Center-periphery, international security, and armed forces

2 CENTER-PERIPHERY, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, AND ARMED FORCES Since the middle of the 20th century, scholars from social sciences such as sociology, economics, political science, and IR, in general, have been increasingly using and expanding center-periphery concepts to understand global hierarchical structures. This paradigm, which we call “critical structuralism”, has a foundational outbreak in the Global South with the seminal contribution of Raúl Prébisch (1949). Yet, throughout this tradition, there has been no formal and consistent proposal for the implication of the center-periphery analysis around ‘security studies’. In this chapter, we seek to address this gap and discuss the relevance of the center-periphery analysis to understand hierarchical structures in international security and force models diffusion. We explore the following hypothesis: just as the encounters between Western colonialism and the “external arenas” of the world-system expanded an axial division of functions between central, semi-peripheral, and peripheral zones, these asymmetries also promoted a division of functions in the security geoculture among broadcasting centers, inter-carriers, and recipient emulators. The first part of the chapter presents the main theoretical trends and contributions to the center-periphery perspective. Implications of the three functions are analyzed in the next sections, particularly what the literature calls the “one-way street” trends in the global military isomorphism. The fifth part examines the diffusion of a specific international force model in the post-Cold War era: the “rapid response” model. Finally, the last section presents the theoretical underpinnings of the analytical framework on international military organizations. 27 MATÍAS FERREYRA Why center and periphery? Center and periphery have been primary categories in human sciences to represent asymmetric spaces and groups relations. The center-periphery (or core-periphery) model is a geometric/spatial metaphor conventionally used in geography and history to explain asymmetrical relationships such as city/neighborhood, urbanity/countryside, central power/local authorities, among others (SAUNIER, 2000). In contemporary IR studies, center-periphery analysis has been a seminal contribution by scholars from the Global South. Some economists, such as Ernst Wagemann [1930] – a Chilean of German descent – had already suggested something similar in the early 20th century, as well as the Romanian Mihail Manoilescu (BOATCĂ, 2005). However, only in the late 1940s, with the work of the Argentinian Raúl Prébisch (1949) and his colleagues at Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal, its acronym in Spanish) such as the Brazilian Celso Furtado (1965), the center-periphery approach came to be recognized worldwide as a model for historical-structural analysis in development economics. The core of Prébisch’s explanation, the center-periphery division, was not considered a zero-sum game in which the center nullified the periphery (BRICEÑO RUIZ, 2012). The center-periphery division did not imply an imperialist exploitation strategy from the center to the periphery but a problem of unequal diffusion of technological-industrial progress. The center and the periphery were the historical results of how technical progress was propagated since the Industrial Revolution, giving rise to different production structures in the international trade order: mainly, primary exporting and industrialized economies (BRICEÑO RUIZ, 2012). The study of such asymmetrical dynamics has favored the formation of a “structuralist paradigm” in IR studies since the second half of the 20th century (SODUPE, 1992). Notably, this paradigm has challenged other established conceptions about the nature of the structure of the international relations; in particular, the neorealist concept of ‘anarchy’ as a principle of order (WALTZ, 1979). This paradigm, which we could also call a “critical structuralism”, provides contrapuntal worldviews from the perspective of the less favored societies of the global order. It contains different theorical branches with different ontological and epistemological orientations and concerns. However, the “center” and “periphery” foundations have emerged here as a broad analytical frame. Scholars and theorists in this framework 28 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH mostly agree that global social relationships are performed through spatial and societal dichotomies, between dominant processes and dominated processes, to describe oppositions between places and actors as well as to suggest an explanatory model of relational imbalance (e.g., SAUNIER, 2000). At the turn of the 1950s to 1960s, several scholars of the so-called “dependence theory” adopted the center-periphery concepts under the influence of Cepal scholars. Yet, they questioned their economist diagnoses. The core of the criticism was their methodological approach, of omitting or softening the political aspects and class struggles in development studies. Within the framework of “peripheral capitalism”, some “dependentist” sociologists argued, proper development (national and autochthonous) is not possible, only a “development of underdevelopment” (MARINI, 2000, 2018; DOS SANTOS, 1998; FRANK, 1970), a “sub-capitalism” or a dependent and associated development (CARDOSO; FALETTO, 1970, FURTADO, 1956). Such studies “rescued”, and complemented contributions formulated half a century earlier by Marxism and Imperialism theories (KOLLING, 2007). From classical Marxism came the fundamental laws that explain capitalism at its most abstract and essential level - surplus value, the exploitation of the labor force, and capital formation. At the same time, imperialism theories provided a first more elaborate perspective of how capitalism - especially from its “monopoly phase” - was articulated on a planetary scale, promoting an “unequal and combined” development between different and distant regions (LENIN, 2011; HILFERDING, 1985; KAUTSKY, 1920; BUKHARIN, 1984, LUXEMBURG, 1971). A variety of theories and approaches have explored such hierarchical dynamics of “structural temporality”. Authors such as Seth (2011), Keene (2002), Wallerstein (2011b), Quijano (2005), and Guimarães (2001) trace the origin of these asymmetries in the concatenated form in which modern capitalism, the Westphalian system of states and Western colonialism has expanded throughout the world. While the Westphalian system of territorially independent sovereign states was taking form in the 17th and 18th centuries, very different colonial and imperial regimes were established beyond Europe (SETH, 2011, p. 173). Events and processes privileged in the conventional account of the IR discipline, such as the Peace of Augsburg and the establishment of the order of Westphalia, roughly coincide with the subjugation, exploitation, and colonization of the Americas, the pinnacle of the African slave trade, the founding of the British East India Company and 29 MATÍAS FERREYRA the Dutch East India Company, Macartney’s mission to the “Middle Empire” and so on (SETH, 2011; WALLERSTEIN, 2011; also: RENOUVIN; DUROSELLE, 2000). The fundamental normative principles of the trans-European colonial and imperial systems were not equality and sovereignty. However, when established, a unitary juridical conception of “sovereignty” was distributed across national and territorial borders as needed to develop production chains and international trade. In Latin America, another theoretical trend that has continued the center-periphery analytical tradition was the so-called “School of Autonomy”, with references such as Puig (1986, 1984) and Jaguaribe (2008). However, unlike Marxist and dependency theories, “autonomists” focused on how foreign and domestic policy of peripheral states could take advantage of certain “margins of maneuver” to promote genuine national interests. Autonomists recognize the structural constraints of external dependence and the asymmetries induced by the capitalist mode of production. However, they think that “it is about to overcome them through strategic maneuvers supported by a correct political diagnosis” (PUIG, 1986, p. 49). This requires a careful analysis of the “real world” - material and psychological. In this view, it is always possible to analytically establish a “potential margin of autonomous decision”; that is to say the “maximum capacity of own decision” that can be achieved, or at least in relative terms. In Europe, the heuristic renewal of the center-periphery approach comes mainly from the École des Annales in areas of History. As Saunier (2000) explains, two contacts were essential: Latin American sociology and economics, which introduce core-periphery analytics, and geography, which leads to Braudelian geo-history. Going beyond the atomist approach to state-nation, Braudel (1987, 2006) contemplates spatiotemporal objects such as the capitalist economy and proposes a definition of their centers. His questions about structural time and space lead him to deal with the peripheries and their dynamics of transformation. For instance, when the center