II government off balance and denying it victory in the western Sahara, the Algerian claims to North African hegemony are bolstered, and Algeria’s credentials as a leader of the radical wing of the nonaligned movement are kept intact. Meanwhile, Algeria’s principal trading partner is the United States, to which it currently sells much of its gas and oil. American investments are among the largest in Algeria, totaling over $6 billion, and American oil firms now surpass French oil interests in Algeria. At the diplomatic level, Algeria has performed yeoman work for the United States in freeing the hostages in Iran, although it remains no less committed to internal collectivist notions of economic and political organization than Cuba or Benin. On the other hand, Algeria depends principally on the Soviet Union for arms.

Libya’s interests and objectives are less clearly definable. It has been a consistent opponent of Hassan II’s regime. It supports a Pan-Arab, Islamic movement that would weaken the kind of conservative Islamic order that has evolved in Morocco. Its mischief making in the western Sahara, not to mention Chad, the Middle East, black Africa, and even East Asia, tends to support Soviet interests, but no close and conscious coordination of Libyan-Soviet strategy has been conclusively demonstrated. At the same time Libya primarily relies on the West to explore, exploit, and market its oil and uses its oil revenues to support its adventurism.

Soviet motivations are less than apparent. Through Libya and Algeria, the U.S.S.R. is the principal supplier of arms to the Polisario. While it claims to favor the independence movement, Soviet economic assistance to Morocco, valued at $2 billion, is the largest of its kind with a non-Communist state.³⁶ The U.S.S.R. gains access to Morocco’s phosphate deposits in return for developing Moroccan roads and transportation networks. The Soviet Union thus becomes an indirect prop of a regime that it is indirectly trying to overthrow.

The Middle East provides additional evidence of a maddening array of conflicting alignments that resist reduction to simple polarities. The United States finds itself the protector of Israel and an important source of arms for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. American arms flow to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, nations which are antagonistic to the Camp David agreements. Meanwhile, Saudi money assists the PLO and buys arms for Syria.³⁷

Europe and the United States are at odds in their approaches to the region. The European states have largely lost confidence in the Camp David process. Fearing that the outbreak of violence would disrupt the flow of oil, hamper trade, and facilitate Soviet penetration in the region, the European Economic Community has begun its own peace initiative in the region.

The falling-out between Europe and the United States over the Arab-Israeli issue can be seen as well in the competing strategies pursued by these states in oil policy. With the collapse of the international oil structure in 1973, the wild fluctuations in oil pricing and supplies that have occurred in the intervening period, and the onset of the Iranian revolution, Europeans have felt left to their own devices in the scramble for oil. The previous order, resting critically on American power and corporate control of oil flows, can no longer be relied on to assure adequate supplies of petroleum at tolerable prices. The European states are divided on what strategy to adopt in trying to keep the oil flowing. They are wary of proposals to use or threaten to use military force. Some seek a solution to the Arab-Israeli crisis at any cost— even to the detriment of Israel. The differences among the United States and its allies in responding to the Iranian revolution, the hostage crisis, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan reflect the turmoil in the Atlantic Alliance.

Overlaying these conflicts of interest in the Western alliance are divided assessments of national needs and appropriate strategies to achieve them. Western governments are reluctant to join in cooperative ventures that might entangle them in commitments damaging to their domestic positions, however beneficial cooperation may appear from a collective Western or from a narrower American perspective. Oil apportionment schemes, for example, imply preceding accord on a host of economic matters, including national growth rates, income distribution, employment levels, and investment and trade patterns. There are few incentives currently at play in Western economic relations, as suggested in the dispute over interest rates between the Reagan administration and European capitals, that can be relied on to prompt such heroic efforts of coordination of discrete national economic policies. As Washington turns to the marketplace and tax cuts to stimulate the economy (while holding inflation down by monetary controls), France nationalizes key industrial and banking firms to apply traditional socialist and Keynesian techniques of economic pump priming and governmental investment.

A comlpex bilateralism is evident in the evolving international system. Fluid alignments are replacing rigid alliances. Efforts to reduce, confine, or rationalize these fractionalized and factious relationships in bipolar, regional, or global terms makes very little sense. The definition of ally and adversary also requires restatement and has to be broadened beyond the assumption of shared political or ideological values. The notion of ally might well include some assessment of the security assets brought to an alignment with the United States and the risks and costs of alignment. The problem facing American policymakers can be resolved into this question: "What combination of bilateral alignments with foreign states are likely to maximize the exterior security assets of the United States or, at a minimum, deny them to foreign adversaries?" The question is fundamentally analytic. What content is given to the response will depend on the policy domain and stakes at issue, the conjunctural forces at play, and estimates of long-term structural need for stable alliance relations.

