Tracking the rise of United States foreign military training: IMTAD-USA, a new dataset and research agenda
| Author | Simon Pierre Boulanger Martel,Theodore McLauchlin,Lee JM Seymour |
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433211047715 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Data Features |
Tracking the rise of United States foreign
military training: IMTAD-USA, a new
dataset and research agenda
Theodore McLauchlin
Department of Political Science, Centre d’e
´tudes sur la paix et la se
´curite
´internationale, Universite
´de Montre
´al
Lee JM Seymour
Department of Political Science, Universite
´de Montre
´al
Simon Pierre Boulanger Martel
Department of Political Science, Universite
´de Montre
´al
Abstract
Training other countries’ armed forces is a go-to foreign policy tool for the United States and other states. A growing
literature explores the effects of military training, but researchers lack detailed data on training activities. To assess the
origins and consequences of military training, as well as changing patterns over time, this project provides a new,
global dataset of US foreign military training. This article describes the scope of the data along with the variables
collected, coding procedures, and spatial and temporal patterns. We demonstrate the added value of the data in their
much greater coverage of training activities, showing differences from both existing datasets and aggregate foreign
military aid data. Reanalyzing prior research findings linking US foreign military training to the risk of coups d’e
´tat in
recipient states, we find that this effect is limited to a single US program representing a small fraction of overall US
training activities. The data show comprehensively how the United States attempts to influence partner military
forces in a wide variety of ways and suggest new avenues of research.
Keywords
aid, coups, military training, security assistance, security cooperation, United States
Introduction
Training other countries’ armed forces is an increasingly
important foreign policy tool for the United States and
other states. Between 1999 and 2016, across 34 different
programs, the USA trained some 2,395,272 trainees from
virtually every country in the world, peaking at 292,753 in
2008. Iraq and Afghanistan accounted for over half of these
trainees, but even leaving these two countries aside, the
total figure was 971,054, with as many as 78,722 individ-
uals in a single year (2016). The United States spent some
$14.8 billion worldwide on its training efforts and sold
training worth another $4.9 billion, leaving aside the larger
expenses of equipping and paying client forces in countries
like Iraq and Afghanistan. The increase in training activities
appears to reflect a concern for state building in a context of
transnational security threats like terrorism, insurgency,
and drug trafficking. It also comes as the USA, in the wake
of Afghanistan and Iraq, seeks to limit its own direct costs
by offloading them to local partners. As opposed to other
elements of security assistance, training focuses on human
capital. In doing so, in theory it addresses a critical element
of contemporary military power (Talmadge, 2015). But it
impacts not just military capability, but how recipient mili-
taries choose to use that capacity – a key problem of civil–
military relations and governance (Atkinson, 2006; Savage
Corresponding author:
theodore.mclauchlin@umontreal.ca
Journal of Peace Research
2022, Vol. 59(2) 286–296
ªThe Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433211047715
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