Introduction

The United States has increasingly come to rely on allies and security partners to accomplish shared security objectives.¹ The United States engages with security partners around the world through training and advising partner militaries, arms sales to partner countries, and the use of force alongside partner forces, among other means. At the same time, policymakers have grappled with what tools they can use to rein in these security partners. In recent years, Congress has, on a bipartisan basis, invoked the War Powers Resolution (WPR) and attempted to limit arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in response to the humanitarian destruction of the war in Yemen. While this legislation was vetoed by the president, it has nevertheless raised questions about what other existing congressional authorities could be used as tools to hold partners accountable, shift their behavior, or restructure security partnerships entirely.

This report is a briefing on the tools that Congress has at hand to leverage beneficial changes in the behavior of U.S. security partners. As policymakers consider what Congress should do next—or what a new administration might do differently—this toolkit can be a resource for members of Congress and their staff, executive branch policymakers, researchers, and advocates to make creative use of existing tools.

This report does not set out to exhaustively list each way that the United States engages with security partners—indeed, because there are so many authorities and funding sources on the books for these relationships, to do so would be an immense undertaking. Instead, it attempts to provide a broad overview of these authorities and funding sources, one that bridges the silos between security force assistance, the export of U.S.-manufactured arms to foreign governments, and the use of U.S. armed forces in hostilities alongside partner forces, three areas of U.S. security policy that are typically considered separately. While serving different purposes, what these authorities and programs have in common is they are tools that the U.S. government has to enhance the security of critical partners—and to use as leverage to change the behavior of security partners when it does not align with U.S. strategic interests. Other forms of support for foreign governments that could also serve as leverage for the United States in bilateral relationships, such as economic development aid or humanitarian support, are outside the scope of this report.

Additionally, Congress has some measure of authority over all of the authorities and programs discussed here, by passing legislation to authorize and provide guidance for such programs and appropriating funding. As a 2014 Supreme Court decision noted, the executive branch does not have “unbounded power” over U.S. foreign policy.² Rather than ceding this authority to the executive branch, Congress can and should play a critical role in managing bilateral U.S. relationships with our security partners.

As the rest of this report shows, there are a myriad of authorities and programs related to U.S. security partners that Congress is responsible for authorizing and funding.³ This can lead to incoherent policy outcomes, where for example the goals and outcomes of bilateral training programs or arms sales are not in accord with the United States’ broader strategic objectives. As Dafna Rand and Stephen Tankel wrote, “the glut of new authorities, occasional confusion about their purpose, and lack of predictability contribute to poor synchronization across the interagency. These factors also fuel the propensity to deploy security assistance and cooperation based on which authorities are available or most flexible, as opposed to choosing the right program for the problem.”⁴ Mapping these assorted tools and looking at them as a portfolio in each bilateral relationship can allow policymakers to take a more comprehensive approach to the United States’ relationships with key security partners.

This approach can also help policymakers to assess the purpose and efficacy of these security relationships. As many analysts have noted, there are few agreed-upon metrics or approaches to measure whether security assistance actually works in the ways that its proponents say it does.⁵ Instead, too often these relationships fall into an unproductive dynamic where U.S. policymakers are afraid of cutting off, reducing, or reforming U.S. assistance to these countries for fear of damaging the relationship, instead of using this assistance as both a carrot and stick to encourage these countries to behave in ways that are conducive to U.S. policy goals.

This report will also be a useful toolkit for policymakers and activists looking to assess and even end the United States’ so-called “endless wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere. Many of the funding sources listed in Part I have been used to fund U.S. engagement with country partners in these wars; the arms sales discussed in Part II have provided materiel for partner countries fighting these wars; and U.S. forces that have directly engaged in these conflicts under the authorities are discussed in Part III. Congress can play an important oversight role by “question[ing] existing military and political strategies and test[ing] assumptions about how the fight is going” and can “lobby for a needed change of course, elevate the voice of stakeholders set aside by the executive branch, [and] press for an end to failing wars.”⁶ During a presidential administration that is unwilling to use U.S. leverage to check the behavior of U.S. security partners, Congress can use these tools to exert such pressure. Even when a presidential administration is more sympathetic to these goals, Congressional action can serve as a useful source of additional leverage.

Finally, there are proposals for wholesale reforms to U.S. security sector assistance, notably including the flip-the-script proposal for reforming the arms sales process.⁷ Over the long-term, it makes a great deal of sense to work towards such reforms to how Congress conducts oversight of security sector assistance. In the short-term, however, there are existing authorities and levers that Congress can use to affect U.S. security assistance. In a deeply polarized Congress that has had trouble passing legislation in recent years, it is remarkable that legislation around the use of force and arms sales has garnered bipartisan support from members of Congress as divergent in their views as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). These transpartisan coalitions provide hope that Congress can use these tools to have concrete effects on cooperation with security partners.⁸

Part I of this report reviews many of the most important U.S. security cooperation and assistance programs and how they are authorized and funded by Congress; Part II looks at Congress’s role in arms sales to foreign governments; and Part III reviews Congress’s role in the use of U.S. armed forces abroad. Each part also includes several recommendations for Congress. An “additional reading” section highlights resources that provide a deeper discussion of these areas.