This perspective does not imply that alignments are essentially short term or opportunistic. They can endure if actor needs, interests, and values are served. Such stability does not imply, however, that differences in other policy domains are always linked or should be connected as a matter of policy, whether as a test of allied dependability or adversary intentions. While this shifting contingent conception of the emerging international scene is not incompatible with security alliances, it does suggest that alliances cannot be automatically broadened unless the nexus of interests in one regional or functional policy area interfaces with those of another. Similarly, to always demand of an opponent in one arena a certain standard of behavior as a litmus test of sincerity in another confuses the actual linkage that may exist between policy domains with the bargaining of states which have incentive to use or not use the club of linkage politics to advance their interests. The question of whether linkage is a good or bad policy toward traditional allies or adversaries cannot be answered in the abstract—it all depends. Linkage is a bargaining tool and not an end of policy as such.

The international system remains divided against itself: it is a self-help system.³⁸ However, between the optimism of a benevolent interdependence inducing cooperation and the pessimism of rising anarchy and conflict in international relations, a middle course must be charted. It demands candid recognition of the conflicting alignment needs of the United States and an honest appraisal of the varied mixes of states needed to reach strategic, economic, and political goals over varying periods of time. Such a perspective neither rules out cooperation nor rules in conflict—again, it all depends. Such a view has the potential virtue of eschewing slogans about implacable death struggles between East and West or clichés about eternal friendship with current allies that obscure current or emerging differences, some of which may be profound, over political aims and strategies. Constructing a prosperous world safe from flawed alliances or alignments will not be easy—just necessary. Seeking only what is best, defined as ideological or conceptual purity, is the enemy of the good. What seems best, then, may not be good enough.

1. These measures are elaborated in Edward A. Kolodziej and Robert E. Harkavy, ‘Developing States and the Inter national Security System,’’ Journal of International Affairs, Spring Summer 1980, pp. 59-87.

2. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), World Armaments and Disarmament: 1978 (New York: Crane, Russak & Co., 1978), pp. 238-53.

3. See articles on these three states, respectively, by Professors David Myers, Stephen Cohen, and Edward Milenky, in Security Policies of Developing Countries edited by Edward A. Kolodziej and Robert E. Harkavy (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1982).

4. For a useful review of developing state nuclear programs, consult John Kerry King, editor, International Political Effects of the Spread of Nuclear Weapons (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979).

5. P. B. Sintra and R. R. Subramanian, Nuclear Pakistan (New Delhi: Vision Books, 1980).

6. Robert Harkavy, Spectre of a Middle Eastern Holocaust (Denver: University of Denver Press, 1977); see also S. Aronson, "Nuclearization of the Middle East," Jerusalem Quarterly, Winter 1977), pp. 27-44.

7. National Foreign Assessment Center, Handbook of Economic Statistics: 1980 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980), p. 4.

8. The relation of oil to security is widely discussed today. Especially useful are Robert J. Lieber’s Oil and the Middle East War: Europe in the Energy Crisis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Center for International Affairs, 1976); "Economics, Energy, and Security in Alliance Perspective," International Security, Spring 1980, pp. 139-63; and ‘Europe and America in the World Energy Crisis," International Affairs (London), October 1979, pp. 541-57; Walter J. Levy, "Oil and the Decline of the West," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1980, pp. 999-1015; and Hanns W. Maull, "Western Europe: A Fragmented Response to a Fragmenting Order," Orbis, Winter 1980, pp. 803-24.

9. For a more optimistic view see Joseph Nye and Robert Keobane, Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977). For a different view and critique, see Edward A. Kolodziej, "Living with the Long Cycle: New Assumptions to Guide the Use and Control of Military Force," in American Security Policy and Policymaking edited by Robert Harkavy and Edward A. Kolodziej (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1980), pp. 21-44; and Robert J. Art, "To What Ends Military Power?" International Security, Spring 1980, pp. 3-35.

10. For a more extensive discussion of these intra-Arab and intraregional quarrels, see the separate articles on the security policies of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Syria in Kolodziej and Harkavy, Security Policies of Developing Countries, pp. 179-202, 227-82.

11. Adeed I. Dawisha, Saudi Arabia’s Search for Security, Adelphi Paper No. 158 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1980).

