Category: Security Assistance

Aid to Ukraine May Elicit Broader Arms Trade Scrutiny

1/19/2023

This is the fifth blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2023 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, often offering recommendations.

John Chappell

The coming months will likely bring renewed skepticism towards U.S. arms sales to Ukraine, especially among Republican members whose party now controls the House of Representatives. While increased attention to U.S. security assistance to Ukraine is all but inevitable, will a change in House leadership bring productive debate about arms sales oversight and end-use monitoring? Or will legislators use Ukraine aid as yet another partisan cudgel?

An Opportunity and Its Risks

In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drew global attention, sparking efforts in the United States and Europe to provide military assistance to Ukraine’s armed forces. Scenes of attacks on civilians and accounts of war crimes drew sympathy from western publics, and diplomats protested President Putin’s blatant violation of international law prohibiting aggressive war. Last year, the United States provided tens of billions of dollars in assistance to Ukraine, with about half of it taking the form of weapons, security assistance, and Foreign Military Financing. But as economic woes continue and the war drags on, public support for continued military assistance to Ukraine has eroded, especially among Republican voters.

The Republican Party’s victory in the 2022 midterms – albeit a narrow one – will change congressional dynamics regarding U.S. arms sales to Ukraine. As became apparent with the election of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker, the GOP caucus is fractured, and the Republican Party’s slim majority makes every vote count, empowering the party’s right flank. Passing legislation through the House during the 118th Congress will be difficult, and securing Senate passage, and presidential signature for many House-originated bills seems unlikely. But with Republicans holding the Speaker’s gavel and committee chairs, they will nonetheless have a great deal of influence to conduct oversight and engage in “overspeech.” House Republicans plan to investigate the business dealings of members of President Biden’s family, scrutinize the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and probe abuses of power in the federal government.

Fights over arms sales to Ukraine may emerge more often with GOP control of the House. Debate about oversight for major arms sales could be productive. Congressional attention to U.S. end-use monitoring procedures would be welcome, especially since current end-use monitoring processes do not monitor how U.S.-origin defense articles are used.

However, should Ukraine aid become a matter uttered in the same breath as Hunter Biden’s laptop, Democrats will be unlikely to take oversight proposals seriously. Much-needed security assistance reform efforts will suffer if arms sales oversight becomes overly associated with far-right posturing.

Republican Positions on Ukraine Aid

The Republican Party is far from unified on the question of military aid to Ukraine. But enough high-profile legislators have raised concerns, whether about the scale of aid or oversight for military assistance, to put the issue on the agenda for 2023. Such concerns may result in the inclusion of additional oversight measures in future appropriations for assistance to Ukraine.

A number of Republican legislators have spoken out against continued U.S.military assistance to Ukraine without greater oversight. In December, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) introduced a resolution to audit U.S. aid to Ukraine, drawing support from both restraint-minded and more hawkish conservatives. Taylor-Greene intends to reintroduce the measure in the 118th Congress. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has also been a vocal critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Key Republican committee chairs are stalwart supporters of U.S. military support to Ukraine. In December 2022, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he “100%” supports arming Ukraine against Russia. He also sponsored a bipartisan bill authorizing U.S. support to international criminal fora, including the International Criminal Court, for investigations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Nevertheless, McCaul backed Taylor-Greene’s audit resolution in the House Foreign Affairs Committee as ranking member, and he has voiced support for “oversight and accountability” for security assistance to Ukraine.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who won the Speaker’s gavel on January 7, 2023 after fifteen rounds of voting, has expressed that Ukraine will not get a “blank check” from Congress with the House under Republican leadership.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has spearheaded Republican support for assistance to Ukraine. But Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) would be a likely Senate ally of Ukraine aid skeptics in the House. A perennial critic of U.S. arms sales, Paul delayed a vote on a $40 billion aid package to Ukraine in May 2022 with a provision requiring that an inspector general monitor the spending. Besides Senator Paul, a significant contingent of GOP Senators has voted against appropriations for aid to Ukraine.

With notable legislators calling for greater accountability and oversight for U.S. arms sales to Ukraine, 2023 will bring opportunities to consider how U.S. law and policy address U.S. arms sales.

