UP IN ARMS

A Cold War–era study of how military aid to “friendly tyrants” often created as many problems as it solved.

Realpolitik was the idea that informed much of the thinking of U.S. policy during the Cold War, especially when it came to supplying military aid to autocratic regimes. In this book, government analyst Casey explores the question of whether such support was successful and how American strategy differed from that of its main competitor, the Soviet Union. The author worked on much of this book while he was a research fellow at the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan, so he was able to draw together a large body of evidence, which he puts to good use in this carefully researched history. Casey readily accepts that many U.S. clients were, to say the least, unsavory. Still, if they were fighting communist insurgencies, or claimed to be, they received military and financial support. One of the primary policy goals was to separate the military from the political leaders, based on the American model. But as the author shows, this strategy often backfired, and the most common reason for the fall of an autocratic leader was a military coup, which then led to more autocracy. The Soviet aim, in contrast, was to integrate the army with the government party, which circumvented the problem of coups but led to mismanagement, stagnation, and corruption. Many autocracies would eventually move toward democracy, although Casey argues that this was only possible once the threat of communism faded away. He explains all this material with authority, though the book is written mainly for specialists in Cold War history and politics.

Casey capably delves into a key U.S. policy of the Cold War and the reasons for its successes and failures.