Military ties built early on junior officers yield later intelligence and arms procurement influence.

Evidence

But like most gifts, these come with obligations and a certain degree of expected loyalty. The obligation-laden relationships can later bear fruit for U.S. military leaders—when, for example, they want to gain valuable intelligence from their high-ranking counterparts, or to shape decisions about another country’s arms purchases or military policy. “You identify officers and senior NCOs [noncommissioned officers],” the former Bush administration official Ray DuBois explained to me, “and you make friends with them when they are sergeants and captains … so when they are colonels and generals you have relationships with them.” These relationships, DuBois continued, “are sources of information,” and “you may be able to influence the country’s procurement policies so they will buy U.S. equipment.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1013

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s broader thesis on how dependence is cultivated; also parallels corporate relationship-building and ‘gift’ economies analyzed in Milgrom/Roberts institutional work.