Possible Areas of Focus in the Ukraine Aid Debate

In light of the sheer quantity of U.S. arms sales and other forms of assistance to Ukraine, three policy areas that congressional conversations may touch on include end-use monitoring, the Leahy Laws, and oversight by inspectors general.

At this stage of the conflict, U.S. arms appear to have remained in the hands of Ukrainian forces, but the risk of unauthorized diversion may rise when the war eventually winds down. The Biden administration has taken action to prevent the diversion of U.S. arms provided to Ukraine. In October 2022, the State Department released a plan to “[s]afeguard and account for arms and munitions in Ukraine and neighboring countries.” The plan focuses on cross-border smuggling of particular powerful and mobile types of arms. But conducting end-use monitoring for U.S.-origin equipment is difficult amid ongoing armed conflict. As a September 2022 State Department cable stated, “standard verification measures are sometimes impracticable or impossible.”

Serious legislative attention to end-use monitoring (EUM) would be a productive outcome of conversations about U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. Mandated in the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 and implemented by the Blue Lantern and Golden Sentry Programs, significant gaps in end-use monitoring deserve attention. As a 2021 brief from the Center for Civilians in Conflict, Center for International Policy, and Stimson Center put it, “current EUM programs are designed to protect U.S. technology, not people. The word ‘use’ in end-use monitoring is an unfortunate misnomer.”

Beyond concerns about smuggling weapons outside of Ukraine, U.S. assistance could contribute to human rights abuses or violations of international humanitarian law. Congress has previously prohibited the provision of security assistance to the Azov Battalion, a far-right armed group that is part of Ukraine’s National Guard. While Russian war crimes thus far dwarf Ukrainian violations in both gravity and quantity, some possible violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by Ukrainian personnel have emerged. Such accounts could trigger the Leahy Laws, which prohibit the provision of assistance to units of armed forces when credible information exists that the unit committed a “gross violation of human rights.” However, given the relative scale of Russian war crimes, significant congressional discussion of gaps in the Leahy Laws as applied in Ukraine seems unlikely, barring a significant change in how the Ukrainian military conducts hostilities.

Ukraine’s difficulties with corruption raise concerns as well, especially since military aid could exacerbate existing problems and undermine the country’s democratic institutions. In light of corruption issues, some analysts recommend the creation of an oversight body on the model of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). In June 2022, the former Afghanistan Special Inspector General commented, “It is really shocking that people are not applying what we learned about the mistakes in Afghanistan to Ukraine.” Others prefer relying on existing inspectors general for U.S. government departments and agencies, such as the finally confirmed DoD Inspector General Robert Storch. In both cases, an inspector general would conduct audits and investigations to prevent misuse of U.S. aid. While tasking inspectors general to focus on U.S. arms sales to Ukraine could contribute to greater transparency, it will be important that the U.S. government absorbs their findings and incorporates reforms into policy, law, and practice.

John Chappell is a Legal Fellow at Center for Civilians in Conflict and a joint J.D. and M.S. in Foreign Service candidate at Georgetown University. He is also a member of the Forum’s Emerging Expert program.

Inclusion on the Forum on the Arms Trade expert list and the publication of these posts does not indicate agreement with or endorsement of the opinions of others. The opinions expressed are the views of each post's author(s).

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Arms Trade Issues Should See Center Stage in 2020 US Election

12/13/2019

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This is the first blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2020 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Jeff Abramson

The "should" in the title to this post is not an admonition, but rather a prediction. And a bold one. An impeachment effort is now underway related to conditions placed on security assistance to Ukraine. Plus, four Presidential vetoes were used in 2019: one to stop Congressional assertion of war powers in relation to the war in Yemen, and three to override rejection of "emergency" arms sales primarily intended to Saudi Arabia for that war. So, how could arms trade issues take an even greater public stage in 2020?

It's the election. As the 2020 campaigns kick into full gear, we should expect that those vying for the highest elected office will look for more areas where they can assert their differences with the President, especially on issues that the public supports. As the Forum's research into candidates positions is showing, there is a stark divide emerging in the approach Democratic candidates are taking on arms trade issues compared to Donald Trump. And opinion polling suggests many of these have a majority of Americans behind them.

