Strife Journal, Special Issue I (November/ December 2015) 58 The Use of Professional Military Education as a Soft-Power Asset in U.S. International Security Policy Duraid Jalili ‘Humble’ Beginnings In 1949 the U.S. began training foreign military personnel as part of the “Military Assistance Program” authorised by Congress. Initially designed to help rebuild European forces (alongside Foreign Military Sales) as a barrier to Soviet influence, the U.S. perspective on the value of international military education was underpinned by a division between the known value of such activities, and the nature of a closed-organisational model. As shown in U.K. Cabinet Office archives, for example, on 27 November 1945 Field Marshal Henry Maitland Wilson, Chief of the British Joint Staff in Washington D.C. sent a confidential telegram to the U.K. Chiefs of Staff. His message was regarding an offer which had been made to the U.S. Chiefs of Staff to send U.S. officers to attend the U.K.’s Imperial Defence College (now known as the Royal College of Defence Studies). In the letter, Wilson outlined a personal conversation held with General George C. Marshall the U.S. Army Chief of Staff in which Marshall stated that: ‘...the U.S. Chiefs of Staff would be glad to reciprocate. However, [they] were concerned to keep the whole thing as quiet and informal as possible on the grounds that if it got about they would be inundated with requests to accept students at American colleges from all the Latin American countries.’ 1 Just under five years later on 7 September 1950 (and only one year after the commencement of the U.S.’s Military Assistance Programme), a U.K. Chiefs of Staff Committee meeting regarding the proposed creation of the NATO Defence College, noted that ‘the idea of setting up such a College has been conceived by the 1 National Archives, UK. CAB 120/8. Secret Cypher Telegram, received by O.T.P. From J.S.M., Washington to Cabinet Officers. FMW 214. 27 November, 1945. Americans as an alternative to acceding to a French request for vacancies at the U.S. National War College and Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and at the British Imperial Defence College.’ 2 Despite this initial reluctance, over the next sixty years the U.S. engaged in an exponential expansion of external foreign military training, as well as significantly widening its capacity to incorporate and integrate foreign military and civilian students within its own national training courses. In 1976, for example, it created its benchmark International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme, designed to centralise a wide range of leadership and management training for both current and (potential) future military leaders. Such programmes were not devoid of criticism or controversy. In the 1994 documentary film ‘School of Assassins’ for example, Robert Richter chronicled the wide range of human rights abuses committed by graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). 3 Such criticisms over questionable human rights records, combined with Congressional in- fighting regarding the value of such programmes, led U.S. Congress to deny foreign training assistance to several countries over the years, impacting both upon individual foreign students and wider political and diplomatic relations between countries. 4 Yet, despite these setbacks, total U.S. Government expenditure on foreign military 2 National Archives, UK. DEFE 6/13. Section 89. Previous Reference: J.P. (50) 88 (O). COS (50 97 th Meeting, Minute 3. 3 School of the Americas Assassins. Dir. Robert Richter. Richter Productions, 1994. 4 M.A. Pomper, ‘Battle Lines Keep Shifting Over Foreign Military Training’, Congressional Quarterly Weekly (29 January 2000), pp. 193-196.