of the Mediterranean world economy “moves” from Venice to Genoa during the 16th century (SAUNIER, 2000). After Braudel, the core-periphery concept was systematically and independently developed in the world system analysis of Immanuel Wallerstein’s (2011), a social historian and disciple of Braudel. Wallerstein distinguishes between what he calls the “world-economy” (the market of the entire universe, the human race that trades) and the “world-economy” (human groups that exchange among themselves 30 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH within the same system). The particularity of the capitalist world-economy is that it becomes a world-economy in about four centuries. It is not the first modern world-economy to exist, but the first to survive for so long, and it has achieved this by becoming, precisely, fully capitalist. Prébisch’s categories were incorporated and recognized by Wallerstein (1995, p. 12), but with significant differences. In the word-system perspective, the center’s quality is not inherently defined by the particular class of economic activity, such as the technical-industrial sector, which from Cepal’s perspective is decisive. In analyzing world-systems, whether or not the activity is one of transformation (agricultural, industrial) or services (of goods, information, transport, finance) does not necessarily define the center. At certain times and under certain conditions, any of these activities can be nuclear or peripheral, high gain or low gain. What matters first is to what extent the activity is, or can be, relatively monopolized at a given point in time and space. The capitalist’s commitment is to capital accumulation. Therefore, the capitalist will vary the locus of commitment (product, place, country, type of activity) as the opportunities to maximize the income of the activities change. Postcolonial critics have also analyzed modern society using “center” and “periphery” categories.5 Yet, they show important contrasts with the Latin American structuralism, Cepal, or the world-system analysis. Postcolonial critics move away from their materialistic ontologies - “capitalism”, “accumulation”, “production chains” (SAID, 1993; QUIJANO, 1999, 2005; GROSFOGUEL, 2009). There may be other forms of hierarchies and ontologies which would explain the political economy in the world system. Inequalities based on race (FANON, 2008), sexual difference, sexuality (TICKNER, 1993), spirituality, culture or epistemic inequalities (SANTOS, 2010, 2011) are not superstructural elements of economic structures. Grosfoguel (2009), for instance, describes forms of work distributed according to a racial hierarchy and articulated with accumulation of capital worldwide. Coercive (and cheap) labor, for example, is usually done by non-European people in the periphery, while “free wage labor” is prominent in the center. Race can also intertwine with gender relations in the current ‘colonial power matrix’. Unlike pre-European patriarchies 5 About several postcolonial critics using “center”, “periphery” and “world-system” language, see: SANTOS, B., S. Estado e sociedade na semiperiferia do sistema mundial: o caso português. Análise Social, vol. XXI (87-88-89), 869-901. 1985. BARKAWI, T; LAFFEY, M. The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies, Review of International Studies, v. 32, p. 329–52. 2006. GROSFOGUEL, R. Para descolonizar os estudos de economia política e os estudos pós-coloaniais: transmoderidade, pensamento de fronteira e colonialidade global. In: SANTOS, B; MENESES, M (ed.). Epistemologias do Sul. Almedina. Coimbra, 2009, p. 383- 418. 31 MATÍAS FERREYRA where all women were inferior to men, some women of European origin have higher status and greater access to resources and education than some men (of non-European origin). According to Grosfoguel (2009), all this reflects an integral, interwoven, and constitutive part of a “package entangled”, a patriarchal/capitalist/colonial/modern world-system. Now, we can understand better the “interdisciplinary crack” that affects the tradition of center-periphery analysis. In general, Cepal academics, dependence theorists, and world-systems analysts conceive cultural relations as an instrument or an epiphenomenon of economic processes. They recognize the importance of culture, like Wallerstein (2011) through the concept of “geoculture”. However, they would have difficulties in expressing culture in a non-reductive way and, therefore, they would have some difficulty in incorporating culture into their theories (GROSFOGUEL, 2009, p. 398). On the other hand, postcolonial theorists would have difficulty conceptualizing economic processes. Many postcolonial scholars recognize the importance of the political economy, but they do not know how to integrate it into the analysis without reproducing a “culturalist” reductionism (GROSFOGUEL, 2009). According to Grosfoguel (2009) the bibliography produced by both sides oscillates between the “danger” of economic reductionism and the “danger” of culturalism. This “culture versus economics” dichotomy would be a “chicken and egg” dilemma, i.e., a false dilemma that arises from what Wallerstein (1998) called the legacy of the liberalism of 19th-century. Such legacy promoted the nomothetic division of social analysis into three areas, three separate logics - the political, the economic, and the sociocultural. According to Wallerstein (1998, p. 286), we have built our institutions of knowledge based on this distinction: Every social scientist ordinarily uses the distinction between three fields: the economic, the political, and the sociocultural. Nobody believes us when we say that there is only one terrain with only one logic. Do we believe it? Some of us, certainly, but not all. And we all repeat ourselves in using the language of the three fields in almost everything we write. It is time that we seriously attack this matter (WALLERSTEIN, 1998, p. 293). Given these nomothetic divisions in social sciences - “solid as granite” as described by Wallerstein (1998) - both “center” and “periphery” encompass polysemic ontologies, and a consensual definition seems impossible. Yet, despite ontological differences, all the center-periphery branches presented 32 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH in this chapter respect the intrinsic logic of the concepts. In the center and its peripheries, we will find the attributes that participate in the unity of the object (e.g., SAUNIER, 2000). Such attributes are necessarily linked to a specific historical object: the modern capitalist society. However, if we analytically change its ontological definition - e.g., from materialistic to culturalist components - we can no longer treat the center and the periphery in the same terms. Similarly, if we change the disciplinary perspective on the object - e.g., from “economy” to “security” - we can no longer treat the center and the periphery in the same way. Center-periphery analysis of security How could we understand and define ‘center’ and ‘periphery’ from ‘security studies’? How and why is the area of “security” built in the center-periphery relationship? Furthermore, how could this relationship explain the diffusion of security and force concepts at the macro level? In principle, no comprehensive answers to these questions have been given. In the theoretical tradition that begins with Prébisch (1949), there has been no formal proposal to apply the center-periphery analysis in “security studies”. This “gap” is understood, in part, by the same disciplinary divisions of the structures of knowledge in social sciences. The Cepal structuralists concentrated on “economic” aspects of the center-periphery relationship; also, dependence theories, although they are more sensitive to the “political” analysis of power and class struggles. In the School of Autonomy - that begins with Puig (1984, 1986) and Jaguaribe (2008) during the Cold War order - although they paid attention to the so-called ‘traditional security issues’, their units of analysis focused mainly on the foreign policy of the State. In any case, it is necessary to update them (RUIZ, SIMONOFF, 2017) and extend them heuristically beyond the Latin American space and to the unit of analysis of Longue durée proposed by Braudel (1987) and developed in the world-system concept by Wallerstein (2011). Yet, “security” has not been the axis in the reflections of Wallerstein either; probably, because he understood that “security” - or even military issues as Wallerstein (2011) once explained - does not have enough “analytical autonomy” comparing to the broader socio-economic variables. On the other hand, even though postcolonial critics brought valuable objects linked to culture (MIGNOLO, 1995; SAID, 1993), to epistemic inequalities (SANTOS, 2010, QUIJANO, 2005) and have approached with 33 MATÍAS FERREYRA “contrapuntal methods” to security studies (BILGIN, 2017; BARKAWI; LAFFEY, 2006, AYOOB, 1991), none of them have expressed any sustained commitment to the center-periphery tradition of analysis. In this sense, in the path of exploring the construction of a center-periphery analytical framework of security, we believe that it is important to extract and synthesize the main contributions