At this moment, the divide is most striking as relates to support to Saudi Arabia. Of the seven Democratic candidates slated to appear in the December debate, six have indicated that they would cut off arms supplies to Saudi Arabia given Riyadh's behavior in the war and humanitarian crisis in Yemen. (Tom Steyer's position is unclear.) While public opinion polling highlighted by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs indicates that Americans are divided on the US relationship with Saudi Arabia, a majority, regardless of party, do believe selling weapons makes the United States less safe. It is easy to see, and unfortunately tragic to predict, that another incident of misuse of US weapons by the Saudis will occur and make it into the headlines. With it will come attention again to US arms trade decisions.

Also at odds with the President, all the Democratic candidates have indicated their support for an assault weapons ban, another issue that has majority public backing. Thus far, however, Democratic candidates have not made the connection that it is illogical to oppose assault weapons at home while at the same time making their export more efficient. While the administration is pushing for just such changes, it is easy to expect more gun control-minded Democratic candidates to make the case that the Commerce Department is not the proper home for oversight of assault weapon exports. Two have done so thus far. As some members of Congress are already doing, candidates can also make the connection to US gun laws and exports with violence in Latin America that fuels Central Americans to flee north. We quickly then link to the wall and broader immigration debates, driving the arms trade into the brighter spotlight.

It's a bit more difficult to predict that the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) itself will become an election issue. President Trump's repudiation of the treaty at an NRA convention in Indianapolis in April certainly was popular with the crowd there and echoed the ill-informed stance that Congressional detractors have taken that the treaty infringes on US rights. It would not be surprising that candidates who publicly criticize the NRA would also then take up the ATT. Three have explicitly supported the treaty thus far, and a number others have taken steps in the past to block opposition to it.

Candidates seeking to distinguish themselves from each other may also branch out into issues where positions have yet to be claimed. Public opinion polling shows that a majority of Americans are strongly or somewhat opposed to using lethal autonomous weapons systems in war (aka killer robots). This is an obvious area where a candidate such as Andrew Yang, who comes from the tech field and talks frequently about artificial intelligence, could be the first to also acknowledge where human-centered limits make sense and support efforts such as those led by the growing Campaign to Stop Killer Robots to ban the development and use of such weapons.

Other issues ripe for candidates to explore include declarations on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, an initiative with increasing international attention that currently lacks US diplomatic support. Treaties such as the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on Cluster Munitions, that are supported by nearly all of NATO and other traditional US allies, but to which the US has yet to commit, can also provide candidates a way to distinguish themselves.

It is, of course, much too early to predict who will be elected as president roughly 11 months from now. It is, however, a much safer bet that arms trade issues will have a prominent role in the public discourse that leads up to the November 3 vote.

Jeff Abramson is a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association and manages the Forum on the Arms Trade.

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U.S. Security Assistance to Non-State Actors: Unintended Consequences and Long-term Instability

5/18/2018

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This is one of six essays in the May 2018 report "Addressing Non-State Actors: Multiple Approaches" (see full report). Each essay is the independent work of its authors.

Seth Binder

Robert Watson

Since the Cold War, the United States has been the dominant arms supplier in the world, providing billions per year in arms to well over 160 countries.[i] Most of the time these weapons go to the security forces of a sovereign state, but occasionally the United States has seen it in its interest to provide arms to non-state actors (NSAs), primarily rebel groups not sanctioned by their domestic state to take up arms. Despite the justifications for providing such lethal aid in the short-term, overwhelmingly the aid has not proven successful, resulting in unintended consequences and long-term instability.

There are justified reasons the United States may decide to provide security assistance to non-state actors, including support for counterterrorism operations, the responsibility to protect innocent civilians, pushback against foreign invasion, as well as other possibilities. For example, when the United States began providing the mujahideen with weapons in the 1980s, it not only helped protect innocent Afghans from callous attacks by Soviet forces, it increased the cost of the Soviet invasion until they ultimately withdrew a decade later. At a relatively low financial cost to the United States, it was able to protect lives and weaken its rival superpower.

