RECIPIENT BEHAVIOUR IN SECURITY COOPERATION RELATIONSHIPS THE USE OF MILITARY ASSISTANCE IN THE EXPANSION OF THE IRAQI ARMED FORCES, 1968-1990

摘要

This thesis examines how Baathist decision-makers expanded the Iraqi armed forces through security cooperation between 1968 and 1990.Current literature on military assistance looks primarily at supplier perspectives. When recipients are discussed, they are often portrayed as "satellites" of their military suppliers, who manipulate them into following policies which are detrimental to their national security and economic interests. This thesis questions this theoretical approach by looking at the growth of Iraqi military power between 1968 and 1990. Despite having a diminutive military force at the start of this period, during the 1980s Iraq emerged as the second largest military importer in the world and was able to defeat an adversary three times its size, Iran. By 1990 Iraq possessed the fourth largest military in the world. Earlier studies of Iraq's unprecedented military expansion were conducted before access to Baathist decision-making was available. Consequently, previous accounts focused on supplier policies (Smolansky, 1991; Timmerman, 1992; Jentleson, 1994). Contrary to such accounts, this thesis argues that the expansion of the Iraqi armed forces was the direct result of Baathist policies.Analysing newly available primary sources, including hundreds of high-level Iraqi government files obtained after the 2003 Gulf War, this thesis reveals the Baathist strategy for acquiring military power through security cooperation. It shows why Iraqi leaders were motivated to expand the armed forces in the first place; how they minimised supplier influence, mitigated defence dependence through diversification and indigenous production, and sustained high-levels of economic growth; and how they used foreign assistance to improve Iraqi military effectiveness. By bringing new details to light on Baathist-era Iraqi military imports policies, this thesis challenges conventional thinking regarding supplier-recipient dynamics and calls for further research into the study of recipient-supplier relationships.