The deployment of US military assistance to Spain in the 1950s: limited modernisation and strategic dependence.

This article looks at the initial implementation of US military assistance to Spain under the lopsided Mutual Defence Agreement of 1953. The process was characterised by the disparity in the objectives of both sides, the centrality of the military training programmes, and the logistical and organisational limitations of the Spanish Armed Forces to assimilate American aid. The Ifni-Sahara decolonisation conflict of 1957–58 in Northwest Africa, in which Spain was forced to seek French military cooperation, made apparent the conditioned and limited nature of US military assistance and Madrid's need to diversify its security partners during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]