ASSISTANCE TO LATIN AMERICA

From the time that it was first proposed to extend the military assistance program to Latin America in 1951 some members of the Senate and House of Representatives have voiced their objections to the proposals. In the beginning they sought to prevent the inauguration of the program, and in the intervening years they have attempted to eliminate it or to reduce it in size and scope. In their opposition they questioned the efficacy of the program as an hemispheric defense vehicle in its early years and throughout the period they have maintained that the matériel made available through the program could be used by dictators or others to perpetuate their rule and thus to thwart the will of the people. Failing to prevent the inauguration of the program, they have hedged it around with various safeguards designed to restrict the use of granted matériel to the specific purposes outlined in the presentations to Congress.

In the hearings on the initial proposal in 1951 Senator Smith of New Jersey asked "How will we be protected against their using this equipment in a row amongst themselves?" Pursuing the topic, he queried

pot on the theory that they may have a problem of

"I

their own of internal self-defense against one of their neighbors?" He concluded by asking of Secretary Miller: "Do you think they have the real will to unite in defense against an outsider?" In the same hearing Senator Hickenlooper raised the question: wondered if there is any South-American country that is not only paying its share for its own particular segment of defense, but is contributing anything materially to the common defense, over and above their own security."l

In the hearings on 3 April 1952, Senator Smith subjected the Administration's proposals to a critical examination. Referring to a request for a $62,000,000 appropriation for FY 1953, he asked: "Are we asking them to take our money or are they coming to us with their hat in their hand and begging us for it?" Later, in commenting on the explanation that funds for FY 1954 and later years would be needed only for the maintenance of equipment made available in FY's 1952 and 1953,

Senator Smith declared:

"That is the same line they

capital equipment, then it is only maintenance. "2

In May 1956 during the FY 1957 hearings, Senator Fulbright asked some searching questions of Assistant Secretary of State Henry F. Holland on the need for the proposed $35,500,000 appropriation for Latin American military aid. Referring to the sum proposed, Senator Fulbright asked: "Do you anticipate any invasion of Latin America by the Communists?" He then asked if there was "any justification for $35 million in this hemisphere for military aid, as against $200,000 for education." Continuing, he added: "I

know what the military representatives are going to say. I have already talked to them and know their responses, and there is no end to what the military can take. They would take $70 million if we would give it to them, and they could spend it.

you

are requesting $35 million for military aid and I 1,3

really do not see any excuse for it. Pursuing

his line of questioning, Fulbright declared:

"But

there is all the difference in the world, it seems to

me, between what we are doing to develop the

inter-continental missile, if you like, or the Strategic

These

Air Force, and putting a few dollars in more or less
obsolescent arms in Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala.
small amounts which, if useful at all, are useful only

to local regimes to keep in power or fight their neighbors
who have only the same kind of arms, but utterly useless
in fighting Russia.
It is fantastic to me that

0

it is of any benefit to anybody to put in a few arms

into any of these countries, and Russia is not going to

move in by arms. If they move at all, it will be

on our defense. It is that we just fritter it away, just a little dab here and there. I do not see any connection between the objective we are after and what this kind of program does. It has nothing to do with the maintaining of a powerful defense position.

those are entirely two different questions.

I think

In Senate hearings in 1958 Senator Long questioned

the advisability of supplying small arms to Latin American

nations, adding: "Of course, small arms are just the

things they need against their own revolutionary forces.

might be more useful for defending their country than
supplying them machine guns with which to kill their
own people.
I do not see that we are helping
ourselves, and it seems to me in some respects we are

D

hurting our cause, particularly before the world, when we start giving arms to support some dictator who would not be in a position to maintain himself, let's say whose government could not maintain itself if we

decided to oppose him vigorously.

In other words,

my theory is that you people say, 'Here is a man who is

Referring to an admission by Mansfield Sprague,

the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, that U. S. military assistance, in U.S. spite of a contrary policy, sometimes had, in effect, resulted in the prevention of free elections or in the maintenance of someone in power, Senator Humphrey, in May 1959, declared: "Now on this basis it seems somewhat reasonable to question the consistency of

increasing our military assistance program to Latin

America and the broader goals of American foreign policy, 1,7 particularly in the Western Hemisphere.