series on Defense360.
President Joseph Biden’s recent announcement that the United States would cut off arms transfers that support the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen is one of his administration’s first major foreign policy decisions. Security cooperation and particularly foreign military sales (FMS) has long been a central and sometimes controversial tool of U.S. foreign policy that serves multiple, potentially conflicting, ends. During the Trump administration, the economic rationale of such sales was highly emphasized, and arms sales increased as the administration released some restrictions on sales. Countries that do not have formal alliance arrangements with the United States, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), were the recipients of a significant portion of those sales.