However, even if we take the most generous view of U.S. intentions when providing security assistance and weapons to NSAs, several unintended consequences can and have occurred. In Afghanistan,[ii] the United States trained and armed fighters who later went on to join al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, which ultimately led the United States to return in 2001 where it is still fighting in a nearly two-decades long war at the cost of trillions of dollars.[iii]

More recently, the United States has been providing more than $2 billion[iv] in weapons and training to Syrian rebels, with an additional $300 million requested for fiscal year 2019.[v] The rebels’ specific task has been to help the U.S. coalition defeat the Islamic State (ISIS), but while Kurdish militias have seen success on the battlefield against ISIS, numerous reports have documented human rights abuses[vi] by U.S.-trained Syrian rebels[vii] and the diversion of U.S. provided weapons.[viii] This has perpetuated the fighting and fostered new grievances among the victims. Yet, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. U.S.-supported Nicaraguan rebels, commonly referred to as the Contras, were frequently accused of human rights abuses,[ix] and trafficking drugs and weapons.[x] But they weren’t the only ones. U.S.-supported UNITA rebels in Angola[xi] and the mujahideen in Afghanistan have also received credible allegations of human rights abuses.[xii]

Much of this comes down to the unavoidable principle-agent problem associated with the provision of arms to other forces. As the principle, the United States only has so much control over the Syrian rebels (the agent) receiving the equipment and training. The agents have different concerns, objectives, and goals, making it near impossible to guarantee arms will not be diverted, power abused, or objectives carried out.[xiii] Yet, US involvement makes it culpable.

In addition, security assistance to non-state actors is an inherently destabilizing activity. The weapons and training provided grant the recipients an extraordinary capacity for violence. Security assistance can be a powerful tool, but it is only as effective as the recipients’ capacity to receive, contain, and direct these resources toward positive ends. States often struggle to fully implement the institutional frameworks required to prevent the misapplication of assistance; the challenge for non-state actors can be even greater.[xiv]

The problem of capacity is compounded by the fact that defense articles and training have a life span that can far exceed the scope of their intended use.[xv] Arms and ammunition linger in the communities that receive them. While U.S. policy, priorities, and interests turn to other areas, the arms and training remain, potentially creating long-term instability. Arms provided to the Contras in Nicaragua have been used by drug traffickers; UNITA rebels in Angola returned to the “battlefield”;[xvi] and many of the mujahideen turned to international terrorism.

In part, this is why relations with neighboring states can be strained when providing NSAs with security assistance. But it is not the only reason. By injecting defense articles outside the pre-existing state structures, the United States undermines the “monopoly of the legitimate use of violence within a given territory.”[xvii] This monopoly provides the foundation for state institutions, and underpins a state’s legitimacy domestically and internationally. Unilaterally arming non-state actors upends domestic and regional security relationships already strained by conflict.

For example, relations with Turkey, a major NATO ally who sees the provision of arms to the Kurds as a direct threat, have been severely damaged by U.S. assistance to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). This has led to U.S. allies fighting each other in Syria, detracting from the mission’s original objectives and further destabilizing the region.[xviii] Former-President Obama promised there wouldn’t be mission creep,[xix] but in Syria the United States is providing training and operations support, U.S. equipment to various state and non-state actors involved in the conflict, and has attacked the Syrian regime, Russian mercenaries, and Iranian-supported militias. Now the United States is coming dangerously close to being involved in direct fighting against Turkey. All risking a further conflagration of the region.

Whether U.S. assistance has turned to short-term responses, such as U.S. support for Libyan rebels, or the long-term engagement evidenced by current U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, problems have arisen. In 1984, a Congressional resolution stated that it would be “indefensible to provide the freedom fighters [mujahideen] with only enough aid to fight and die, but not enough to advance their cause of freedom.”[xx] Now, the US is providing the “Vetted Syrian Opposition” with just enough assistance to defeat ISIS and anger nearly every ally and foe alike, but not enough assistance to decisively end the conflict against al-Assad and the Syrian regime. Despite the different policy approaches, security assistance has perpetuated and further complicated the wars, while doing nothing to address the endemic problems at the heart of the conflict.