12. Stephen J. Solarz, "Arms for Morocco?" Foreign Affairs, Winter 1979/80, pp. 278-99; Washington Post, February 10, 1979, p. A7; New York Times, October 19, 1979, p. A7, and February 18, 1980, p. A3.

13. For an overview of global terrorism, see the Journal of International Affairs edition on international terrorism, Spring/Summer 1979; Richard Vokey, "Islands under the Gun," Far Eastern Economic Review, May 8, 1981, p. 36.

14. On India’s purchase of Soviet arms, see Far Eastern Economic Review, June 6, 1980, pp. 9-10 and Reuters dispatch, India Abroad, December 19, 1980.

15. On the shipment of enriched uranium from the United States, consult the U.S. State Department Fact Sheet on Tarapur, June 1980.

16. Figures are drawn from the New York Times, February 6, 1981, p. 4. For a succinct review of Pakistani security policy, see Stephen Cohen’s chapter in Kolodziej and Harkavy, Security Policies of Developing Countries, pp. 93-118.

17. New York Times, February 6, 1981, p. 4.

l8. See the chapter on Cuba by Carla Anne Robbins in Kolodziej and Harkavy, Security Policies of Developing Countries, pp. 73-90.

19. Pierre Lellouche and Dominique Moisi, "French Policy in Africa: A Lonely Battle against Destabilization," International Security, Spring 1979, p. 108. In a chart presented on p. 109, only 34,500 troops are listed. The higher figure of 40,000 appears more frequently.

20. Robbins, op. cit.

21. Lellouche and Moisi, p. 109.

22. Quoted in Michael Moodie, "Defense Industries in the Third World: Problems and Promises," in Arms Transfers in the Modern World, edited by Stephanie O. Neuman and Robert E. Harkavy (New York: Praeger, 1979), p. 289.

23. SIPRI Yearbook, 1978 and UPI release, Sunday Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, December 7, 1980.

24. Le Monde, August 5, 1980.

25. SIPRI Yearbook, 1978.

26. Robert S. Jaster, South Africa’s Narrowing Security Options, Adelphi Paper No. 159 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1980).

27. See the review of Nigeria’s security policy by John Ostheimer and Gary Buckley in Kolodziej and Harkavy, Security Policies of Developing Countries, pp. 285-304.

28. Discussion with journalists and political officials in Nigeria and Gabon, January 1981.

29. See successive issues of Le Monde, January 1-14, 1981.

30. The circumstances of the Shaba interventions are described in Peter Mangold, "Shaba I and Shaba II," Survival, May/June 1979, pp. 107-15. Also useful is Julian Crandall Hollick, "French Intervention in Africa in 1978," The World Today, February 1979, pp. 71-80; James O. Goldsborough, "Dateline Paris: Africa’s Policeman," Foreign Policy, Winter 1978-79, pp. 174-90.

31. This analysis is not meant to slight the British contribution to the settlement but to emphasize the indispensable role of Chinese guns, the threat of Soviet and Cuban intervention, and the offices of the front-line states in producing a solution for independence and black rule through the ballot box and not by bullets. For a useful review, see Xan Smiley, "Zimbabwe, Southern Africa and the Rise of Robert Mugabe," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1980, pp. 1060-83.

32. Lellouche and Moisi, p. 109.

33. New York Times, February 24, 1981, p. 6.

34. See the analysis of French arms transfer policy by Edward A. Kolodziej, "France and the Arms Trade," International Affairs (London), January 1980, pp. 54-72 and "Determinants of French Arms Sales Behavior: Implications for National and International Security," in Threats, Weapons and Foreign Policy, V. Sage International Yearbook of Foreign Policy Studies (Beverly Hills, California: Sage, 1980), pp. 137-76.

35. Robbins, op. cit.

36. National Foreign Assessment Center, Communist Aid Activities in Non-Communist Less Developed Countries, 1979 and 1954-1979 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980), p. 7.

37. These conflicts over arms and strategies are explored at more length in Kolodziej, "Europe: The Partial Partner," International Security, Winter 1980/81, pp. 104-27.

38. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1979). See also his stimulating essay, "The Myth of National Interdependence," The International Corporation, edited by Charles P. Kindleberger (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1970), pp. 205-23.

Edward A. Kolodziej (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Office of Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is former head of the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia, and of Department of Political Science, University of Illinois. Dr. Kolodziej is author of French International Policy under De Gaulle and Pompidou: The Politics of Grandeur and The Uncommon Defense and Congress: 1945-1963. He is also a frequent contributor to professional journals.

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

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