The Arms Trade With the Third World.

In 1976, the US Congress halted arms sales to Chile. This paper examines the congressional debate over arms sales to Chile and the political and military consequences of the action. Recent scholarship has largely overlooked the embargo and its implications for regional security dynamics in South America. Initially US sanctions increased Chile's diplomatic isolation and military vulnerability, which made regional conflict more likely. However, Chile's ability to surmount the effects of the embargo eventually increased Augusto Pinochet's independence vis-a-vis Washington. When the Reagan administration began pushing for a transition to democracy, it lacked two key instruments for influencing a military government: weapons sales and security assistance.

Cutting Off the Dictator: The United States Arms Embargo of the Pinochet Regime, 1974–1988

The expropriation of U.S. companies —such as the International Petroleum Company— has been signaled in historiography as a decisive factor in determining the stance of the U.S. government towards P...

The United States Congress and the Peruvian Revolution, 1968-1975❧

Multinational corporations in the extractive sector have historically faced challenges to their property rights, particularly in oil. International business scholars argue that firms can decrease these challenges by approaching domestic legitimating actors or seeking home government support. Through a study of the operations of Standard Oil of New Jersey in Peru and Argentina in the twentieth century, we find that these legitimating strategies can backfire due to two main elements: first, the multinational might approach actors with a different agenda from those defining, delineating, and enforcing property rights. Second, host countries can use home government support to multinationals to delegitimise foreign firms' operations.

Multinational Corporations, Property Rights, and Legitimization Strategies: US Investors in the Argentine and Peruvian Oil Industries in the Twentieth Century

: Although domestic laws, rules, and norms shape defense acquisition in the United States (U.S.), budgeting and financial management policy and practice decisions made in the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government regarding how to spend defense financial resources have a powerful impact on the international security environment and the strategic choices of other nations. Understanding the interaction effects between U.S. defense weapons and weapons system planning, acquisition and execution and related budgeting/fiscal policy, and the reactions of other nations to it all is vital if U.S. defense management processes are to succeed in achieving the objective of preparing U.S. armed forces to fulfill the U.S. government's national, international, and foreign policy goals. This report examines U.S. defense weapons acquisition and budgeting from an international perspective. Within this context, answers are sought to the following questions. First, what are the effects of U.S. defense acquisition, defense assets, and budgets on the international development and diffusion of new military technologies? Second, what factors drive U.S. arms export decisions? Third, how do U.S. policies shape the international market for armaments? Finally, do U.S. decisions about how much to spend on national defense drive those of other nations through arms races and burden-sharing? This report addresses a number of policy and process issues related to these questions and provides a summary and conclusions of findings.

International Dynamics of U.S. National Defense Acquisition and Budgetary Policy

On May 5, 1967, U.S. National Security Adviser Walter W. Rostow briefed President Lyndon B. Johnson that Peru had contracted to buy twelve Mirage 5 supersonic fighter jets from France, "despite our repeated
 warnings of the consequences." The first planes were delivered a year later, prompting the United States to withhold development loans from Peru as directed by the Conte-Long Amendment to the 1968 Foreign
 Assistance Appropriations Bill. Peru was the first Latin American country (with the exception of Cuba) to equip its air force with supersonic combat aircraft, and its decision spurred a dramatic qualitative
 and financial escalation in regional arms procurement, thereby defeating Washington9s effort to control the latter. The CIA qualified the "Mirage affair" as the "most serious issue" in U.S.-Peruvian
 relations at the time. The event demonstrated the growing desire of Peru and other Latin American countries to loosen the ties that bound them to Washington and exemplified France9s drive to depolarize
 world politics during the Cold War. Demanded by the Peruvian military establishment, the Mirage deal also announced the golpe of October 1968 that ended the presidency of Fernando Belauunde
 Terry and ushered in the reformist military dictatorship of Juan Velasco Alvarado. In addition, it complicated relations between the White House, Congress, and the press in the antagonistic context of the
 Vietnam War. Finally, it further illustrated the diplomatic and economic stakes of military aircraft sales, as well as the appeal of the airplane as a symbol of national sovereignty and modernity.

Franççois Le Roy

Papers

Mirages over the Andes: Peru, France, the United States, and Military Jet Procurement in the 1960s