of these analytical trends and even link them to more current ones that come from critical theorists, “macrosecuritization” perspective, and organizational sociology. Liberal geoculture of security An initial step in that direction is to recognize that a geoculture, dominated by “centrist liberalism” for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, as Wallerstein (2011, p. 96; 1995, p. 3) explains, as well as has instituted norms in the structures of knowledge that separated nomothetic fields - economics, sociology, and political science - has also done it for a disciplinary field of “security”. Although frequently subsidiary to those other fields, this “security field” has also had separated knowledge, skills, norms, and devices. Following Neocleous (2008, 2000), this process occurs, with more institutional definition, after the Second World War. Not just because the global expansion of US power spawned and funded a generation of academics guided towards “area” studies, ‘security studies’ and ‘international relations’ more generally, but because it appeared to place the liberal State at the heart of the security question. The definition of a “security area” with specific knowledge, actors, skills, norms, and devices, is a consequence of what we call here liberal geoculture of security: that is, a set of values that has shaped a field of axioms, standards, and forces as “security” throughout the modern world-system. It is a geoculture in the same way given by Wallerstein (2011). By a geoculture, Wallerstein (2011) understood the “values that are very widely shared throughout the world-system, both explicitly and latently” (p. 277). According to Mariutti (2020, p. 3), understanding geoculture in the terms proposed by Wallerstein requires a change of view, as it is not a superstructural phenomenon. On the contrary, Wallerstein qualifies geoculture as an underside of the other processes of the world-economy, or even the way in which the system becomes aware of itself. By underside, we must understand both its bottom face – submerged, out of the immediate line of vision – and its “inner part” if we visualize it mentally like a sphere (MARIUTTI, 2020, p. 3). 34 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH The French Revolution and its historical consequences - the normalization of political change and the popular redefinition of sovereignty promoted values and cultural norms for the world-system. Until the long nineteenth century, there had been a disjunction between the political economy of the world-system and its discursive rhetoric. Wallerstein (2011, xvi) conceived this as the creation of a geoculture widely accepted and that constrained social action thereafter. These values and norms also triggered the reaction of other two modern ideologies: conservatism, and radicalism. Yet centrist liberalism was able to “tame” the other two ideologies through the institutionalization of the liberal State that emerges in the XIX century. The most backward axioms of what we call here liberal geoculture of security lie in the central statute attributed to the republican nature of each State of law, given what Kant (2006), for instance, enshrined as “perpetual peace” [1795]. Kant, but in general the political theory of Contractualism and the philosophy of Utilitarianism – for example, from “the volunteer of the greatest number” idea (BENTHAM, 2015) – placed the domestic mode of governance and views of a social contract of each State in the core of the liberal security project. Liberalism, indeed, was never a meta-strategy of anti-statism (WALLERSTEIN, 2011). On the contrary, even the most prominent “minarchist” views of liberal theorists defend that the state should not abandon its role as the regulator of “public security” (MISES, 2008; NOZICK, 1988). That John Stuart Mill [1861] could declare, as Neocleous (2000) pointed out, that security is “the most vital of all interests” and that “the greater security of property is one of the main conditions and causes of greater production” (2001, p. 28-200). In the same direction, Adam Smith said: “the increase of security would naturally increase industry and improvement” (1977, p. 253). For this reason, Smith argued that “the objects of police are the cheapness of commodities, public security, and cleanliness […]. Under this head, we will consider the opulence of a state” (1977, p. 349). According to Marx, in The Jewish Question (2005): “security is the highest social concept of civil society, the concept of the police; the entire society is there just for that, to guarantee to each one of its members the preservation of their person, their rights, and their property” (p. 40). In this Marxist vein, Neocleous (2000) argues that security for liberalism came to refer to “the liberty of secure possession” (p. 10). One of the reasons for this is that the private property system necessarily requires the existence of a class of poverty, excluded people. “The problem, however, is not poverty per se, but 35 MATÍAS FERREYRA the fact that from the class of poverty a further, more dangerous ‘classʼ can emerge, a ʻrabbleʼ without right, integrity, and honor and thus in rebellion against property” (NEOCLEOUS, 2010, p. 11). In Wallerstein (2011) terms, this exclusion explains the very contradictory success of liberalism. Despite the triumph of liberalism in proclaiming the sovereignty of “people” such victory has been hollow. “From the outset, there was no agreement about who were the ‘people’” (2011, p. 11), who have their rights recognized and who have no. A o-economy of ‘security’ emerge here as the imperative of incessant managements justified by incessant “insecurity” - revolts, disorder, insurrection, crime, etc. - from the state to the market, being refocused on individuals and, ultimately, on property. The promulgation of a static, “definitive” metric on this managerialism constitutes the liberal geoculture of security as a standard approach. Changing over several eras, and anchored in the security geoculture, knowledge from the liberal tradition has been spatialized and periodized by the global networks center-periphery, on the arenas of ideology and social sciences, subordinating and incorporating “other” ways of understanding “threatening objects” as “alternative”, “local”, “radical” expressions, or even, to paraphrase Boaventura Santos (2010), being “produced as non-existent”. These were the ones who insisted that their social movements must be “anti-systemic” - that is, what they should seek is to destroy the historical system that made possible that reversion of “equality” that undermines the recognition of their rights (WALLERSTEIN, 2011). The standard assumption of liberal geoculture of security remains that security is valid as the foundation of freedom, democracy, and good society and that the main question is how to improve the power of the state to improve “security” (e.g., NEOCLEOUS, 1008). On the other hand, the critical studies assumption remains that security is valid just as the outcome of the “emancipation” of the social forces oppressed by this power. “Emancipation, not power or order, produces true security” (BOOTH 1991, p. 319). However, postcolonial critics are the first to question that this “emancipation” is inscribed eurocentrically in the same liberal tradition that they criticize (BARKAWI; LAFFEY, 2006; BILGIN, 2017; AYOOB, 1991, for instance). Notwithstanding, the latter’s interest in finding a greater openness of the security area to those “other” non-Eurocentric subaltern perspectives is also questioned by other critics. As Bigo (2001, p. 95) and Neocleous (2008) point out, how to maximize security always seems to remain the core issue. Thus, there is a danger that these approaches do not quite manage to shake off the managerialism prev36 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH alent in more traditional security studies: the desire to ‘do’ security better. The assumption seems to be that while we might engage in a critical security interrogation, we could never entirely be against it (NEOCLEOUS, 2008). The dynamics of the security geoculture also comes close to the concept of macrosecuritization developed by Copenhagen School theorists. Macrosecuritization lies on the possibility of building and diffusing securitized “packages” frequently from the systemic level to lower (local, regional) levels. According to Buzan and Weaver (2009), what distinguishes macrosecuritization from securitization, at least initially, is a different scale of analysis. However, from a contrapuntal perspective, the principle of ‘structural anarchy’ - that Buzan and Weaver (2009) inherited from the IR mainstream - hinders the understanding of the origin of the phenomena that the concept of ‘macrosecuritization’ contemplates. Buzan (2006) explains the origin of macrosecuritization through “globalization” processes and stands out the Cold War period as a historical example in which macrosecuritzations were “capable of structuring the mainstream security dynamics of interstate society for many decades”. However, from a contrapuntal perspective, “globalization” is not the cause of global securitized asymmetries, but these asymmetries have been sources of “globalization” - and