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A TRADUIRE

The Mutual Defense Assistance Act was a United States Act of Congress signed by President Harry S. Truman on 6 October 1949. For US Foreign policy, it was the first U.S. military foreign aid legislation of the Cold War era, and initially to Europe. The Act followed Truman's signing of the Economic Cooperation Act (the Marshall Plan), on April 3, 1948, which provided non-military, economic reconstruction and development aid to Europe. The Act was reauthorized in 1950^{[réf. nécessaire]}, but in 1951, it and the Economic Cooperation Act were succeeded by the Mutual Security Act, and its newly created independent agency, the Mutual Security Administration, to supervise all foreign aid programs, including both military assistance programs and non-military, economic assistance programs that bolstered the defense capability of U.S. allies.

About the same time, the Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951, also known or referred to as the Battle Act, (65 Stat. 644; 22 U.S.C. 1611 et seq.) was also passed; it banned U.S. assistance to countries doing business with the Soviet Union and was so-named after its sponsor, Representative Laurie C. Battle of Alabama. Strong motivation for this 'control' act also came from export control concerns, following their tightening by the Export control Act of 1949 over Soviet advances; export controls were used for both domestic policy and later as an instrument of foreign policy. This is exemplified by the restrictions on export of certain strategic or military items to the Soviet bloc or to other countries which it felt, if permitted, would be detrimental to the foreign policy program of the US. This latter motive became so strong that it brought legislation directing the President to enlist the cooperation of other nations in enacting controls on trade with the Soviet block to parallel those of the United States. The benefits of the various economic and military aid programs were to be withheld from non-cooperating nations. The act covered a wide range of materials needed for the production of weapons, and was especially focused on anything that could aid atomic weapons research and construction.

As the Cold War developed, these acts were part of the American policy of containment of Communism. They importantly provided defense assistance to any ally that might be attacked by the Soviet Union or one of its allies, while other programs provided non-military economic assistance. In Asia the programs expanded with the newly established Maoist People's Republic of China, and other areas, with the development of specific country missions, including ones in Austria (1947–50), China (1946–48), Ireland (1948–51), and Trieste (1947–52).

Contexte historique : l'arsenal des démocraties après 1945 et le début de la Guerre froide

In the euphoria of the end of World War II, western arsenals dropped down to a dangerous level of weakness and worn-out, public funds were, by priority, allocated to reconstruction. Even the US arsenal showed obvious signs of shortages and decay.

US military officials began calling for the introduction of a new defense legislation in 1947, arguing that depleted inventories of surplus World War II-vintage armaments, piecemeal planning of new armaments and restrictions on presidential authority threatened current and future efforts to arm allied nations. New legislation became a necessity for the US by mid‐1948 with the negotiation of the North Atlantic defense treaty and the necessity to provide military aid to strengthen the connectional defenses, having in mind a global resistance to Communist expansion of the signatories.

Truman sent a first bill to Congress on 25 July 1949, the day he ratified the North Atlantic Treaty but congressional opposition forced submission of a new legislation, which specified the recipients and the amounts of assistance. Administration planners believed the MDAA's immediate effects would be to raise the morale of friendly nations and prove US reliability and resolve to meet Communist worldwide threats. The MDAA also institutionalized the concept of specific military aid programs, a result ensured by adoption of similar legislation in 1950 and an increase in annual spending on military aid to $5.222 billion after the outbreak of the Korean War - the very first large scale test of the validity and practicability of the concept, if excepting the logistical support allowed to France during the Indochina War.

Relance des programmes américains d'armement

President Harry S. Truman inspecting a brand new M41 Walker Bulldog Prototype Tank. The MDAA allowed a much needed revival of the US armed forces equipment modernization program.

The successful but limited use of the new M26 Pershing tank at the end of WWII, led the U.S. forces to believe they had the basis for a successful tank design. However, it did not meet the requirements laid forth by the Ground Forces Equipment Review Board in 1945 as the M26 still used many components of the aging M4 series. At the eruption of the Korean War, the sole readily available tank forces the United States were able to engage were small groups of light M24 Chaffees from the Japan's occupation forces. But this WWII-vintage reconnoitre tank was unable to face the soviet-made medium T34/85 tank

Mutual Assistance Program - Military Assistance Program

The 1949's Mutual Defense Assistance Act created the "Mutual Assistance Program" concept - which turned de facto into US "Military Assistance Program" (MAP)- which made mutual security pacts and the concept of security assistance integral and intertwined elements of the western free world's doctrine of containing Soviet expansion. The MAP concept was totally different from the wartime Lend-Lease program in that it never needed refunding from the country that benefits any military assistance. Between 1950 and 1967, $33.4 billion in arms and services and $3.3 billion worth of surplus weaponry were provided under the program.

Europe: NATO

The Patton Tank family (here a Belgian M46) was the direct result of the revival of the late 1940s US armament modernization program framed by the MDAA

Greek US M24s Chaffee in 1956

M47 Patton tank provided to the Franco regime under NATO's MAP

On 4 April 1949, the foreign ministers from 12 countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty at the Departmental Auditorium in Washington D.C.: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. Provision for enlargement was however given by Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that membership is open to any “European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area”.

• Belgium and the Netherlands
• Denmark and Norway
• France :

Massive support was negotiated with France from 1950 to 1954 when the French Union fought the Chinese and Soviet-backed Viet Minh during the First Indochina War. Support included substantial financial aid, material supply from the US Army (uniforms, helmets, rifles, tanks), US Navy (aircraft carriers such as Belleau Wood/Bois Belleau), the U.S. Air Force (twelve Fairchild C-119, fighters, bombers and maintenance crews) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (twenty four pilots of the Civil Air Transport) from which two pilot were killed in action during the battle of Dien Bien Phu.^{[réf. nécessaire]}

American military support to France's rearmament lasted well into the 1950s^{[réf. nécessaire]}, the French receiving furthermore equipment including M46 Pattons, F-84 Thunderjet, etc.^{[réf. nécessaire]} but the divergence between the United States and the Anglo-French alliance during the Suez crisis was to have decisive consequences on France-NATO relationships.^[pas clair] Whereas the damage done to Anglo-American relations was quickly repaired, in the case of France, the situation remained more complex. France started to express reservations about the direction of Allied policy and US leadership and, following his election as President in 1958, General Charles de Gaulle, in particular, made clear his dissatisfaction with aspects of this US prominent role, as well as, more specifically, with NATO's nuclear policy and integrated command structure.^{[réf. nécessaire]} Although France was one of the very founding members of the Atlantic Alliance, President Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s military structure in 1966 in protest over American dominance of the Atlantic Alliance.

• Germany
• Greece

• Italy
• Portugal

On 4 April 1949, José Caeiro da Matta, Portuguese Minister for Foreign Affairs, signed the North Atlantic Treaty.

• Spain
• Turkey
• Appendix - The making of The Bridge at Remagen: alleged anti-soviet MAP and the "coup" of Prague.

This film was shot on location in Czechoslovakia in 1968.At that time, Czechoslovakia was already seen by soviet Russia as becoming too liberal and unorthodox in its political values.^[pas clair] Moscow argued about the presence of WWII-vintage US military equipment - M24 Chaffee tanks, GMC trucks and other military antiquities used as accessories for the making of the movie - as evidence of a secret pro-Czech anti-Soviet MAP among other political excuses to justify the military "coup" the Soviet authorities planned against Prague. Therefore, while the movie was being filmed, the USSR invaded the country, MIGs overheading the set whereas the Russians claimed that American spies were among the cast and crew ... pure propaganda that turned totally fallacious.^{[réf. nécessaire]}

• Appendix 2 - Joined US-Allied military ventures and programs.

Asia

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and President Harry Truman, 1949

• Indochinese Peninsula after independence : Vietnam, Laos, ..

