New regimes often face intense power consolidation challenges. This article examines how US military aid influences this dynamic, using instrumental variables for aid levels and proxies measuring regime vulnerability.

### Data & Methods

An instrument for U.S. military aid is combined with measures of regime fragility to analyze effects across different political systems.

### Key Findings

Military support increases anti-regime violence in unstable new democracies AND personalist autocracies, but has no impact on established non-personalist states.

### Why It Matters

The findings reveal a crucial mechanism: aid creates moral hazard that encourages exclusionary power consolidation. This fundamentally reshapes our understanding of external military intervention's domestic consequences.