Free For Lunch? The Languid Life Of Foreign Attaches
Aldrich, Hope
Free For Lunch? The Languid Life of Foreign Attaches by Hope Aldrich A typical day in the life of Captain Sergio Rolando Alcaraz, Paraguayan naval attache in Washington, goes something like...
...The assistant secretary’s suggestions were about as popular as Castro’s would be at the White House...
...weapons grant or financing program...
...But Basnyat, relaxing confidently on a couch in his carpeted office, says that his army’s work has nothing to do with defense...
...various such entities around Washington, often housed in fancy buildings with their own separate staffs...
...Ostensibly, his responsibilities are to advise on military matters, to keep abreast of technological advances through the trade magazines, and to keep thearms parts flowing smoothly through the pipeline to home when needed...
...a free, two-week tour in Latin America...
...The staff also produces reports on subjects such asdisaster relief...
...At first glance, it seems that Alcaraz is finally getting down to real business...
...He went around and looked for British tanks,” Childs recalls...
...Translators take their places in two tiers of booths and a lengthy agenda is distributed...
...This way “they can solve problems on a personal basis that might have taken three or four times longer at the diplomatic level,” Swarztrauber says...
...But we all understand each other...
...They play tennis...
...A big part of the game of looking and feeling important is finding an elegant building suited to the attache’s ostensible stature...
...It was founded during World War 11, with a mandate “to act as the organ of preparation and recommendation for the collective self-defense of the American continent against aggression...
...But step inside and it’s a scene straight out of some movie where the British have just abandoned a colony: bare, cavernous rooms with several windows boarded over,and only twodesks and a few decaying armchairs visible on the first floor...
...No one dares abolish it because it would upset the military back home...
...funds a drug control program there, but this office does not manage it...
...Each country may name to the one-year program three students who have graduated from their national war college and reached the rank of colonel...
...Why wasn’t “Charlie” plan brought out then...
...The truth is that Latin American governments and the OAS shudder at the mention of a permanent and powerful Latin American military organization such as NATO, says Child...
...The haze of elegance and respectability that has long shrouded diplomacy usually keeps these questions from coming up...
...and no fear of rising tuition or closing doors because the governments pay all...
...Uniformed officers step out of limousines and move on past the flags set up outside the marble doorway to the lounge, where they sip drinks beneath paintings of naked cherubs holding strands of flowers...
...The conference takes place in the ornate, red-carpeted meeting chamber, dimly lit by chandeliers...
...General Adams recalls time after time when the “Golden Exiles” from Latin America havearrived after changes of governments, especially changes from military to civilian leadership...
...Because most countries have to send plans home for approval, which can take months, thestaffworkshalf-timeat most, Adams says...
...So they intentionally limit the InterAmerican Defense Board to anadvisory role, with no authority to call up troops...
...When we go on tour, we have Israelis, we have Arabs...
...a faculty-student ratioofabout one to four...
...The army is not used for fighting outsiders,” he says...
...So procurement does not absorb much of his time...
...This means drawing up strategies against invasions and uprisings...
...During the recess, waiters in red jackets serve wine, and the halls ring with the sounds of voices raised in speeches and toasts and the clinking of glasses...
...When the Peruvian government became civilian under President Fernando Belaunder, it conveniently dispatched to the board a group of officers who had lost their jobs...
...H.A...
...They are called “Alpha,” “Bravo,” and “Charlie,” and he says they are continually updated and evaluated by the board...
...Colonel KO Gyi, time seems to have stood still...
...Seated on the nob of a hill at 16th and Euclid Streets, the IADB headquarters is a pink, Venetianstyle mansion with carved lions crouching at its window sills...
...And the diplomats themselves aren’t going to be much help...
...In fact, according to Bruce Bagley,anassistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studiesand an occasional lecturer at the college, the college attracts a significant number who are being bypassed in the military system and who need “a feather in their caps“ to boost their careers...
...military bases and arms companies...
...In 1972, when Guatemala complained of an unusual buildup of British forces across the border in the British colony of Belize, the board sent down a Colombian general to see what was going on...
