U.S. Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs is introducing a new bill on Monday that would link U.S. security assistance to the quality of a partner country’s security sector governance—potentially incentivizing improvement by rewarding progress with higher levels of support.
“Security partners with well-governed security sectors are more effective, more reliable, better positioned to absorb and protect United States-origin defense articles from misuse or illicit transfer, and conduct military operations in a manner that encourages stability at home and abroad,” the legislation, a copy of which was provided to Foreign Policy prior to its introduction in Congress, states.
U.S. Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs is introducing a new bill on Monday that would link U.S. security assistance to the quality of a partner country’s security sector governance—potentially incentivizing improvement by rewarding progress with higher levels of support.
“Security partners with well-governed security sectors are more effective, more reliable, better positioned to absorb and protect United States-origin defense articles from misuse or illicit transfer, and conduct military operations in a manner that encourages stability at home and abroad,” the legislation, a copy of which was provided to Foreign Policy prior to its introduction in Congress, states.
Jacobs, who worked at the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations prior to her time in Congress, told FP in an exclusive interview that this legislation came out of that experience. She saw “firsthand that we would say we care about human rights and good governance and all these things, and then as soon as a government was willing to work with us on counterterrorism or countering China, we would turn a blind eye and give them whatever they asked for.”
“And that was a strategic mistake because when U.S. arms fall into the wrong hands, when militaries that we’re training, or are seen as assisting, commit abuses, that actually hurts our own interests and relationships with local populations,” Jacobs said. “Better security governance leads to better partners and leads to better outcomes.”
The bill, named the Security Sector Governance Compacts Act, would require the secretary of state to create “metrics and indicators to assess the quality of governance of the security sectors of security partner countries,” which would be known as the “Security Sector Governance Index.”
“We don’t prescribe in this legislation what the index would be, partially because I don’t think that’s Congress’s role, but we do set some criteria of what needs to be included,” Jacobs said.
Those criteria include the level of corruption in a partner country’s security sector; the level of civilian oversight of the partner’s national and internal security forces; the level of the security force’s involvement in politics, commercial holdings, and merit-based promotions; and the record of human rights and international humanitarian law violations and civilian harm by such security forces or their affiliates, among other factors.
Using this index, the bill would mandate annual assessments from the secretary of state, in coordination with the secretary of defense, to designate partner countries under four tiers that would determine the type of assistance provided. The legislation also calls for a report on these assessments and designations to be submitted to Congress.
The bill is not about passing judgment on other countries, Jacobs said. “This is about protecting the use of taxpayer dollars” and making sure the United States isn’t “funding abuse.”
Jacobs emphasized that while there is already legislation on the books that places conditions on U.S. assistance, such as the so-called Leahy Laws, one of the challenges under existing statutes is that “there’s really only an on or off toggle.” She said her bill offers a more proactive, graduated model for assistance “versus just a punitive approach.”
The Leahy Laws, which prohibit U.S. assistance to foreign security force units if there is credible information that they’ve committed human rights violations, are also “only at the unit level,” Jacobs said. This new legislation is “more about the broader incentive structure of the whole governance of the security sector.”
“In many cases, if you’re just supporting the military without doing the rest of the governance approach, you’re actually setting the conditions that make a coup more likely, not the opposite, because then the military in those countries are the only institutions that have real capacity,” Jacobs said, adding that this legislation is also an attempt to learn lessons from what the United States has done “poorly in the Sahel, for instance.”
To this point, there has been a series of coups in the Sahel in recent years that’s made it harder for Western countries, including the United States, to continue counterterrorism operations in the region. Jihadist groups there have exploited the instability, expanding operations and ramping up attacks.
Jacobs, the youngest Jewish member of Congress, is introducing the legislation less than a week after joining a large cohort of her Democratic colleagues in voting in favor of an amendment to end military aid to Israel. Though the amendment failed, the vote was indicative of how U.S. public sentiment toward Israel has shifted over the country’s prosecution of the war in Gaza and treatment of Palestinians more generally.
“Israel would not be exempt” from the index in the new bill, Jacobs said, and “would face the same standards as everyone else.”
“The fact of the matter is, we should have the same standards across the board, and we should have clear indicators to measure them and help countries see that they can get more things if they improve their governance. This is not just a punitive thing to call out one country,” Jacobs added.
