Military Corruption Research Articles

Effect of Military Corruption Factors on National Security Perception through Military Trust

국방 서비스는 전쟁을 억제하여 국민의 생명과 재산을 보호한다는 점에서 국가 서비스 중 가장 중요한 서비스라 할 수 있다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 국방 서비스에 부정적인 영향을 주는 군 부패요인을 설정하고 군 부패요인이 군 신뢰를 매개로 국가안보의식에 미치는 구조적 인과관계에 대해 연구하였다. 군 부패요인은 병역비리, 인사비리, 그리고 군납비리로 분류하였다. 이를 위해 서울 및 수도권 성인 247명을 대상으로 설문조사를 실시하고 실증분석을 하였다. 본 연구의 결과를 정리하면 다음과 같다. 첫째, 군 부패요인이 국가안보의식에 미치는 직접 요인에서는 인사비리와 군납비리는 부정적인 영향력이 있었으나 병역비리는 유의적인 영향력이 없었다. 둘째, 군 부패요인이 군 신뢰에 미치는 영향에서는 병역비리와 인사비리, 군납비리 모두 군에 대한 국민의 신뢰에 부정적인 영향력이 있었다. 셋째, 군 신뢰는 시민들의 국가안보의식의 긍정적인 영향력이 있었다. 넷째, 군 부패요인과 국가안보의식간에 군 신뢰의 매개효과를 검증한 결과 군 신뢰는 병역비리, 인사비리, 군납비리 모두 유의적인 부(-)적인 매개효과가 있었다.

Military spending and corruption in the economic community of West African states

Military spending and corruption in the economic community of West African states

Predators or Protectors? Military Corruption as a Pillar of Regime Survival in Uganda

ABSTRACT When he came to power in 1986, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni promised to establish a professional, disciplined and all-inclusive national army. More than three decades later, the Ugandan army under his leadership has constantly been entangled in record corruption scandals. Based on extensive field research, this article explores the nature of corruption in Uganda’s defence sector and shows how corruption is tolerated and sometimes encouraged by the regime leader because it serves as an instrument of political control. The article highlights pervasive corruption in the Ugandan army, the political use of corruption by the regime and the impact it has had more generally.

Enemy within the State: The Pathology of Boko Haram Insurgency, Military Corruption, and Fallacy of Arms Procurement in Nigeria

ABSTRACT This article analyses the nexus between Boko Haram insurgency and military corruption under the political regime of former President Goodluck Jonathan (2010–2015). The article considered general theories that inform the nature of political system that provides opportunity for patronage politics with its implication on national security. The article further investigates the clandestine temperament of military expenditure and the role of political office holders and senior army personnel in defense corruption. There are two main findings. First, the major subterfuge employed for diversion of arms procurement funds was channeled through alliance formation between the political elites, the serving and retired top military officers. Second, the persistent Boko Haram revolt has been a concealed boulevard for diversion of state resources into private coffers; therefore, ensuing the reign of terror to be more tougher, lengthened and unconquerable due to secretive benefits associated with defense expenditure enjoyed by political and military cabals in Nigeria.

Military corruption in war: stealing and connivance among Zimbabwean foot soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (1998–2002)

ABSTRACTThis article examines the ways in which Zimbabwean foot soldiers engaged in military corrupt activities, stealing army rations from the trenches to resell in neighbouring civilian communities and Congolese soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The practice became widespread among and between senior and junior officers. However, this practice did not end with the war; rather it was carried over from the DRC war to the Zimbabwean army barracks. The article contends that the practice of stealing army rations was a deeply unprofessional practice. The article draws from life history stories of Zimbabwean former soldiers who deserted the army and are now living in South Africa.

Cronyism and Military Corruption in the Post-Deng Xiaoping Era: Rethinking the Party-Commands-the-Gun Model

This article considers why cronyism and military corruption remained rampant in the post-Deng Xiaoping era, despite the PLA’s progress toward modernization and professionalization. In theory, the bifurcation of civilian and military elites and the demise of ‘supreme leaders’ provide the PLA with greater autonomy vis-à-vis the Party, whereas the persistence of personalistic power in decision-making creates opportunities for upper-level leaders to place trusted associates in key posts. The lack of effective checks and balances thus facilitates the misuse of power for private ends and gives rise to cronyism and corruption. Relatedly, the Party’s command of the gun is at risk if and when the promotion of military officers conforms more to the exercise of personalistic power than to the prescribed procedures of Party control. Moreover, several major cases of military corruption reveal that the weakening of Party oversight may be a remedy worse than the disease.