even a dominant idea about it. In this way, Copenhagen School theorists like Buzan would leave a vacuum in the analysis of the connections between the unequal spread of interstate structures, Western colonialism, and “primitive” indicators of modern macrosecuritization. According to Wallerstein (2011), the current spatial asymmetries in the world-system – center, semi-peripheries, and peripheries – were developed through the unequal encounter between Western colonialism expansion and the so-called “external arenas” of the modern world-economy. The “peripheralization” of these “external arenas” was completed approximately between 1850 and 1940. In this period, the world-system impacted distant areas that until then had experienced limited effects – for instance, Japan, China, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, inland Africa, and the Western interior of North America. Yet according to Black (2002), a previous period (1700-1850) increased interaction between different parts of the world, and several non-Western expansive powers, such as China, Burma, Siam, the Afghans, Mysore, the Marathas, the Sikhs, Egypt, the Zulus, or the jihads in West Africa. Their organizational cultures varied immeasurably but these were times of raising projection of European military power overseas. In this process, the industrial capacity of the Atlantic European societies and their naval forces were essential (BLACK, 2002). 37 MATÍAS FERREYRA These encounters promoted, often manu militari, a process of integration (peripheralization) of these “arenas” into the axial division of labor as weaker sources of capital accumulation in the production chains and, therefore, with more fragile state structures. (WALLERSTEIN, 2011). Hence, as we move to peripheral zones, state monopolization (police, military) tend to be more diluted vis-à-vis central states. Thus, it has formed contexts where local elites tend to adhere to support and resources from central countries to protect internal security, integrity, and sovereignty in peripheral states. Following Wendt and Barnett (1993, p. 322), both central and peripheral states have relied on physical, financial, and human capital, that is, conventional and “technocratic” forces (advanced weapon systems, budget, and high skills of soldiers) rather than unconventional, “armed peoples”. Hence, “capital” and “force” are mutually needed. If the world-economy changes, the world of forces that protects it changes. And vice versa, the word of forces can also alter the social order. If any exceptionality – radicalization, social revolt – breaks any of its central or dispersed ramifications, then a dynamic of accumulation and extraction of surplus-value are also in risk. Such attributes of force have been globally diffused through complex processes in center-periphery networks. Currently, sociologists and scholars close to a branch called new institutionalism have provided useful concepts to understand the global interorganizational diffusion of what Kaldor (1976) called a modern “Form-of-Force”. Thanks to organizational sociology we know that modern organizations in the same sector tend to resemble each other - for example, healthcare, museums or banks (SOETERS, 2021). This process is called isomorphism, which in the literal sense of the word is the tendency to develop similar forms. The work of DiMaggio and Powell (1983) has been seminal in understanding how these processes are developed and in which direction are oriented. This convergence, isomorphism, in the jargon of organizational sociologists, emerges in “rationalized environments” defined in functional terms as “organizational fields” (DIMAGGIO; POWELL, 1983). The phenomenon occurs through different mechanisms: normative pressures, mimetic pressures, coercive pressures, and competitive pressures. Convergence and isomorphism also occur in the field of military organizations, even from different nations and continents. Several scholars have studied it under the perspectives of diffusion of cultural norms, military chance, security, and military global diffusion (e.g., FARRELL; TERRIFF, 2002; GOLDMAN, 2006; FINNEMORE, 2013, REINSCH, 2011; KOURTIKAKIS, 2010). However, scholars in this branch they don’t usually provide analysis on how 38 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH Western colonialism impacted in global military isomorphism, and it is a point that deserves more attention. Through the work of Theo Farrell (2005), a scholarly reference in studies of military diffusion, it is possible to show how foundations of colonial coercive isomorphism tend to be neglected, i.e., actors in an unequal relation compelling other to adopt the same organizational model (DIMAGGIO; POWELL, 1983). In Farrell’s view, modern military isomorphism is mainly a result of normative pressures – that stem from professionalization – in addition to the competition logic of a neorealist imperative, maximizing power and the notion that military – mainly in great powers – are by nature competitive. Farrell (2005, p. 465) argues that the weaker and smaller a state is, the more normative its military emulation mechanisms become. “Professionalization remains a central mechanism whereby norms of conventional warfare are diffused around the world and reproduced by the militaries of developing states” (FARRELL, 2005, p. 465). In practical terms, this process involves officers being sent for training in military academies of “developed countries” and central military advisers, literature, and equipment being received by “developing countries” (2005, p. 466). In this process, “small states seek the prestige attached to great-power military symbols, as well as the certainty provided by great-power scripts for military action” (FARRELL, 2005, p. 466). Nonetheless, a comprehensive analysis will remain superficial (even tautological) if these normative inequalities are self-explanatory. Even in neo-institutionalist terms, it is crucial to observe how the current normative orientation of military diffusion in the peripheries constitutes a historical consequence of colonial coercive isomorphism. The roots of modern military professionalism in former “external arenas” of the world-system were not generally based on autonomous practices of training and learning. Instead of that, such modern foundations often began with the destruction/submission of indigenous forces or being compelled to take modern norms, even trying to resist European expansion. For instance, from the second half of the 19th century and its cast upon at the Berlin Conference (18841885), African colonial troops were well drilled and acquired the regimental traditions and ethos, symbols, and insignia, according to the standards of their European counterparts (OLAWALE; SKÖNS, 2014; REID, 2012). In Latin American, Spanish, and Portuguese army leaders played a role in shaping colonial societies against rebellious indigenous leaders (KRUIJT, 2012). With the feudalization of their territories, the vassals of lords, indigenous peoples were often incorporated into their local forces (SOTELO, 1977). Given that 39 MATÍAS FERREYRA European forces had destroyed their local armies, it is not surprising that their training recruits quickly internalized the ‘superior’ Western military values. This process implanted norms about what constitutes a ‘modern’ force, corresponding fundamentally to isomorphing coercive pressures. It is a causal process that Farrell (2005, 1998) has overlooked because his time frame of analysis has not been focuses on colonial relations but mostly on contemporary military diffusion processes between independent states. Overall, he explains normative pressures on military diffusions as consequences of a (curiously) undefined “world culture”. Farrell (2005) deals with “world culture” and its “causal impacts” but does not explain its specific (liberal) ideological attributes and how it was imposed worldwide. In this sense, the concept of liberal security geoculture may be much more precise to ideologically comprehend the “one-way street” of global military isomorphism. Today’s military world culture constitutes an asymmetrical structure precisely because Western definitions of modernity are its center, the reference point for peripheral elites, and because of these ideas fuel dependency (because of capital-intensive) patterns of militarization (WENDT; BARNETT, 1993; also: SOETERS, 2018, p. 105). It does not mean peripheral states are passive objects forced to accept Western military ideas against their will, but it contains the idea that the global military isomorphism is structurally asymmetric, constraining a primarily “one-way street”, a proto-hierarchical process. Three functions in the security geoculture Although decolonization in different parts of world meant the “nationalization” of many colonial forces, this did not necessarily mean adhering to autochthonous epistemic constructions. Most postcolonial states inherited doctrines, equipment, and organizational structures implanted through colonial coercive pressures. With the postcolonial implications of this process, the diffusion of force standards and security devices has evolved, combining mimetic, normative and competitive pressures. This has