Colby Goodman
As part of the State Department’s budget request for FY 2016 released on February 2, the Obama Administration is requesting a significant jump in security and one type of development aid to the Maghreb and Sahel countries of Africa to “address challenges to U.S. national security emanating” from the two sub-regions.
As the Obama Administration continues to loosen its arms export control policies, the United States may end up helping China modernize its military, according to a recent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) report. The study titled “Western Arms Exports to China,” which looked at the export policies and practices of Germany, France, United Kingdom and the United States towards China, encourages the international community to develop a more unified approach on the export of arms and military-relevant goods to China to improve control efforts.
In highly and extremely fragile countries such as Chad, Nigeria and Yemen, U.S. security assistance may have little to no effect on reducing fragility in these countries, according to a RAND Corporation study from late last year. The report, which is titled “Assessing U.S. Security Cooperation as Preventative Tool,” will likely spark renewed discussion and debate about the proper use of U.S. foreign security aid in volatile countries as well as about the specific types of military and police aid given.
As the Obama Administration looks to engage with the winner of the upcoming presidential run-off election in Tunisia, which is between the current interim President Moncef Marzouki, a former dissident, and Beji Caid Essebsi, a former foreign minister, security sector reform in Tunisia will likely be a key future issue.
According to the U.S. government’s latest foreign military training report for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, the United States trained 29,784 military or police personnel from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), significantly more than any other region in the world. By contrast, the United States trained 12,157 personnel from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and 10,043 personnel from Latin America and the Caribbean in Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 (see below chart).
Yesterday, the House of Representatives approved the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2015. The bill is identical to the recently agreed NDAA by both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
Despite its name, the Defense Department justification for the Iraq Train and Equip Fund shows it would only be used for the provision of weapons, military equipment and construction of training facilities with no funding for training.
The White House sent a request to Congress yesterday to approve an additional $5.6 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding to support a strategy to “degrade, and ultimately defeat” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Within the $5.6 billion, the Obama Administration is asking for $1.6 billion for a new Iraq Train and Equip Fund (ITEF).
With the recent military takeover in Burkina Faso, there is increasing attention on U.S. security assistance to the key U.S. counterterrorism ally. According to the Washington Post, soon after mass protests led to former president Blaise Comparore’s resignation, the country’s military suspended the constitution and staged what appears to be a military coup.
On October 20, 2014, the Center for International Policy (CIP) launched Security Assistance Monitor, a new program and web-resource that will track U.S. military and police assistance and arms sales with a focus on Africa, Central Eurasia, Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East.