The United States has woeful history of proxy armies

The apparent rout of the Iraqi army by the Sunni insurgent forces of the Islamic State the past six months revives old memories of the ignominious defeat of another U.S.-organized and trained army unable to discharge the function for which it was created.

Almost 40 years ago, the Army of South Vietnam collapsed. Nearly 15 years of U.S. training, organization and supplies were revealed to have been in vain.

So, too, in Iraq, it seems. After eight years of training, organization and supplies, the Iraqi army seems unable to fulfill the mission for which it was created.

These developments provide sobering lessons on the limits of U.S. capacity for nation building. These are not the first instances of failed U.S. efforts to organize an army.

The Rural Guard that the U.S. created during its occupation of Cuba 1899-1902 was unable to defend the government against an uprising in 1905 and necessitated another American military intervention. A second Cuban army was created in 1908, which was also unable to put down subsequent internal uprisings in 1912 and 1917 without U.S. military interventions. The same Cuban army was eventually defeated and dissolved by the revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959. The National Guard of Nicaragua was organized during U.S. military interventions during the 1920s and was defeated and dissolved by the Sandinista insurrection in 1979.

Not only did these armies fail to achieve the purpose for which they were created, but U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean resulted in the organization of armies that developed into powerful and often corrupt institutions of political patronage through which dictatorial authority was exercised.

Gen. Fulgencio Batista ruled Cuba between 1934 and 1958 through the U.S. organized, trained and supplied army. Two generations of Somoza rule in Nicaragua emerged out of the U.S.-organized National Guard. Two generations of Duvalier rule in Haiti was sustained by the U.S.-organized Garde d’Haiti. Gen. Rafael Trujillo maintained a 30-year rule in the Dominican Republic through the U.S.-organized National Guard.

U.S.-organized armies have often developed into institutions of graft, corruption and malfeasance. Control of the Cuban army, reported to the U.S. military attaché in Havana in 1938, was “similar to that practiced by American gang-leaders; that as long as the Chief of Staff can obtained certain emollients, financial, political, and military for his Lieutenant Colonels and guarantee their immunity to punishment, he can command their loyalty and obedience as a body.” This is not dissimilar to the assessment made in 1966 by John Bartlow Martin, U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic: “The [Dominican] soldiers swaggered and drank, plundered and bullied.”

All in all, something of a dismal record indeed, but one not without an internal logic. Broadly defined, the function of an army is principally to defend the national interest, including and most especially protecting territorial integrity and preserving national sovereignty.

Herein lies the profound structural contradiction attending the U.S. organization of armies. It is counter-intuitive to suppose that an army created under the auspices of a foreign occupation would be properly endowed with a mission to defend territorial integrity and national sovereignty, for discharge of this mission would necessarily oblige the new army to turn immediately against the occupying power.

Armies organized in the context of U.S. occupations are formed as proxy armies, the military bulwark of client regimes designed to serve the national interests of the United States. Such armies are both creation of U.S. policy and serve as instruments of U.S. policy needs. As Lt. Col. John Nagl noted succinctly during an NPR interview July 15, U.S. interests would be best served to enable the Iraqi army “to do the fighting and dying in our behalf.”

The army thus created is “political” from its inception: indeed as a condition of its creation. And because it is designed to serve foreign interests, it is highly vulnerable to internal challenge from insurgencies advancing the claim to uphold national interests against foreign interests, the front-line defense of which is the very army created by the occupier.

It was the fate of the Cuban army in 1959. And the fate of the Vietnamese army in 1975. And the fate of the Nicaraguan army in 1979. It may well be the fate of the Iraqi army.

Louis A. Pérez Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History and director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This story was originally published December 6, 2014 at 8:00 PM with the headline "The United States has woeful history of proxy armies."