International attempts to regulate the arming of non-state actors have been restrained by the lack of an international consensus on the definition of a “non-state actor.” The term is broad enough to include a range of groups, including armed rebels, warlords, private security companies, terrorist organizations, and even “semi” recognized states such as Taiwan and Kosovo. In 2001, John Bolton, then U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, rejected an effort to ban military aid to non-state actors defined as “irresponsible end-users of arms” on the grounds that this would “preclude assistance to an oppressed non-state group defending itself from a genocidal government.”[xxi]

While a definition may not determine whether a group is a responsible end-user, it would give states a better idea of their own responsibility in providing weapons, and the risks associated with doing so. The Canadian delegation to the United Nations Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects, argued for a blanket ban on arms transfers to non-state actors, and attempted to include language in the preamble that would have emphasized states’ responsibility in providing arms to non-state actors. However, due to U.S. opposition, neither effort made it into the final document.

One solution could be to forgo any UN consensus, and instead push for regional agreements. The ECOWAS Convention of 2006[xxii] and the Kinshasa Convention of 2010 define non-state actors and prohibit the transfer of small arms and light weapons to them. The ECOWAS Convention defines NSAs as “any actor other than State Actors, mercenaries, armed militias, armed rebel groups and private security companies.” By comparison, the Kinshasa Convention defines “non-state armed groups” as any group that “is not part of the formal military establishment of a state, alliance of states or intergovernmental organization and over which the state in which it operates has no control.”[xxiii] While the definitions vary significantly, they both address the risk of arming NSAs, and contribute to a customary definition for the groups themselves. Regional arms control regimes like these could discourage interstate meddling, in that parties would have a vested interest in preventing proliferation in their neighborhood(s) and could provide a unified voice against outside intervention.

Ultimately, U.S. provision of security assistance to non-state actors carries enormous risk and should only be executed as policy after thorough cost-benefit analysis that weighs short-term benefits against the likely unintended long-term consequences. Mitigation strategies must also be considered to address the inevitable consequences if in fact assistance is initiated. Non-state actors’ lack of institutional capacity, the lifespan of materiel provided, and the general inability of the United States to align its objectives with those of its non-state proxies exposes the tension between security assistance’s long and short-term goals. An internal CIA study reportedly notes that covertly arming and training rebels has rarely worked in the past.[xxiv] America’s recent covert and overt support in Syria hasn’t seemed to fair much better. While these policies have the potential to achieve short term objectives, they create lasting and long-term consequences that have too often failed to achieve peace and stability.

Seth Binder is an independent researcher focused on U.S. security assistance and arms sales. Robert Watson is a member of the Forum on the Arms Trade’s Emerging Expert program.

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[i] Arms Transfers Database, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (accessed April 3, 2018), .

[ii] Jason Burke “Frankenstein the CIA Created,” The Guardian, January 17, 1999.

[iii] Cost of War Project, Brown University’s Watson Institute, November 2017.

[iv] Security Assistance Monitor data on U.S. security aid to Syria, (accessed April 1, 2018).

[v] Office of the Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense Budget Fiscal Year 2019 (2018, February) Counter-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Train and Equip Fund (CTEF).

[vi] “We Had Nowhere Else to Go: Forced Displacements and Demolitions in Northern Syria,” Amnesty International, October 2015.

[vii] “Under Kurdish Rule: Abuses in PYD-Run Enclaves in Syria,” Human Rights Watch, June 19, 2014.

[viii] “US-Allied Syrian Rebel Officer Handed Trucks and Ammunition to al-Qaeda Affiliate,” Associated Press, September 23, 2015.

[ix] Doyle McManus, “Rights Groups Accuse Contras: Atrocities in Nicaragua Against Civilians Charged,” Los Angeles Times, March 8, 1985.

[x] “Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy,” Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report, December 1988.

[xi] Edward Girardet, “Angolans Describe Human Rights Abuse During Civil War,” The Christian Science Monitor, June 3, 1983.