Military Corruption in China: The Role ofGuanxiin the Buying and Selling of Military Positions

AbstractHow doesguanxifacilitate corrupt transactions? Utilizing fieldwork data and published materials, this paper investigates howguanxipractices distort the formal military promotion system and facilitate the buying and selling of military positions in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). It identifies the three key functions ofguanxiin facilitating corrupt transactions: communication, exchange and neutralization.Guanxienables effective and safe communication among corrupt military officers, holds transaction partners to their word, and neutralizes their guilt about committing corrupt acts.

‘TONE AT THE TOP’: FIGHTING MILITARY CORRUPTION IN LATIN AMERICA

This essay aims to discuss how tone at the top works in the traditional military contexts found in Latin America, and how the right tone could be adopted in corrupt military institutions to move towards an ethical role-modelling environment. For this endeavour, several strategies that can help military generals to fight military unethical culture in contaminated hierarchical organisations will be proposed, while a number of hypotheses on the institution’s functioning will be provided. Differently from private companies’ theoretical bias, the main suggested approach implies the initial establishment of a strong, transactional-based tone at the top as the main tool to fight military corruption. As a further step, after the corrupt culture has been neutralised, transactional leadership based on ethics could be slowly transformed into gentler versions of transformational style, but never letting the main fear of the harshest punishment evanesce. In summary, by showing that unethical leadership will necessarily pave the way for misconduct in traditional military organisations, we propose a cannonball strategy, based on a punishment and reward system, to reinforce integrity instead of gentler or charismatic leadership styles.

Discharged Soldiery: Wordsworth, Cobbett, and Military Corruption in the 1790s

This article contends that Wordsworth’s treatment of the Discharged Soldier is influenced by a scandal that followed the publication of William Cobbett’s pamphlet The Soldier’s Friend (1792). Cobbett publicized the mistreatment of soldiers in the secretive British army, calling particular attention to the embezzlement of troops’ salaries by senior officers. The Soldier’s Friend influenced both texts and protests that addressed military conditions in the 1790s. Wordsworth read contemporary pamphlets and knew the circle of Cobbett’s publisher, Ridgway. The behaviour of Wordsworth’s Discharged Soldier evokes the demoralized soldiery Cobbett depicts: malnourished, poorly clothed, but unwilling to reveal details of his hardship for fear of recrimination under the Mutiny Act. Wordsworth explores these ideas further in The Borderers, in which Rivers has been corrupted by mistreatment in service and poses a threat to society on his return home, where he replicates the abuse he endured.

CORRUPTION, MILITARY SPENDING AND GROWTH

This paper considers the effect of corruption and military spending on economic growth, analysing both the direct impact of public spending and the effect of allocating resources between categories of public spending within the framework of an endogenous growth model. The model exhibits non-linearities as a result of the links between the components of public spending, corruption and economic growth. The main findings of the empirical analysis confirm the expectation that corruption and military burden lower the growth rate of gross domestic product per capita. They also suggest that when the effect of the complementarity between military spending and corruption is omitted, as in most studies, the impact of military burden on economic performance is underestimated.

Their Hands in the Till

The change from Yeltsin to Putin has had minimal effect on Russian military corruption. Putin, despite his desire to rebuild Russian strength, has not shown himself willing or able to seriously deal with this problem. The fluctuations in the level of military corruption in the post-Soviet period seem largely to be explained by changes in availability of things to steal or embezzle. Thus, the latter years' substantial increases in defense spending have been accompanied by a steep rise in military corruption. Today, Russian military corruption is one of the main obstacles to military reform in Russia and to Russia serving as a partner in international military cooperation. It might also make the traditionally pro-military Russian public loose faith in the country's armed forces.

Military corruption & Ugandan politics since the late 1990s

The paper examines cases of corrupt military procurement in Uganda since the late 1990s. It also considers the illicit business activities of Ugandan army officers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1998. The paper then discusses how military corruption aroused the concern of parliament, and became a matter of importance in the 2001 presidential elections. We argue that the prevalence of military corruption was the result of government and army leaders not being subject to public accountability. Not a single leader has been faced with prosecution or punishment for corrupt military behaviour. We conclude by arguing that military corruption has helped to maintain the National Resistance Movement (NRM) in power, although this has been realised at the cost of building a professional national army in Uganda.

