The Trump administration may come to regret its “stop work” order issued this week on all current U.S. foreign assistance. The broad ramifications of this decision are likely to impede national security priorities of the incoming Department of Defense, Department of State and White House leadership, ranging from anti-trafficking efforts to counternarcotics programs to security sector assistance aimed at countering aggressive Chinese, North Korean, and jihadist activity.
Foreign assistance legally refers to the congressional appropriations that annually serve a range of funding accounts – each with its own acronym alphabet. There are nearly 30 foreign assistance accounts in total that pass through the Office of Foreign Assistance, which was created as a clearing house to integrate these funds, stretching across State, USAID, and implemented by a range of agencies from the Department of Defense to the Department of Homeland Security. These accounts range from humanitarian accounts funding emergency response to security accounts such as Foreign Military Financing and International Military Education and Training (IMET), where the authorities are delegated to the State Department, but the Department of Defense is responsible for the implementation of the programs with security partners around the world.
Since September 11, 2011, the portion of the overall foreign assistance budget dedicated to security assistance funding has steadily increased over Republican and Democratic administrations alike – comprising $9.6 billion in the FY 2022 budget, as enacted, compared to $36.4 billion for the rest of the bilateral foreign assistance accounts, including development, economic aid, global health, and humanitarian assistance programs. (This was before the Ukraine supplementals significantly increased the overall annual foreign assistance budget.)
While the stop work order may have been designed in an attempt to target development aid, it is also likely to hurt the foreign policy goals articulated by President Trump and Secretary Rubio.
Stopping Counter-Narcotics Security Assistance
The security assistance abruptly stopped this week includes the nearly $1.45 billion annually for the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). The accounts are dubbed security assistance rather than military assistance because often the recipients are domestic police units and other civilian law enforcement agencies and entities.
INL’s most recent strategy prioritizes disrupting and reducing illicit drug markets and transnational crime and combating illicit financing to reduce transnational crime. Historically, INL has spent the preponderance of its funding in the Western Hemisphere. It is a critical resource that has helped the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of Homeland Security (including U.S. Customs and Border Protection) and other agencies train domestic police to combat drug smuggling directly affecting Americans. INL, in other words, funds other national security actors, including those combating human trafficking – a key priority of Secretary Rubio’s and others in the Trump administration.
Stopping Security Assistance to Counter Threats in Asia
As another example, President Trump signed the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA) in late 2018 amid rising economic and military tensions between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), North Korea rapidly testing ballistic missiles, and jihadist activity increasing in the Indo-Pacific region. The ARIA sought to advance U.S. policy interests and American influence in the Indo-Pacific region as well as promote a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
With the ARIA, and the subsequent Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and budget request, the past five years have witnessed an exponential growth in foreign assistance dedicated to the Indo-Pacific region. The United States dedicated $8.3 billion in health programs, economic assistance and security assistance to the region from 2020-2024 (Fiscal years 2019-2023). At least 25-30% of this funding includes security assistance to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia among other regional partners in an effort to counter the PRC’s coercive actions in the South China Seas. The Philippines is the largest recipient of U.S. security assistance in East Asia. Our naval partners there this week will confront an abrupt stop to the ongoing activities that support training, material, and other capabilities, including maritime legal enforcement and drug interdiction.
Stopping Nonproliferation and Anti-terrorism Programs
NADR (Nonproliferation, Anti-terrorism, Demining, and Related Programs) is another security assistance program that, if totally stopped, will curtail urgent counter terrorism (CT) programs that train partners how to follow illegal flows of terrorism financing, improve terrorist interdiction programs, and fight threats such as ISIS.
Through its CT programs, the State Department seeks to influence partner states’ political will and capabilities to fight terrorism domestically. One of the biggest CT challenges the United States has faced abroad since 9/11 is the prevalence of weak security partners who on their own cannot or will not fight local terrorist threats – including transnational groups threatening the U.S. homeland.
For decades, NADR funding has also helped to halt the clandestine spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) materials and technology to rogue states, terrorist groups, and other non-state actors. The programs aim to deny proliferators the materials and technology they need for their programs; prevent and contain WMD and missile capabilities as well as advanced conventional weapons; and secure against leakage of WMD and missile-related materials and expertise, primarily in Russia and other Eurasian countries. In an era where nuclear-armed autocrats such as North Korea and Russia are joining forces, efforts to halt the spread of WMD and its proliferation globally are even more critical.
An Abrupt Stop Work is Not Real Reform
Most security assistance experts agree that more could be done to evaluate the strategic outcome of these programs. In fact, the Department of Defense has stood up an entire university run by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, in part to ensure greater methodological rigor to the design and measurement of security assistance programs and their outcomes. In fact, I argued with Stephen Tankel 10 years ago that the government had not focused sufficiently on the return on investment of most security assistance programs, hurting our strategic impact.
Yet arguing for greater efficiencies and impact does not necessitate an abrupt stop work order for ongoing security assistance programs around the world. Alas, the main beneficiaries will be U.S. security competitors, who in the short term will see the stop-work order as genuine proof of their perennial propaganda regarding the unreliability of U.S. partnership. In the medium term, the erratic U.S. policy style might incentivize its partners to look elsewhere for security guarantors.
Editor’s note: This piece is part of the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of the Trump Administration’s Executive Actions