Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, brief reporters at the Pentagon, Feb. 29, 2016. DoD photo by Army Sgt. 1st Class Clydell Kinchen
Politico: The Pentagon's secret foreign aid budget
The U.S. sends billions to foreign militaries each year. What do we have to show for it?
Last month, the Obama administration released its 2017 budget proposal, including thousands of pages on the nearly $600 billion request for the Pentagon. That money is earmarked for a wide array of projects—$1.8 billion in procurement of equipment for the Special Operations Command, for instance, and $1.2 billion for the chemical and biological weapons defense program. In each case, the administration carefully explains the rationale and purpose for the budget request.
But what isn’t included in that massive budget is a comprehensive country-level breakdown of the $10 billion or so in foreign military aid the Pentagon administers every year, euphemistically referred to as Building Partner Capacity. This makes it impossible to calculate the cost of individual aid programs, much less to determine whether the BPC programs are effective. That’s a concern, because BPC sometimes causes more problems than it solves.
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WNU Editor: A review on the Pentagon's foreign military aid program is long overdue. I can only imagine the intensity of the lobbying that is being done right now.
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