...Culture of Cushiness One can’t help suspecting that the life of many military attaches is but the tip of a comfortable iceberg that exists not only in Washington diplomatic circles, but in capitals throughout the world...
...At the Australian embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, business moves so fast the embassy provides computer printouts of needed parts at the reception desk that any salesperson can skim over...
...About the only thing missing is a basketball team...
...troops, the OAS did indeed call on the IADB to draw up a plan for a multinational force...
...But does Swarztrauber’s college really attract the stars of the hemisphere’s military ranks...
...wanted access to Latin American raw materials in case other sourcesdried up, Child explains...
...Although they aren’t a diplomatic necessity, half the embassies have them-and at not inconsiderable expense...
...As for the rest of the curriculum, the military courses taken by the Argentinian graduates certainly didn’t help in the Falklands...
...On the day I visited his Massachusetts Avenue office, the issue under discussion was whether the social committee should invite Nancy Reagan to IADBs fortieth anniversary party...
...Burma is not involved in any U.S...
...We’re overflowing with pamphlets from people trying t‘o sell us things,” he says brightly...
...Well, explains McEnery, “the plans are extremely general...
...You couldn’t just dust them off and go to war, if war broke out...
...But it can also be a form of exile...
...The U.S...
...Captain Alcaraz has lots ofcompany...
...It is used for developing the country, for natural disasters, and for building foot paths through the high mountains...
...The IADB is composed of 19 active-member nations from the Americas, including the United States...
...It was just a paper exercise...
...Child contends that the real reason for the existence of the pink elephant on 16th Street is . purely political...
...United States Rear Admiral Sayre Swarztrauber, chairman of the college, claims the students are “the cream of the crop, obviously top notch...
...military installations and private armament companies...
...The U.S...
...Though the board became an anachronism soon after the threat of war passed, it wasn’t until 1968 that the U.S...
...Appointment as an attachecan bea treat-a reward of luxury and leisure...
...The pomp and circumstance preceding the biweekly council of delegates meetings rivals President Reagan’s recent European tour...
...delegation to the board from 1973 to 1978, said that the board‘s few other attempts at peacekeeping hardly have been memorable...
...Assign him to the board...
...They do make-work like updating a big military dictionary in four languages “so that when we say ‘soldier’ or ‘rocket’ we all know what we’re talking about...
...It’s nice to come to Washington...
...Easy-listening music wafts through the room as he leafs through the pages...
...He removes from a metal safe three pastelcolored booklets that heexplains are strategy plans for hemispheric defense...
...Learning To Kill Time If Latin American military officers aren’t passing the time at the Inter-American Defense Board they may have retreated to the groves of academe-the Inter-American Defense College, which sits on a lovely stretch of land along the Potomac in Southwest Washington...
...I quickly noticed that the students tend to be shiny on top and thickening at the waist...
...The attache handles bids for spare parts, but his government usuallynegotiates directly for major new purchases like ships and planes...
...We have passed through so many events...
...It’s an elegant, impressive, dignified, and totally false display...
...The board makes use of an international staff of about 70, including 24 officers who work in intelligence and planning, five interpreters, a draftsman, and two chauffeurs...
...Some civilians also are allowed to attend...
...How do Italian diplomats in the Ivory Coast keep busy...
...In truth it moved in tenyearsago...
...A council of delegates from each country sets policy at biweekly meetings...
...to Paraguay is a $I5,000 training grant...
...On the 2300 block of California Street, in an expensive residential area, stands an imposing red-brick, three-story building, the Embassy of Burma-Office of the Military, Naval and Air Attache...
...Gyi serves tea on a table with old calendars spread under the glass top...
...We are very senior people,” he explains...
...The recent war in the Falklands illustrates the board’s stature...
...The college has astudent bodyofonlyabout 60...
...Except forfunding the OAS has no formal tie with the IADB...
...Basnyat’s mainjob, he says,issimply todevelop good relations with the men at the Pentagon, the reason being that Nepal’s survival depends more on friendship than weapons...
...But thescrapbook turns out tocontain pamphlets not for majorarmaments, butforsmallsupply dealers and even a caterer...
...Then it’s time for lunch with a spare parts salesman...
