Walter C. Ladwig III. The Forgotten Front: Patron-Client Relationships in Counterinsurgency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xv + 346 pp. $34.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-316-62180-6; $105.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-107-17077-3.
Reviewed by Nicholas Sambaluk (Air University)
Published on H-War (April, 2021)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University)
An academic study using theoretical terms and concepts, The Forgotten Front is foremost a work written in hopes of guiding the decision-makers of powerful states. Through a powerful trio of case studies, author Walter C. Ladwig III underscores the point that although patron states and their smaller clients can share a common enemy during a counterinsurgency effort, few goals may be held in common. For that reason, historical cases suggest that patrons should ensure that the assistance they provide be contingent on the client’s performance in areas valued by the providing patron.
Frequently, the patron may identify such areas as anti-corruption efforts or economic initiatives that are galling or even counterproductive from the standpoint of the client regime. Indeed, at least in the shorter term, such initiatives can undercut the regime’s power and implicitly its capability against an insurgent’s challenge. Ladwig makes clear, however, that the patron is well advised to support a client country rather than a client regime, as support for the latter can easily morph into an obligation to either support an unfettered strongman (whose policies may engender enduring antipathy and rebellion from the population) or else abandon the entire effort toward the client state. Ladwig’s study of South Vietnam from 1957 to 1963 illustrates this dilemma, and the author observes that promises (especially those made by figures like President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, at the time vice president) toward South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem massively eroded the apparent credibility of US threats to make aid contingent on the regime’s reform efforts.
In contrast, US aid to the newly independent Filipino government during its struggle against communist Huk forces in the late 1940s and early 1950s was much more predicated on the Filipino government and military acting in accordance with US advice. The counterinsurgency conflict remained a stubborn one, but the Philippines ultimately prevailed and the United States had supported the country rather than invest entirely in one particular political figure. Across multiple cases, the pattern reflects that the client’s dependence on foreign assistance is (predictably) correlated to the degree of leverage that is attainable by the patron.
US involvement in El Salvador from 1979 to 1992 occupies a middle ground for Ladwig, between the relative success in the Philippines and the catastrophe in South Vietnam. Conditionality of aid was practiced but not consistently, and Ladwig points to the correspondingly mixed results as a more than coincidental outcome.
The work is both useful and readable, and Ladwig admirably addresses definitional and theoretical areas (which might otherwise have proved thorny) in an early and clear manner. The book is all the stronger for that. The tone throughout the book is serious, but for a footnote’s subtle and playful reference to Notre Dame University as the alma mater of El Salvadoran reform politician Jose Duarte. Since the analysis is very much from the perspective of the patron and deals with what patron states should or should not do in their support of counterinsurgency campaigns in third-party countries, the book does perhaps unintentionally cast less-than-cooperative client leaders as implicitly petulant and short-sighted. As a consequence, The Forgotten Front forms an interesting reply to such works as Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War (2007), which highlights the agency of minor states during the Cold War. Ladwig’s reliance on US archival materials helps make the project much more practical to undertake, but it also helps guarantee what is primarily a patron’s perspective of the client rather than a third-party appraisal of patron-client relationships.
That, however, is not a serious problem since the book provides advice for patrons and is intended in that vein. Allusions to more modern cases, beyond the Cold War, and the acknowledgment that certain dynamics may be substantially altered by the emergence of a post-Cold War geopolitical landscape indicate that the people designing aid policy for client states form a key intended audience for this book. Thus the work closes with five prescriptive points: to anticipate that relations with the client will not be cordial, to ensure that conditions are set and that they are clear and measurable as well as realistic, to be prepared for opposition within the patron’s own decision-making circles, and to encourage local reformers in the client state. As if the message were not already strongly enough made, the closing words remove all doubt: “sometimes being a good ally means being a stern friend” (p. 313).
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Citation:
Nicholas Sambaluk. Review of Ladwig III, Walter C., The Forgotten Front: Patron-Client Relationships in Counterinsurgency.
H-War, H-Net Reviews.
April, 2021.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55950
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