The JCTP aimed at assisting former Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union Republics, now independent, to form democracies and defense forces of their own.

If active, it is entirely out of the jurisdiction of the state and under the DoD, which might or might not keep its original identity, but more likely plunders it for replacements or special units of the Regular Army or Air Force.

The program links National Guard units of U.S. States with partner countries around the world for the purpose of supporting the security cooperation objectives of the geographic Combatant Commands (CCMDs).

"For SPP events conducted overseas, National Guard members are typically placed in a duty status by orders issued under the authority of 10 U.S.C.

"For SPP events conducted within the United States, National Guard members are placed in a duty status by orders issued under 32 U.S.C.

The travel-related expenses are paid from separate funds, the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) accounts, of which there are many, such as the following:[16] All SPP activities are coordinated through the geographic Combatant Commanders, the U.S.

Former co-nationals of Austria in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary had been an ally of the Third Reich, contributing some ten divisions to the invasion of Russia.

As a result of this American fiasco the government adopted a policy of never communicating with countries behind the Iron Curtain but always approaching the Soviet Union first.

As the region was falling into poverty and cynicism, Gorbachev had proposed to the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on March 6, 1986, policies of glasnost, or candidness of governmental process, and peristroika, reorganization.

German reunification was declared complete (and is celebrated as such) on October 3, 1990, considered the final settlement of World War II after 45 years of occupation.

One effort to address these policy goals was to expand military-to-military contacts with the newly independent states of Central and Eastern Europe.

In 1989 the DOD sponsored the Interagency Working Groups (IWG's) for the purpose of developing mil-to-mil contacts, one with the Soviet Union and one with Eastern and Central Europe.

The East Europe IWG met on August 15, 1990, to formulate objectives, of which the first was "Promoting development of non-political militaries accountable to democratically elected civilian leadership.

Dick Cheney, United States Secretary of Defense, created independently a program of Bilateral Working Groups (BWG's), one per nation.

During the previous year, meanwhile, Gorbachev, seeing the end coming, had been struggling to create some portable unity that would carry on after the fall of the Soviet Union.

When Germany conceded the loss of World War I, it attempted to retain the Baltics, who had been the left flank of the Eastern Front, through the use of Freikorps, supposedly non-national mercenary volunteers.

Plans were made to extend invitations to all the Central and Eastern European countries, but the State Department reneged temporarily.

Over the course of the next year, a new organization was proposed, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) to include Warsaw Pact and CIS nations.

[33] It is true that the retreating army of the 3rd Reich for a time formed a redoubt on the Kurland Peninsula, but it had no hope of victory, and was forced to surrender.

The Boehm source reports that "In the United States, it had been shown that operating a standing army costs 80 percent more than a reserve element.

Conaway was able to write to Powell, "The National Guard stands ready to advise and assist in the formation of U.S.-style National Guard military structures in the countries of the former Soviet Union, the Baltic Republics and the former Warsaw Pact, and to assist authorities in cooperative self-help projects to enhance democratization and stabilization of the countries of the region."

On April 1 Dick Cheney added "humanitarian assistance" and "crisis management" in an address to NATO at Brussels redefining U.S. goals for East Europe.

"[36] Some weeks after, the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm received a letter from the Latvian Deputy Minister of Defense, Valdis Pavlovskis, inviting USCOM to assist Latvia in implementing the deployable reserve.

As a sort of afterthought, it suggested that each Baltic country be assigned a "partnership state," the Guard of which would take charge of mil-to-mil (or mil-to-civilian) exchanges.

Shortly the suggestion became a full-blown proposal of the program, with Michigan to be assigned to Latvia, Pennsylvania to Lithuania, and less certainly New Jersey or New York to Estonia.

"[37] In the last few weeks of November, 1992, a visitation of 38 interagency dignitaries alighted upon the Baltics by air with full authority to unroll the program as persuasively as they could.

Subsequently, the DoD changed the traditional reserve role of the Guard for this case, to permit it to undertake "an active component mission."

The MLT for Latvia, including members of the Michigan NG, arrived in Riga in early May, a few days after the Estonian team in Tallinn.

The non-paper beginning of the SPP as a distinct program therefore is counted by the major Internet military sources as April, 1993, with Estonia taking the lead by a few days.

The immediate trigger of the change was the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1981, which began with the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran by radical Islamic students (and others) contrary to International Law.