McNair Paper Number 44, Chapter 8,  October 1995
**CONTRIBUTIONS TO U.S. DIPLOMATIC INTERESTS OVERSEAS ANDECONOMIC INTERESTS AT HOME**
Political and economic liberalization, which have yielded democratic elections and free market economiesin many parts of the world, also nurture anxiety within impatient electorates and conservative nationalinstitutions.  Questions of leader integrity and the perceived inability of governments to reduce povertyand correct long-standing social inequities have led to urban and rural violence in a number of nations. The strategic interests of the United States are served by working with elected officials to encouragesocial stability, ensuring the sustainability of the progress already made, and helping them travel thedifficult road still ahead.  As this process unfolds, military institutions also have begun to reexamine theirroles, missions, organizations, and institutional values.  Many are trying to reconcile traditionalcorporatist thought and the relatively new liberal thinking.  Many also are trying to rethink the customaryrelationship between the military and political sectors of their society.  From a U.S. perspective, this isan opportune time to stress the important contributions that professional education in the U.S. and contactwith Americans can make, not only for military officers but also for civilian officials.

**Learning About Liberty in the United States**
International military students have played positive supporting roles in remarkable national politicaltransformations over the past five years.  These officers were among the pro-democracy forces in Mali,for example, when the 23-year old military dictatorship was overthrown in 1991.  They had a key rolein rallying pro-democracy Thai protesters in 1992 and championing the cause of human rights andrepresentative government in Thai politics.  Graduates commanded the Army units that successfully putdown Venezuela's two attempted coups in 1992 and played important roles in Guatemala when theirinstitution opposed the President's attempted *autogolpe* (self-coup) in 1993.  And in many other lessdramatic and visible ways, they have helped sustain liberty's momentum that Washington praises today. 
	What these officers share in common is an experience in the United States that changed their thinkingabout democracy.  Many of the military officers involved in the events above attended service schoolsin the United States during the 1980s.  Trying to explain their willingness to promote and defenddemocracy, the INSS team found that U.S. professional military education and technical training,designed for U.S. students, generally offer little formal instruction, other than resource management,on the liberal political tradition in this country, the role of the armed forces within this tradition, andother democracy-related subjects.  Even after the 1991 Expanded IMET legislation prompted newofferings of instruction on human rights and governance issues in courses on military justice and inprograms such as the School of the Americas and the Defense Resource Management Institute, the coreService schools have changed little in their curricula.  For U.S. officers, graduates of service academiesand civilian universities, who have been taught to understand this country's unique history and cultureof civilian control of the armed forces, nothing in civil-military relations has changed.(Note 50)  Not surprisingly, the content of professional militaryand technical courses for junior officers and, to a lesser extent, at command and staff colleges, is quieton human rights and democratic governance.  The curricula at war colleges are more broadly based,paying attention to defense and service resource management, military operations, and national securitypolicy making, which includes domestic and legislative considerations affecting security decisions.  Civil-military relations in the context of intergovernmental teamwork in the execution of policy is a currentissue of interest; topics on human rights usually are not.  Informal discussions about the military's rolein American society occur among U.S. and foreign classmates, often stimulated by an experience in theinstallation's Informational Program, such as a visit to a high school or college ROTC program, aNational Guard armory, or a service recruiting office.   
	By and large, foreign students in the 1980s and 1990s gained an understanding of liberties enjoyedin this country from experiences outside the professional education or technical courses they wereattending.  Perhaps an occasional class, maybe discussions with U.S. officers (classmates and sponsors),but certainly contact with the American way of life shape their attitudes.  An example from Mali,provided by a Foreign Service Officer who was assigned there between December 1990 and February1994, illustrates the process and influence of this immersion.(Note51)

	[T]hose officers who had benefitted from IMET training tended to support the transition to democracy andcivilian control of the military.  In addition, many of them had a heightened sense of the professionalism ... andhow it related to human rights issues and support for democracy, even though they had not been in coursesspecifically designed to address these issues.  (This was just before E-IMET was created.)  Some of them spokeoften about the importance of their IMET experience both for professional development and for what theylearned about how a professional military acts in a democracy.  Some of them emphasized that this came notonly from the course, but also from contact with U.S. military and civilians, and from just living in the U.S. fora year.(Note 52)

	The study team discovered that, of all the experiences which foreign military students remember,contact with the American culture stands out.  As mentioned earlier, this comment is made time andagain in the responses to the INSS survey.  The role of DOD's extracurricular Informational Program(IP) is frequently singled out.  Curiosity about the United States and how a free market democracyfunctions today is greater than ever.  The IP tries to nurture and focus this interest, as well as the naturaltendency of visitors to compare cultures, to ensure that students have insightful encounters withdemocracy in action and that the significance of each is not lost.  The original 1976 legislation creatingIMET encourages "understanding between the U.S. and foreign countries."  INSS found that this goalis best served by combining an assignment at a U.S. military school with participation in the IP andincidental contact with Americans and their way of life.  