...They should have gone to Sandhurst...
...John McEnery ofthe U. S. Army, the board’s chairman, insists that the IADBhasan important role to play...
...They visit embassies...
...Mucho Ado About Nothing There are more than 400 defense attaches in town...
...Alpha deals with small-scale guerrilla insurgency, Bravo with broader-scope war within the hemisphere, and Charlie with “significant attacks from the outside...
...another free, two-week tour through U.S...
...It employsa full-time “police force attache,” Lt...
...Meanwhile, the trip committee is making arrangements for this year’s visit of the board delegates to Latin America...
...There are no problems...
...What does the Dominican Republic mission in Malta do all day...
...Upstairs,in the offices of the attache, Lt...
...sharp every day, 60 uniformed officers and more than 100civilians stream into a modern, six-story office building of the German Military Representative, where they keep track of West German spare parts contracts worth about $3 billionannually...
...tried to eliminate theemptyexercise, and by then it was too 1ate.Thestatedepartment sent an assistant secretary ona swing through Latin America to suggest replacing the board with annual meetings of the ministers of defensewouldn’t the ministers like t.0 do their talking somewhere besides Washington, he urged...
...It was permanently established by the Organization of American States in Bogota in 1948...
...If there would be only army people, I think there would be no problems in the world...
...He didn’t find any...
...The board is simply a dumping ground for an excess of undesirable high-ranking military officers...
...Chiniya Bahadur Basnyat, military attache for the government of Nepal, would bea bit busier than most of his South American counterparts...
...The attache needs a house in the suburbs, often a chauffeur and club memberships, and a sizable entertainment budget...
...Perhaps the most popular and widely used device to fill the attache’s need for feeling significant is the multinational commission...
...The board also helped out President Antonio Guzman of the Dominican Republic when he wanted to get rid of the director of the national police...
...Why friendships with military men in particular...
...There just aren’t any plans for insurgency in Central America, he says, because “we haven’t had any instructions to do any...
...Uruguay, for instance, has eight defense attaches on a diplomatic staff of 16-and can buy no arms from the United States...
...The intelligence units have noaccess to classified materials so the staff is often left guessing at facts and figures...
...Air Force Genera1 Ranald Adams, who chaired the board from 1978 to 1981...
...What do these attachesdo...
...We’re happy with visitingeachotherand getting to know each other,” he says...
...Later on, doing business will be easier...
...Total cost is about $2.3 million annually, funded through the Organization of American States, of which the U.S...
...But what about the defense attaches from countries with tiny military budgets or to which, like Paraguay, the United States has banned weapons sales because of the countries’ poor human rights records...
...It’s hard toadmit that you’re in exile,orthatyourcountry’s foreign service is wasting money, or that yourjob is nothing but a cushy rewarddevoid ofsubstance...
...A 1964 Who’s Who lies on the nearempty bookshelves...
...Many of them become generals and admirals and cabinet officers...
...Whatever those later “needs” turn out to be, it’s a little hard to figure out what these people actually accomplish in the meantime...
...Of course, Swarztrauber’s claims that college graduates can reach for their phones to smooth out diplomatic crises has never amounted to much...
...During the Dominican Republic crisis of 1965, hfter President Johnson sent in U.S...
...Hope Aldrich is a Washington writer...
...Gyi’s staff includes about six people, which seemed more than necessary for his responsibilities of supervising about 20 Burmese students training at U. S. military bases and overseeing modest spare parts purchases...
...about 100 guest speakers a year from universities like Princeton and Johns Hopkins...
...But he makes no effort to hide the leisurely pace of the attache’slife...
...Child, a retired lieutenant colonel who was a member of the U.S...
...It looks as if the staff had moved in yesterday...
...But according to Professor John Child, assistant dean at American University’s School of International Service, “it was never used...
...The Languid Life of Foreign Attaches by Hope Aldrich A typical day in the life of Captain Sergio Rolando Alcaraz, Paraguayan naval attache in Washington, goes something like this: In the morning Captain Alcaraz receives phone calls or attends meetings as a member of the social committee and the trip committee of something called the Inter-American Defense Board...
