Buying Allies: Payment Practices in Multilateral Military Coalition-Building

From the Korean War to the Gulf War, many states have been paid to join multilateral military coalitions. How are state-to-state payments distributed in an allied military operation? Payments are largely covered by “pivotal states”—the ones that care the most about an operation’s success. Such payments take the form of deployment subsidies and political side deals to attract critical contributors to the mission.