Building Militaries in Fragile States: Challenges for the United States (Book review)

In Building Militaries in Fragile States: Challenges for the United States, Dr. Mara Karlin presents a comparative case study of four United States Government (USG) attempts to strengthen partner militaries’ internal defense. Building Militaries opens with a summary of the Islamic State’s defeat of the Iraqi Army in 2014 after the USG trained the Iraqi Army for ten years and provided $20B in assistance. This scene-setter underscores Karlin’s assessment that the USG’s traditional approach of throwing resources and training at fragile states to shore up those states’ internal defense is not working.