Covert aggression is not a new Communist technique. The political/military cadres who gradually seized control of the satellites of Eastern Europe after World War II and those who later seized North Korea, Red China, and North Vietnam had been carefully prepared for many years. Today, cadres are active in Laos and Vietnam, where insurgency has reached a high degree of development. We believe they are forming in a number of countries in various other regions of the world where insurgency is still only latent.

MAGNITUDE OF THREAT

The President underlined the magnitude of this threat when, in his address to the Congress in March 1961, he said: "In more areas of the world, the main burden of local defense against overt attack, subversion, and guerrilla warfare must rest upon local populations and forces. But given the great likelihood and seriousness of the form of strong, highly mobile forces, trained in this type of warfare . . ."

There is a large range of military/political options open to Communist attackers utilizing the covert aggression technique. These options include the subversion of individuals, tribes, fronts, parties; guerrilla warfare; and the entire gamut of Communist operations designed to undermine the free world. As serious as are the threats of general and limited war, in our judgment they do not in the long run exceed that of covert aggression. This is particularly true in this decade of the 1960's.

Grave as this problem is, it is not insurmountable. We must remind ourselves of the fact that partly through the assistance of the United States, 28 million Filipinos are free; 14,300,000 South Vietnamese remain outside the Communist bloc; Greece and Iran are still free; and with British assistance, 7 million Malayans retained their freedom. The states on the periphery of the Sino-Soviet bloc have been the most severely tested. In non-contiguous areas, where there were no bases nearby into which the Communists could reach for quick resupply and reinforcement, and without the leverage given by the direct threat of overt military aggression, they failed in Malaya, the Philippines, and-in the late stages of the fight-in Greece.

EFFORTS TO COUNTER COVERT AGGRESSION

The President has stressed the urgency of combatting Communist wars of covert aggression and we are acting to meet the problem. I should like to explain briefly to you how we are going about this task in the Department of Defense.

Our first problem is that of organizing and directing the effort. Both General Lemnitzer 2 and I spend a good part of our time giving personal direction to this endeavor. For instance, in the past 60 days we have twice been to Honolulu to meet with Admiral [Harry] Felt, the Pacific Commander, and with senior commanders to discuss our defense contribution to South Vietnam. I intend to

2 Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

continue this practice on a monthly basis. We started similar meetings with our Caribbean Commander. We were there last Saturday. In addition, Major General John A. Heintges, who served as chief of the Programs Evaluation Office in Laos from 1959 to 1961, has been designated as the chief focal point within the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization for problems pertaining to covert aggression. Brigadier General William B. Rosson has been designated Special Assistant to the Army Chief of Staff for the same purpose.

Under Presidential direction, I am sending senior officers from all services upon orientation and study trips to places in which Communist covert aggression is present or threatened. I have instructed that all promotions to senior Army positions be reviewed to make certain that senior officers are professionally qualified in all phases of warfare, including the counter-insurgency type. Doctrines are being refined within all service schools, and training courses for many officers who require further professional instruction are being intensified and expanded.

SUPPORT GIVEN TO FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS

We recognize that our task overseas is largely to provide support to foreign military establishments and foreign governments. They do the job. We advise them and we support their anti-covert aggression activities. Our advice and support must be sound. It must fit in with that given to the same governments by the Department of State, the Agency for International Development, the United States Information Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency. The advice and support given to foreign governments by all of us must form a pattern of activities which, if vigorously prosecuted, will bring success.

The balance of diplomatic, political, economic, psychological, military, and intelligence programs is difficult to strike. The Communists are attempting to establish states within states. There is competition by force and persuasion for the allegiance and control of entire populations. It is not only guerrilla warfare that is involved; it is total warfare on the level beneath that of overt invasion. During fiscal year 1962 we have worked hard, across administrative lines, to develop country plans which, when fitted into plans by foreign governments, together comprise a way to win.

EXAMPLE OF SOUTH VIETNAM

The dual overt and covert threat that exists in certain countries along the border of the bloc makes the problem particularly difficult. South Vietnam provides a good example. Vietnam's military forces must be poised for double assignment. They must be light, fast, and quickly responsive to the internal threat, while retaining the capability of assembling quickly should weight and width be required to meet an external thrust from North Vietnam.

In South Vietnam, the United States is contributing that which the Vietnamese cannot themselves contribute: helicopters, versatile aircraft, transports, river boats, sea patrol boats, communications equipment, maintenance and construction gear. Experienced U.S. training, staffing, and intelligence teams are also helping bridge the gulf of inexperience.

ASSISTANCE TO NON-CONTIGUOUS COUNTRIES

In addition to countries contiguous to the bloc, the Department of Defense is also assisting countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. These are the countries whose first concern is internal security and whose force structures reflect the response to internal covert aggression more than to an external threat.

Our Military Assistance Missions and Advisory Groups are concentrating now upon the development of training, organization, equipment, and doctrine which can best assist countries like Colombia, Peru, Liberia, and Ethiopia to maintain internal security and help meet the needs of their awakening peoples. We are training friendly officers to use their security forces to assist in educating the people, providing sanitation, building schoolhouses, constructing farm-to-market roads, and treating their injuries and illnesses, as well as to protect them. These latter measures are part of the program known as Civic Action. They are essential elements of the larger effort of our military to assist the governments and people of the lesser developed countries to reinforce their defenses against the internal threats to their security.

DOD'S VIEWS ON DISARMAMENT

The policies of this administration on disarmament can be described in detail more appropriately by others. We in the Department of Defense have naturally played an active part in the greatly intensified study and research in this vital area that has gone on in the past year, and have been fully consulted in the development of national policy.

