REMARKS OF RALPH A. DUNGAN BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON WESTERN HEMISPHERE AFFAIRS OF THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE 24 JUNE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 11, 2006
• Sequence Number: 31
• Publication Date: June 24, 1969
• Content Type: SPEECH

Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
Remarks of Ralph A. Dungan before
the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
24 June 1969
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I am greatly
honored by your invitation to participate in this difficult,
but most important, exploration of United States military
policies and programs in Latin America. I am hopeful and con-
fident that your hearings will be more fruitful in bringing
about change than many others that have been held over the
years.
Before I begin discussion of the specifics, let me make
clear a few of my assumptions or prejudices.
1. I believe that however improbable, incapable, or
wrong-headed we believe a country to be, it has a fundamental
right, with which neither we nor anyone else may legitimately
interfere, to work out its own political, social and economic
destiny. It's a rather old principle which even antedates
our own Declaration of Independence, but it bears remembering
and reiteration as we approach the topic under consideration.
2. The basic thread running through U. S. policy toward
Latin America since the latter days of the Eisenhower Admin-
istration has at least formally--and I emphasize formally--
been favorable to drastic, even radical social change. A
corollary to this policy is that one can expect in the process
of such change instability and even violence, hopefully short
lived.
3. As a democrat (small and large "D"), I believe that
the interests of most men in organized society are protected
best within a legal and constitutional framework which provides
for effective (and periodic) participation in governance by the
population. Conversely any action or policies having the
effect of disturbing, suspending or subverting such processes,
however justified, are self-defeating and contrary to our own
as well as any other country's national interest.
So much for the fundamentals. Let me also enter a dis-
claimer at this point. I do not believe that I have ever
encountered in my governmental service a military man who was
not operating in a manner best calculated to serve the interests
Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
 Approved For Release 2007/92/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
and policies of his country as he saw them or they were laid
out to him. Certainly there are dull and limited men in the
military service as there are in every group, but seldom does
one find venality or purposeful subversion. So when one
criticizes policies, programs or methods it certainly does not
imply personal or group condemnation.
I do not believe that one can evaluate the effect of the
U. S. military presence and its programs in Latin America
without considering, at least briefly, our general military
posture as seen by Latin Americans. I regret very much to say
that I believe that most Latin Americans view the United States
as a major military power committed to using its military force
to arrange the world in such a way as to be most conducive to
its own interests. As the left wing and not so left wing
Latin American sees us, we are an imperialist and militarist
power. This inference is very easy for a person to draw, of
course, when one looks at the very substantial part of our
national budget which is committed to war and the preparation
for war and without doubt in recent years has been influenced
by our seemingly total commitment to the war in Vietnam so
well publicized by the foreign press. There is no shaking the
prevailing Latin conception of the United States as a society
dominated to a very large measure by "The Pentagon." This
perception is widely shared across the political spectrum and
is seen as a threat by some and a source of salvation by others.
Perhaps no single action which the United States has taken,
including the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was so significant in con-
firming the view of the United States as a nation willing and
ready to use its vast military power unilaterally in its own
interest as the unfortunate invasion of the Dominican Republic.
Thus, it seems to me most important to recognize that in
considering the effect of any particular action, program, or
policy under the aegis of the U. S. military in Latin-America,
we must take into account the fact that the Latin American
already sees the United States as a militaristic power disposed
to use that power at will.
Kinds of U. S. Military Presence in Latin America
As the members of the subcommittee know, there are
basically three types of U. S. military presence in Latin
America.
(1) The military missions which are directly attached
to the U. S. Embassy and maintain formal liaison with military
elements within the host government;
Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
 Approved For Release 2007/02/037: CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
(2) The Military Assistance Group whose function it is
to administer the military assistance program and to provide
technical assistance; and
(3) Special military purpose missions usually of a
short term and directed to some special purpose.
