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Bribing your Enemy

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by pc1973 (U13716600) on Tuesday, 2nd February 2010

  I know this tactic is about as old as warfare itself.
  
  What has bought this about is the new policy in Afghanistan to offer the Taliban money for laying down there arms.
  
  I was trying to think of historical examples and this is what I came up with;
  
  Ethelred and his 'Danegold' - Unsurprisingly the Vikings kept comming back for more money, the fundamental flaw with this type of policy. Ethelred is remembered as a poor king mainly for this reason.
  
  The Eastern Roman Empire, lasted a lot longer than it probably should have by bribing it's neighbours but again they could not keep up with the future payments, bankrupted itself and was eventually overrun anyway.
  
  I know there are probably plenty more examples but as far as I can see this policy has a major fundamental flaw, it shows you as week and encourages your enemy. I suppose it may have merit if the idea is just to buy time to strengthen your own hand but that does not appear to be the case in Afghanistan.
  
  Can any poster here think of an historical example where this has been a long term effective policy?

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Eamonn_Shute (U14223612) on Tuesday, 2nd February 2010

  The Treaty of Picquigny seems to have worked for Louis XI of France, until he reneged on his promises.
  
  

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Wednesday, 3rd February 2010

  Hmmm... actually this is a very simplistic way of seeing things. Bribing is a very effective way of getting rid of potential threats. The example of the Byzantine Empire is a very good one (its the most well known case) but I think it was not well presented one. First of all saying that it did not work for the Byzantines when their Empire lasted some 1000 years is a bit out of place. Then if anything the Empire did not fall out of this system but rather due to internal frictions and the deliberate (from the part of a few Byzantine plutocrats, the general political fraction that was behind the rise of the Komneni dynasty) delocalisation of business to North Italy (fiscal paradise for Byzantines). Effectively the Empire lost to North Italians but them, were not initially any enemies to be bribed or something.
  
  On the contrary, the bribing strategy seemed to have worked quite nicely for the Byzantines. Not always but most of the times yes.
  
  According to the Byzantines, The essence of bribing is not exactly that you offshoot the danger for ever. The essence of bribing is to gain time and save some money. Their strategy was quite developed on this issue. First there is the recognition of the threat, where it comes, what are the root causes. Then it is the assessment, how much potentially dangerous can be this threat. If the threat is minor, you let the thematic regional armies re-sestablish the order with minimal cost. If it happens due to any reason (e.g. a parallel campaign) to have nearby a substantial quantity of the Imperial Army, the threat minor or major is dealt instantly. However in the case that the threat is a major one and that thematic armies cannot stand easily, and that you do not have any large chunk of the Imperial army available in the nearby region you will consider bribing. But even that has a procedure.
  
  First you have to calculate all the time and expenses required to deal with the major threat as well as include the possibility of an initial failure. In that you have to count in not only the expenses of organising, arming, feeding and tranporting a sizeable army but also the economic setback and the population and taxes lost in the region under attack. And the cost could easily rise to really high level even for an average threat, let alone a major one. At the end of the day, bribing no matter if it seemed to be "a lot", most of the times was actually a fraction of the cost that the Empire would have to suffer in case of a war no matter if victorious. Do not forget that the Byzantines rarely ever gained a lot from winning their adversaries apart sizeable quantities of areguably second rate weapons - or at best... a recycling of their own money (stolen by the defeated raiders...).
  
  Hence, to our eyes today it seems "ungracious" that a whole Empire had to yield to the "demands" of "petty" warlords but then if I send you back then to see how "petty" were Bulgarians with their +100,000 army (sometimes larger than the standing army of the Empire itself) armed proficiently in almost a copy of the Byzantine (as for the most of it they were citizens of the Empire and they were led often by sectarian ex-Byzantine leadership)... and all that when facing concurrently the Empire of the Arabs... well I think you would instantly reconsider the strategy!
  
  Obviously, no Byzantine had any illusion of the permanent success of bribing. Bribing gave the time to face the other concurrent threats (in the case of Bulgarians, face fist the Arabs who were the biggest threat even above the major threat of Bulgarians). It gave them the time to study the enemy and develop the best strategy, as well as a chance to divide the leaders of the enemy (since often some part of the leadership was more bribed than another... so you know how it goes...). The fact that the enemy would come back asking for more was known but then they would be better prepared for it, having finished all concurrent wars transferring chunks of the Imperial army in the area, and when the time would come than the price of the enemy would approach the actual cost of the necessary campaign, they would strike. Note that throughout all this process, most often it is the bribing party that has the control of the situation, not the bribed one, as most people tend to imagine.
  