• Iran
• Japan:

On 8 September 1951, the United States and Japan signed the Mutual Security Treaty, which stationed U.S. troops on Japanese soil for the defense of Japan following the eruption of the Korean War. On 8 March 1954, both countries signed the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement (activated on 1 May 1954), focusing on defense assistance. It allowed for the presence of U.S. armed forces in Japan for the purpose of peace and security while encouraging Japan to take on more responsibility for its own defense, rearming in a manner suited for defensive purposes.

Latin America: counter-insurgency programs

A F-80 Shooting Star - a symbol of the MAP to Latin-American anti-communist juntas - used as a memorial in Lima, Peru.

As early as the 1820s and the end of the Spanish main-mise in Central and South America, serious social divisions in Latin American societies, combined with the pressure of foreign financial interests and the autocratic - if not dictatorial - character of the local governments resulted in constant internal civil troubles - the guerrillas. In the 1930s, those insurrectionist movements turned more and more openly to revolutionary subversives attempts to install Marxist forms of governments, the local armed forces usually trying to deter any form of democratic solution to the social problems by coups d'état and pronunciamentos followed by harsh dictatorships supported by US Companies - what in turn eventually still worsened the situation and increased anti-US agitation or feelings.

From the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, the United States, having important and growing strategic and economic interests in the area - and especially in Central America -, opted to military support the pro-US governments, even ones with dictatorial forms.^{[réf. nécessaire]} This attitude was still reinforced^{[Information douteuse]} with the Fidel Castro's victory in Cuba in January 1959, despite U.S. support to the Batista's junta.

Non aligned countries

F-86D with Yugoslav markings, Belgrade Aviation Museum, Serbia.

The MDAA caused both a great deal of friction with the non-aligned countries^{[réf. nécessaire]} and opportunities to tighten geopolitical relations with the western free world and especially the United States.

• India and Pakistan:

India refused to accept any American imposed limits on its trade^{[réf. nécessaire]} and went ahead with shipments of Thorium nitrate to China. Realizing that cutting off all aid to India would do more harm than good, Secretary of State Allen Dulles negotiated a solution.^{[réf. nécessaire][pas clair]}

• Indonesia
• Yugoslavia:

see references

Up to the early 1960s, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) had a large arsenal of German equipment, planes and armor captured during the war, ^{[réf. nécessaire]} western-allies equipment that had been donated by the USA and Great Britain during the war, as well as Soviet equipment.^{[réf. nécessaire]}

Despite Josip Broz Tito's firm adherence to communism, because of the ideological and personal conflict with Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union - and thereafter all the Warsaw Pact's pro-Soviet governments - denounced his treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia on September 27, 1949. For sometime it seemed to be a serious threat and a real danger of an intervention of the country by his former allies, so Yugoslavia accepted readily the American/British offer of assistance. There was also even discussions at that time on its possible inclusion into North-Western Alliance. It can be said by now that Yugoslav armed forces received during this very period standard NATO military equipment and arms - such as the F-86 and F-84 Thunderjet jet fighters or M36 Jackson and M18 Hellcat tank-destroyers.^{[réf. nécessaire]} After Stalin's death and the political and ideological pacification with Soviet Union, Yugoslav Peoples Army later exclusively imported part of their equipment from the USSR when not constructing it itself.

Controversy

After General Charles de Gaulle argued about US-leadership within the NATO Alliance and following the unconditional support entrusted by the US Governments to dubious right-wingModèle:Weasel-inline military regimes in the name of Communist Containment policy - such as the Spanish Franco and Portuguese Salazar's dictatorships or the Greek Regime of the Colonels, in the wake of the Vietnam War protests, democratic left-wing public opinion in the USA and in Europe rose the controversial question of the MAPs being used as occult instruments of some form of covert ultra-conservative political US imperialism.Modèle:Weasel-inline The quite enigmatic role played by the CIA within the frame of those programs also fed the controversy,^{[Information douteuse][réf. nécessaire]} which reached its peak with the overthrow and murder of Chilean President Salvador Allende after an alleged CIA-sponsored military coup in 1973 - a controversy still not closed.

