Helping Others Defend Themselves: The Future of U.S. Security Assistance

Abstract

quately govern themselves or secure their own territory. Dealing with such frac tured or failing states is, in many ways, the main security challenge of our time. For the Defense Department and the entire U.S. government, it is also a com plex institutional challenge. The United States is unlikely to repeat a mission on the scale of those in Afghanistan or Iraq anytime soon?that is, forced regime change followed by nation under fire. But as the Pentagons Quadrennial Defense Review recently concluded, the United States is still likely to face scenarios requiring a familiar tool kit of capabilities, albeit on a smaller scale. In these situations, the effectiveness and credibility of the United States will only be as good as the effectiveness, credibility, and sustain ability of its local partners. This strategic reality demands that the U.S. government get better at what is called building partner capacity: helping other countries defend themselves or, if necessary, fight alongside U.S. forces by providing them with equipment, training, or other forms of security assistance. This is some thing that the United States has been doing in various ways for nearly three-quarters of a century. It dates back to the period before the United States entered World War II, when Winston Churchill famously said, Give us the tools, and we will finish the job. Through the Lend-Lease program, the United States sent some $31 billion worth of supplies (in 1940s dollars) to the United Kingdom over the course of the war. U.S. aid to the Soviet Union during those years exceeded $11 billion, including hundreds of thousands of trucks and thou