  Hence, generally speaking, bribing in that way works. But you have to always put in your overall strategy. If you bribe just like that hoping that you solved the problem for ever then you are living under illusions.
  
  Note also that bribing is a strategy that is used very much today only that it is called differently and is given via different channels.

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• Message 4

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  Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Wednesday, 3rd February 2010

  What has bought this about is the new policy in Afghanistan to offer the Taliban money for laying down there arms..."
  
  
  Quite simply, the current tactics are not working. Or at least, are far too slow. Unfortunatley the West does not have much of a taste for the ong haul war.
  
  I think the hope is that, over time, after much repeat bribing, the threat diminishes and the former fighters eventually get absorbed in to the normal economy.
  

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• Message 5

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  Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Wednesday, 3rd February 2010

  Can any poster here think of an historical example where this has been a long term effective policy? Β 
  
  British India used an extensive combination of bribery and stipends for local rulers with a fair degree of success. Those Taliban we're proposing to bribe had ancestors bribed by the British.
  
  Nik makes some very good points about the Byzantines - particularly that conquering the troublesome neighbours often did little good and cost a lot too. (If memory serves) this was a tactic inherited from the earlier Roman Empire. They bribed tribes around the edges as buffer states.
  
  Imperial China came to similar conclusions with neighbouring nomads. Payments could be effective ways of keeping the immediate neighbours at peace. These nomads found it beneficial to control access to Chinese goods to nomads further afield and usually only caused trouble when the source of these goods failed to deliver. Creating armies to conquer them was ruinously expensive and usually resulted in a further frontier with a different troublesome nomadic tribe. Building a really long wall was a desperate attempt to keep down the cost of defending the frontier.

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• Message 6

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Friday, 5th February 2010

  Hmmm... it is true that bribing the Afgani Mujjahedins (I prefer that old name of Talebans) guerillas is not giving a final solution since guerillas are simply "addicted" to the easy money but still it is a cost effective one when they can easily bribe around 100 guerillas for more than 1 month with an amount equal to the cost of 1 flight of a small reconaissance aircraft... You do the additions. What is lost is mostly the "pride", being the worlds' strongest army and having to pay a petty warlord not to cause you trouble. Forget pride, its all about cost-effective solutions and bribing is a wholy respectable strategy.
  
  I can show you another very successful example coming from the other super-power Russia. Russia in Tchetchenia faced certainly an even more harsh resistance from local Tchetchen warlords - at the end of the day, the Tchetchens had both a national as well as religious fight to give. Russians first sent a strong force of 20-30,000 soldiers in 1995 and did little things, then again in 1998-99 and did much better, albeit at a great loss of life (as battle in the Caucasus ends up 1 on 1) and a huge financial bleeding, let alone the continuing blow to their image of a falling super-power that cannot easily control its own territories. And then what?
  
  The Putin choses plan B. Bribing. There was the event murder of the popular Tchetchen leader, Kadyrof, arguably shot by rival Tchetchen warlords but then that could be Russians themselves too. And Russians jumping on that approach his 28 years old son, and make a clear agreement: young Kadyrof rises as a governor of Tchetchenia taking aside all other ambitious warlords, he brings peace, he enjoys ample Russian financial support, let alone filling his own foreign bank account for good, he does anything he wants in the country - apart one thing: talk again of independence.
  
  It worked? Well yes it worked. Young Kadyrof accepted, took power, used the Russian money to buy enough Tchetchen warlords so as to attack and either kill or imprison all the rest and from there on he governs the land as "a king in the service of the Emperor".
  
  So did Putin's bribing of the Chechens worked? A couple of years ago in an interview, Kadyrof was asked what is the stance of Tchetchens against Russians nowadays and he replied: "Tchetchens and Russians are "natural" friends. Russians were never our enemies. The whole war was built on... misaunderstandings"... thus cancelling a history 120 years of armed Tchetchen resistance to Russians. So I guess bribing in this case worked just nicely. It may not work for ever, as Kadyrof in his turn can be murdered or deposed by the enemies he created, but then Russians have certainly gained plenty of years to be prepared well for such a scenario.
  
  So the above is not at all any bad lesson for westerners in Afganistan. They simply have to chose the right person to give the money. But then there lies also the question "Does US and their allies want to solve the issue? Or do they simply what to remain there to have a continuous military presence?" Cos I guess it is mostly the 2nd case.

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