given rise to an increasingly clear hierarchical division of functions between actors into the liberal geoculture of security. Precisely, we distinguish three types of functions: 40 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH a. broadcasting center; b. inter-carriers; c. recipient emulators. The broadcasting center is always made up of some actors of the capitalist center, a smaller group of states and organizations within the central production zones. By defining norms (written and unwritten) of what is appropriate and meaningful (for geoculture) and effective (given the laws of science), the broadcasting center drives macrosecuritization; that is, it shapes norms and management technologies for dispersed and fragile zones. It is defined by the junction of the highest order of abstraction, theory, and the most concentration of capital and prestige that inspires (or leaves no alternative) to others. The broadcasting center’s rationalities are inherently “open-ended”: it deals not just in closed circuits of control, but in calculations of series of possible and probable events, and therefore susceptible to readaptations according to the times and locations of the world-system.6 In Latour terms (1987), these are “centers of calculation” to which distinct peripheries areas are networked. The broadcasting center’s attributes do not consist in being the source of original ideas or concepts, which often makes no sense - if not downright impossible - to find an origin (BOURDIEU, 1987), but in making them powerful. Indeed, ideas can become legitimate and popular not precisely because of their properties but because of who transports and supports them and how they are packaged, formulated, and codified for specific situations (CZARNIAWSKA; JOERGES, 1996). In this way, the broadcasting center tends to link intermediary carriers to their broadcasts. As we will also call here, these inter-carriers are defined not as “norms makers” - although they can sometimes co-participate there - nor as “recipients” - although they are also serial emulators - but essentially as transmitters of standards and devices for weaker recipient emulators. These transmitters are state or non-state organizations, civil, politician, or military experts, among other actors located primarily in central and semi-peripheral areas, giving practical meaning to Sahlin and Wedlin (2008 p. 227) call “mediation-mode” of diffusion. Normative entrepreneurship is (and, as some academics and officials believe, should be) the broadcasting center’s domain. 6 This analytical framework gathers, and rethinks concepts developed by theorists of the diffusion of ideas, such as Sahlin and Wedlin (2008) and Czarniawska and Joerges (1996). In defining some attributes of what we call broadcasting center, we take ideas from Foucault (1978) (the idea of “rationalities open-ended’”), by Latour (1987) (“center of calculations”) and by Bourdieu (1987) (on the impossibility of finding an absolute origin of ideas). 41 MATÍAS FERREYRA A norm is formally codified in some agencies on the center’s initiative and therefore follows its global or selective diffusion process. This process can sometimes have local coordination of inter-carriers in certain inter-organizational fields; otherwise, it may be a more uncoordinated diffusion, in what Sahlin and Wedlin called chain-mode imitation, i.e., a diversity of actors who copy a message but do not know its origin. Both “modes” help to promote the diffusion of standards and devices to recipient emulators. These are weaker actors and organizations of peripheral zones that tend to emulate the broadcasting center’s ideas. The proactivity of peripheral actors resides in the ways of doing translations, including the relative ability to decide on ways to resist, edit or adapt the central formalized ideas (which standards, when, what possible combinations). Hence, the epistemic autonomy to conduct organizational changes, that is, ha ability of self-management by self-elaborated (their own) knowledge is narrower and more limited in these actors. Peripheral actors sometimes may have the potential to generate some innovations or oppose “normative resistance” (KOTYASHKO et al., 2018), or even act as a competitive emulous, that is, in strict sense, an actor who, by emulating, also intends to surpass those he took as a reference. Despite this, there is little place for the participation of peripheral contrived in the global security standards production. Only a few actors of central zones have been modern broadcasting centers. After the French Revolution, centrist liberalism began to dominate and expand the security geoculture. In this period, it was the Napoleonic model of waging war, with its “citizen armies”, the original use of “divisions” and “corps” of force in large bodies maneuvered, that had an enormous impact on the world-force system. In his work On War, Carl von Clausewitz (1997) used these experiences to develop his theoretical models of the significant characteristics of an “effective military command”. However, the British Empire has also been an eminence in naval forces. With the defeat of France in the war against Prussia in 1871 and after the German unification, these three models, the Prussian, the French, and the British, constituted the broadcasting center of the set of global standards that provide the basic template for the modern military isomorphism. Modern forces are based at least on three basic attributes: • state control, referring to specialized and regular organizations for external defense of sovereignty and monopolized by states. These are typically “Westphalian” forms of forces. The historical development of these forces to protect sovereignty occurred against 42 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH the background of a world where there was a general lack of such specialization (e.g., BLACK, 2002): • professionalism, it is the result of the emerging liberal ideology between the 18th and 19th centuries, including values on equality, merit, nationalism, bureaucratic rationality, recruitment rules, neutrality, and technical differentiation (GOLDMAN, 2006, p. 70); and, • technologicism is based on relations between military organizations, technology, and industrial societies; and expressed in ways to enhance technocratic capabilities, military equipment, and weapons. In the case of the Russian Empire, despite its condition closer to the central areas, it has been one of the first lines of emulation of Western military reforms. At the beginning of the 19th century, its infantry became more homogeneous around the Napoleonic model, although frontier forces remained more isolated: the Caucasian corps and Cossack forces achieved an identity separate from the rest of the Russian Army (MENNING, 1986, p. 31). Following the Crimean War and during the period when Prussian victories were reshaping military concepts, Russia embarked upon those reforms which would shape the way Russians would prepare for and go to war for the next half century (KIPP, 1986, p. 90). In peripheral countries, such reforms were more than a matter of copying a successful military machine. There was also a bigger dimension that focused on the impact of nationalism, modernization, and secularization. The modernization of Japan’s army, from 1868 with the Meiji Restoration, in response to French and then to German models, and of its navy, under the inspiration of the British model, is a good example of this bigger dimension (GOLDMAN, 2006; RENOUVIN; DUROSELLE, 2000). Goldman (2006), in addition to Japan, also studies this process in Ottoman Turkey and Kemal Atatürk’s since 1922 and concludes that while competitive strategies is an important driver of diffusion, mimetic non-competitive pressures like the desire for “prestige” and “legitimacy” are equally potent drivers of military diffusion. Until the end of World War II, there were no formal doctrines of “pacification”, or “national security” as would happen later in which other State agencies and areas are included. However, the “military science” developed in this period created crucial tools for managing colonial territories, populations, and conflicts in State building processes (OLIVEIRA, 2014). 