Briefly stated, our thinking on disarmament and arms control involves three central considerations. First, U.S. security may be enhanced by multilateral limitations and restraints on military capabilities provided they are fairly designed and faithfully executed. Second, any system of disarmament or arms control that is adopted must include the pressures necessary to ensure Soviet compliance to ensure that the Soviets cannot, through a covert violation, obtain a measure of military superiority over the United States.

Finally, any measures that are adopted must be designed in a manner that will preclude a decisive change in the relative military positions or capabilities of the two sides to our disadvantage. This means, for example, that measures which would reduce overall U.S. nuclear superiority should be matched by corresponding reductions in those Communist bloc superiorities which threaten friendly areas now protected largely by our nuclear deterrent.

Before closing, I would like to touch briefly on three factors which, while not directly related to the foregoing discussion, are central to our military posture, and of especial concern to this committee. The factors are mobility, military assistance, and State Department-Defense relationships.

MOBILITY OVERSEAS BASE REQUIREMENTS

In the East-West conflict, the Communists are clearly the military aggressor. The West does not seek its goals by military attacks. Thus the initiative rests with the Sino-Soviet bloc. It can

strike from its power center at a time of its own choosing, anywhere along its 14,000-mile frontier opposite the free world. This factor generates a requirement for a high order of U.S. military mobility.

In the defense establishment, we are concentrating on improving our capacity for getting quickly into action wherever needed. We are needed. We are expanding air and sea lifts, prestocking equipment abroad for forces in the United States, developing a novel shipborne forward floating depot-a self-contained, mobile, U.S. sea base, capable of delivering equipment and support anywhere on the Indian Ocean or Southeast Asian littoral in 5 to 25 days. We are also increasing the active forces held ready in the United States. An element of mobility that is of particular current concern relates to our overseas base structure. Base requirements are not immutable; they change with change in equipment and weapons. However, as long as we must be ready to bring force to the Communist perimeter, a large and complex structure of bases, including, periodically, new ones, will be absolutely necessary.

I am aware of the political difficulties this requirement poses. We have experienced problems, as you know, with France, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and others, and foresee difficulties in the Azores, perhaps Spain, and elsewhere, but we must contrive to hold the needed structure. Loss of the Azores, for example, would seriously curtail our ability to move forces rapidly to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Bases remain an urgent and continuing problem.

MILITARY ASSISTANCE

On the second of the three factors I mentioned, military assistance, I shall be appearing before you in April to present the specific elements of the program for fiscal year 1963. Let me, however, today indicate the highlights of our approach in this area.

In the NATO area, we are continuing major grant programs to Greece and Turkey, which clearly lack the resources to take the essential steps to develop their non-nuclear capabilities. For other countries, however, we have continued the policy of reducing or eliminating grant aid. In the few cases where it will be continued, this aid will be expressly contingent upon at least equal additional efforts by the recipient countries. Almost all the key European countries are now economically capable of carrying their own full share of the NATO defense burden.

A corollary to this military assistance policy is, of course, the effort that we have made to offset the balance of payments costs of our forces in Germany through an undertaking by the German Government to expand its military purchases of goods and services from the United States in amounts approximately equal to those costs. We are now seeking a similar arrangement with France.

REVIEW OF POLICY REGARDING MAJOR RECIPIENTS

From a dollar standpoint, the bulk of military assistance continues to go to the key allied countries on the periphery of the SinoSoviet bloc-Korea, the Republic of China, Turkey, Greece, Iran, and Pakistan. Vietnam, and to a lesser extent, Thailand, are spe

cial cases, and, as you know, in Vietnam we are going all-out to assist them.

Over the past year, we have started an intensive review of military assistance policy in the six major recipient countries I have listed above. The effort has been to see whether military assistance can be reduced so as to permit greater relative allocations of U.S. aid on the economic side, and also, where possible, to reduce the burden on the local defense budget. This review has already resulted in some adjustments of the military assistance program without, however, reducing military force levels to an unacceptable degree. A major question concerns Korea, where it has not been wise to consider an adjustment of the force level up to the present time, but where we are now engaged in a special overall strategic review to see what the future United States/Korean posture should be. It involves a most difficult weighing of strategic risks against the necessity for greater economic and political programs within Korea. I know that this matter has been of concern to this committee in the past, and I shall be prepared to speak to it more fully when we present the military assistance program.

IMPORTANCE OF BOTH LARGE AND SMALL PROGRAMS

Whatever adjustments we may make in these key programs, however, I should like to make it clear that each of these countries will continue to require major forces as a part of the overall defense posture of the free world. Unless external security remains assured, we cannot expect them to make the social and economic progress that is vital to their longterm stability.

The third and growing concern of the military assistance program is with those countries that do not confront a direct external threat from the Sino-Soviet bloc, but where there is a continuing threat of internal subversion. The dollar amounts we devote to Latin America, to Africa, and to countries in other areas falling within this category are not large. However, we have been devoting an intensive effort to the refinement and improvement of these programs, having regard to the particular local political situation in each case. I am convinced that we must do a much more effective job in this regard, particularly in Latin America, if these countries are to have the stability and freedom from Communist disruption that are essential to their continuing progress.

STATE-DEFENSE RELATIONSHIPS

I said at the start of this statement that I would confine myself to military matters. In this period of cold war, covert aggression, and crisis, however, political and military matters are so deeply and continuously intertwined that the State-Defense relationship becomes an element of our military capability. Perhaps I should report briefly on that relationship as I see it.

The State Department is responsible, under the President, for formulating and directing the implementation of our foreign policy. This is fully understood in the Defense Department. On the other hand, in this time of troubles, military considerations bear on many aspects of our foreign policy, and in some cases may even govern policy decisions. It is our duty, from the Defense side,