Over the past years, Seventy-nine countries benefited from U.S.-led, funded, and directed programs planned to train and assist their governments in combatting terrorism. These programs were conducted by the Department of Defense, State Department, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and other branches of the U.S. government.
The category of “assistance” covers many different types of U.S. activities and operations, including but not restricted to training foreign security forces. According to the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy, the major types of U.S. counterterrorism aid include improving the abilities of foreign militaries, aircraft surveillance, logistics, command and control, and border and maritime security assistance. The total scale of this aid is crucial: as an indicator, between FY2002–FY 2016, the U.S. contributed $125 billion to develop the capacity of foreign military and police forces to handle terrorism.
The State Department calls many of its counterterrorism actions “diplomacy” rather than “war.” Increasingly, the State Department operates military-style activity, for example in training local police officers to quickly react to potential attacks on U.S. embassies in “high threat” countries.17 The State Department is also conducting a growing number of military-style training centres for law-enforcement mechanisms in many regions.
Its programming to support and assist countries in countering violent extremism concentrates on development activities, such as youth peace games, film projects, and online messaging, to stop “radicalization and recruitment to violence” amongst high-risk residents; such actions are very similar to the Pentagon’s “information operations efforts,” or psychological operations. Researchers also utilised the training/assistance category to catch Pentagon operations like surveillance and aerial aid for other countries, like Juniper Micron, which concerns airlifting French soldiers and supplies into Mali and flying refuelling tasks in support of French airpower against militant groups in that country.
Foreign Military Training Report,” a joint declaration to Congress by the Defense Department and State Department covering fiscal years 2018 and 2019. According to the report, training movements by these two departments were conducted for other countries’ military and police personnel, including the goal of these trainings, their locations, and the money expended on them. The map only includes significant in-country training focused on counterterrorism. It excludes courses for foreign military personnel that occurred in the U.S. or other regional training centres.
Through a combination of diplomatic concentration and foreign assistance, the Department operates with foreign government partners to develop the capabilities necessary to stop, degrade, detect, and react to terrorist threats. This includes measures to strengthen law enforcement and judicial capabilities, improve aviation and border security, heighten global information sharing, counter-terrorist financing, enhance crisis response, and counter violent extremism.
Through its global engagement, the State Department encourages greater burden-sharing to address terrorist threats and enables countries to build counterterrorism capacity in their own regions. The State Department also operates closely with the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, and the Intelligence Community to lead an integrated whole-of-government strategy for international counterterrorism.