43 MATÍAS FERREYRA After 1945, and throughout the current period that extends into the 21st century, the broadcasting center have tended to form around the so-called “US military transformation” experience, although the former extensive area of Warsaw pact (1955-1990) also built differentiated Soviet doctrines (as the “Soviet operational art”) (KIPP, 1986). Unlike the previous period, a “security area” with scientific status emerge here. This is not only due to the multiple implications of the use of the concept of “national security” by the US National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency rather than “defense” (be it as narrowly military) or even “national interest”, but also by the rise of methodological behaviorism in “conflicts researchers” in the western university system. This development had a direct influence on more systematic studies of “peace.” “Peace” is now a scientific object, in which human behaviors are prescriptive and modifiable objects by ‘smart’ management of conflict’s resolution. Here are inscribed not only the development of doctrines of counterinsurgency and pacification but also those most critical and reflexive schools of emerging peace studies, with contributions such as those of Galtung (1998) who helps to forge standards such as peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding, among others, which would later become a doctrinal base for current UN peacekeeping operations. In Cox (1981) terms, there has been an expansion and evolution of security studies as problem-solving knowledge for “failing” transformable places. If the trend in previous periods was towards the peripheralization and the building of modern state, the contemporary trend has been towards identifying the periphery as a place of “failure” and “restauration” of state structures. However, as “revolutionary wars” and “wars of national liberation” have shown in numerous and technologically inferior peoples on the periphery, the broadcasting centers needs much more than “hard power” to pacify violent focus of class struggles and revolutionary politics (SAINTPIERRE, 2000, p. 67). When “new” failing processes occur in the eyes of the broadcasting center, new manipulation and translation processes must also be carried out that allow the conflict to be recovered as ‘knowable’ objects of study. This is because the theory does not reflect an independent reality but rather a language from which a social object that is constructed is apprehended. Therefore, how knowledge is transformed through distinct data collection processes, accommodation, negotiation with trial-and-error testing is crucial. In Latour terms (1987, p. 223) such mediations between a local experience and central theory allow the conversion of the empirical local into mobile, immutable, and combinable “references”; that is, abstractions of reality that can be easily moved and combined. 44 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH For example, with the experience of failure in Indochina, for the first time, France’s general staff tried to adapt the military apparatus to a counterinsurgency war, in the case of Algeria. Their expressions were manuals and books prepared by the military with tactics and concepts. As stated in La Guerre Moderne of Roger Trinquier (2006, p. 5) “A conflict today is an interrelated system of political, economic, psychological, military actions”. Such tactics seek to achieve control and support of the population through “pacification units” based on “pacification zones”, using medical, educational, and ideological efforts among other approaches (GALULA, 1964). These manuals and books became ‘references’ that quickly circulated throughout the US military and places such as the US Army theoretical journal Military Review. Aware of their own ignorance about the Vietnamese people and pacification, the US armed forces learned from French mistakes ‘on the ground’ and perfected a variety of counterinsurgent doctrines (as in the National security doctrines) and to contain, for instance, communism throughout Latin America. These doctrines have been reissued and updated during the early years of the “war on terror,” as shown in the “US Counterinsurgency Field Manual” (BENEDETTI, 2013; ULLMAN; WADE, 1999), doctrines in Nato peace operations and “kinetic” methods used in UN peace-enforcement operations (TERRY, 2000). What is evidenced here is the progressive integration of doctrinal references from successive management experiences in failing areas and circulating in networks on long-distance social control logics across the globe, in fragile or conflict zones, from Cambodia to East Timor, from Colombia to Somalia or Afghanistan. From the constellation of university departments, think tanks, security and defense planning teams, public and private, a dispersed inter-organizational field emerges between broadcasting center, inter-carriers, and recipient emulators. Nowadays, inter-carriers are often governments and organizations with the capacity to fund security projects and transfer specialized data and management technologies. Among various examples, in Africa, actors like China, Japan, the African Union, United Nations, and specifical arrangements such as the Nordic Defense Cooperation (Nordefco) and other stakeholders have been “partners” for years transferring resources educational standards to various ‘capacity-building programs’ (FLEMING, 2015; BAYEH, 2015). Interesting enough, we cannot describe China as an actor of the broadcasting center. The same could be analytically asserted about Russia. Although a more balanced international order of three leading players —United States, Russia, and China— has emerged in the last decades, this balance did not 45 MATÍAS FERREYRA automatically translate into three organizational broadcasting centers with competitive management standards. One of the main reasons is that most peripheral countries still do not seem to perceive China or Russia as formulators of alternative standards of conflict resolution. China or Russia could develop their own cultural norms with original systems of management (for instance, based on Chinese Confucian or deep Russian values). However, those values have not hitherto been institutionalized or organized globally, not even in their own regions. This currently denotes the dominant normative role of the US and Western models in the transformation of armed forces in peripheral countries toward standards of global military cooperation and conflict management. Even so, geo-normative balances may change… International force standards: the “rapid response” model From the data research collected, it is possible to argue that some concepts of “rapid response forces” have been ones of the keys in the international diffusion of a specific model of force in the post-Cold War era. It amalgamates organizational changes in the main experiences on permanent international military organizations in the world. Currently, this model has been adopted by actors like Nato (e.g., Nato Response Force) and the EU Battlegroup, as well as African Standby Force, Peninsula Shield, and Southern Cross Force. Military rapid response forces are generally understood as troops that are on standby, ready to be deployed to a crisis within a short time frame (REYKERS; KARLSRUD, 2017). According to Langille (2004) the concept must be understood as a “reactive force” and should not be confused with preventive (or pre-emptive) deployments. In UN context, tragic events such as Rwanda and Somalia in the 1990s have shown how important rapid deployment is in current crisis management. Vast human suffering, death, diminished credibility, opportunities lost, escalating costs were just some of the traumatic consequences of slow and inappropriate responses (Langille, 2007, p. 219). Although speed alone cannot guarantee success, it is a critical factor for the effectiveness of crisis response. Although today this force model became an international standard for military organizations, the scholarly literature emphasizes different attributes and categories in its evolution. Koop and Novosseloff (2017) explain that experimentations with different forms of “multinational standby armies” predate even the creation of the UN itself. While the first attempts of 46 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH organizing multinational forces for intervention and policing can be traced back to the “eightnation alliance” that crushed the Boxer rebellion in China in 1900, the first proper example of a multinational coalition organized by an international organization was the so-called Saar Force in the mid-1930s. However, these authors are not addressing the attributes “rapid” or “quick” in such force concepts but only their multinational and standing nature. Military scholars such as Isenberg (1984) and Bates (2009) have focused on this “temporal” dimension of the force. Regardless of what one calls it - Quick Strike Force, Unilateral Intervention Corps, Multinational Intervention Force, or Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force - the concept of rapidly deployable military force would be posterior to the Second World War. It would have developed in United States during the Kennedy administration. In that time, the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, created a fire-brigade organization, subsequently renamed Strike Command, with a mission to furnish “rapidly deployable, combat-ready forces in an emergency situation, calling for response on a scale less than all-out nuclear war” (ISENBERG, 1984; BATES, 2009). The idea of a rapid reaction force surfaced again in 1977 when Carter government issued a directive ordering a mobile force that could respond to brush-fire wars. In this sense, in March 1980, the so-called Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) was established at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, and it is known as the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) since 1983 (ISENBERG, 1984). Centcom and Nato forces have been compelling experiences. These have influenced other organizations including the current UN vanguard concepts of rapid deployment forces who have later framed the Shirbrig. In the UN context, the Friend of Rapid Deployment led by countries like Canada and Denmark has played a leading role in developing rapid deployment capabilities during the 1990s. Among other key national reports, the Canadian report Towards a Rapid Reaction Capability for the United Nations (CANADA, 1995) was used as the baseline for their dialogue on the area of standby arrangements (CORD II, 2013). Specifically, it contemplated the “current experiences” of the US, France, and Nato as the “models” that contain the “primary elements” of that concept (CANADA, 1995, p. 18-21). As the report states, they looked at the operation of the U.S Central Command (Centcom), as a unified command (with a single commander, a broad, continuing mission, and composed of two or more services) capable of deploying an operational-level headquarters with a variety of tactical units (CANADA, 1995, p. 19). As for Nato, the report takes the example of the ACE Mobile Force or AMF (L), created in 1960 as a rapidly-deployable, multinational force. 