What inspires a country to offer military assistance to another?

Military Assistance as Political Gimmickry? The case of Britain and the newly federated United Arab Emirates after 1971

So basically…

Military assistance is a mainstay feature of foreign and defence policy activity of many major world powers today, with the goal of building the recipient nation’s military capacity for enhanced stability. Or so it seemed.

The motives for deploying advisors and trainers abroad may well originate at a domestic level and possibly to keep the offering country’s political opponents happy.

This was the case in the 1971-75 British military assistance offered to the UAE. Researchers have determined that Britain was not acting out of interest to the newly independent UAE, but rather its own short-term domestic political interest. The Conservative Party government at the time wasn’t even acting against the Labour Party’s stance; the elected Tories reversed their promise to oppose Labour’s decision to withdraw from the Middle East. Rather, it was intra-party politics that played a large role in the offering of military assistance.

In short, a ‘political gimmick’.

 Interested? You can read more here.