In this category of military presence, one would find
the activity of the Army Mapping Service, military sales
missions, visits by high ranking U. S. officers, special
aviation or Naval activities, military sponsored music or
cultural presentations or finally, U. S. military activities
directly related to some military program or interest of the
United States as such. An example of the latter kind of
activity would be requests by the United States military of
certain countries in Latin America to station air-sea rescue
teams in connection with the wasteful MOL (Manned Orbiting
Laboratory) program recently terminated under pressure by
the Congress.
I think it is very important to note that while the
U. S. military or the United States Government sees each of
these programs or activities as having peculiar and legitimate
ends and as separate activities, the Latin Americans, except
those who are fimiliar with our military folkways, see them
as one large military presence constantly probing and seeking
some advantage or another.
The Military Assistance Program
The present day military assistance program is the lineal
descendant of military training missions organized on a service-
to-service basis as far back as the late thirties. Current
programs involve the sale (on generous credit terms) or grant
of military hardware and technical training provided by
resident U. S. military personnel or Mobile Training teams
which are in country for relatively short periods of time to
perform specific training duties.
The objectives of the program from our point of view
(1) To contribute to internal security by providing
material and training to enhance counter-insurgency capability;
(2) To strengthen relations with host country military
and of lower priority since 1961;
Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
 Approved For Release 200710207 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
(3) To enhance Latin American capability to contribute
to hemispheric defense.
From the Latin American military point of view, I believe
that the presence of our military advisors has been tolerated
by and large in order to obtain arms on a grant or cheap credit
basis. As equipment previously furnished to Latin American
countries becomes obsolete and spare parts unobtainable, and
as military aid budgets are cut, interest in U. S. military
assistance missions tends to wane.
I do not believe that our objective of seeking to strengthen
counter-insurgency capability is either valid or successfully
being attained for the following reasons:
(1) If our basic policy is to promote social change,
then to some extent we are promoting instability. And one
man's instability is another's insurgency.
(2) Insurgency is, and by and large has been in Latin
America, a political problem not a problem of military tactics
or equipment. If it is not met with sufficient indigenous
political will, then no amount of training or equipment will
counter it.
(3) Obviously, in some cases our support of so-called
counter-'insurgency forces has served to perpetuate, not
deliberately of course, regimes without broad support or worse.
(4) As so-called Nasserite military regimes emerge--
and this is a subject which deserves attention--our counter-
insurgency efforts may turn out as they have in the past to
be instruments of insurgency.
(5) A commitment to assist local forces in maintaining
internal security inevitably involves our military in a kind
of implicit commitment to insure that internal security is in
fact maintained, even if that involves certain risks for the
U. S. There is an inevitable tendency in any group to have
its efforts crowned with success. Some institutions can
accept compromise or even defeat as a normal outcome. But
this is not so generally with military organizations which are
quite properly oriented toward victory.
This brief speculation is by way of warning that our
commitment to Latin American internal security has within it
the seeds of rapid and uncontrolled escalation especially when
Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
 Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
5-
ready forces are poised for deployment. I must say that there
is an argument to be made for not being in a position to react
quickly.
My basic contention is that the maintenance of civil order
is pre-eminently a function of an indigenous government. It
is a matter which we should stay out of.
How we got into the business is interesting in itself.
To vastly oversimplify, I believe that our present preoccupation
with counter insurgency as the major thrust of U. S. military
aid policy is nothing more than an incomplete evolution of an
intention on the part of the Kennedy Administration to eventually
disengage from significant military activity in Latin America.
You will recall that in an attempt to get away from tanks,
planes and ships allowable under the hemispheric defense
concept of the fifties, President Kennedy refocused the military
assistance effort on counter insurgency and civic action. This
weaning away from major armaments was partly a reflection of
Washington's perception of the security problem as it existed
at the time but partly a conviction that we ought to encourage
a concentration on the developmental problem as the root cause
of instability. Thus was born civic action which had such a
highly publicized but minor and short-lived impact.