[xii] Patricia Gossman, “The Forgotten War,” Human Rights Watch, February 1991.

[xiii] Kareem Shaheen, “US-Trained Syrian Rebels Refuse to Fight al-Qaida Group After Kidnappings,” The Guardian, August 6, 2015.

[xiv] An Vranckx, “Containing diversion: arms end-use and post-delivery controls,” GRIP, April 2016.

[xv] Paul Holden, Indefensible: Seven Myths That Sustain the Global Arms Trade, Zed Books, February 2017.

[xvi] “Peace in Angola When Savimbi,” Afrol News, April 11, 2001.

[xvii] Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 1918.

[xviii] Carlotta Gall, “72 Turkish Jets Bomb US-Backed Kurdish Militias in Syria,” New York Times, January 20, 2018.

[xix] Micah Zenko, “Your Official Mission Creep Timeline of the US War in Syria,” Foreign Policy, October 19, 2015.

[xx] “Afghan Freedom Fighters: United States Support,” 98 Statute 3499, U.S. Congressional Resolution, October 4, 1984.

[xxi] Paul Holtom, “Prohibiting Arms Transfers to Non-State Actors and the Arms Trade Treaty,” United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), 2012.

[xxii] ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons, Their Ammunition and Other Related Materials, June 14, 2006.

[xxiii] Central African Convention for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons, their Ammunition and all Parts and Components that can be used for their Manufacture, Repair and Assembly, Kinshasa, April 30, 2010.

[xxiv] Mark Mazzetti, “C.I.A. Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels,” October 14, 2014, New York Times.

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Donald Trump and The Death of Diplomacy

4/26/2017

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This is the fifth entry in a series examining actions during the first 100 days of the new Trump administration and their possible implications on the arms trade, security assistance and weapons use in the future.

William D. Hartung

Donald Trump prides himself on being the master of the “art of the deal.” But if his plans to slash spending on diplomacy are approved by Congress, there won’t be anybody home to make deals with other governments, except for Trump and his inner circle, who have so far shown a shocking lack of knowledge of foreign affairs.

Trump’s budget blueprint proposes to cut funding for the State Department and the Agency for International Development (AID) by 28%. This steep reduction is being imposed on an agency that is already underfunded, receiving just one-twelfth of the roughly $600 billion per year provided to the Pentagon. A few years ago, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put this in perspective when he noted that it takes more personnel to operate one aircraft carrier task force than there are trained diplomats in the U.S. Foreign Service.

Trump’s downgrading of diplomacy does not bode well for the ability of the United States to prevent or rein in conflicts, and may actually lead to more, and longer, U.S. military interventions. Donald Trump’s own secretary of defense, James Mattis, made this very point when he was the head of the U.S. Central Command, asserting in a Congressional hearing that if the State Department budget is cut, “I’m going to need more ammunition.”

With diminished diplomatic tools available, the Trump administration is liable to engage in the kind of unfocused military bluster we saw in its one-off cruise missile attack on a Syrian airfield in response to a chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians and its threat of preemptive military action against North Korea if it tested a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, the administration is increasing the U.S. presence in Iraq and Syria, stepping up U.S. involvement in the disastrous war in Yemen, and talking about increasing U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan – all the while encouraging U.S. military leaders to “take the gloves off” by easing the criteria for selecting bombing targets, with a noticeable uptick in civilian casualties as a result. Absent a diplomatic strategy and the personnel to craft one, U.S. involvement in these wars is likely to escalate, with increasingly negative consequences for the United States and its allies.

Another set of policy instruments that the Trump administration is likely to lean on in the absence of a robust diplomatic corps is the wide array of arms and training programs funded and operated by the Pentagon. These programs have grown dramatically since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. According to data compiled by the Security Assistance Monitor, Pentagon-funded assistance grew from $1 billion in 2002 to $10.8 billion in 2015. These funds are spread across dozens of separate initiatives that support arming and training the militaries of over 100 countries. There have been notable failures, like the lavishing of hundreds of millions in aid on the Saleh regime in Yemen under the Pentagon’s 1206 program, assistance that ended up placing arms in the remnants of the regime’s army that is now fighting along Houthi forces in that nation’s civil war.

