Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume IX, Foreign Economic Policy

109. Report Prepared by Charles Burton Marshall⁰

Washington, May 17, 1961.

MILITARY ASSISTANCE FOR THE 1960’S

[Here follow Parts I-V (pp. 1-45 of the source text). The parts are entitled: I, Military Assistance in Relation to National Aims; II, Military Assistance in Areas Subject Primarily to Threat of Internal Aggression; III, Military Assistance in Areas Under Internal and External Threat; IV, Military Assistance in the NATO Area; and V, Perspectives on Military Assistance.]

VI. Recommendations

100. The exigent questions about military assistance are best understood in relation to the whole situation now confronting the United States. However, necessary, empirical examination of needs in particular areas gives little clue to the answers. The range of opportunity for useful accomplishments is great and varied. The United States might resolve its will at any one of a number of levels of endeavor. Yet it cannot truly discover its will by poring over figures. It should do so by taking counsel of its aims and the measures of the danger it is in.

101. To put it moderately, that danger is high. The resolution of the United States has increasingly come into question. Adversary forces appear to have the initiative in many sectors. The exigency of the situation has been almost without exception among those consulted during the preparatory stages of this report. No amount of assurances exchanged among themselves, no amount of repetition to others of the firmness of our resolution, can suffice to redress the danger. The essential is to use opportunity—and to create opportunity—to demonstrate resolution by concrete commitments and actions.

102. Military assistance is a channel of action appropriate for that purpose. It is then to be used at the nation’s initiative, without requiring concurrence of others. A demonstration now of the intention of the United States not just to hold a line but to push on to required achievements in joint security will serve the United States well. It can stir imagination and heart among those allied with the United States, reassure those under the pressure of uncertainty, and elicit complementary actions.

103. The important thing now is to use military assistance to begin far-reaching programs of force improvement stretching over a reasonably calculable future—say, six years. Such programs are relevant to needs consonant with the purposes of the United States in each of the areas considered in this report.

104. It would overtax the prophetic abilities on call to attempt to project the requirements called for over such a span. The various estimates scanned are too widely variant to permit exactitude. The principal variables in mind in stating this reservation are the following:

a. The level of modernization requiring to be undertaken in NATO.

b. The level of requirements for nuclear weapons in NATO and the related transferability to conventional capabilities of funds now allocated for nuclear capabilities in NATO.

c. The extent of complementarity likely to be found necessary as plans to this purpose develop in respect to meshing indigenous forces with United States forces in countries subject to external threat as well as internal threat.

d. The extent of military civic action programs likely to be found feasible in the above countries and those singly subject to internal threat.

105. In view of this report, a sum in the magnitude of three quarters of a billion to one billion dollars in addition to the authorization already requested is in order in fiscal year 1962.

106. On a conservative basis, subsequent annual requirements signally less than those recommended herein for authorization and appropriation for fiscal year 1962 scarcely seem likely. A reasonable premise is that about half of the cumulative increments over the period would go to the stimulus of force improvements for NATO.

107. Finally, military assistance should be carried on in consonance with the views developed in the body of this report.

0. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 700.5-MSP/5-2361. Secret. Attached to the source text is a May 23 memorandum from Marshall to Secretary Rusk, which indicated that the report was completed on May 17 and recommended that it be discussed “in a meeting similar to the one of February 25 which gave rise to it.”