**Helping to Bring Civilian and Military Leaders Together**
The Expanded IMET program is uniquely able to bring civilian and military personnel together for acommon educational experience, in many cases, for the first time.  At present, this occurs mosteffectively outside the United States, using a Mobile Education Team (MET) from either the NavalJustice School's International Training Detachment, the Defense Resource Management Institute or theCenter for Civil-Military Relations to present an in-depth seminar or course of instruction.  Suchoccasions provide the U.S. ambassador the opportunity to bring together a large number of seniorgovernment officials, legislators, representatives from the media and other nonmilitary groups tostimulate dialogue and enhance mutual understanding.  "Just being the 'event' that brings all partiestogether is significant," observed a participant of several MET's on military law.  "Moreover, workinggroups, follow-on classes, combined training, . . . spurred by the E-IMET training, have continued andimproved communication."(Note 53)  The Chairman of theDefence and Security Committee of the Malawi National Assembly recently was one of 38 participantsin a seminar conducted in Zomba by the Centre for Civil-Military Relations.  His letter to DefenseSecretary Perry underscores the power of a mobile education team to assist high-level democraticauthorities in ways that would not be possible in the United States:

	The thirty eight participants in the seminar included the full spectrum of Malawi leadership in the Armed Forces,the Legislature, the Media, the Ministry of Defence and other key ministries.
		My colleagues and I found the Seminar extremely interesting and useful.  We were able to discuss problemsthat have never been examined in an open manner in Malawi before.  We were also able to analyse how otherdemocracies have resolved their problems in civil-military relations, and plan to use this analysis to address ourown challenges in the areas of Ministry of Defence Organisation, Defence Policy Formulation, Roles andMissions of the Army and Police as related to internal and external threats, the relationship between the Pressand the Military, the role of Legislative oversight and the appropriate role for military personnel in relation topolitical activity.(Note 54)

	Because it is explicitly designed to address human rights and democratic institution issues, E-IMEThas a more direct and measurable impact on these questions.  "Let's not just measure bodies, but ratherchanges in statutes, in procedures," argued a military lawyer in one of INSS's workshops.  In manyAfrican and Central European countries, military justice codes are being re-written.  Many of the newcodes are modeled on the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice as a result of the Naval Justice School'sefforts.  A program in Senegal is typical.  "After showing a [civilian] military judge for Senegal . . . oursystem of court procedures emphasizing the accused's rights and the need to make sure the accusedunderstood them, the judge significantly changed his. . .procedures and adopted the U.S. model virtuallyverbatim."(Note 55)  In the Czech Republic and otherCentral and Eastern European countries, E-IMET programs complement other programs--multimilliondollar programs--sponsored by the Committee for Eastern European Legal Education (CEELE), the U.S.Agency for International Development (USAID), the American Bar Association and others.  Theseefforts focus on the judiciary, commercial codes, and legal practices.  Few, if any, have contact withthe military.  Only E-IMET does.  The programs work well together, but only E-IMET provides a venuefor civilians and military to meet on neutral ground.

**Improving National Defense Management**
In their ongoing period of economic reform and constrained resources, governments have expressedconsiderable interest in developing expertise in the field of resource management.  IMET and E-IMETprograms fund military and civilian/military participation respectively at a wide range of different defenseand service schools in this field.  It is significant that the first U.S. Army War College graduate fromone of the new Eastern European republics recently headed the commission which planned therestructuring of his country's armed forces.(Note 56)  TheDefense Resource Management Institute, however, has the most experience with these programs.  Since1965, the Institute has conducted professional education courses in analytical decision making, resourcemanagement, and civil-military relations in defense planning and budgeting for roughly 12,000 U.S.military and civilian officials and over 8,200 personnel from 125 other countries.  Since E-IMET waslaunched in 1991, DRMI has averaged about 225 international students per year attending its residentcourses.  The Institute also has conducted 8 to 10 mobile education courses abroad each year which addanother 350 to 400 participants.  
	DRMI has increased its activities, and influence, overseas.  It currently teaches an annual 2-weekseminar on resource management at the Honduran National Defense College (the Institute helped designthe curriculum in 1991).  Mobile Education Team's have visited Argentina, Poland, Hungry, Romania,Lithuania, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and several countries in southern Africa over the last 4years.  The Argentine military has integrated its MET instruction into curricula at their National DefenseSchool and Superior Studies Course.  An early December 1994 visit by the Ukrainian Minister ofDefense, resulted in the Institute immediately conducting a special 2-week course for a high-leveldelegation of eleven deputy cabinet ministers from executive departments in Ukraine.  The CzechRepublic is planning a similar program.  Case studies based on the DRMI curriculum are used at theVenezuelan Naval War College.  And the Colombian Minister of Defense has recently asked forassistance with the formulation of his country's next defense budget.(Note 57)  Colombian graduates of DRMI resident courses areworking in the Ministry of Defense planning office and other resource management positions.  TwoMETs have worked with a cross section of Colombian ministries that are involved in the defense planningprocess.  In addition to 38 Colombians attending the March 1995 mobile course, there were twoBolivians, two Costa Ricans, and one participant from El Salvador.(Note 58)

**Buying USA
Exposure to a wide variety of U.S. military systems and related material is a powerful incentive forforeign students to recommend that national leaders "buy USA" after their return home.  These officershave not only planned for the use of U.S. weapons and equipment in the classroom and actually practicedwith them in the field, but they also have a good understanding of their operational abilities andlimitations, logistical requirements, and employment doctrine.  Often as the result of continued U.S.professional training and education, the national military leadership in wealthier countries adopts a pro-U.S. defense equipment mind set.  The sustained effectiveness of U.S. training programs for Spain's F-18 fighter pilots, for example, contributed immeasurably to the government's decision to purchase 24additional USN F-18S aircraft.  The procurement of the HAWK missile system as the Spanish AirDefense system can be attributed to the number of senior officers involved in the decision process whoattended the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.(Note59)  The Portuguese, Greek, Turkish, and Ecuadoran armed forces have reorganized andmodernized using U.S. equipment, tactics and operational doctrine.  Material recommendations in theseinstitutions frequently are made by panels of officers who share the common experience of attending thesame U.S. military staff or war college.(Note 60)
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