what’s the meaning of ”than to”

Question

I was reading a book and came across the following piece of text:

each new affiliate that joined after the attack was, to a greater or lesser extent, mounting an insurgency in its home region, and each was allocating far greater resources to such battles than to striking international targets.

So, what’s the meaning of the ”than to”? What are the rules for using it? Does it mean the same as ”...and each was allocating far greater resources to such battles rather than striking international targets.”

Or is it correct to say ”I would rather end this on good terms than to fight and hate each other”

Answer 1

"than to" is not special here.

each was allocating far greater resources to such battles than to striking international targets.

The correct way to parse this has each "to" as a preposition modifying "allocating", and they are parallel:

each was allocating far greater resources (to such battles) than (to striking international targets).

You could rewrite it this way to be more clear:

each was allocating far greater resources to such battles than they were allocating to striking international targets.

Answer 2

Your first interpretation is correct. The quote is stating the FACT that more resources are being poured into the insurgency, and a lesser amount of resources are being poured into “striking international targets”.

Your second interpretation is incorrect. By saying, the affiliates “would rather end this on good terms than to fight and hate on each other,” implies that what happened (described in the first interpretation) was an outcome of preference.

Based on the context of the quote, it cannot be determined if the outcome was PLANNED beforehand that more resources would be poured into the insurgency, or if it ended up that way over time.