But the basic defect in the stability-counter insurgency
tactic as perceived by the U. S. military generally is that
somehow stability is an end in itself and that it matters little
in whose hands or under what conditions stability exists--or
what means are used to obtain it. Again, this is not to posit
inhumane or undemocratic attitudes or values to our military.
The problem is that the prevailing mode of action of the military
is pragmatic, and neutral from the standpoint of value. Military
men are not amoral and valueless, on the contrary. But their
approach tends to be objective oriented and short term in
outlook.
The Direction and Supervision of Overseas Military Activity
This leads to a comment which does not relate directly to
the question of either policies or programs. As I see it, one
of the principal reasons why our peacetime military efforts in
Latin America and elsewhere around the world have been counter-
productive--even disastrous--is the system of direction and
operational control--emphasis on operational control and
supervision from Washington.
Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
 Approved For Release 2007/02/07: CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
The prevailing view of the military side of the Pentagon,
seldom made explicit, is that the implementation of certain
aspects of U. S. policy is assigned to various agencies
operating overseas. This conception holds that it is the
agency responsible for goal achievement that has the choice
of means and timing. Thus, for example, even though hemis-
pheric defense was a very low priority objective in Latin
America in the early 60's, that period was marked by constant
efforts on the part of or with the willing collaboration of
U. S. military personnel to expand major weapons procurement.
For instance, there was a mission dispatched to South America
to drum up sales of the C-130 which at that time was going at
about $5 million a copy with spares. This was justified,
believe it or not, under the internal security rubric. I
suspect that the real reason was to keep the production line
going in Georgia.
Activities are undertaken, missions dispatched, plans
concocted by any number of officers and elements in the line
of command, many of which are never examined at a sufficiently
informed and authoritative level to insure internal consistency.
The point is that while there is adequate authority vested
in the Ambassador in the field to supervise and direct activities
of constituent elements of the overseas missions, there is no
comparable mechanism at the Washington level.
In all candor, I must say that this is very largely due
to a strong disinclination on the part of even the highest
authorities in the Department of State to assume any res-
ponsibility for supervision of operational programs. This,
I believe, is based on the mistaken notion that policy papers
and traditional diplomacy are the heart of the matter. However
important, I seriously doubt whether they ever were that
important. But in contemporary situations, what is said and
done and by whom in the field of foreign affairs, is vastly
more important than the nuance of a policy paper.
When President Johnson appointed General Maxwell Taylor
to look into the direction and organization of foreign affairs
in 1965, I think his purpose was to clearly define where oper-
ational authority and direction in the field of foreign affairs
should reside. General Taylor's recommendations, later em-
bodied in a NSAM, were most perceptive and clear. But their
thrust was effectively neutralized by the oldest of bureaucratic
dodges--the construction of a plethora of committees. Now
these too have been dismantled and no doubt this is for the
best.
Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
 Approved For Release 2007/0-210-7 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
But the fact remains that there is no one in Washington
really charged with seeing to it that programs operated by
various agencies really do serve a defined purpose and are
not merely the result of an interpretation of one or another
policy developed in some executive agency with some overseas
interest.
The annals are full of stories illustrating this point
and they range from those which have the most serious consequences
to those which merely impede or make more difficult the attain-
ment of our principal objectives.
To some degree, I understand, military missions in Latin
America have been streamlined after years of pressure and
because of budget austerity imposed by Vietnam. I hope this
trend continues, not only because these large missions are
costly far out of proportion to their utility, but because
they have so often been counter-productive from a political
point of view.
Indeed, if there is any valid generalization to be made
about U. S. military policies and programs in Latin America,
it is that, on the whole, they have been disastrous from a
political point of view, whatever the intentions of the
Government or those directly involved.
They have been based on false military and political
assumptions and significant amounts of time and political
capital have been expended to force a kind of ritual accept-
ance of our preconceived notions. For instance, based on a
false or outmoded conception of external threat, we stage an
anti-submarine exercise called UNITAS, involving U. S. and Latin
Navies. This exercise is designed to demonstrate that there is
solidarity if it ever came to war and that, indeed, there is
real naval anti-submarine capability.
