Copies of this report are available for $1.50 each, or 50 cents each for orders of 20 or more, from the Center for International Policy. Request copies by e-mail at cip@ciponline.org .

December, 1998

Just the Facts:

A quick tour of U.S. defense and security assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean

By Adam Isacson and Joy Olson

For at least a century, the United States has heavily aided the security forces of Latin America and the Caribbean. U.S. military aid and training programs reached their high-water mark during the cold war, when Washington viewed the region's often repressive and corrupt armed forces as a bulwark against Soviet communism. When the cold war ended, however, the closeness and significance of the U.S. military relationship with the region did not.

In fact, the U.S. relationship with Latin America's militaries is quite strong, according to a year-long study carried out by the Center for International Policy and the Latin America Working Group. What has changed since the cold war is the rationale for cooperation and the ability of Congress and the public to oversee military cooperation programs.

Joint training: The map illustrates the 214 visits that U.S. Special Forces paid to Latin America to train with the region's security forces during 1998. These deployments -- which include both "JCETs" and counternarcotics training -- are just one example of many inter-military cooperation programs that the United States carries out in the hemisphere.

It is difficult to grasp the entire extent of today's security assistance to the region, as aid and training are fragmented across a welter of programs and initiatives. Foreign military programs go through many channels within the U.S. government, governed by different laws, carried out by different bureaucracies, overseen by different offices within Congress, and publicized with different degrees of openness. The picture has grown still more complex in the 1990s. As the U.S. government shifts its security focus in the hemisphere toward counternarcotics, it is involving new agencies and creating new assistance programs.

"Traditional" foreign aid programs and Defense Department programs

We can best appreciate the complexity of today’s defense and security programs in the hemisphere by taking a quick "tour" of the many programs used to channel aid. We will look first at programs governed by the United States’ traditional foreign aid legislation, then at programs that the Defense Department carries out on its own.

This division of security-assistance programs according to funding legislation is more than just legalistic hair-splitting. As the following "tour" will demonstrate, aid and training are increasingly being funded through the defense budget. This change may weaken citizens’ ability to supervise and oversee the U.S.-Latin American military relationship.

Each year, Congress approves the national budget by passing separate funding bills for different functions. Most military and police programs today are funded through two such bills: the Foreign Operations appropriation — the "foreign aid bill" that governs military and economic aid — and legislation governing the Defense Department’s budget.

Until relatively recently, the foreign aid bill accounted for nearly all significant military assistance. The defense budget did not pay the tuition bills of foreign military trainees, and did not fund shipments of weapons and other military equipment. The defense budget paid to keep the doors open at overseas bases and training facilities like the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, as well as training exercises and operations of the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom), the "regional command" charged with protecting U.S. interests in Latin America and the Caribbean. Arms transfers and training were the exclusive purview of the Foreign Operations legislation.

This arrangement was good for oversight, as the unpopularity of foreign aid in the United States guarantees that the Foreign Operations bill receives close scrutiny every year. The two regularly amended laws governing the programs in the foreign aid budget bill — known as the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA, first passed in 1961) and the Arms Export Control Act (AECA, 1968) — are packed with reporting and notification requirements, as well as with restrictions on which countries can or cannot receive security assistance.

The foreign aid bill, however, is funding a decreasing portion of U.S. defense and security assistance to the region. Aid is flowing as well through the Defense Department budget, which carries far fewer restrictions and notification requirements for its programs with Latin America. As we shall see, this change carries serious implications for citizens' ability to monitor and influence the U.S.-Latin American military relationship.

Programs in the foreign aid bill

Our tour begins with an explanation of the "traditional" security assistance programs funded through the foreign aid bill. Information about these programs is relatively easy to obtain; the State Department, which is ultimately responsible for them, is required to inform Congress about their activities in its yearly budget request and several other well-distributed reports.

The yearly Foreign Operations bill also includes conditions and restrictions which can prevent a foreign military from receiving assistance through these programs. Some well-known restrictions include the yearly drug-certification process, which cuts off aid to countries perceived as uncooperative in the drug war, and the "Leahy Amendment," which stops the flow of assistance to foreign military units facing credible allegations of human rights abuses. The foreign aid bill may also single out a particular country as ineligible for certain forms of military aid, as has been the case with Guatemala for the past several years.

Arms transfers

The Foreign Assistance Act and Arms Export Control Act govern several programs and funding mechanisms that allow U.S. weapons to be sold, given away or leased.

