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Special Message to the Congress Transmitting Bill for Inter-American Military Cooperation.

May 06, 1946

To the Congress of the United States:

I submit herewith for the consideration of the Congress a bill to be entitled "The Inter-American Military Cooperation Act" authorizing a program of military collaboration with other American States including the training, organization, and equipment of the armed forces of those countries. I recommend that the Congress give this bill its favorable consideration and enact it.

For several years our Army and Navy have maintained cordial relations of collaboration with the armed forces of other American republics within the framework of the Good Neighbor Policy. Under authorization of the Congress, military and naval training missions have been sent to various American republics. During the recent war, even prior to Pearl Harbor, this collaboration was intensively developed on the basis of inter-American undertakings for hemisphere defense. Training activities were expanded, and under the Lend-Lease Act limited amounts of military and naval equipment were made available to the other American republics as part of the hemisphere defense program. Forces from two of the American republics participated in combat overseas, and others joined in the defense of the shores and seas of the Americas at a time when the danger of invasion of our continents was all too great.

More recently the American republics have assumed new responsibilities, for their mutual defense and for the maintenance of peace, in the Act of Chapultepec and the Charter of the United Nations. The close collaboration of the American republics provided for in the Act of Chapultepec, the proposed treaty to be based upon that Act, and other basic inter-American documents, makes it highly desirable to standardize military organization, training methods and equipment as has been recommended by the Inter-American Defense Board.

Under the bill transmitted herewith, the Army and Navy, acting in conjunction with the Department of State, would be permitted to continue in the future a general program of collaboration with the armed forces of our sister republics with a view to facilitating the adoption of similar technical standards. Certain additional training activities, not covered by existing legislation, would be permitted. The President would also be authorized to transfer military and naval equipment to the Governments of other American States by sale or other method.

The collaboration authorized by the bill could be extended also to Canada, whose cooperation with the United States in matters affecting their common defense is of particular importance.

A special responsibility for leadership rests upon the United States in this matter because of the preponderant technical, economic and military resources of this country. There is a reasonable and limited purpose for which arms and military equipment can rightfully be made available to the other American States. This Government will not, I am sure, in any way approve of, nor will it participate in, the indiscriminate or unrestricted distribution of armaments, which would only contribute to a useless and burdensome armaments race. It does not desire that operations under this bill shall raise unnecessarily the quantitative level of armament in the American republics. To this end the bill specifies that amounts of nonstandard material shall be sought in exchange for United States equipment.

It is my intention that any operations under this bill, which the Congress may authorize, shall be in every way consistent with the wording and spirit of the United Nations Charter. The bill has been drawn up primarily to enable the American nations to carry out their obligations to cooperate in the maintenance of inter-American peace and security under the Charter and the Act of Chapultepec which is intended to be supplanted by a permanent Inter-American Treaty.

It is incumbent upon this Government to see that military developments in which we have a part are guided towards the maintenance of peace and security and that military and naval establishments are not encouraged beyond what security considerations require. In this connection the bill provides that operations thereunder are subject to any international agreement for the regulation of armaments to which the United States may become a party. In addition provision will be made for continuing coordination of the actual operations under the legislation with developing plans and policy in the field of armaments regulation.

In executing this program it will be borne in mind, moreover, that it is the policy of this Government to encourage the establishment of sound economic conditions in the other American republics which will contribute to the improvement of living standards and the advancement of social and cultural welfare. Such conditions are a prerequisite to international peace and security. Operations under the proposed legislation will be conducted with full and constant awareness that no encouragement should be given to the imposition upon other people of any useless burden of armaments which would handicap the economic improvement which all countries so strongly desire. The execution of the program authorized by the bill will also be guided by a determination to guard against placing weapons of war in the hands of any groups who may use them to oppose the peaceful and democratic principles to which the United States and other American nations have so often subscribed.

In entering into agreements with other American States for the provision of training and equipment as authorized by the bill, the purposes of this program will be made dear to each of the other governments.

HARRY S. TRUMAN

Note: The draft bill, transmitted with the President's message, is printed in the Congressional Record (vol. 92, p. 4518).

Harry S Truman, Special Message to the Congress Transmitting Bill for Inter-American Military Cooperation. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/229231

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