McNair Paper Number 44, Chapter 1,  October 1995
**TO ENHANCE SECURITY**
Our national security strategy is based on enlarging the community of market democracies while deterring and containing a range of threats to our nation, our allies, and our interests.(Note 1)

The strategy enunciated in President Clinton's *A National Security Strategy of Engagement andEnlargement* stresses three primary objectives:  enhancing security, promoting prosperity at home,and promoting democracy worldwide.  The United States employs a range of policy instruments intheir pursuit.  Among them is International Military Education and Training (IMET), one of theforeign assistance programs overseen by the Department of State but implemented and managedby the Department of Defense.  The IMET program traditionally has been a relatively small, low-cost and low-risk appropriation with sound legislative support.  As U.S. foreign aid continues tocollapse under strong congressional pressure to economize, this "bonsai" appropriation in the vastforest of security assistance programs has gained in standing, potency and importance to nationalsecurity far surpassing that envisioned by its political framers in 1976.
	The grant IMET program has received little scrutiny since the end of the Cold War and passage of the 1991 legislative amendment expanding its mandate.  Congressional interest in foreigneducation and training has never been significant, but in today's international security setting,concerned as it is about fragile democracies, ineffective governance, and a range of nontraditional,transnational concerns, the glimmer of hope offered by IMET should receive greater attention. More needs to be known about how the Defense Department educated foreign military students inthe past, IMET's effectiveness in supporting U.S. policy interests, and its prospects for the future. 
	The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) of the National Defense University recentlyorganized a special study team of military and civilian specialists with extensive backgrounds ininternational military education and training to address these issues.  The INSS team--cognizant ofthe changing international security environment, in particular, the altered purposes, missions, andrequirements that political and economic changes worldwide have been imposing on the IMETprogram--believes the following factors to have a significant influence:
Restored political democracy in many regions of the world and growing internal dialoguewith military institutions on relevant roles, missions and structures are the scenarios of thefuture.Renewed emphasis on professional military training in a new security context--worldwide--isreinforcing efforts to promote democratic political systems.The United States is generally viewed by governments as a model to be emulated inestablishing a political-military relationship in which civilian authority is effectively developed..Challenges and upheavals in the form of internal wars, religious extremism, and ethnicseparatism are generating requirements for international intervention in the form ofmultinational forces.	The INSS study group assumed that U.S. collaboration with other participants in ad hoc militarycoalitions formed for peace and humanitarian assistance is  facilitated when uniformedprofessionals shared familiar operational doctrines, command and control procedures, and logisticarrangements.  In the existing post-Cold War environment, the IMET program can and doesprovide a foundation for mutual understanding and enhanced interoperability in a wide range ofactivities, including supply of medicines and foodstuffs to refugee communities, rescue of embassyand United Nations personnel, and enforcement actions exemplified by Operations *Desert Shield*and *Desert Storm*. 
	The study team's framework for analysis was the extent to which IMET serves U.S. interests.  Inassessing IMET, the group focused on five basic questions:
Has the program facilitated access to senior military and political leaders and promotedcommunication between the United States and recipient countries?Does IMET provide an effective introduction to and understanding of U.S. political values,particularly as they relate to democratic society and respect for human rights?Do military education and training experiences funded by IMET contribute, as Congressdesires, to improving political-military relations in recipient countries and fostering theefficient management of their defense establishments?Does this military program serve as an important asset for interoperability in coalitionpeace and humanitarian assistance operations?Is familiarity with U.S. military equipment and the doctrine for its employment a usefulbyproduct of the IMET program?	Using its own questionnaire to guide discussion, the INSS team interviewed U.S. Governmentofficials with program-related responsibilities, reviewed past studies and relevant literature,conducted two workshops bringing together experts from agencies of the Departments of Defenseand State and several nongovernmental organizations, and queried all unified commands and mostof their subordinate security assistance offices, as well as service agencies that implement IMETprograms and many of the schools and institutes participating in them.  The team found in morethan  60 responses from around the world, in the assessments of every person with whom theteam had contact, and in every response to the questionnaire, over 100 people, unanimousendorsement of  IMET and strong support for continuing the programs.  
	The team found a sound vision guiding IMET that reflected a blend of two traditional preferencesin U.S. foreign policy, a mixture of pragmatism and liberal idealism.  The IMET program is basedon the belief that many officer-graduates will rise to positions of prominence within their armedforces and, in all probability, also within their governments and business communities.  The UnitedStates desires access to these future leaders and wishes them to have a sound understanding ofthe United States and its history, culture, and traditions.  In this regard, the IMET experience alsoencourages others to learn more about a form of democratic governance and civil society that theUnited States  believes is best for the individual and the community.  Such immersion includeslearning more about the role of a military institution in a democracy. 
	The issue of political-military relations lies just below the surface of the U.S. approach toeducating international officers.  In the Cold War years of the IMET program, careful efforts weremade to present the American democratic system in a nonpropagandistic, nondoctrinaireframework.  The rationale was that foreign students should voluntarily experience the environmentof an open society to best ensure the U.S. message about democracy was palatable and credible. This open and unforced approach disappeared in the 1990s.  Today advocacy of the U.S. model forpolitical-military relations in a democracy is emphatic and uncompromising.
	In the pages that follow, the INSS team's analysis of IMET's effectiveness is organized in five parts:
		The legislative roots of the program and its relationship to foreign military sales
		The structure of IMET in FY 1995,  emphasizing the importance of IMET's original synergy ofEnglish language training, a professional course of instruction conducted in the United States, andDOD's Informational Program
		An assessment of the effectiveness of international military education and training made possibleby IMET and other funding options
		Contributions toward (1) achieving regional stability over the long term; (2) improving multilateralcooperative military relations with the United States; (3) supporting U.S. diplomatic interestsoverseas and economic interests at home
		Making a good program better.****| Return to Top | Return to Contents | Next Chapter| 
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