How IMET your mother : revisiting foreign military training, human capital, and coup risk

Abstract

How does foreign aid in the form of military training impact civil-military relations in recipient states? Savage and Caverley (2017) find that US foreign military training alters the balance of power between recipient state militaries and their governments, doubling the risk of a military coup. Despite data constraints that limit their analysis to just two training programs, and obvious concerns about selection effects and endogeneity, the result has been cited as evidence that US training increases coup propensity. Employing new and updated data on the full range of US military training programs, we find this effect limited to a single training program, IMET, and thus unrepresentative of the vast array of US training. Our results have implications for foreign aid, civil-military relations, and the design of foreign military training programs.