The underlying problem is that these programs have never been adequately evaluated to determine if they are effective in meeting U.S. security objectives. As the Congressional Research Service noted in a report on the subject, “the assumption that building foreign security forces will have tangible U.S. national security benefits remains a largely untested proposition.”

It is difficult to track the Pentagon’s aid programs under the best of circumstances, but at the moment there is literally no way to know how they will fare in the fiscal year 2018 budget. Details on how much the Trump administration will spend on Pentagon assistance, and which programs will be favored, awaits the release of the administration’s full budget submission to Congress. But the fact that these arms and training programs could be implemented in the context of a rapidly shrinking diplomatic corps is cause for concern.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

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Progress and Gaps in Security Assistance Transparency

5/13/2016

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Colby Goodman

This is the second blog post in a series on official transparency reporting, where it struggles, and the important role civil society often plays in monitoring and improving global understanding of the trade and use of conventional weapons. Clear here for the first post.

Over the past decade and a half, the United States has greatly expanded its investment and involvement in the security sectors of other countries, moving from more than $5 billion in FY (Fiscal Year) 2001 to more than $19 billion in FY 2015, to help address a range of U.S. security concerns. This investment, often-called security assistance, can be a helpful tool to reduce security threats from violent actors and help make security forces more accountable to the civilian population. However, done poorly it can also undermine stability or have no effect at all.

According to a RAND study last year, U.S. security assistance has several risks. It can undermine legitimate governance, exacerbate the balance of power within the state, give weapons to unintended users, and abet human rights violations. There is also the risk of moral hazard. Since transnational terrorism is not always high on a foreign country’s security concerns, the incentive is also real for some countries to make slow progress in addressing terrorism in order to keep the aid flowing.

Unlike other forms of U.S. foreign assistance, much of the U.S. security assistance is not published on the State Department’s “Foreign Aid Dashboard” or in the International Aid Transparency Initiative registry, making it nearly impossible for journalists, civil society, and policy makers to help identify the specific risks and steer U.S. taxpayer money to more effective programs. When there is information, sometimes that data is widely different than what the Defense Department has told Congress.

For instance, the Foreign Aid Dashboard indicates that the Pentagon allocated money to Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Iraq through the Section 1206 authority in FY 2011. However, Congressional Research Service reports don’t list those countries receiving any Section 1206 funds for that year. In the case of Cote d’Ivoire, the Dashboard indicates that Section 1206 funding is addressing health issues instead of counterterrorism issues.

This gap in public information on State and Defense Department assistance efforts prompted the creation of the Security Assistance Monitor (SAM). SAM is the first, and most comprehensive resource to house all publicly available, official data on U.S. security assistance in one place. SAM searches through a diverse range of U.S. government reports, submits Freedom of Information requests, and interviews government officials to obtain sought-after data, including from the growing amount of Pentagon military aid.

Our interactive online databases covering military aid, economic aid, arms sales, and military training provide journalists, civil society, and policy makers in the United States and abroad with key information needed to conduct oversight of this assistance. We also analyze the data to identify important trends and potential concerns and publish our findings on the Security Assistance Monitor blog or in outside sources.

However, there is still some key U.S. security assistance data and information that is not yet available to the public. Unlike the State Department, the Defense Department does not provide a public, comprehensive budget justification to Congress for the next year that shows the type of security assistance it plans for each country and the related costs. There is also no reporting yet to Congress with a full accounting of how the Defense Department spent its money for more than 50 security assistance authorities the previous year.

Improved access to quality, timely, usable information has many benefits. Detailed information on military and police aid helps the U.S. government coordinate security assistance efforts within the State and Defense Departments. It also helps identify where there may be duplicative efforts or an under focus on key issues. Without such basic transparency, it’s also nearly impossible to begin to assess whether or not the United States is spending its money on the right activities and ensuring that such lethal aid doesn’t abet human rights and undermine stability.

Colby Goodman is Director of the Security Assistance Monitor.