The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program is the main channel through which the U.S. government sells weapons directly to other governments. A country buying weapons through FMS does not deal directly with the company that makes them. The U.S. Defense Department serves as an intermediary, buying the weapons from the manufacturer, delivering them to the customer government, and often providing maintenance and training. According to U.S. government estimates, in 1998 the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean will purchase weapons, training and defense services valued at about $163 million through the FMS program.

Sales of high-tech weapons to the region (such as advanced fighter aircraft), which are now possible with the mid-1997 lifting of a twenty-year-old "ban," would most likely be carried out through the FMS program.

Countries purchasing weapons from U.S. companies without a government intermediary choose the Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) program. The State Department must approve DCS sales by issuing a license; according to the department's past estimates, roughly half of approved sales usually end up being completed. However, State does not track completed sales, so there is no way to be certain how many sales go forward. In 1997, DCS licenses valued at about $1.05 billion were approved for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Occasionally, the United States foots the bill for arms sales. The Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program uses grants or loans to pay for other countries' FMS purchases (and, less frequently, DCS purchases). While this program was the largest conduit for military aid to Central America during the 1980s, the region has received almost no new FMF in the past few years.

The U.S. government may also transfer weapons through a mechanism called an "emergency drawdown." The Foreign Assistance Act authorizes the President to take weapons, training or services from the government's existing arsenal or budget to meet "unforeseen emergencies." Narcotics trafficking, according to the law, is an emergency that may justify a drawdown; a maximum of $75 million per year may be taken from the Defense Department and shipped overseas as counternarcotics assistance under this category. Congress is not empowered to approve or disapprove drawdowns, though it must be notified of them fifteen days in advance. In September 1998, the Clinton administration ordered a $75 million drawdown for several countries, as indicated in the following table.

The Excess Defense Articles (EDA) program allows the U.S. government to transfer surplus military equipment defense articles no longer needed by the armed forces to foreign security forces. While most EDA are given away, some are sold at heavily-discounted prices. Latin American countries were offered free excess articles valued at over $26 million (originally valued at $87 million) in 1997, most to Argentina and Mexico. As the only country in the hemisphere to have gained a largely symbolic "Major Non-NATO Ally Status," Argentina is given privileged access to more desirable excess articles. During 1996 and 1997, Mexico received 73 UH-1H "Huey" helicopters from the United States 53 via a drawdown and 20 through the EDA program.

Training

International Military Education and Training (IMET) a sort of "scholarship" program for foreign security forces is the main mechanism for funding military training through the foreign aid bill. IMET funding allows students from over 110 countries worldwide to take courses at approximately 150 military training institutions (including the School of the Americas, discussed below). In some cases, IMET pays for visits by U.S. military training teams (MTTs), groups of instructors assigned to teach courses overseas. About 20 percent of IMET funding goes to a subset of the program known as "expanded IMET" or "E-IMET." E-IMET pays for courses in non-combat topics (law enforcement, defense resource management, civil-military relations) and are open to some foreign civilians. Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to receive IMET funding valued at $10.25 million in 1998.

Counternarcotics

The State Department is legally considered the "lead agency" for international drug control policy. Its Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) funds and manages the International Narcotics Control (INC) program, which offers aid to the governments and security forces of countries in which drugs are produced or transported. The INC program can pay for a wide variety of activities, among them crop- substitution efforts, fumigation programs, judicial reform, or arms transfers and training for militaries and police forces. Military and police aid make up the majority of INC assistance region-wide. INC is a large and rapidly growing program: in 1998, it is expected to spend over $181 million on activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, with about $128 million slated for military and police assistance.

In Colombia, the INC program pays for an extensive aerial coca fumigation program. U.S. contract pilots, flying U.S. government-owned planes, spray herbicides over Colombian coca fields most of them rebel-controlled while escorted by Colombian police and military aircraft.

The "Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act," legislation enacted by Congress in October 1998, would increase the INC program's budget by about $225 million between 1999 and 2001. $201.25 million of this amount would go to buy new or upgraded hardware including six UH-60 "Blackhawk" helicopters for the Colombian National Police (CNP). During the first half of 1998, Republicans in the House had fought bitterly to transfer three Blackhawks to the CNP through the INC program. The State Department resisted, however, claiming that the helicopters were a poor use of limited resources.

Defense Department programs

Though its budget is legally separate from the "traditional" foreign aid process, the Pentagon has always used some of its own resources for cooperation with Latin American security forces. U.S. military bases, regular joint exercises, and extensive deployments of U.S. troops, among other activities, have long maintained steady contact with the region's militaries while transferring advice and skills.

