Arming the Americas

Report Outline
Plan for Hemisphere Military Cooperation
New Rio Treaty and Continental Defense
Arms Project and Inter-American Relations
Special Focus

Plan for Hemisphere Military Cooperation

Two Projects to enhance the individual and collective security of nations of the Western Hemisphere will come before Congress at its next regular session. The Senate will be asked to approve the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, signed at Rio de Janeiro on Sept. 2, 1947; both houses will be asked to adopt legislation, twice recommended by President Truman, to authorize a far-reaching program of continental military cooperation under the leadership of the United States.

The Treaty of Rio de Janeiro, supplanting the temporary wartime Act of Chapultepec, makes aggression against any one of the American republics, from within or without the continent, the concern of all the republics and commits each one of them to assist a victim of aggression. Under the proposed “Inter-American Military Cooperation Act,” put forward as a measure to implement the new regional security treaty, the United States would supply arms to other American states and assist in training their armed services, aiming thereby to standardize the equipment and organization of the military, naval and air forces of the individual nations.

Approval of Truman Proposal by House Committee

President Truman first asked Congress to authorize the military cooperation program in a special message on May 6, 1946. A year later, on May 26, 1947, he renewed the request in another special message which was largely a repetition of what he had said on the subject originally. The President observed that “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.” He added that “A special responsibility rests upon the United States in this matter because of the preponderant technical, economic, and military resources of this country.” The President anticipated certain objections to the program by saying: