ON OCTOBER 16, 2017, Baghdad dispatched troops to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk with the goal of retaking it from Iraq’s Kurds, who had plans of creating an independent state in the northern part of the country. Not only did Iraq’s security forces, trained and equipped by Washington, assault a crucial U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), they did it with the help of Qassim Suleimani, Tehran’s top operative in the Middle East, who reveled in seeing Iraqi militias under his control use American Abrams tanks and Humvees in pursuit of their mission.

This wasn’t the first time that something had gone terribly wrong in U.S. security assistance to Middle Eastern partners. In Syria, the United States spent four years and burned through more than a billion dollars trying to create a rebel force that would be able to rein in the influence of the country’s jihadists. The result was nothing short of disastrous. A minuscule number of Syrians ultimately made it through several U.S. training programs, and many who had received military support from Washington made a devil’s bargain with Al Qaeda and transferred U.S. equipment to the terrorist group.

Frustration in Washington with U.S. military assistance to Middle Eastern partners has been noticeably on the rise, and Iraq and Syria only tell part of the story. In public and closed hearings on Capitol Hill, members of Congress have more assertively voiced their concerns to Defense and State Department officials about human-rights problems, and American weapons’ misuse or seizure by terrorists. In June 2017, almost half the Senate voted against delivering precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia (worth $500 million) for its war in Yemen. A month later, President Donald Trump terminated what was left of the CIA’s program to support Syrian rebels and expressed interest in slashing several countries’ foreign military financing (FMF) programs and turning parts of them into loans. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cut almost $96 million in military and economic aid to Egypt, while withholding another $195 million in FMF.

America’s exasperation with security assistance to its Middle Eastern friends is perfectly understandable, but it hasn’t led to a useful policy debate. Instead of addressing the more fundamental issues that have plagued security assistance for so long, Washington has only dealt with the symptoms. Also, it has focused on criticizing the recipients of U.S. aid and blaming them for most, if not all, of the failures, while conveniently ignoring its own problems. Contrary to political instinct in Congress, the question is not whether the United States is spending too much or too little on FMF programs designed for Arab partners. Nor is it whether the United States is selling too many or too few weapons to its Arab partners. Rather, it is whether U.S. security assistance is actually contributing to evolving U.S. policy priorities in the Middle East—and if it isn’t, where is it failing, and why?

THE UNITED States has used various forms of security assistance over the past half century to achieve numerous policy goals in the Middle East, including (1) guaranteeing Israel’s survival throughout its wars with Arab states, and preserving its qualitative edge over its neighbors; (2) prying Egypt away from the Soviets and restricting Moscow’s political access to the shah of Iran; (3) upholding Cairo’s commitment to the 1978 Camp David peace treaty, and maintaining U.S. access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace; (4) containing the Islamic Republic of Iran during the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War by secretly providing intelligence and transferring weapons to the Iraqis; and (5) checking Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein following the Second Gulf War by, among other things, arming GCC countries.

Massive U.S. foreign military sales (FMS) to Arab partners throughout these years have also done wonders for the U.S. economy. They have generated trillions of dollars’ worth of revenue, created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the American defense industry and boosted efficiency in U.S. military budgets by reducing unit costs.

These enormous political and economic benefits notwithstanding, U.S. security assistance has failed significantly to bolster military relations with Arab partners. It is true that such assistance has sustained U.S.-Arab military ties and provided the United States with deep and relatively easy access to Arab leaders. But it hasn’t enabled security integration or achieved higher levels of defense interoperability between the two sides—or among the Arabs themselves—despite much talk about these objectives. Before 9/11, strengthening U.S.-Arab military relations was not viewed as particularly pressing by either side because there were no major security threats to collective interests (Iran and Iraq were still reeling from their long and devastating conflict, while Saddam’s aggression against Kuwait was essentially countered by U.S. military power, notwithstanding the international coalition). However, Al Qaeda’s attacks on September 11, 2001, totally changed America’s perception, forcing U.S. policymakers to rethink Washington’s priorities in the region. Since 9/11, strategic-level documents, including the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy and the Quadrennial Defense Review, have put a higher premium on building the military capacities and capabilities of Arab partners so they could address common threats jointly with the United States.

America’s fight against terrorism remains a key security preoccupation in the region, but Iran’s growing regional influence is becoming more of a concern, especially for a Trump administration who took office determined to halt the expansion of Iran’s reach across the Middle East. In addition to deterring Iran from attacking its Arab neighbors, a goal that materialized soon after the birth of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Trump seeks to counter Iran’s regional agenda. How U.S. security assistance has fared against these three U.S. policy objectives in the region—deterring Iran, countering Iran, and combating Sunni violent extremism—is discussed below.

U.S. SECURITY assistance to Arab partners has played a marginal (or at best an unclear) role in the goal of deterring Iran by conventional means. It has been almost irrelevant to the goal of countering Iran unconventionally. And it has been at least partly helpful to the goal of fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Of all the likely reasons why Iran has been successfully deterred from directly attacking any of America’s Arab Gulf partners, the presumed deterrent power of the Arab Gulf states’ conventional arsenals, developed to a large extent through U.S. arms sales, might be the least convincing. This is not meant to pooh-pooh the Arab Gulf states’ military assets, or to suggest that these countries’ missile defenses, in particular, do not constrain the planning of Iran’s military leaders. But it does imply that Tehran worries about potential U.S. punishment, which robust and forward-deployed U.S. forces in the Gulf could quickly execute, more than anything else. Until the Arab Gulf states integrate militarily—a goal that seems even more remote today than it was before—deterring Iran is primarily a U.S. responsibility.

Washington’s military support to its Arab Gulf partners may have been a boon to the U.S. economy, but it has done little to stop Tehran from spreading its regional influence. Despite the large volume of powerful and sophisticated weapons the United States has sold the GCC countries, several members of that bloc still feel existentially threatened by Iran, even though it is militarily inferior to them. Such deep fears continue to create significant pressures on U.S. policy and fissures in U.S.-GCC relations. The one time the United States did address, at least indirectly, Iran’s regional challenge, it produced awful results. With the help of U.S. arms and logistical assistance, the Saudis went to war against the pro-Iran Houthi militia in Yemen, primarily to deny Tehran a presence in their backyard. Riyadh’s national-security concern was and still is legitimate, yet its prosecution of the military campaign has been ineffective so far (although the tide might finally be turning in the Saudis’ favor).

The tale of U.S. counterterrorism support to Arab partners is more promising, though still vastly lacking. Thanks in large part to various forms of U.S. help, Iraq’s counterterrorism service, a crowning achievement of the United States in Iraq, has performed ably in the fight against ISIS; Jordan’s elite military units, one of the most proficient “rapid reaction forces” in the region and highly regarded in the world’s special-operations community, have trained Arab irregular forces in partnership with the U.S. military to fight terrorism; Lebanon’s army has succeeded in protecting the country’s northern borders and evicting violent Sunni extremists; the Palestinian Authority has ensured security and coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet much more effectively over the past decade; the UAE’s special-operations forces have pursued military missions jointly with U.S. special-operations commandos against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen; and finally, Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism apparatus crushed Al Qaeda’s insurgency across the kingdom in the mid-2000s and, more recently, denied ISIS a foothold in the country.

Then there are the less positive cases. Egypt probably tops them all. Although it has been receiving $1.3 billion per year in military assistance from Washington since the late 1970s, Egypt still struggles mightily in fighting terrorism at home, countering Islamic insurgents in the Sinai Peninsula, and securing its borders with Libya and Gaza. And while Baghdad should be proud of what its counterterrorism service has accomplished in the past couple of years, one must not forget that the Iraqi army did collapse in a humiliating fashion in 2014, failing miserably to stop ISIS’s initial onslaught, despite substantial U.S. treasure and training spanning more than a decade. Although Tunisia has received an exponential increase in U.S. security assistance since 2011 (tripling it to roughly $100 million in 2016) and has been designated by Washington as a major non-NATO ally, the country is a hotbed for Islamic militancy. It is estimated that some seven thousand Tunisians have traveled to fight in Iraq and Syria, making them the largest contingent of foreign fighters joining ISIS. Jordan’s internal-security apparatus has done well to contain the Syrian spillover and block ISIS infiltration with the help of U.S. money and equipment. However, terrorist attacks by ISIS-inspired extremists have spiked in Jordan in recent years, and youth radicalization has become a serious problem. Like Tunisia, Jordan has seen many of its young men, anywhere from two thousand to four thousand, leave the country to fight with ISIS, making the Hashemite kingdom one of the world’s highest per capita contributors of foreign fighters.

THERE OBVIOUSLY isn’t one reason why the United States has struggled to meet its evolving priorities in the Middle East; there are many. So to assign blame solely to U.S. security assistance for what ultimately are policy shortcomings is simplistic and misleading.

First, it should be acknowledged that the United States and its Arab partners have dissimilar threat perceptions and security priorities, which will inevitably impact the effectiveness of U.S. security assistance. Second, each Arab partner has a unique sociopolitical context and threat environment. And each has tackled its security challenges differently, depending on its own perceptions, priorities and resources.

With respect to Iran’s regional challenge, for example, it is no secret that the Arab partners do not view such a challenge similarly, nor do they agree on how to address it jointly. For some, Iran poses an existential threat. For others, it is an irritant but a manageable concern. Others even view Tehran’s regional policies with indifference. No amount of U.S. arms, funds and training can change these realities.

Political and cultural differences between the United States and its Arab partners help explain why these partners have utilized U.S. security assistance in ways that, from Washington’s point of view, seem unwise and ineffective. U.S. officials believe that many Arab partners insist on purchasing large and high-tech U.S. weapons that do not address pressing security needs and requirements or advance shared goals. Supersonic aircraft and advanced missile defenses, for example, are less relevant for Iran’s irregular warfare or terrorist insurgencies than attack helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and smaller combat search-and-rescue planes.

Given Iran’s weapons smuggling and other nefarious activities on land and at sea, it is mind-boggling how most Arab Gulf states have not made proper investments in their coast guards, special-operations forces and various local law-enforcement agencies. Instead of developing minesweeping capabilities to prevent the Iranians from mining the Strait of Hormuz, for example, some Arab Gulf states have been obsessing over the F-35, the latest generation of American fighter plane, even though they already possess considerable air power. It is true that some Arab partners have made smarter acquisitions lately. And it is also true that some partners increasingly realize the importance of formulating official and viable arms-acquisition strategies, and appreciate the value of military education and training. But this general preference for prestige and modernity, instead of effectiveness and integration, is not likely to go away anytime soon.

This is not just about a lack of military expertise or “wrong choices” by Arab partners concerning the types and quantities of weapons they acquire. Arab partners often make political decisions regarding certain arms sales that have nothing to do with national security. This is when factionalist considerations, which Washington has little understanding of and cannot control, come into play. For example, if an Arab leader buys the best weapons and authorizes the best training for one particular military service (for example, the air force) but deliberately ill equips another service (for example, the army) it is due to political dynamics that are tied to his or the ruling family’s perceptions of regime stability, or even survival.

Arab partners also are sometimes unwilling to cooperate with Washington on delicate security affairs. That’s perfectly understandable. Internal security is a profoundly sovereign decision that involves a country’s most intimate secrets. As close as relations between the United States and its Arab partners have been historically, there is a strong and legitimate inclination on the part of these partners to conceal various things about their politics and societies. Such Arab resistance to sharing sensitive information is also amplified whenever relations with Washington experience political turbulence, as was the case with most partners during the Obama presidency. U.S. security assistance is, at the end of the day, a function of bilateral ties. The healthier these are, the more effective U.S. security assistance will be. One would only have to look at America’s security-assistance experience with its NATO allies, which shows that the process of consultation and coordination on security and defense affairs is more organized, institutionalized and therefore effective than with Arab partners (although still not where it should be).

On the American side, the problems of U.S. security assistance to Arab partners are equally basic, and have little to do with security assistance per se. The source of all security-assistance ills is not the amount of funding, the quality of training, the speed of U.S. weapons delivery, or the type or quantity of arms that Washington provides. It is the often-broken U.S. policy toward the recipient country that profoundly undermines the entire enterprise. U.S. security assistance has become an end in itself rather than a means, often driving U.S. policy as opposed to the other way around. Every time a training program breaks down, or an arms transfer leads to unintended consequences, U.S. officials and military officers with security-assistance responsibilities are drilled by members of Congress and blamed for the failures. Of course, these administrators of security assistance are too courteous and loyal to their supervisors to state the obvious: things fell apart not because a U.S. general did something wrong or there wasn’t enough money, but because, more often than not, the policy toward the Arab partner was incoherent.

Consider Egypt. We finance a good bit of the country’s military requirements and support its economy, yet we tolerate its government’s political repression, which contributes to Islamist radicalization. In Syria, we said that Assad must go, but did the absolute bare minimum to make that happen. We armed and trained a handful of rebels so they could fight terrorism, which Assad helped create, yet we ceded the terrain to Iran and Russia, whose heavy-handed interventions ensured Assad’s survival. In Iraq, we helped build the country’s law-enforcement agencies after Saddam, in an attempt to help the Iraqis figure out their politics in relative peace and security. Yet we did nothing to limit Iran’s growing influence over Baghdad. Worse still, we tolerated the proliferation of IRGC-controlled Iraqi militias that recently used U.S. equipment to recapture Kirkuk. In Yemen, we politically and militarily enabled Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthis, even though we knew it would be a major distraction from the fight against ISIS and Al Qaeda, and offer Iran influence in Yemen that didn’t exist before. Instead of fixing the policy, which should be the author of security assistance, we either have thrown more money at these problems, added more layers of bureaucracy, or overlitigated and politicized the process.

One immediate consequence of an unclear policy toward the recipient country is confusion in the U.S. government over who does what and when in the security-assistance process. The most obvious example of this tension is between the Department of State (DOS) and the Department of Defense (DOD). Bureaucratic infighting is commonplace in any government, and often attributed to rivalry or competition over power and resources. But that is not always the reason. The root cause can also be, especially in the context of security assistance, the lack of a viable policy toward the recipient country. The main reason why the United States defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, for example, is not because the mujahideen of the past were braver or better warriors than today’s Arab rebels, or because we armed the Afghans with Stinger missiles (okay, that helped a lot). It’s because U.S. policy at the time—rollback of communism—and the strategy—containment—were clear and consistent, which made for effective security assistance.

Numerous congressional hearings have been held, and even more reforms enacted since 9/11, to try to improve DOD-DOS coordination on security assistance. But all the debates and tactical fixes have essentially missed the mark. There is no doubt that some improvement in interagency coordination has been made in recent years, and especially since the 2012 Benghazi incident, when terrorists attacked and burned the U.S. mission in Libya, killing Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. nationals. Unlike in the past, there is now legislation—Section 333 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, or FY17 NDAA, is the latest example—calling for synchronization and joint planning between DOS and DOD. A new steering committee has been established to oversee such joint planning. Further, the secretary of defense now must seek the concurrence of the secretary of state before launching some, but not all, security-assistance programs with partner nations (exceptions include Ukraine and counter-ISIS assistance).

However, optimal interagency coordination won’t happen absent a workable policy toward the country receiving such assistance. It also won’t happen if DOS continues to exhibit leadership deficiencies and organizational weaknesses. Today, a major opportunity for DOS to get more involved seems to present itself: both the Congress and DOD affirm that they have provided DOS with the necessary resources and authorities to lead this process (although DOS still assesses that section 333 of the FY17 NDAA consolidates DOD’s security-assistance “fiefdom” and that Foggy Bottom still lacks the necessary resources and authorities to take the lead as it did in the past). One would also be hard pressed to find a secretary of defense who values and champions interagency coordination more than James Mattis. Yet despite its absolutely crucial role in security assistance, many in the Pentagon and Congress believe that DOS does not appear to be ready yet to assume larger responsibilities in the process. That’s especially damaging for the future of the security-assistance enterprise.

The absence of a viable policy toward the recipient country also explains why we’re less articulate in explaining why we provide security assistance to our Arab partners. Although we do enjoy, as stated previously, a number of political and economic benefits from security assistance, on military matters, however, it is far less clear. Merely inserting the term “building the local capacity” of Arab partners in high-level documents does not answer the question of precisely why we pursue these onerous, expensive and often controversial activities. For example, should we be engaged in developing our Arab partners’ overall military capabilities, or should we help build specific capabilities to achieve well-defined U.S. objectives? The two goals might sound the same, but practically and strategically they are considerably different. The first assumes that such a process would by default contribute to U.S. interests, or it might be indifferent toward that outcome. The second is much more deliberate toward such end results. So far, we have sporadically pursued the second approach and relied much more on the first.

As fundamental as the issue of (lack of) policy is, it is not the only one undermining security assistance. Security assistance hasn’t adjusted to the new U.S. priorities in the Middle East. Also, many of the United States’ laws and procedures are old—the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and Arms Export Control Act of 1976 still govern the security-assistance process—and need to be updated. Its focus seems to be misplaced, too. Born in the Cold War and designed to address conventional threats, U.S. security assistance is still focused on and better suited to deal with external defense rather than a holistic process of security, from intelligence to intervention, and from arrest to rehabilitation. The emphasis on external defense is not necessarily a big problem when it comes to U.S. allies that are stable democracies, with few worries about terrorist armies and insurgencies. But in the case of Arab partners, none of which is a true democracy, one would reason that their chief threats emanate from within.

Even if a coherent policy does exist, which is rare, let’s be perfectly honest: security assistance to politically fragile and militarily weak Arab partners requires a great deal of hard work over a long period of time. It is far easier to transfer a weapons system to Arab partners than it is to commit to helping them build full-spectrum military capabilities, a process that includes education on how to effectively use, maintain and deploy the weapons system in service of a national defense strategy. Arms, no matter how powerful, should not be equated with military capabilities. Indeed, buying a Ferrari will not automatically enhance the owner’s driving skills. There is abundant evidence from the Middle East of U.S. military equipment rusting on tarmacs and in deserts, barely used, stolen or prematurely retired. It is true that Arab militaries have gotten better at handling and servicing imported U.S. arms, but the adage that “Arabs don’t do maintenance” has not entirely lost its credibility.

The process of military education and training on doctrine, strategy, policy, organization and leadership also has a political dimension. Enhancing the effectiveness of law-enforcement and security agencies in authoritarian Arab governments often requires political reengineering, as well as institutional and legal capacity building, which Washington is not good at and decreasingly interested in doing (so as to avoid even the perception of nation building). It is one thing to help an Arab country train and equip its coast guard, for example, but it is another altogether to help that government create legal systems and authorities that are necessary for that military service’s role and jurisdictions.

Personnel is another handicap in the U.S. government when it comes to security assistance for Arab partners. There simply are not enough Arab country specialists in Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon who also have experience in the process of U.S. security assistance. DOS could use more “warrior diplomats” who understand security and the use of force, while DOD could use more “diplomat generals” who are familiar with foreign cultures and history. This is particularly important with regard to U.S. security assistance, because there are cultural and historical reasons, not just competence-related reasons, why security integration with the United States, among and even within the Arab states has not worked well. To make matters worse, a systematic debriefing/lessons-learned process to collect and analyze the experiences of officers when they complete their Middle East assignments does not exist. Such officers tend to “move on to the next assignment” and just disappear into “the system,” along with the things they have learned. Fiscal year 2017’s NDAA mandates a professionalization of the security-cooperation workforce, including developing career paths, but if that’s not treated as a priority to which resources would be allocated, it simply won’t happen.

ALL AMERICAN presidents since Jimmy Carter have sought to fix various elements of U.S. security assistance in one way or another, yet they all diagnosed the problem differently. Carter and Reagan focused on U.S. arms sales and particularly on their size rather than on their effectiveness (Carter believed that less was better, to reduce regional militarization, while Reagan was convinced that more was better, to empower friends and allies to fight communism). Soon after he took office, Obama signaled that he would take a more strategic and requirements-based approach to U.S. weapons transfers. The presumed shift was well received by many in the Pentagon. However, U.S. arms sales to the Middle East soared under Obama, oftentimes with little regard for what the president and his national-security team said they were initially committed to. Moreover, security-assistance coordination between DOS and DOD was lacking partly because Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter did not have the best working relationship and disagreed on various foreign-policy matters (contrary to Tillerson and Mattis, who seem to work well together).

Trump believes that the United States spends too much on foreign aid and that it should sell more arms to boost the U.S. economy. That’s why his idea of fixing security assistance is based on making cuts in some foreign-aid programs and making more megaweapons deals. There certainly is no harm in looking more closely at the numbers of FMF programs to Arab partners to check if waste can be eliminated or reduced. But economic savings is not what should drive American policy, as those can be made via multiple other avenues in the U.S. budget. The ultimate metric of success for U.S. security assistance should be its direct contributions to America’s policy objectives in the region.

U.S. security assistance has to be, first and foremost, integrated into a broader U.S. Middle East strategy and linked more directly to clearly defined U.S. policy goals in the region, which currently center on, but are not limited to, deterring Iranian aggression, countering Iranian asymmetric warfare and combating violent extremism, all of which require working with Arab partners and helping them enhance their military capabilities (and reform their politics and economics). Such a strategic reconfiguration of U.S. security assistance must be implemented through the interagency process, given the involvement of various federal agencies in this system. The National Security Council (NSC) should take the lead, and start by abandoning the current bottom-up security-assistance approach, which is primarily engineered by the defense offices of U.S. embassies in the region, along with CENTCOM and the U.S. military-service chiefs, in favor of a strategy that is formulated at the top and communicated to the various bureaucracies and offices. As experienced as CENTCOM is in the military and security requirements of its Arab partners, and as irreplaceable as its role in the region is, the process of security assistance requires first the strategizing, prioritizing and policymaking of the NSC (ideally, DOS should be the one prioritizing and policymaking, and the NSC should be coordinating and helping get DOD on board). That is because even the strictest military affairs of the region have first-, second- and third-order political effects that must be accounted for, which can only be done through proper interagency coordination. However, strategy at the NSC level is not enough. There also has to be concrete planning guidance to identify which Arab partner capabilities we care about in relation to stated strategic aims. One way to do that is by returning to the original legislative intent of security assistance as a tool of foreign policy, which would require much closer DOS-DOD coordination. While new legislation like Section 333 of the FY17 NDAA is a helpful step in that regard, it maintains the responsibility for many security assistance programs, and a vast majority of unearmarked security-assistance funding, with DOD. Approaches that place foreign policy back in the heart of security-assistance strategy, planning and implementation, such as the creation of a transfer of authority to enable DOD to funnel its assistance dollars through the DOS policymaking apparatus, might assist in this goal.

Second, we need to craft clearer policies toward Arab partners to allow for more effective arming, funding and training of their militaries, should there be a need for such activities. Security assistance simply will not succeed in the absence of a convincing reason why we are committing more U.S. treasure and political capital, and sometimes even blood, to this endeavor. It is no longer sufficient for the Defense and Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), which takes the lead in implementing DOS’s authorities and the security-assistance process, to state vaguely that a certain arms sale to the region contributes to “regional stability” and U.S. interests. It has to explain to Congress more clearly why specific types of Arab military capabilities should be developed, and how exactly they are expected to contribute to U.S. goals.

Third, there might be a benefit to establishing a new joint congressional committee (or subcommittee) on security assistance, to which DOS and DOD report—although this runs the risk of creating more barriers and perhaps stovepipes than the ones that already exist. Currently, DOS and DOD report to separate congressional committees and use different language and metrics for security-assistance evaluation. That needs to stop, given the obvious linkages and synergies between political and military affairs when it comes to security assistance. We can talk all we want about joint planning and interagency coordination, but if oversight systems are not harmonized and reporting channels are not unified, it might make no difference (mind you, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to convince the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and others to give up their jurisdictions on security assistance).

Fourth, the executive branch needs to more meaningfully involve Congress in this process, not just because the latter has the power of the purse, but because security assistance must be a national conversation, especially as we might provide more of it in the future to our Arab partners to reduce our military involvement in the Middle East. This will require not just “dropping off” loads of documents and hoping for lawmakers to read them (which more often than not they won’t), but also personally and more regularly engaging with senior staffers on the Hill, who generally tend to know more about the issues than their bosses. In return, members of Congress need to more effectively engage their DOS and DOD colleagues by educating themselves more about security assistance (some, like Sen. John McCain, are more knowledgeable and experienced than others, of course), asking the right questions and, as impossible as this sounds, depoliticizing the issue. There’s no excuse for ignorance when DOS notifies and briefs members of Congress in advance on all major arms sales and security-assistance grants and submits multiple reports on FMF.

Fifth, it is vitally important for Washington to try to understand its Arab partners’ perspectives on their own national security and U.S. security assistance, rather than dismiss them offhand as bizarre or irrational. There is an unhealthy dose of waste and ineptitude in some aspects of the Arab partners’ approaches to defense and security policy, but not everything they do, by any stretch of the imagination, is misguided. A greater appreciation of the differing security calculations and concerns of Arab partners might help U.S. officials in their efforts to (1) encourage these partners to do joint threat assessments, strategic analyses and capability planning with U.S. counterparts, and (2) offer them more pointed advice on their core security requirements, both of which could positively affect U.S. security assistance. It is not as though U.S. political and military leaders have not pursued these consultative processes with Arab counterparts before. They have—many times. For example, Daniel Chiu, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, led discussions with various global U.S. partners about their own military requirements and national-security concerns. The goal was to entice the allies to compare threat assessments and pursue joint acquisition projects with the United States. It worked to a large extent with Jordan, for example, but failed with Egypt. The United States now leads annual Defense Resourcing Conferences (DRCs) with Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan, and anticipates expanding these to other partners around the world. The purpose of these DRCs is to help partners match their procurement decisions to their strategy and resources. But unless this process is, first and foremost, directly tied to U.S. policy and strategy—which it doesn’t seem currently to be—all it would do is create more problems.

TOO OFTEN the United States has sold or transferred weapons to friends and allies—not just Arab—with little regard to their military utility and the recipients’ capacity to use them. This wasn’t much of a U.S. concern in the past, because Washington had policy objectives that seemed more important or pressing than building or enhancing the military capabilities of friends and allies.

However, U.S. priorities in the Middle East have changed. Today, the United States is facing a more complex network of adversaries, some of whom do battle in the shadows, resort to irregular war tactics and are eager to sacrifice everything for their apocalyptic cause. The support of Arab partners is vital for addressing these threats effectively. There is immense value in continuing to pursue arms deals that benefit the U.S. economy and preserve enduring U.S. goals in the region, including the upholding of U.S. military basing on and access to Arab territory and airspace, as well as the Camp David peace treaty. But the status quo is no longer acceptable, and it is becoming increasingly costly. Despite its humongous size, security assistance is not and cannot be an island. It must be reintegrated into the U.S. foreign-policy process.

Bilal Y. Saab is senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute. He is most grateful to numerous current and former U.S. officials, military officers, senior congressional staffers and experts for sharing their insights.

Image: Reuters