Because they make up a tiny sliver of the Pentagon's enormous budget, the department's military assistance activities in Latin America undergo far less congressional scrutiny than do traditional foreign aid programs. Defense budget aid carries fewer conditions which would prevent abusive militaries or units from receiving assistance. These programs also have fewer reporting requirements, making information about the Defense Department's activities in the region more difficult to obtain.

Pentagon counternarcotics programs

Until recently, the defense budget did not fund foreign military training or transfers of military equipment. These activities were governed solely by the foreign aid bill, with its numerous conditions and notification requirements. While security assistance through the foreign aid bill has decreased during the 1990s, Defense Department-funded programs have grown markedly, expanding to include some training and equipment-transfer activities.

The drug war explains much of this re-channeling of assistance. In 1989, Congress made the Defense Department the government's "lead agency" for overseas narcotics interdiction. In 1991, the U.S. military's counter-drug role was expanded still further by a short-term provision in that year's defense budget authorization law. Known as "Section 1004," this provision allows the Pentagon to use its own funds to train foreign militaries and police, as well as to transfer some equipment, as long as it can be claimed to be for counternarcotics.

These programs closely resemble much aid provided through traditional foreign aid channels, though they are subject to far less oversight. The law does not even require that Congress be told how much aid each country gets.

Almost every country in the hemisphere receives some assistance funded by section 1004. In 1998, Latin America is expected to receive $163 million in section 1004-funded aid, an amount similar to the total transferred through the State Department's INC program. Section 1004 has paid for the training of over 1,000 Mexican Army personnel in counternarcotics techniques since 1996. Many of the Mexican trainees, all of whom were instructed on U.S. soil, are members of elite Air-Mobile Special Forces Groups, known by their Spanish acronym GAFE. The section 1004 training budget for Mexico is about ten times as large as the IMET budget for Mexico, an outlay which receives far more oversight.

In recent years, Congress has authorized the Pentagon to carry out other counter-drug arms transfer and training programs for specific countries. Mexico received $8 million in helicopter parts in 1997 and 1998 through one such authorization, while an estimated $89 million river-based counter-drug assistance program for Colombia and Peru will operate from 1998 through 2002. The latter program recently contributed to the construction of a riverine training center for the Peruvian Navy in the Amazonian city of Iquitos. Again, these authorizations provide assistance very similar to that funded by INC, FMF, IMET and other traditional foreign aid programs but they are likely to receive far less scrutiny because of the sheer size of the overall defense budget in which they are contained.

Training institutions

While under the IMET program Latin American military personnel may choose from among about 2,000 training courses designed for U.S. soldiers at U.S. installations, the Defense Department also maintains schools designed especially for Latin American militaries, with courses taught entirely in Spanish. The most famous of these is the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (SOA), based at Fort Benning, Georgia. The SOA has come under attack from critics due to the poor human rights records of many of its graduates and the discovery of training manuals used at the school which include instruction in torture and other abusive techniques. The school nonetheless remains in full operation: 908 students from throughout the region attended in 1997. While the Defense Department pays the cost of maintaining the school, SOA students' tuition is almost completely financed by three sources: the IMET program, the INC program, or direct purchases of training through the FMS program.

Other U.S. military services maintain similar Spanish-language schools for Latin American military personnel. The Air Force's Inter-American Air Forces Academy (IAAFA) is based at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, while the Navy's Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School (NAVSCIATTS) is based for now at Rodman Naval Station in Panama. The Washington-based National Defense University recently founded an educational facility, the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (CHDS), offering courses in security, defense resource management and civil-military relations. The Center's main emphasis is to increase the security policymaking capabilities of the region's civilian leaders, though military officers make up about a quarter of its student body.

Training deployments

A significant amount of military training takes place outside the United States. Each year, over 50,000 U.S. military personnel are sent to Latin America and the Caribbean on more than 3,000 separate deployments; of these, a large portion have a training mission. Some are Military Training Teams (MTTs), small groups of instructors who travel overseas to teach a course. MTTs can be funded through a number of mechanisms, including (but not limited to) IMET, INC, section 1004, or FMS purchases.