...On Brandywine Street at 8 a.m...
...As it turns out, the strategic plans - Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and the others-are purely make-believe, according to U.S...
...All in all, the real purpose for maintaining the college, Bagley believes, is simply to give the Pentagon convenient access toas many Latin American officersaspossible...
...Another function the board serves is .as peacemaker, says McEnery, citing the 1965 Dominican Republic crisis, during which an IADB plan for theoperation ofaninter-American peacekeeping force was adopted...
...All over Washington you see limousines disgorging streams of uniformed officers who disappear behind the doorways of mansions with plaques identifying countries you may never have heard of...
...The board sent an observer only for about a month, he said...
...For countries with large defense budgets, the spare parts business does in fact keep military attaches and their backup staffs frantically busy...
...But that elegance can fade quickly once you’re past the front door...
...The so-called peace-keeping role of the board is equally substantive...
...In his office, where more cherubs cavort on the ceiling, Lt...
...pays two-thirds in addition to the salaries of the U.S...
...The State Department originally pushed for creation of the board during World War 11 because the U.S...
...To understand the important role they play in keeping some of Washington’s attaches from nodding off during the day, I took a closer look at one, an obscure but proud organization called the Inter-American Defense Board...
...The average student this past winter was 45 years old, closer to the end than the start of his military career...
...The cream of the crop are at home, he says, having already made it while in their thirties...
...The formula for assignment: “A colonel is too powerful to be fired, too dangerous to be retired...
...Then there’s Peru...
...Nepal seldom buys American-made spare parts for its army-perhaps once or twiceayearand has no navy or air force, he says...
...Faculty come from every member nation...
...One might think that Lt...
...He keeps a large scrapbook of pamphlets from salesmen on the coffee table...
...militaryassigned to the board...
...This idyllic institution was set up in 1962 by the Inter-American Defense Board and isopen to officers from the board’s member nations...
...But what about the thousands of other diplomats whose functions are even harder to discern...
...At least the military attaches and defense board members have some assigned duties and a well-defined role...
...I soon discover that since 1977 the United States has banned all arms sales and grants to Paraguay, whose human rights record makes the Philippines look like Luxembourg...
...Once these things are pointed out, all of that getting in and out of limousines becomes less dazzling-and more amusing...
...He stresses how important it is to have attaches in Washington attending social functions and keeping up contacts for the day they are needed...
...What’s more, Alcaraz is the naval attache from a land-locked country800miIesfrom thesea...
...There are...
...General Juan Balaguer, whose taxingjobis to keepin touch with U. S. police organizations to monitor illegal smuggling of Peruvian artifacts...
...Basnyat enthusiastically describes a special camaraderie among Washington’s corps of military attaches that comes out most strongly when they all go off on Pentagon-sponsored trips to U.S...
...Alcaraz has a ready explanation for his presence in Washington-Paraguay apparently needs a navy for its rivers, which carry trade and border on sometimes-unfriendly nations, and it needs good public relations even during the arms embargo...
...The students get a first-class education, and more important, Swarztrauber goes on, once back at home in high-ranking positions they can pick up the phone and call former colleagues when disputes between nations arise...
...enthusiastically joined the project and donated building space because the college was seen as a chance to counter the growing threat of Castro-style guerrilla warfare...
...The telephone book isn’t much help, offering only obscure listings for foreign mi1itary”commisions” and “representatives . ” What I found on my strange journey through this world is that behind the impressive titles is a sea of blank date books and lengthy agendas that lead nowhere...
...almost guaranteed graduation (only a handful haven’t passed...
...They sent them up here until they became eligible to retire...
...It’s the last thing they want after a history of American intervention...
...Now, in Washington, he wants “to rest, listen to the music . . . . If they need you, they will come and get you...
...Perhaps this isa place wheresome real policy decisions are being made, 1 thought as 1 made my way through the broad, marbled entrance...
...Nepal’s 25,000-man army is matched against the military giants that ring its borders-China with an army of about 4.5 million and India with an army of more than one million...
...This year, the only thing military going from the U.S...
Vol. 14 • November 1982 • No. 9
