National Security Best Buys in Foreign Assistance

Introduction

Under the Biden administration, the United States obligated approximately $86 billion in foreign assistance in fiscal year (FY) 2024 across 203 countries.^[1] That figure is now under acute pressure. Executive Order 14169, issued by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, initiated a sweeping reassessment of U.S. foreign aid, and early estimates suggest FY 2025 obligations have fallen to roughly $19.4 billion, a reduction of more than 75%.^[2] Traditional U.S. allies have followed: The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have each announced significant cuts to their own assistance portfolios.

Proponents of U.S. foreign assistance have long made the case that foreign assistance is not just about altruism toward the world; it is, in fact, the primary instrument of soft power and meaningfully advances national security interests. This moment of retrenchment has forced several questions: What does foreign assistance actually buy in terms of national security interests, and what types of foreign assistance advance these objectives?

These questions are not new. Since the Marshall Plan helped rebuild and stabilize European economies after World War II — and foreign assistance was institutionalized through the creation of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under President John F. Kennedy in 1961 — U.S. assistance has served as a central instrument of statecraft: aiming to stabilize fragile states, counter adversaries, shape public perceptions, and strength military, economic, and political alliances. During the Cold War, it served as a bulwark against Soviet expansion across Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. After Sept. 11, 2001, in addition to military action and counterterrorism measures, it became the dominant tool of stabilization in fragile states from Iraq to Afghanistan. Through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched in 2003, it demonstrated that health assistance could generate soft power returns unmatched by almost any other form of engagement. In each era, the strategic rationale shifted, but the underlying premise held that U.S. assistance advances U.S. interests.

Proponents have historically advanced two broad justifications: a humanitarian case grounded in U.S. altruism and values, and an instrumental case centered on foreign assistance across sectors (security, development, health) that produces stability and, in turn, serves national interests. Both rationales have shaped decades of policy. Yet, neither has been fully examined in a systematic, evidence-based way that links specific forms of assistance to measurable strategic outcomes.

The humanitarian or moral case for foreign assistance — that the United States, as the world’s wealthiest democracy, bears a responsibility to reduce poverty and human suffering and that Americans wish to be seen as altruists — is neither dismissed nor debated here. The authors assert that it is in fact strategic as well to be seen as upholding American values. This working paper instead asks a narrower and more demanding set of questions: Which forms of U.S. foreign assistance have, in practice, yielded measurable returns against specific national security interests, and under what conditions does that return materialize?

To answer it, this paper draws on three sources of evidence.

1. Review of the existing empirical literature on foreign aid and strategic influence, spanning public opinion research, security force assistance studies, great-power competition analyses, and behavioral studies of political actors and public responses to donor activity.
    
2. Original, structured interviews with a bipartisan group of senior national security, diplomatic, defense, and development officials with deep experience across priority U.S. theaters, including the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.
    
3. Review of recent public opinion polling from key aid-recipient countries, offering an empirical lens through which to assess claims about soft power and legitimacy returns.

The case for foreign assistance as an instrument of national security has too often rested on assertion rather than evidence. This paper attempts to provide the latter. To be clear — while national security and U.S. interest are important lens to evaluate the utility of foreign assistance — they are not the only ones. Assistance that is an expression of American values, such as humanitarian aid or global health, has been a hallmark of U.S. assistance since the end of World War II and pays its own dividends.

View the full paper (PDF).

Notes

^[1] The term “obligated” refers to funds that have been formally committed by the U.S. government for a specific purpose, though they may not yet have been spent. “ForeignAssistance.gov – Dashboard: 2024,” last modified May 20, 2026, https://foreignassistance.gov.

^[2] Exec. Order No. 14146, 90 FR 8619 (2025), https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2025-02091.

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