The problematic association between foreign military assistance and increased terrorist attacks in recipient nations ISWS Seminar Series with Guest Speaker Aoife McCullough

Foreign military assistance is intended to support security forces in recipient nations to fight insurgencies, and maintain stability and political order. However, the literature indicates that foreign and, in particular, US military assistance, is associated with an increase in anti-regime violence in recipient nations. The negative effects are contingent on certain regime characteristics with new or personalist regimes being more prone.

Niger, a country with a personalist regime, experienced a steep rise in foreign military assistance between 2013 and 2023 and a corresponding increase in anti-regime violence. In this paper, Aoife McCullough uses Niger as a most-likely case to investigate whether the causal mechanisms proposed by the literature explain the increase in anti-regime violence. Aoife has found that the rationalist causal mechanisms, focused on leaders' coup proofing strategies in response to foreign military assistance, do not adequately explain the rise in anti-regime violence in Niger and proposes an alternative causal mechanism which shows how foreign military presence increased the probability that the military and population would support a coup while at the same time forcing terrorist groups to change their strategies.

These new strategies resulted in increased attacks against both civilians and pro-state militia groups.