Military Aid and Human Rights: Assessing the Impact of U.S. Security Assistance Programs

Abstract

APPROXIMATELY 109,000 MILITARY STUDENTS from 160 countries participated in U.S. security cooperation programs during fiscal year 2012. The total cost of approximately 53,700 individual events, through which the U.S. government trained foreign military, police, and law enforcement officers, was $1.017 billion.1 Foreign military sales, which have been on the rise since 2006, also peaked in 2012, with $69.1 billion in sales of defense articles and services to foreign countries and international organizations.2 The U.S. government has long contended that this scale of security assistance yields considerable payoffs. It increases the professionalism of foreign security forces and encourages other states to develop their own defenses, thus reducing the need to commit U.S. forces in local crisis situations. It promotes respect for democratic values and human rights among the foreign security cadres and serves as an instrument of foreign influence through which the U.S. government can shape the military doctrines and operating procedures of recipient countries. Even the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and similar programs have been framed as important instruments in strengthening the security of the United States and its friends and allies. The idea is that sales of U.S. equipment and services increase coalition interoperability, leading to more joint exercises and other types of military-to-military cooperation and to decades-long relationships between the U.S. military and partners around the world.