A Plan To Reform U.S. Security Assistance Getty/Pete Kiehart
A Ukrainian soldier shakes hands with one of his instructors after taking part in a Combat Lifesaver Course at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center near Yavoriv, Ukraine, on April 22, 2015.
Sam Hananel
Introduction and summary
U.S. security assistance is broken and in need of an overhaul. Over the past two decades, the bureaucratic system developed to deliver billions of dollars of military aid to partner nations has evolved and expanded not by design but as the result of a series of ad hoc legislative and policy changes. Though the U.S. Department of State was initially in charge of security assistance policy and accounts, since 9/11, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has established a separate, well-funded security assistance bureaucracy at the Pentagon. This has inhibited effective congressional oversight, harmed coordination between diplomacy and defense, and contributed to the growing militar