The Mexican Army as Cartel

This article deals with one of the least examined aspects of smuggling along the U.S./Mexico border: the role of the Mexican army as a major player in the traffic of drugs into the United States. It is hoped that this study will help to eliminate a lacuna in our understanding of organized criminal activity south of the border. It will do this by examining the chaotic conditions obtaining along the Mexican side of the border due to the breakup of the Matamoros cartel and the consequent functional necessity of the Mexican Army's stepping in to assure safe and unimpeded drug shipments into the United States. In addition, it will be demonstrated that the antidrug role of the military in combating the drug trade is a necessary adjunct to its role as a major trafficker in drugs. Finally, it will be argued that the administration's policy of ignoring Mexican military corruption as well as its incursions into U.S. territory is counterproductive in terms of effectively curtailing the drug trade, that it lends itself to the militarization of Mexican society, and that ultimately it threatens harmonious international relations with Mexico by encouraging an increasingly aggressive military presence along the U.S. border.

Military rule, civilianisation and electoral corruption: Pakistan and Bangladesh in perspective

Military rule, civilianisation and electoral corruption: Pakistan and Bangladesh in perspective

Valuing the human factor: The reform of Russian military manpower

Russia's new military reform aims to modernize the armed forces, create a professional, high‐tech military, and defend against threats to its interests. This reform will fail unless it overcomes major obstacles to military reform. These obstacles are a threat assessment that demands defense and deterrence against everyone on all fronts or azimuths, the crisis of state power and defense policy that obstructs democratization and a coherent policy process, and the continuing Tsarist ‘regimental economy’ that leaves soldiers to the mercy of officers, and facilitates the military's corruption and brutalization. Until Russia overcomes these obstacles, military or democratic reform will not succeed, nor will Russia be truly secure.

Military Corruption in China: A Conceptual Examination

While corruption might have some positive effects on transitional societies, this is not the case for all segments of society. Corruption threatens to undermine the discipline, morale, and cohesiveness of the Chinese armed forces.

Fear, greed, or garage sale? The analysis of military expenditure in East Asia

This paper examines the determinants of military expenditures in eight East Asian countries from 1983 to 1993. In a pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis, it finds that the security threats (either external or internal) have not been a factor in determining the governments' defence burdens. Instead, economic and bureaucratic budgetary factors are better predictors of their defence decision-making. Military corruption and subsidized defence industries are the main domestic elements driving up the budgets; but this bureaucratic 'irrationality' is checked and balanced by economic rationality, for the defence burdens generally correlate with the availability of economic resources.

Shady Business: Corruption in the Brazilian Army before 1954

An enduring paradox lies at the heart of Brazilian politics. The Brazilian Army has long suffered from corruption at the highest levels so extreme as to create disquiet throughout the institution. Yet the Brazilian military, like other armed forces in Latin America, has justified its involvement in politics and society by accusing civilians of corruption. Despite repeated revelations of military corruption, soldiers and civilians as well have sometimes accepted the armed forces' use of this moral discourse. For example, an anonymous businessman wrote General Pedro Aurélio de Góes Monteiro on 30 November 1954: “The country is on the brink of financial and economic ruin. This state of things is the result of the abuses of past governments and of the deceased President Vargas and the generalized corruption. … The only solution for the reestablishment of confidence in the exterior would be the delivery of the government to a military dictatorship” (emphasis in the original).2 Thirty years later, at the close of authoritarian rule in Brazil, a daring journalist named Carlos Alberto de Carli exposed rampant corruption within the military's intelligence services. Yet Carli himself dedicated his book in part to “the armed forces—the moral reserves of our people” (cover page, Carli 1985).

