Military Assistance in a Changing World Environment
Abstract
Mr. Chairman, honored members, I am pleased to be here today to testify on military assistance. This is my first appearance before this committee as Director of the Defense Security Assistance Agency, and I look forward to many more opportunities to work with you throughout the Congressional consideration of the Administration's budget request and legislative proposals. I think everyone will agree that the past 20 months have produced world change at a pace that almost defies comprehension. Last year, just about this time, the Administration came here to explain its proposed security assistance program to the Congress. At that time, all agreed that as a result of those changes, particularly those in the Soviet Union, the security assistance program would be reviewed in its new context. Everyone anticipated that military assistance would be reduced. The only real question was how fast. We believed that once the new international political system had begun to gel we would be better able to assess the future of our security assistance policy. But since then, events have stubbornly refused to slow down. Ever since the end of the World War II we have planned our foreign and security assistance in the context of a stable, if sometimes threatening, bipolar environment. Whatever the crisis of the day, the basic structure of global politico-military relations remained. This is true no more. We can no longer define our national security objectives simply in a Cold War context. One of the constants of U.S. policy in the post-war period was coalition building. We prepared ourselves to combat a wide variety of potential threats, not just the Soviets, by building diplomatic and military relations with friends and allies. A key tool in that policy has been and remains military assistance, both arms sales and grant aid and training. Nowhere has the wisdom of this decades-old policy been more evident than in the success of operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA495922
Entities
People
- Teddy G. Allen
Organizations
- Defense Security Cooperation Agency