Featured Graduate Student Research: Nandita Balakrishnan
Featured Graduate Student Research: Nandita Balakrishnan
Project Description & Purpose of Trip to the United Kingdom

The clear challenge in the study of coups is that coups by nature are quick, often covert actions; therefore, we only observe the cases that do occur and as scholars we often must rely on second-hand reporting of the events. As a result, relevant factors such as contingency planning, foreign involvement, and even why a coup occurred and why it succeeded or failed is often unknown. Therefore, looking at classified intelligence reporting as well as talking to people who have first-hand experience working with coup-vulnerable governments and militaries are crucial sources of information.

My fieldwork in the United Kingdom had two distinct parts. First, I conducted archival research at the National Archives in London with a particular focus on examining what occurred during the Cold War period. I then traveled to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst1 to do both archival work with a focus on the end of the Cold War period and elite interviews with academics and military officers who had had experience working with foreign militaries in various deployments.
Archival Research at the National Archives in Kew (London)
At the National Archives, I looked at four types of documents. All of the files included a variety of documents including internal correspondence within the relevant ministry, telegrams back to London, notes for Prime Ministers’ Questions, and policy memos. What was particularly interesting was that numerous drafts of the same documents were often included such that any changes of thinking or concerns about word choice could be seen.




Interviews and Archival Research at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst
I continued my archival work while at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst (RMAS). RMAS, unlike West Point, is a one year program that fully focuses on teaching cadets operational skills as opposed to granting a Bachelor’s degree. RMAS also has an extensive collection and archive. In particular, I examined files on policies regarding the training of overseas cadets. I saw how different countries made and removed bids to send their nationals to Sandhurst. For example, Ghana, at times removed its bids, which somewhat seemed to line up with when they had coups. In addition, I found a list of “distinguished foreign alumni” of Sandhurst, many of whom went on to mount their own coups in the future.
What made my trip to Sandhurst particularly special was the series of on-the-record interviews I had with both academics and military officers about their experiences deployed abroad. The former group largely worked with foreign military academies and therefore, had an intimate knowledge of the modern training of soldiers. The latter group primarily had UN peacekeeping operations training in sub-Saharan Africa. I will just briefly highlight two of my interviews.
In one interview, I spoke with a military historian, who had spent months in Afghanistan helping to build up the National Military Academy in Afghanistan (NMA). Originally, the United States had tried to model NMA after the West Point system, but the hybrid of military training and academics resulted in officers ill-prepared for active combat. Therefore, this gentleman was part of the contingency sent in to move NMA towards a Sandhurst-style institution and worked closely with General Karimi, the Chief of Staff of the Afghani Army. In particular, he told me despite a past coup history that Afghanistan is likely not to face a coup today for three reasons. First, the presence of American and British soldiers for the foreseeable future actively deters any military incentives. Second, Presidents Karzai and now Ghani were good at satisficing the military and worked to have a good relationship with their top generals. Third, the situation in Afghanistan with the Taliban, Haqqani network, and army factionalism makes the military unwilling to take charge of the country. In short, based on his experiences, he believed that foreign military presence and concerns about large scale civil war were two explanations for the global decline of coups. His experiences were very much in line with my theoretical notions.
In a second interview, I spoke with a retired Lt. Colonel who had served as an operational planner for the US Mission at the UN. He also had several deployments in advisory roles in sub-Saharan Africa and the Balkans. In particular, he discussed how he had had to do peacekeeping planning in the aftermath of the 2012 Malian coup. While the military had stepped down from governmental power, he said one of the challenges was planning knowing that the military could step in again at any time. He clearly highlighted that domestic political violence can alter military incentives especially because militaries and governments assess risk of conflict very differently. This was again in line with arguments made in the dissertation.
Conclusion
This field trip provided me with a treasure trove of valuable information and very much met my expectations as to what I would find. Now that I have completed my archival work, my plan is to incorporate the findings in a number of relevant sections of my dissertation. The information about the military coup cases will be incorporated into a qualitative chapter I have already written. The remaining archival work will go into my theory chapter while the interviews will become a crucial part of the evidence chapter of my international factors section.
1. This is the British equivalent of the United States Military Academy at West Point