MILITARY AID OR KILLER DEAL: U.S. WEAPONS TRADE AND MILITARY TRAINING IN THE CARIBBEAN, 1790 - 2001 Guest Speaker: Dr. Humberto Garcia Muñiz

INTEROPERABILITY: POST COLD WAR U.S. MILITARY POLICY IN THE CARIBBEAN

As we all know in 1989 supposedly the Cold War finished and there is a change in U.S. military aid policy. There comes the foreign military financial program which is mainly donations. They are giving equipment again. They are giving training, they are giving services. They are not charging for them. The key word here is "interoperability." What they are doing is that most of the countries that are getting money here which are the Dominican Republic and the English-speaking islands, they are being trained together. They are a kind of sub-regional force. And they train together in Puerto Rico in Camp Garcia and they train in Domincan Republic, they train in several islands every year. And they try to attain "interoperability" because what they want is to use these forces for -- not for military interventions -- because they are not prepared for that. They will be mainly used for peace-keeping purposes or, after the U.S. intervenes, for stability purposes -- like in Haiti.

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