Reexamining Russia: Crime Without Punishment

Reexamining RussiaCrime Without Punishment Ariel Cohen (bio) It has long been obvious to all who grasp the disastrous legacy of communism that building democracy in Russia will be no easy task. Seven decades of totalitarian rule, which obliterated private property, economic markets, civil society, mutual trust, and any real concept of citizenship, are not a promising foundation on which to build democratic institutions. In many ways, given the enormity of the obstacles confronting it, Russia has made impressive strides toward democracy and a market economy. Yet even these partial and precarious gains are now imperiled by a danger that few, if anyone, foresaw. A tidal wave of crime and corruption is sweeping across the Eurasian landmass, threatening to overwhelm the region’s fragile democratic and market reforms. Russia alone is home to thousands of gangs and hardened criminals, and hundreds of mob bosses and illegal organizations with international connections. Tens of thousands of businesses are controlled by organized crime; their gross product is higher than the GNP of many UN members, including several post-Soviet states. 1 The Russian mafiya (a generic term used to refer to all organized crime in the former USSR) is estimated to be worth at least $10 billion. 2 In 1993, more Russians died in criminal violence than did Soviet soldiers during the nine years of war in Afghanistan. 3 In 1994, more than a hundred people were kidnapped and held for ransom in Moscow alone. The situation in other post-Soviet states is even worse: in some of them, criminal gangs have actually controlled the value of the national currency. 4 [End Page 34] The crime wave could have grave political consequences for Russia, Ukraine, and their neighbors in East Central Europe. Ordinary people, feeling unsafe in the streets, are beginning to regard democracy as the freedom to loot and murder. Crime and corruption, together with pressing economic problems, may well prompt a hard-line backlash in Russia and the ascension to power of an ultranationalist such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky or an imperialist strongman like General Alexander Lebed. Crime itself has become a major post-Soviet export. Drugs, weapons, and—most alarming of all—nuclear components are being smuggled out of Russia into Western Europe, the United States, and Asia. Criminal syndicates and terrorist organizations around the world can now hire former KGB officers expert in eavesdropping, assassination, and paramilitary tactics. Today, shady businessmen from the East produce briefcases full of cash—up to $3 million at a time—to buy expensive real estate in the West, thus tainting Western economies with huge infusions of illegally obtained money. There is evidence that top officials of the Russian government are involved in criminal activities, although the administration of President Boris Yeltsin has done very little to investigate charges against them. Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and former First Deputy Defense Minister Matvei Burlakov were accused by the Russian press of arranging the murder of a popular investigative journalist, Dmitrii Kholodov of Moskovskii komsomolets, who was killed by an exploding briefcase in October 1994. Kholodov had published a series of startling exposés on military corruption and was about to testify before a committee of the State Duma when he was assassinated; he reportedly had been told by a source within the Russian military intelligence that the briefcase contained documents exposing corruption in the military. Burlakov was fired, but has escaped prosecution, as has a corrupt deputy finance minister who was recently sacked. In March 1995, veteran broadcaster Vladislav Listyev, the director-designate of Russia’s national television network, was shot to death execution-style in the vestibule of his Moscow apartment building. His murder, which police admitted they had little hope of solving, appeared to be connected with his plans to attack widespread corruption in the sale of television advertising, corruption in which the mafiya is heavily involved. The Listyev case quickly became a flashpoint in the smoldering political conflict between Moscow mayor (and potential presidential candidate) Yuri Luzhkov and President Yeltsin. Officials of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) have participated in fraud and forgery that have cost Russian taxpayers more than $350 million. The incompetent former chairman of the bank, Viktor Gerashchenko, was...

The Destiny of Greece

TluTith respect to the charges of degeneracy and corruption so * * inconsiderately made against the Greek people, though this may not be the place to refute them, it is yet of importance to observe that, however they may have deplored the succession of calamities commencing with their conquest by the Romans, through the degradation that followed the transfer of the capital to Byzantium, a degradation which the introduction of Christianity did not diminish, down to the last fatal scene that reduced them to a galling and hopeless bondage, the Greeks never lost sight of their imprescriptible rights, or of their former glory. Thus far an English sympathiser, Mr. Edward Blaquiere, as long ago as 1824, when the epic of the war of independence was still warm in the memory of Europe. Romantic and sentimental though they may seem today, these words have remained true of the Greek people. Few other nations have suffered worse misgovernment in our times; few others have had more reason to forget their dignity and pride of country beneath the weight of military dictatorship and administrative corruption. Again, in the last few years, the dictatorship of Metaxas, harsh and heavy, utterly unenlightened, was followed by the bitter occupation of the Italians and later of the Germans. Greece was taken from the map; and yet, man by man and company by company, there arose the elements of a guerrilla army which pinned the invaders to their garrisons and lines of communication. The spirit of independence which attracted Byron had surged vividly to life again. This people would live. The Greeks emerged from the toils of the second world war with a regained sense of pride and independence. But it was precisely then, while the war in Europe was still at its height and Rundstedt was hammering at the Allied lines in the Ardennes, that the gains of Greek resistance and liberation seemed at once lost in the turmoil of civil war. Fighting between the British troops which went into Greece on the heels of the retreating Germans, and ELAS, the army of the resistance, broke out in Athens in December, 1944; and continued until ELAS gave in a