Version française

Mutual Assistance Program - Military Assistance Program

L'OTAN et le réarmement européen

M47 Patton de la Bundeswehr, Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr de Dresde.

La naissance de l'OTAN.

Le 4 avril 1949, les ministres des Affaires étrangères de 12 pays - Belgique, Canada, Danemark, France, Islande, Italie, Luxembourg, Pays-Bas, Norvège, Portugal, Royaume-Uni et États-Unis - signaient le Traité de l'Atlantique Nord dans l'enceinte du « Departmental Auditorium » à Washington - l'article 10 du traité stipulant que l'adhésion restait par ailleurs ouverte à tout « Etat européen en mesure de promouvoir les principes du présent Traité et de contribuer à la sécurité de la région de l'Atlantique Nord ».

Le 5 avril 1949, les cinq puissances du Traité de Bruxelles adressèrent à Washington une demande officielle d'aide militaire et financière. Des demandes semblables furent remises par le Danemark, l'Italie et la Norvège.

Le gouvernement des États-Unis prépara ensuite un programme global d'aide militaire a ces nations. Le programme s'élevait à 1,450 million de dollars pour l'exercice financier 1950, dont environ 1,130 million de dollars (chiffre qui fut ensuite ramené à un milliard de dollars) étaient destinés aux pays européens de l'OTAN.

Le réarmement de l'Allemagne.

Grèce et Turquie.

Moyen-Orient et Pays arabes

Le Shah d' Iran Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi et le Président Harry Truman en 1949.

• Iran

Asie

• Sud-est asiatique.

Viêt Nam.

Laos.

Cambodge.

• Corée et Taiwan.
• Japon.

Amérique latine : les programmes d'assistance dans la lutte anti-insurrectionnelle

Dès les années 1820 et la fin de la domination espagnole en Amérique centrale et en Amérique du Sud, de graves fractures sociales dans les sociétés latino-américaines, combinées à la pression croissante d'intérêts financiers étrangers et au caractère autocratique - sinon dictatorial - des gouvernements nationaux entraînèrent des troubles civils intérieurs et l'émergence de guérillas. Dans les années trente, les mouvements insurrectionnels tournèrent de plus en plus ouvertement à la subversion révolutionnaire d'inspiration marxiste, les forces armées locales essayant de contrer toute forme de solution démocratique aux problèmes sociaux par des coups d'Etat et des pronunciamientos suivis de l'instauration de régimes dictatoriaux soutenus par des sociétés étrangères - essentiellement américaines - ce qui en fin de compte ne fit qu' aggraver encore la situation et augmenter l'agitation et le ressentiment anti-américains.

À la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, avec le début de la guerre froide, les États-Unis, ayant d'importants et croissants intérêts stratégiques et économiques dans ces régions du monde, optent pour un soutien militaire inconditionnel aux gouvernements pro-américains, quant bien même seraient-ils de caractère dictatorial. Ce choix politique fut encore renforcé par la victoire de Fidel Castro à Cuba en janvier 1959 malgré l'appui américain massif à la junte de Batista.

Pays non-alignés

La mise en oeuvre du MDAA fut à l'origine à la fois de beaucoup de frictions avec les pays non-alignés et d'opportunités pour les États-Unis de nouer avec certains d'entre eux des relations géopolitiques plus étroites.

• Inde et Pakistan

L'Inde refusa d'accepter une limitation quelconque de son commerce par les États-Unis et poursuivit ses livraisons de nitrate de Thorium à la Chine. Réalisant que couper toute aide à l'Inde ferait plus de mal que de bien, le Secrétaire d'État Allen Dulles négocia donc une solution.