Joint exercises are another way to provide military training, although the U.S. government does not classify them as such because their primary purpose is ostensibly to train the U.S. personnel involved. In 1998, Southcom will host over twenty large-scale exercises throughout the hemisphere; Latin American militaries will take part in most as co-participants, observers, or perimeter guards. In addition, thousands of U.S. troops are deployed on hundreds of smaller missions each year to practice skills, often in cooperation with Latin American units.

The Southern Command divides its exercises and training deployments into three categories. "Operational exercises" practice responses to specific security threats, such as (according to a Southcom document) "defense of the Panama Canal" or "combating terrorism." "Multinational exercises," carried out in cooperation with several militaries, practice such non-traditional military missions as peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, counter-drug efforts, and medical assistance. "Engineer exercises," also known as "humanitarian civic assistance (HCA)," involve construction of basic infrastructure and provision of medical, dental and veterinary services. In 1998, the Nuevos Horizontes series of engineer exercises constructed roads, bridges, schools, wells, and other infrastructure in Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras and Peru. Critics of these exercises worry that they encourage militaries to expand their missions to include domestic development projects, giving them a reason to avoid cutbacks during a period of few external security threats.

Visits by U.S. Special Forces (such as Navy SEALs or Army Green Berets) are a large and growing subset of training deployments. The most well-known of these is the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, funded through the Special Forces' own budget. JCETs are groups deployed overseas to work with, or to train with, foreign militaries. The average JCET group is comprised of 10 to 40 troops, though groups can include as many as 100. JCETs always involve foreign units, though they are ostensibly designed to benefit the Special Forces personnel themselves. A larger number of similar Special-Forces teams, funded by section 1004, deploy to the region for counternarcotics training. If funded by section 1004, the deployment's primary purpose need not be to train the U.S. personnel involved. In 1998, 214 JCET and counterdrug Special Forces groups circulated through twenty-eight Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Other Defense Department activities

U.S. military activities in Latin America, of course, go beyond aid and training. Six significant military installations remain in Panama, though a 1977 treaty mandates that all of them be closed by the end of 1999. Attempts to maintain a post-1999 U.S. military presence in Panama by establishing a "multilateral counter-drug center" appear to have failed, though several "bilateral access agreements" for counternarcotics operations are being negotiated with several countries in the region. U.S. troops are also stationed at the Enrique Soto Cano air base in Honduras and Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, as well as at radar sites and other counter-drug facilities region-wide.

Other open-ended military "presences" include an ongoing humanitarian civic assistance operation in Haiti and a peacekeeping contingent on the border between Ecuador and Peru. The region's militaries receive frequent advice, planning and logistical assistance, and intelligence from U.S. personnel deployed overseas, while a wide variety of personnel exchanges, visits, seminars, and other "foreign military interaction" programs are employed to guarantee close military-to-military contact.

Restrictions and reporting

Recent revelations in the media of Special Forces JCET activity in Colombia and Indonesia have created controversy, particularly in the U.S. Congress. Restrictions in the 1997 and 1998 foreign aid bills prohibited U.S. assistance to units of a foreign military credibly accused of human rights abuses. But this restriction did not technically apply to Defense Department-funded programs, and JCET activity in Colombia and Indonesia appeared to contradict the human-rights restrictions found in the foreign aid bill.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) closed this defense-budget loophole, amending the 1999 Defense Department appropriations bill to prohibit foreign military units from receiving section 1004 and other Defense-funded training if their members face credible allegations of human-rights abuse.

The increasing use of the defense budget for military and police programs nonetheless makes it conceivable that aid banned through the foreign aid bill may simply flow through the defense-budget bill. In 1998 Guatemala whose military is singled out in the foreign aid bill as ineligible to receive FMF or regular IMET is getting $774,000 in section 1004 assistance, training with five Special Forces teams, hosting two Central America-wide joint exercises in humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping, and hosting several smaller "civic-action" deployments of U.S. troops.

Defense-budget assistance also goes relatively unreported to the public. Congress keeps close tabs on programs funded through the Foreign Operations bill, requiring that the State Department provide, among other reports, an extensive annual presentation document explaining its economic and security aid programs (the 1998 Congressional Presentation for Foreign Operations totals over 1,200 pages). Getting information about similar Pentagon activities is not as simple. There is no such thing as a congressional presentation document for Defense Department exercises or counter-drug programs. Reporting to Congress and the public is piecemeal, with separate documents explaining very specific activities. Distribution of these documents is also quite limited; researchers must often mount a search effort through the Pentagon bureaucracy to obtain reports on security-assistance programs. Sometimes, as in the case of Section 1004, there is no report to obtain, as the law does not require notification.

