Optimizing Military Assistance Training

Abstract

There are many means employed by the United States to maintain and advance its position throughout the world during the current period of bipolar conflict. The most conspicuous of these are subsumed under what is known as the Mutual Security Program. Nearly half of the approximately $4 billion budgeted during fiscal year 1962 for mutual security went into military assistance. Of this, about $125 million was devoted to the training of foreign military personnel. This Military Assistance Training Program, including the training of foreigners in the United States and that administered overseas by Military Assistance Advisory Groups (MAAG's), missions, overseas commands, and third countries, constitutes by far the largest effort the world has known on the part of one country to educate and train citizens of others. The number of foreigners given military assistance training in the United States each year—about 16,500 in 1960—exceeds the number trained here under the Fulbright, Smith-Mundt, and Agency for International Development (AID) programs combined.