Engineer Memoirs
Later, particularly in the NixonFord years, it was much more political. I don't mean
the weapons weren't going to be used for military strength. But the whole business of
the arms trade was viewed as political.
When Carter came along, there was opposition to this whole idea. We had made a great
mistake. We had exploited arms first for commercial purposes and then for political
purposes, and it had all turned sour.
Of course, the root of all this was the failure in Vietnam. Vietnam represented the
essence of the concept that, if we supplied weapons, training, and support to allies
forward and close to the Communist periphery, then the wars, the battles, the struggles
would be there. All this would keep it away from the U.S. These people would be
surrogates for us. This was the whole concept of a forward defense. This was the Nixon
Doctrine. Let them fight the wars. We'll supply the materiel.
The Carter view of this, the viewpoint of his administration, was that this concept had
gotten us into a lot of trouble. By the time I got there, the concern--and this was a very
deep concern of McGiffert--was that a whole arms transfer apparatus be responsive
and be controlled by the political leadership and that we not engage in arms transfers
unless a decision was made politically that this was what we wanted to do.
They had a huge kick on this. My job wasn't particularly to sell weapons. My job was,
once the political leadership had decided what they wanted to do, to see that that was
done.
That was all right with me. There were a bunch of people that had been in the business
a long time that felt that the whole concept of security assistance and military aid was
one of the keys to our security and that a regime that throttled this was hurting our
security. The whole Carter thing was anathema to them.
Since I hadn't grown up with this my whole life, it wasn't as hard for me to accept the
fact that McGiffert was deciding these things, or Harold Brown or whoever. I tried to
carry out what they wanted done. In retrospect, maybe sometimes they went overboard.
Q:
Now that you mention it, I think your predecessor was really appalled by Carter
policies, wasn't he?
A:
May 19th, 1977, was when President Carter first put out his policy that arms transfers
would be an exceptional tool of policy, not a routine instrument.
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