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Peru Changing Foreign Military Missions and Impacts
Like most other Latin American nations, Peru received
substantial assistance from a number of countries over the
years
to help improve its military capability. Each foreign
mission
played an important role during its time in Peru. The
first
missions were those of France, originally invited by
President
Nicolás de Piérola in 1896 to help rebuild the armed
forces,
which had suffered a major defeat in the War of the
Pacific and
which were rent by internal conflict. Except for its
withdrawal
during World War I, the French army mission operated
almost
continuously in Peru until 1940, and was supplemented by a
French
naval mission (1905-12) and an air mission (1919-21) as
well.
Perhaps the most significant foreign military presence,
the
French occupied most of the key command positions,
established
and then staffed the Military Academy in Chorrillos for
over
twenty years, and set up (in 1904) and then directed the
National
War College (Escuela Superior de Guerra--ESG), also in
Chorrillos. Many of the FF.AA.'s subsequent
concerns--expanding
the country's effective national territory, the
educational role
of conscription, data collection, the institution's
civilizing
mission, and the connection between national development
and
internal security--could be traced to the French missions.
The
origins of the modern professional army of Peru could be
found in
the work of a succession of French officers and
instructors,
beginning in 1896 with Colonel Paul Clément, the first
head of
the French military mission. FF.AA. members trained by the
French
military mission were on active duty through the 1950s;
even
CAEM, founded in 1951, had its origins over thirty years
earlier
in a French mission recommendation. The professional
military
that the French helped to create in Peru was an activist,
interventionist one; it saw no conflict between military
responsibilities and involvement in the country's
economic,
social, and political affairs.
The United States military presence in Peru began with
a
naval mission in 1920. It operated almost continuously
until the
difficulties that led to the termination of all United
States
military missions by the Peruvian military government in
1969. A
United States air mission first arrived in 1924, and
another
began to function in 1941. The United States Army mission
worked
continuously with its Peruvian counterparts from 1946 to
1969.
During the period from the 1940s through the 1960s, when
the
United States military role was most extensive, and on
into the
1970s, almost 7,000 Peruvian officers and personnel were
trained
by the United States--in Peru, in the Canal Zone, and in
the
United States--in programs lasting from a few weeks to
four
years. United States training objectives included
providing
specialized technical competence, giving exposure to
United
States military approaches and relationships with civilian
agencies, helping to professionalize in ways that would
lead to
less military intervention in politics, and assisting in
giving
the armed forces a development role, as in road-building
or civic
action.
When increasingly nationalistic Peruvian military
leaders
felt that the United States role was in growing conflict
with
their view of Peru's national development goals, they
chose in
1969 to expel the United States military missions.
However, Peru
continued to purchase some equipment from the United
States, with
attendant instruction, and to send a small number of
officers to
the United States and its bases in the Canal Zone for
training.
Peru also accepted small United States military and
paramilitary
training units in Peru from the mid-1980s onward for
short-term
specialized instruction related to drug-trafficking
interdiction.
The February 1990 Cartagena Agreement signed by the
presidents of
the United States and the Andean countries, along with the
PeruUnited States umbrella agreement on drug control and
economic
assistance of May 1991, envisioned substantially expanded
United
States economic and military assistance to Peru to help
with the
drug-trafficking and insurgency problem. Expanded military
training assistance was approved by the United States
Congress
for 1992 as part of a US$30-million counternarcotics
package, but
was suspended in April 1992 after President Fujimori's
self-coup.
Shorter-term foreign military advisers during the
twentieth
century included a German general from 1926 to 1930 and an
Italian air mission from 1935 to 1940. Beginning in 1973,
the EP
and FAP developed a close relationship with the Soviet
Union that
included substantial military missions for both services.
From
the mid-1970s through the 1980s, some US$1.5 billion in
Soviet
equipment was purchased by Peru, more than from any other
single
country. From 100 to 400 Peruvian military personnel from
the EP
and FAP were trained in the Soviet Union each year at the
height
of the relationship. In the mid-1980s, the Soviet
permanent
mission in Peru consisted of 650 personnel. Up to
seventy-nine
technicians of Cuba's Antiaircraft Defense and
Revolutionary Air
Force at a time served in Peru in the late 1970s to help
with the
preparation of Soviet equipment purchased by the FAP. The
matériel and support gave Peru significant opportunities
to
upgrade the EP and FAP at relatively low cost and on
extremely
favorable credit terms. Owing to economic problems,
repayment was
largely in goods rather than cash.
For the Soviet Union, Peru was the only Latin American
country outside of Cuba in which it had a significant
military
presence. In fact, in the mid-1980s there were more Soviet
military advisers in Peru (150 to 200) than there were
United
States military advisers in all of Latin America. Although
the
ongoing Soviet-Peru military relationship was reduced
substantially by early 1991 and Peruvian military
authorities
were interested in new arrangements with other countries,
severe
economic problems made these very difficult to work out.
The impact of foreign military training missions on the
FF.AA. over the years was significant, even decisive at
times.
The most important contributions were in the areas of
establishing training facilities, providing instruction in
an
array of military subjects both in Peru and abroad,
building the
technical capability of the military with training related
to
equipment purchases, and making each of the institutions
of the
armed forces more professional. In Peru, however, as in
most
Latin American countries, military professionalization
also
better equipped the institution to become involved in
politics
when its leaders deemed that circumstances required
intervention.
Neither the French missions of 1896-1940, nor the United
States
missions of 1946-69 resulted in reduced Peruvian military
intervention; the Soviet relationship originally developed
while
the Peruvian armed forces were in control of the
government.
What the Peruvian military tried to do for many years,
usually with success, was to maintain diversity in both
foreign
missions and sources of equipment in order to retain as
much
independence as possible as an institution. Although this
strategy worked in the 1920s and 1930s, it was even more
successful in the 1970s and early to mid-1980s. For
example, of
the more than US$1 billion in military equipment Peru
obtained
from 1974-78, some 63 percent came from the Soviet Union,
10
percent from the United States, 7 percent from France, 6
percent
from the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany--FRG),
4
percent from Italy, 1 percent from Britain, and 9 percent
from
other countries. This pattern continued in the 1980s,
giving Peru
the most diversified military in Latin America in terms of
equipment, as well as making the country the largest
single
importer of arms in the region. One of the prices of
greater
independence with greater diversity, however, was the
technical
and logistical challenge of trying to mesh widely varied
matériel
into effective and efficient military operations.
Data as of September 1992
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