Piecemeal reporting and the fragmentation of assistance make it nearly impossible to get a "big picture" view of the U.S. military relationship with Latin America today. As a result, the transfer of weapons and dangerous skills is happening without adequate oversight and supervision by Congress, foreign-policy planners, and the public.

Conclusion

This "tour" of the multifaceted U.S.-Latin American military relationship reveals a level of closeness and activity that might seem surprising ten years after the end of the cold war. Still more surprising, however, is the lack of official knowledge and oversight of military aid programs. As we have seen, defense and security assistance programs are highly fragmented and are increasingly being funded outside the traditional foreign aid process. This has made it difficult for congressional staff whose responsibilities often force them to limit their focus to specific programs as well as responsible government personnel and activists, to judge where security assistance is going. A result is that controversial activities Special Forces deployments, questionable training manuals, even entire assistance programs often go virtually unnoticed for years.

Congressional and citizen oversight could be greatly strengthened by undoing the fragmentation of reporting. Congress, for example, should have access to information about all military training and assistance in one single report regardless of the bureaucracy that implements it or the budgetary category that funds it. The same should be done for counternarcotics programs. Human rights and other restrictions on aid must be applied to all programs, again regardless of implementing agency or budget authority.

There is also a strong need to keep better track of who is being armed and trained, and where they go afterward. The U.S. government must commit greater staff and other resources to enforce existing laws ensuring that potential aid grantees and trainees do not include notorious human rights abusers. "End-use monitoring" of aid also demands increased attention and resources. The weapons and skills that the United States transfers can cause a great deal of harm, and we must do more to ensure that they are not misused.

Finally, citizens' groups also have a responsibility to oversee military aid. Even though Latin America and the Caribbean are enjoying a period of relative peace and democratic rule, activists and nongovernmental organizations concerned with U.S. policy toward the region must continue to keep a close eye on the military-to-military relationship.

U.S. Security Assistance By Country

Adam Isacson is an associate with the Center for International Policy's demilitarization program. Joy Olson is director of the Latin America Working Group, a coalition of sixty nongovernmental organizations concerned with U.S. policy toward the hemisphere.

For more information:

Just the Facts: A civilian's guide to U.S. defense and security assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean, by the Latin America Working Group and the Center for International Policy.

A 250-page study providing in-depth information about all of the programs discussed in this report. The entire, regularly updated text of Just the Facts is also available on the Internet at http://www.ciponline.org/facts/

Other organizations:

Latin America Working Group, 110 Maryland Ave. NE, Box 15, Washington, DC 20002, lawg@igc.org, http://www.igc.org/lawg/. Co-authors of this study.

Washington Office on Latin America, 1630 Connecticut Ave. NW, 2nd Floor, Washington, DC 20009, wola@wola.org, http://www.wola.org/. Education and advocacy about U.S. policy toward Latin America; strong focus on counter-drug programs.

Federation of American Scientists' Arms Transfer Monitoring Program, 307 Massachusetts Ave. NE, Washington, DC 20002, tamarg@fas.org, http://www.fas.org/asmp/. Monitors military aid and training programs worldwide.

Council for a Livable World Education Fund, 110 Maryland Ave. NE, Suite 211, Washington, DC 20002, cardamone@clw.org, http://www.clark.net/pub/clw/cat/. Monitors military aid and training programs worldwide.

U.S. Government web sites:

U.S. Southern Command (military body operating in Latin America and the Caribbean): <http://www.ussouthcom.com/>.

Defense Security Assistance Agency (manages several security-assistance programs): <http://www.osd.mil/dsaa/>.

Department of State Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (manages the INC program, publishes yearly strategy report on-line): <http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/index.html>.

White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (the office of the "drug czar," publishes yearly strategy report on-line): <http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/>.

U.S. Army School of the Americas: <http://www.benning.mil/usarsa/main.htm>.

Inter-American Air Forces Academy: <http://www.lackland.af.mil/iaafa/index.htm>.

Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies: <http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/chds/>.

Center for International Policy
1755 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 312
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 232-3317
Fax: (202) 232-3440
cip@ciponline.org
www.ciponline.org
A Publication of the Center for International Policy

© Copyright 1998 by the Center for International Policy. All rights reserved. Any material herein may be quoted without permission, with credit to the Center for International Policy. The Center is a nonprofit educational and research organization focusing on U.S. policy toward the developing world and its impact on human rights and needs.

ISSN 0738-6508