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U.S. Arms Transfers and Military Training in the Middle East and North Africa

3/11/2015

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William Hartung

The United States is the largest supplier of weapons and training to the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region, and is likely to remain so over the next few years. But there has been no comprehensive effort to assess the potential impacts of these transfers, which range from tens of billions of dollars in deals with Saudi Arabia to the evolving program to train and equip a 5,000-strong force of Syrian moderates to fight ISIS.

The need for closer monitoring and control of U.S. transfers to the region is underscored by recent cases such as the use of U.S.-supplied weaponry to put down the democracy movement in Bahrain and the surrender of large quantities of U.S.-supplied weaponry to ISIS by U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces. But despite these warning signs, it is likely that U.S. transfers to the region will continue to grow in the context of building and sustaining a coalition against ISIS.

U.S. transfers of arms and training to the region must also be seen in the context of the activities of other suppliers. In the midst of the violence rocking the region, is there a room for a policy of greater restraint in arms transfers on the part of its major arms suppliers, or will such efforts have to await a resolution of major ongoing conflicts like the Syrian civil war?

William Hartung is Director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

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Central America: This aid package could be a break with the past, if it supports those trying to break with the past

3/11/2015

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Adam Isacson

We don’t have a lot of detail yet about how the Obama administration plans to spend its proposed $1 billion in aid for Central America. That means there is still opportunity for advocates to influence how it gets spent.

We do know that only about 15–20 percent of it would go to Central American security forces. This is an important break with past frameworks like Plan Colombia (81% non-military/police aid, 2000–2006) or the Mérida Initiative (78%, 2008–2010). This time there are no helicopters, and almost nothing for militaries.

For now, our energy must go toward supporting these overall amounts, which will face a fight in Congress. But our message must also be that this aid cannot subsidize kleptocratic elites or bypass civil society. The 22% of aid through the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement account must not revert to old patterns of funding weapons and elite units while downplaying recipients’ corruption and human rights abuse.

Central America has no shortage of creative community-based violence prevention initiatives, honest judicial personnel, and courageous investigative journalists and human rights defenders. All badly need help and should get support from this package.

Police are necessary to protect people, too, and the police aid in this package can have the greatest impact if it goes to professionals working in areas like internal anti-corruption controls, relating and being accountable to communities, reducing response times when citizens call for help, investigating corrupt financial flows, and making policing a proper career.

Adam Isacson is Senior Associate for Regional Security Policy at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

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Central America: Police and private investment don’t replace political will and compassion

3/11/2015

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John Lindsay-Poland

The Obama administration has proposed a billion-dollar aid package for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that would more than double U.S. aid to police that remain abusive despite years of counter-drug and anti-corruption programs. The package also nearly quintuples mostly unspecified development assistance.

Just as pouring billions into Afghan reconstruction didn’t make the war in Afghanistan good, increased aid to governments with no political will to stop corruption and violence does not make militarized approaches to child migration or drug trafficking worthy of support. Honduran law enforcement agencies are “criminal organizations inside and out,” said Honduras’ deputy drug czar, later killed.

The package aims to stop children and families from fleeing violence to the United States, by promoting private enterprise, militarizing the U.S.’s and Mexico’s southern borders, training drug warriors, and supporting certain faith-based youth programs. Vice-President Biden made clear that the package is modeled on Plan Colombia – associated with massive forced displacement and killings – and U.S. community policing, which promoted ‘broken windows’ policing and prison expansion. The judicial reform promoted for Central America has had abysmal effects on prosecuting extrajudicial executions in Colombia and northern Mexico.

The Pentagon’s Southcom and State Department’s narcotics bureau have made Honduras and Guatemala the focus of military and police programs for years. Nicaragua, “neglected” by such efforts, has remarkably less organized crime, violence, and children fleeing to the United States. Money won’t create political will for the changes needed in Central America. But it could support compassionate treatment of families fleeing violence to our homeland.

John Lindsay-Poland is a researcher and analyst with the Fellowship of Reconciliation Peace Presence.

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Central America: This aid package could be a break with the past, if it supports those trying to break with the past

Central America: Police and private investment don’t replace political will and compassion

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