The U.S. spent roughly $25 billion last year on what’s loosely known as security assistance-a term that can cover everything from training Afghan security forces to sending Egypt F-16 fighter jets to equipping Mexican port police with radiation scanners.
The spending, which has soared in the past decade, can be hard to trace, funneled through dozens of sometimes overlapping programs across multiple agencies. There’s also evidence it’s not always wisely spent. In Afghanistan, for instance, the military bought $771 million worth of aircraft this year for Afghan pilots, most of whom still don’t know how to fly them.
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“Nobody looks at it systematically,” said Gordon Adams, who worked on national security and international affairs for the Office of Management and Budget in the 1990s and has argued for a reduced military role in security assistance. That’s in part a reflection of how the landscape of programs has grown and fragmented in recent decades. Security assistance grew 227 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2012, to a peak of $26.8 billion, according to data collected by the Stimson Center, where Adams is a fellow. That growth comes largely from programs in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are beginning to be scaled back. This year’s budget still allocated more than $20 billion across State and Defense.
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