Both propositions are false and each year there are,
elaborate preparations, large political hub-bub and expenditures
by Latin Navies on fuel and ammunition which they can ill afford.
In short, the whole affair is a farce.
But the important point is that it costs us heavily
politically and it demonstrates more forcefully than any policy
paper that we encourage the growth of substantial naval capability
with no reference to the implications for other policies directed
toward the conservative and allocation of resources for economic
and social development.
Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
 Approved For Release 2007/02J0-7 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
But some speculation about the future may be more productive
than to rake over the past, the mistakes of which have been docu-
mented rather well by others.
The Future
The Latin American military man of the future, at least in
the more mature and larger countries, is likely to be less con-
cerned about support and loyalty to any particular class of
society. He is also less likely to be attached to the preserva-
tion of any pre-existing social or political system and more
likely to adapt to popular and even radical national ideologies,
partly because he more readily identifies with them and partly
in order to preserve a position for himself and his service or
social group in the emerging power structure.
Thus, the basic political assumption of our military in the
past is no longer true -- that the military in Latin America are
a good bet to preserve stability -- that is, the status quo.
While it is still too early to judge, recent events in Peru seem
to support this speculation.
Moreover, the notion that a close relation between U. S.
military professionals and Latin American military is the best
way in which to maintain contact with this important sector of
Latin society is unsound. I believe that not a few of our diffi-
culties in the past have related to the fact that we have tended
to rely on our own military personnel as channels of communication
to Latin American military leaders.
All of this is by way of saying that we have dealt program-
matically and conceptually in the past as if the Latin American
military establishments have the basic characteristics which we
assume of our own - that is, a professional cadre subject to
civil constitutional authority. This is not a fact. The military
in Latin America have an independent, albeit shifting, political
role. It is a mistake to believe that we can relate creatively
to it if we insist in pretending that somehow it is, or can be
transformed into, our quite theoretical conception of the role
of the military in a constitutional democracy.
These final observations, Mr. Chairman, will sum up my remarks.
1) Based as it is on a host of faulty assumptions
about the nature of the security threat, the political
characteristics of Latin American society, etc., our
present method of relating to the military society should
be abandoned immediately. This means an immediate end to
our military assistance program and the large missions which
are justified by it.
Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
 Approved For Release 2007/0240)7-: CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1
2) I suggest immediate curtailment if not abandonment
of joint military exercises with the Latin American countries.
They generally have had a negative political value and, being
based on an unsound strategic concept, have almost no military
utility.
3) Continue to maintain friendly relations with the
military in Latin America as we would with any other social
or political group through appropriate members of the
Ambassador's staff - I suggest an office of Defense Attache'
with no direct relations with any U. S. military entity, at
least for command purposes.
4) Continue to entertain requests for military hardware
and short-term training, but only if requested by the host
government through the Ambassador. It is not feasible or
desirable to just eliminate armaments in Latin America. It
is possible to reduce the parties to the negotiation and
possibly to put the matter of armaments on the political
rather than the technical level where they have tended to
be.
5) The Executive Branch and, specifically, the State
Department have for too many years resisted becoming the
executive agent of U. S. foreign operations. As a result,
foreign operations have become the tail wagging the foreign
policy dog. Several Presidents have recognized the problem
but have thus far only treated the symptoms of the problem
by providing stronger coordination at the field level through
the Ambassador. What is needed is a radical restructuring of
the machinery of foreign affairs and most especially the will
to make the machinery work.
6) And finally, Mr. Chairman, I reiterate my general
plea for a reassessment of our own choice of means; for
the abandonment of a policy in Latin America in which we
impose practically no restraints on the use of force in
the attainment of our own objectives. I submit that if
there is a "problem" of militarism in the Latin American
countries, we bear a heavy burden for its existence.
Approved For Release 2007/02/07 : CIA-RDP71B00364R000200010031-1