• Indonésie

• Yougoslavie

Malgré l'adhésion ferme de Josip Broz Tito au communisme, en raison de conflits idéologiques et personnels avec Joseph Staline, l'Union soviétique - et par la suite tous les gouvernements pro-soviétiques du Pacte de Varsovie - dénonça son traité d'amitié avec la Yougoslavie le 27 septembre 1949.

Une menace réelle d'invasion du pays par ses anciens alliés pesant un moment sur la Yougoslavie, le régime titiste s'empressa d'accepter l'offre d'assistance du monde occidental libre - et il fut même question à ce même moment de son adhésion éventuelle à l'alliance occidentale. Les forces armées yougoslaves se retrouvèrent ainsi équipées de matériel militaire similaire à celui distribué aux états membres de l'OTAN, tels que des chasseurs F-84 Thunderjet et F-86 Sabre.

Controverse : le « Mutual Defense Assistance Act » et les « MAPs », instruments de l'impérialisme américain ?

Après que le Général Charles de Gaulle eut dénoncé le leadership des États-Unis au sein de l'OTAN et quitter l'Alliance pour cette raison et considérant le soutien américain inconditionnel à des régimes militaires fascisants au nom de la politique de containment du « totalitarisme soviétique » - comme le régime du Caudillo Francisco Franco en Espagne, la dictature d'António de Oliveira Salazar au Portugal ou le Régime des Colonels en Grèce, dans la foulée de la vague de protestation suscitée par la Guerre du Viêt Nam, la gauche démocratique et l'opinion publique aux États-Unis et en Europe soulevèrent la controverse de l'Accord d'Assistance et de Défense Mutuelles et des MAPs utilisés comme instruments occultes d'une politique américaine impérialiste ultra-conservatrice souterraine.

Le rôle occulte joué par la CIA dans le cadre des Mutual Assistance Program alimenta également la controverse, qui atteignit son paroxysme avec le renversement et l'assassinat du président chilien Salvador Allende à la suite d'un coup d'état militaire peu ou prou « sponsorisé » par l'Agence en 1973 - une controverse qui n'est toujours pas close.

Articles connexes

• Liste des doctrines géopolitiques, Théorie des dominos
• Liste des alliances internationales de la guerre froide, Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord, Organisation du traité de l'Asie du Sud-Est
• Interventions militaires des États-Unis dans le monde
• Guerres coloniales portugaises

Bibliographie

Bibliographie en langue anglaise

• Chester J. Pach, Jr.: Arming the Free World: The Origins of the United States Military Assistance Program, 1945–1950 (1991).
• Ronald E. Powaski: Toward an entangling alliance: American isolationism, internationalism, and Europe, 1901-1950 (1991.;
• Collectif: Organizing the world: the United States and regional cooperation in Asia and Europe Galia Press-Barnathan (2003).
• Bibliographie complémentaire : Books.google.be Library On US international politic and diplomacy.

NATO.

• Lawrence S. Kaplan: A Community of Interests: NATO and the Military Assistance Program, 1948–1951 (1980);

Amérique latine.

• Carlos Caballero Jurado & Nigel Thomas : Central American Wars 1959-1989 illustrated by Simon McCouaig Osprey Publishing Men-at-Arm series n^o 221, 1990.
• Alejandro de Quesada : The Bay of Pigs illustrated by Stephen Walsh Osprey Publishing Elite series n^o 166, 2009.
• Robert L. Scheina : Latin's America's Wars, the age of the Professional Soldier, 1900-2001, Brassey's Inc., Dulles, Virginie, 2003, (ISBN 1-57488-449-2).

Asie.

Bibliographie en langue française

• Vox magazine des forces armées belges.
• {bilingue français/néérlandais} Lt-Col. Hre BEM Willy Brabant : 1950-1953-2003 From USA for Mutual Defense, Tank Museum News, Bruxelles 4^e trimestre 2003.
• Paul Gaujac : Les blindés en Algérie de la Guerre au maintien de l'ordre 1946-1954, Steelmasters n°101 (oct-nov 2010) pp.6-15, Histoire & Collections, Paris 2010.