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

84. Report Prepared by the Policy Planning Council⁰

Washington, undated.

US MILITARY AID POLICY TOWARD NON-NATO COUNTRIES

1. Development of a clear concept of the rationale and purpose of US external military aid programs has been hampered by a widespread disposition to justify military aid primarily on grounds that it should contribute—more or less directly—to strengthening the military posture of the United States. Experience since World War II, however, has shown that US military aid also serves a variety of non-military purposes and that even the purely military returns vary widely in nature and amount from country to country. This confusion about the purpose of military aid and the impossibility of laying down broad criteria applicable to a world-wide military aid program has caused difficulty not only with Congress but in the formulation and administration of military aid.

2. Military aid does and should serve a variety of purposes. The more important ones are listed below and demonstrate clearly that (a) many are non-military; (b) few if any have general application; most are important in some areas and unimportant or inapplicable in others; and (c) their importance in different areas changes with changing military and political conditions. These variously valid purposes are to:

(1) Assist the US to deter or meet overt Bloc aggression;

(2) Provide quid pro quo for the right to maintain US bases;

(3) Develop facilities in the recipient nation for possible use by US forces in the event of local aggression;

(4) Assist a country to cope with Bloc-inspired subversion, disorder, or guerrilla activity;

(5) Assist in maintaining internal security;

(6) Preserve the territorial integrity of the recipient nation against its neighbors;

(7) Deter recipient nations from seeking military aid from the Bloc or other undesirable sources, or balance the effects of such aid;

(8) Maintain pro-US regimes;

(9) Assist in assuring a pro-US indoctrination in local military groups;

(10) Support nation-building activities.

3. One principle that is generally valid with regard to military aid is that we should tailor the aid to serve, as well as possible, as many as possible of the purposes that are valid at the particular time and place. Thus for example even if an aid program is initiated as quid pro quo for base rights, we should seek to have it serve other constructive purposes, such as nation-building, not just tickle the vanity of the recipients.

4. Non-NATO recipients of US military aid by and large now fall into three general categories:¹

(a) those requiring assistance for military forces to meet a demonstrable military threat;

(b) those requiring military assistance to meet threats of subversion, guerrilla activity, or local aggression;

(c) those having no demonstrable military requirement for assist-ance but receiving military aid largely for political or other reasons such as quid pro quo for base rights.

5. The problems with regard to administering military aid programs for countries in category (a) are largely military ones once the decision has been made regarding the desired level of indigenous forces it is in the US interest to support. However, the decision which places a given country in category (a) is not always a purely military or strategic one. For example, Pakistan has been receiving military assistance with the aim of building a force capable of contributing to the defense of Pakistan against Bloc aggression. It might well be asked, however, whether the limited contribution even US-supported Pakistani forces could make toward coping with Bloc aggression compensates for the drain on Pakistani resources which could otherwise be devoted to economic development and for the political problems US military aid to Pakistan has caused with India and Afghanistan. In short, military criteria should not be the only basis for deciding what kind of a military aid program in a given country best serves US interest.

6. This is clearly even more true in the case of countries falling in categories (b) and (c). Overemphasis on conventional military criteria has in part been responsible for the comparative neglect in US military assistance programs of the need for aiding non-NATO nations to cope with the whole range of internal security problems including subversion, internal disorders, and guerrilla activity. Internal security, as thus defined, is rapidly becoming a major problem for many non-NATO nations and hence for the US. In most areas, political and economic meas-ures are necessary for a permanent solution of the causes of internal security; hence the military aspects of an aid program must be dovetailed with them, and often be subordinate to them.

7. Finally, there are countries in category (c) which for a variety of non-military reasons are receiving or should receive military aid. In these cases, the type of military aid given should be determined almost exclusively by political considerations.

8. Thus, in all cases where purely military requirements, from the US point of view, are not overriding or are subordinate to political requirements, US military assistance programs should be geared primarily to achieving US economic, social and political objectives in a given country. These objectives will vary, of course, from country to country, but in general this approach to military assistance should make for greater efficiency in the use of military aid, not only to improve internal security capabilities, but, for example, to indoctrinate military personnel along lines favorable to US interests and assist nation-building activities through the construction of roads, harbors, etc., and the training of labor in useful civilian skills.

9. If US military assistance programs are going to achieve maximum results politically as well as militarily, it will be necessary to make some changes in the administrative arrangements under which these programs are now formulated and implemented in order to achieve closer cooperation between State and Defense. It is not recommended that any type of new joint agency be established. Indeed, despite the substantial and increasing political content of military aid programs, primary responsibility for them should remain with Defense. The desired goal could perhaps best be achieved by assigning a few State officers to work on an integrated basis in Defense. They would not be expected to speak officially for State or to be a substitute for the liaison that now takes place at various levels between State and Defense on military assistance programs. Their primary contribution would be to bring their experience in political and economic affairs to bear at an early stage on the formulation and administration of military assistance programs, in a way that is virtually impossible within existing bureaucratic liaison machinery between the two Departments. Their participation in the preparation and implementation of military assistance programs would, at the very least, assure that political and economic, as well as military, goals were being given constant and fruitful attention.

0. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 740.5-MSP/1-1961. Secret. Drafted by William O. Webb (S/P) on January 19. Forwarded to Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Raymond A. Hare under cover of a January 19 memorandum from George A. Morgan, which is attached to the source text. Morgan indicated in his memorandum that, following Hare’s oral request, the Policy Planning Council “has for some months been analyzing the problem of the effectiveness and optimum goals of US external military aid policies and programs,” and this paper represented its general conclusions.
1. Some countries fall into more than one category. [Footnote in the source text.]