From the book The Weaponisation of Everything by Mark Galeotti
Why do poor countries contribute peacekeeping forces?
“Pakistan, India, Nepal, Rwanda, Bangladesh and, at the top of the league, Ethiopia. In terms of GDP per capita, according to the International Monetary Fund, Ethiopia is the poorest of that list, ranking 161st out of 186 countries. Is it, by contrast, world leader in altruism? Not so much. The UN pays a flat fee of around $1,500 per soldier per month, but to the state providing the force, not the individual grunt on the ground. That would not cover the basic pay and provisions of a British Army private but compares very favourably with an Ethiopian average salary of $275 per month, and the government can pocket the difference between what the UN provides and what it pays its men. Meanwhile, Ethiopia also gets useful training and experience for its troops and influence over what may be local conflicts in this case in neighbouring Sudan and South Sudan.”
The countries that sponsored the first Gulf War
“Scaling up, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and neighbours such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE feared they might be next, they were happy to see the US-led multinational coalition deal with the problem. Doubly so, as many of these countries either lacked the forces to make a substantial contribution or as in Saudi Arabia’s case the desire to do any fighting. So instead they stumped up direct payments of $84 billion to the US, Britain and France, who did the lion’s share of the fighting, and extra support to cover bases and logistics. No one would suggest that the combatant countries actually made a profit on the war, or that they were motivated by the payments. Nonetheless, the way that rich but militarily weak or self-indulgent nations could simply outsource the violence – and the dying to foreigners is a pattern that Machiavelli would have recognised from the days when mercenary captains fought Italian city-states’ wars for them.”
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