47 MATÍAS FERREYRA From this document derived the vanguard concept of force proposed to UN: […] based on the principle of linking all of the levels of the UN system, especially an operational headquarters and mission groups provided by member states at the tactical level, for the purpose of deploying a force as rapidly as possible for a brief period, either to meet an immediate crisis or to anticipate the arrival of follow-on forces or a more traditionally-organized peacekeeping operation (CANADA, 1995, p. 52). Based on these models, the concept of Shirbrig emerged. The report concludes that the force could be based on six generic or basic components: Early-warning mechanism; effective decision-making process, readily-available transportation and infrastructure; adequate logistics support; adequate finances, and well-trained personnel. Established in 1997, Shirbrig had relative success participating in six UN missions in 12 years of life. After its first deployment to the peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee) in 2000, the Brahimi Report (2000) singles out Shirbrig as an essential model for establishing regional arrangements elsewhere. However, as Reykers and Karlsrud (2017) explain the overall track record of the existing multinational rapid response mechanisms remains disappointing, and the UN does not even have a rapidly deployable capacity anymore. While the EU Battlegroups have been operational for about a decade, they are still awkwardly awaiting their first deployment. The revitalization of the Nato Response Force with a spearhead capacity has somewhat disguised the alliance’s difficulties in finding sufficient more. (REYKERS; KARLSRUD, 2017, p. 421). In democracies, every deployment of troops abroad requires extensive negotiation at the political-military level and in parliament, which is not conducive to the ambition to respond quickly. This adds to a general hesitation to engage in missions abroad. Having said this, Shirbrig and Nato references were decisive for inspiring similar force models in regions such as Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Regarding Shirbrig, the DPKO and countries like Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands have played an important role in the mediation-mode diffusion by reformulating a model based on the broadcasting center experiences. 48 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH An analytical framework for international military organizations As mentioned in the introduction, one of the research objectives consists of a systematic comparison of the three cases in the Global South, based on primary and secondary data material. For understanding the data collection in the context of a systematic comparison, we built an analytical framework on seven organizational variables considered relevant in the literature on inter-organizational cooperation, isomorphism, military dependence, and multinational military cooperation (DIMAGGIO; POWELL, 1983; PFEFFER; SALANCIK, 2003; SHALIN; WEDLIN, 2008; SOETERS; TRESCH, 2010; SOETERS, 2018, 2021; FARRELL; TERRIFF, 2002; FARRELL, 2005; WENDT; BARNETT (1993). Since these can present variations between the three cases, we created a typological-comparative scheme with their respective ideal-typical, theoretically derived modes (see Table 2 below). This section describes each of such variables and their typologies. Some variables presented in this chapter are recovered here, and others specific to international military organizations are incorporated. Then, we explain the method whereby the seven variables were applied and operationalized in the case studies. Table 2 – Typological-comparative framework on international military organizations Variables Modes Normative Mimetic Coercive Competitive Isomorphism Dependence Operational Profile Intercultural Strategy Broadcasting Chain-imitation Mediation Financial Technological Operational Doctrinal Pragmatic Assimilation Absolutist Separation Integration Multinationalism Vertical Horizontal Specialization Simple Advanced Operational Partnership Attached Embedded Co-deployed Composite Source: author’s elaboration 49 MATÍAS FERREYRA a. Isomorphism Following concepts and categories of the sociological new institutionalism, the first variable compares ‘isomorphic pressures’ (DIMAGGIO; POWEL, 1983) and ‘modes of ‘diffusion’ (SHALIN; WEDLIN, 2008). As shown before, several authors have sketched how a “rationalized environment” has been conducive to produce military isomorphism. We have already described its primary mechanisms. However, we will repeat them here once it may help readers to understand this work better. These are: • Normative pressures: stemming from military professionalization through formal educational basis and networks across which new models diffuse (FARRELL, 2005; DIMAGGIO; POWEL, 1983). • Mimetic pressures: are responses to uncertainty (DIMAGGIO; POWEL, 1983), or the identification needs of actors (SHALIN; WEDLIN, 2008), resulting in imitative modeling from “prestige” or “reputation” of others. • Coercive pressures: referring to actors in an unequal relation compelling other to adopt the same organizational concept. Hence, the two keywords here are power and dependence. • Competitive pressures: based on the assumption that the “anarchic system” creates powerful competitive incentives - mainly between great powers – to adopt the most successful military practices (FARRELL, 2005; GOLDMAN, 2006). Center-Periphery relations may drive isomorphic pressures. As Farrell (2005) points out, there is a “one-way street” trend of normative military isomorphism in that peripheral and small states “seek the prestige attached to great-power military symbols, as well as the certainty provided by greatpower scripts for military action” (p. 466). Following Wendt and Barnett (1993) and Pretorius (2008), this “one-way street” trend expresses broader asymmetries in which central countries have shaped peripheral elites’ ideas about what constitutes a “modern army” (even multinational armies). Considering typologies of Sahlin and Wedlin (2008, p. 227), the military diffusion process can express at least three different ways through which ideas, models, and practices are diffused and adopted: 50 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH • Via the broadcasting mode: a central model inspiring (or leaving no alternative to) others. • Via the chain mode of imitation: an idea or practice being repeated but in different links without knowing the origin of its development. • The mediation by others (also called carriers): diffusion via international organizations such as Nato or the UN, as well as via media and researchers in expert committees, among others. Ideas, concepts, or models can be edited and reshaped as they travel between different emulators. In this sense, diffusion can generate not only homogenization but also variation or change patterns within military isomorphism. b. Dependence As argued, global military isomorphism would not be entirely understood without the implications of peripheral military dependence. But here lies a more fundamental question: What are the kinds of external dependence in military organizations? As Alain Rouquie (1984, p. 168) pointed out, military dependence is a “multifaceted” phenomenon. Authors such as Wendt and Barnett (1993), and Silva (2018) argue that military dependency, mainly in peripheral countries, tend to be “capital-intensive” (based in technocratic systems, weapons, and human capital demands). However, they do not delve into a typology of military dependency to understand more thoroughly the empirical differences between organizations. In this regard, some propositions developed in the so-called “resource-dependence theory” (PFEFFER; SALANCIK, 2003) are useful. This approach assumes that to survive every organization requires external resources, that is, resources that are controlled by others. The key to our analysis is the kind of external resources that may generate external dependence in military organizations. We distinguish at least four kinds of resources generating military dependence to glimpse empirically its main patterns: • Financial: when external financial assets support the activity of military organizations. • Technological: when military capabilities’ development relies on the transference of science and technology (S&T) from others. 