Not Little Sparta: Military Politics and Domestic Constraint in Kuwait

• In Event: Development and Conflict in the Era of American Withdrawal

Abstract

This paper uses original interviews conducted in Kuwait to examine the domestic political institutions that influence military investments and weapons purchases overtime, and thereby explain Kuwait’s status as a region outlier in defense capabilities.
Since the emergence of modern Kuwait in the 19th century, the country has consistently faced external threat. Saudi expansion threatened the rule of the Al-Sabah family in Kuwait City until British intervention in 1920. In 1961, Baghdad’s opposition to Kuwait’s formal political independence from the United Kingdom triggered another crisis. The outbreak of the devastating Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s turned Kuwait into a frontline state with major battles only kilometers from its borders. And in 1990 Iraq invaded, occupied, and briefly annexed Kuwait. In regional comparison, one is hard pressed to find a more threatened state. Yet despite these conditions, and particularly since 1991, why has the Kuwaiti state fail to invest in or develop a more capable military? Today’s Kuwaiti military, while possessing modern American systems, is not much different from the military that capitulated two days after the Iraq invasion. By contrast over the same period, the militaries of neighboring Gulf Arab states have witnessed extensive investment and upgrading. In recent years for example, American military leaders have affectionally dubbed the United Arab Emirates “Little Sparta” to acknowledge Abu Dhabi’s military advancements using American weapons systems. The Kuwaiti state has also purchased billions in US weapons. However, it is one of the few countries in the Global South, and the only in country the Middle East, that has rejected American as well as other foreign weapons deals. Conventional explanations drawn from the international relations literature yield some insight but fall short in important ways, which this work addresses.
The paper first measures the development of the Kuwaiti military in terms of investment in military capacity before and after 1990. Investments are measured quantitatively using historical data on weapons sales, domestic budget commitments, and changes in military force structure. Qualitatively, the analysis examines Kuwait’s deepening military relationship and joint training with the US Army during its “rearmament” phase in the aftermath of liberation from Iraq. Interviews with Kuwaiti observers, retired Kuwaiti officers, and former US and European military advisors provide an assessment of the relationship’s effects--and its limits--on the development of the Kuwaiti military.
The second half of the paper examines the literature and theories about what could be shaping the Kuwaiti pattern specifically and Arab military politics more generally. These arguments tend to emphasize small state position, attractiveness to external patrons, regime survival, or barriers within Arab political culture. However, relying on a single explanation in the Kuwaiti case turns out to be either incomplete or imprecise. To sharpen the argument, the paper examines the case of a significant weapons deal in the late 1990s. Drawing on interviews with former Members of Parliament and Ministry of Defense officials, the paper shows how and why Kuwait rejected the largest sale of American weapons in regional history. Kuwait’s history of elected parliament and its powers of invigilating sitting cabinet ministers provide important veto points in all public expenditures. Equally important, parliament operates as part of a set of institutional constraints on political economy decision making that can pull questions of security into larger national debates. Weapon sales and military investment decisions can be subjected to many of the same political economy pressures and obstacles resident in Kuwaiti national politics. Despite external threat and ample resources, the Kuwaiti military lags its comparators not because of size or culture but primarily because of domestic political and institutional constraints.
The findings offer two contributions. The Kuwaiti case provides a unique study of civil-military relations in one of the most militarized parts of the world. Instead of those relations being tied completely to issues of regime survival, this analysis shows how civil-military politics are embedded in broader political economy struggles and institutions. Second, the Kuwaiti case offers insight into robust domestic political agency at the core of American hegemony in the Middle East. Perhaps then, Kuwait is not as exceptional as is often assumed.

Author

• Pete W. Moore, Case Western Reserve University