The Client’s Principles: Explaining Israel and Taiwan’s Defense Ties with Central America

ABSTRACT

Although foreign policy between great power patrons and their client states is often studied, those of client states and third states within the context of patron-client relations receive little attention. We address this gap through a comparative historical analysis of Israel and Taiwan’s defense ties with Central American states from the 1970s until 2019. We argue that clients’ initially make decisions based on the preferences of their patrons, but subsequent defense relations with third states depend on how they benefit clients, which may not align with the patron’s preferences. Our study, besides adding further theoretical and empirical context to the existing scholarship, compares Israel and Taiwan’s long running defense ties with Central American countries, to reveal that both client states began supplying arms and training as surrogates of their patron U.S., but the type of defense goods they subsequently supplied and whether they institutionalised ties were contingent on their expected gains, be it economic, diplomatic, or security.

KEYWORDS:

• Great power rivalry
• foreign policy
• arms transfers
• Central America
• Israel
• Taiwan
• United States

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Kai Thaler and Timothy Rich for their valuable feedback on the project. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Tom Long’s discussion on “derivate power” is also relevant to this idea. Tom Long, Small States, Great Power? Gaining Influence Through Intrinsic, Derivative, and Collective Power, International Studies Review, Volume 19, Issue 2, June 2017, Pages 185–205, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viw040.

2 Namely: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

3 This was prior to Israel’s fighter/bomber sale to Honduras mentioned above.

4 An in-depth study of this period could indicate that willing and able for Honduras and El Salvador, if willing but unable for Guatemala, while the US was willing and able to covertly organize the Contra forces, though supply often had to be indirect, with ties to Honduras helping facilitate transfers to the main FDN contra force. We thank Dr. Kai Thaler for this insight.

5 The full member states are: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Belize. The regional observers are: Mexico, Chile, and Brazil. The extra-regional observers are: Germany, Japan, Spain and Taiwan.