51 MATÍAS FERREYRA • Operational: when external support with respect to personnel or equipment is needed to execute tasks at the operational/tactical level during deployments. • Doctrinal: when military organizations sustain their formation in emulating doctrines, skills, and concepts created by others. c. Operational profile As shown, processes towards isomorphism can affect organizational changes. Now, it is important to note that these changes also affect the normative scope of the use of force. For instance, a multinational peacekeeping operation often requires its personnel to adopt Rules-of-Engagement such as the “non-use of force except in self-defense” of UN missions. These rules denote an “operational culture” consisting of a common set of values and beliefs at the strategic and operational levels, in which nonetheless local, regional, and national environments can interfere, generating different approaches of operations (e.g., RUFFA, 2017; SOETERS, 2021). Theoretically, perceptions on how to understand the use and scope of force, its modus operandi, and environment can be typified in nuances on the “hard” and “soft” uses of force (JOHNSTON, 1995) or more deterministic or discontinuous visions in relation to the role of violence in military pacification. Following Janowitz’s footsteps in the modern military system, we can distinguish two main ideal approaches with respect to operational profiles (JANOWITZ 1971 apud TRAVIS, p. 264): • the absolutist approach, emphasizes the importance of wins (fast), dominance over enemies, coercion, punishment and combat mentality. “Since the political objectives of war are gained by victory, the more complete the victory, the greater the possibility of achieving political goals”. And, • the pragmatic approach, emphasizes lasting success, persuasion, and adaptation to others, stability, peace, and reconstruction maintenance, a discontinuity on the use or the threat of violence by adapting it to political objectives. 52 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH d. Intercultural strategy Another important dimension linked to culture in international military organizations has been how these manage interoperability challenges coming from differences in language, beliefs, and practices among military personnel (SOETERS, 2018, p. 25-28). Intercultural and inter-organizational interactions occur in commanding headquarters, in project teams from different nations working together, submit of military and politician personnel from different countries working together or headquarters in the process of internationalizing their workforce. Interactions also can occur at operational and tactical levels in missions, exercises, and operations. All these encounters are not exempt from tensions or caveats among mindsets about the meaning of commitment, Rules-of-Engagements, visions of military competence, standards operating, technologies, and perceptions on who is in power, who has the largest economic, and reputational capital. For these reasons, it is easier to create multinational units than to make them actually work (ARTEAGA, 2015). In general, there are at least three ways to deal with the challenges provoked by inter-organizational and intercultural interactions (SOETERS, 2018, p. 27-28; SOETERS; TRESCH; 2010): • Assimilation: occurs when smaller or junior partners adapt and often become affiliates of a larger or a senior partner from whom they are dependent or whom they consider superior. • Separation: emerges during operations in three main ways: • dividing the area of operations into smaller geographic segments or areas assigned to different leading nations; • separating the operation in different periods of time; • task-related separation, distributing various tasks to particular units. • Integration: occurring least frequently as it is the most complex way to achieve cooperation between armed forces of different nations. In this mode military personnel are integrated in the multinational military organization without national distinctions under the idea that all nations are equal equivalents and can make a comparable contribution at all force levels. 53 MATÍAS FERREYRA e. Multinationalism Another distinction refers to what Soeters and Manigart (2008, p. 3) have called multinationalism in the military organizational matrix. Two forms may be distinguished: • Horizontal multinationalism, the most traditional form of interaction between national contingents, consisting of a basic alignment of units where contacts related to operations only occur at the level of headquarters. And, • Vertical multinationalism, which implies a greater and deeper degree of cooperation and interaction between national components, taking the form of mixed units. f. Specialization Another dimension is the degree of specialization – simple or advanced – in multinational cooperation (SOETERS; MANIGART, 2008, p. 3): • Simple integration: there is no task specialization between national components constituting the task force and cooperation takes the form of a simple juxtaposition of the national units. And, • Advanced cooperation: there is a certain degree of specialization in the execution of the mission or operation’s set of tasks. g. Operational Partnerships The analysis of military multinationalism can be complemented by adding the perspective on operational partnerships in peacekeeping missions, which is also valid for our standing “operational partnerships in-waiting” (DANIEL et al., 2015). The focus here is on how is or could be the formation of command and units during deployments. There are four types of partnerships based on two crossing variables: Does the partnership use multinational command structures? Does the partnership feature multinational operational units? These are: 54 MULTINATIONAL MILITARY FORCES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH • Attached: an independent operational unit works alongside and is under the operational command of a larger unit. • Embedded: troops from a country are integrated within operational units of another country to form mixed units under the command structure of the latter. • Co-deployed: distinct national units operate as part of a multinational command involving officers from both countries. • Composite: troops from different countries form mixed units that serve under a multinational command involving officers from two or more countries. In these categories, “operational partners” can be junior, senior, or equal partners, as determined by mandates, the size of countries’ troop contributions, and their reputation and international standing. h. Method As mentioned in the introduction, our method analysis consists of a synchronous comparison on inter-organizational and operational differences (the “most different systems”) (HOPKIN, 2010), according to the seven variables of the analytical framework. In this way, we created a multivariable analysis method for international military organizations; the operationalization of the variables has been done as follows. On the isomorphism dimension, we have traced the identification of the organizations with external references and their adaptations to force models from central countries. We examined the role of international organizations in promoting force standards; moreover, we paid attention to how other organizations in each region could mediate/coordinate, or not, such processes. Yet, while the types of isomorphic pressures intermingle in an empirical setting, the comparison highlighted the contrasts according to the relative prevalence of the kinds of pressures and modes among the three case studies. The perspective of external dependence can manifest itself in different conditions. Operational dependence can be tested only in cases of forces with deployments in real crisis scenarios based on indicators in situ of external support. In other cases, our analysis of all those dependence types focused on how external resources affect, or not, the principle of “local ownership” 55 MATÍAS FERREYRA within organizations. It refers to the ability of their members to internally drive changes processes and create specific twists to the cooperation despite possible dependence on resources (PFEFFER; SALANCIK, 2003). To compare operational profiles, we have collected data about the mission concepts and operational environments, which provide indicators on the method of employment, the design, and operations approaches. For the variable intercultural strategies, we studied the influence of cultural and linguistic heterogeneity, national military traditions, features of leadership, and asymmetries between partner members in missions, exercises, and operations. The variable’s multinationalism and specialization consist of tracking formal indicators of inter-organizational interactions, forms of training and deployments in eventual missions, resources contributions among member-states, and their distribution of functions and roles in the organizational structure of each case. Finally, operational partnerships focused on formal data with respect to the command and unit structures in action. 56