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IR conference to examine outcomes of military-to-military contacts
By David J. Craig
The United States has leveraged influence in the affairs of weaker nations
for decades by providing training to foreign armies in regions such as
Latin America. The objective of these military contacts, say proponents,
is not simply to address U.S. security concerns, but also to transmit
American values such as democracy and respect for human rights.
But does the U.S. military achieve such noble goals, or does it encourage
abuses of power and human rights violations in fledgling nations? That
question will be addressed at a conference hosted by the BU Center for
International Relations, entitled Mil-to-Mil: Assessing U.S. National
Security Cooperation Strategies, on November 13 and 14 at the School of
Management, 595 Commonwealth Ave. Participants will include Andrew Bacevich,
retired U.S. Army General Fred Woerner, and David Scott Palmer, all CAS
professors of international relations, as well as Andrew Hoehn, the U.S.
deputy assistant secretary of defense, U.S. Department of State officials
Robert McGarity and Douglas Maybarduk, and several Latin American military
officers and scholars of the region. The conference, which is free and
open to the public, is funded by the Strategic Studies Institute of the
U.S. Army War College and the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee.
“Mil-to-mil contacts can include foreign military officers attending
U.S. war colleges, sending U.S. Special Forces to train foreign units
in particular tactics or the use of equipment, or senior officers visiting
the officers of other nations and vice versa,” says Bacevich, who
directs the Center for International Relations. “Thousands of these
mil-to-mil contacts happen every year, involving dozens of countries around
the world.
“The United States takes part in these exchanges because they can
help interoperability between nations in case we’re ever in a military
coalition with them, because it’s good for our people to learn about
the military cultures of other countries, and because we think being on
friendly terms with another nation’s generals will lead to increased
U.S. influence,” he continues. “But we also contend that we
convey to other nations values like military professionalism, respect
for human rights, respect for civilian control, and belief in democracy.”
However, the notion that the U.S. military imprints positive values on
other nations “has long been asserted, but never demonstrated,”
Bacevich says, and in recent years there has been mounting criticism from
American activists and journalists about the efficacy of such contacts.
“There is a huge debate because some people say that just the reverse
is true: that we transmit negative values, and this has particularly been
the case with Latin America,” he says. “They assert that foreign
armies train with us and then return home and engage in torture or massive
human rights violations.”
Of course, the military establishment “absolutely denies that,”
Bacevich continues, “and policy makers tend to be very enthusiastic
about these contacts. They tend to assume that the policy outcomes are
positive. But we’ve never really run the facts to ground and determined
whether positive values are transmitted or if perhaps negative values
are transmitted. What we’re doing in this conference is taking a
detached, comprehensive view of military-to-military programs to get some
sense of whether or not any values are being passed, and what the policy
outcomes of these contacts are.”
The conference will include the presentation of four studies assessing
the effects of U.S. military contacts with Guatemala, Colombia, Nicaragua,
and El Salvador. These studies were commissioned by the Center for International
Relations, which has received an offer to publish them as a collection
of essays, Bacevich says. “These are four case studies done by highly
respected specialists on Latin American security issues,” he explains.
“They deal with some of the most contentious cases of U.S. relations
in Latin America. For instance, the Guatemalan military has clearly been
a massive violator of human rights, and yet we have had these mil-to-mil
relations with them on and off, going back quite a long time. The data
may show that certain types of military contacts are useful and have positive
results, and some don’t. So potentially, it might help us reshape
mil-to-mil programs.”
For more information about the conference, visit www.bu.edu/ir/cir.html. To attend, please RSVP to Jain Yu at 358-0195.
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8 November 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations