Jonathan G. Wachtel
In 2011, the Obama administration declared a “strategic pivot” to Asia away from the Middle East. Nearly a decade later, in October 2022, the Biden White House published a National Security Strategy that stated, “No region will be of more significance to the world and everyday Americans than the Indo-Pacific.” In the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the “sense of Congress” declared its goal to “strengthen United States defense alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region to further the comparative advantage of the United States in strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China.” Today, despite all of these grand declarations, 86 percent of the annual U.S. Foreign Military Financing (FMF) still goes overwhelmingly, as it has for decades, to nations in the Middle East.
Within that overwhelming portion of the pie, the top beneficiaries of this largesse include long-time security partners Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Of the roughly $13.2 billion Congress placed in the FMF account in Fiscal Year 2024, Egypt’s security assistance is roughly $1.3 billion, and Israel’s share is a tremendous $6.8 billion.
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