PRESS ROOM

A new report that looks at the use of U.S. aid to Egypt recommends that instead of beefing up funding, security aid should be cut by $300 million per year.
The report, released by the Project on Middle East Democracy and the Center for International Policy on Tuesday, found that the Egyptian government has “misused” American assistance and suggests the fund should be repurposed for humanitarian assistance in the global efforts to combat COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

The case for slashing Egypt military aid: The Center for International Policy and the Project on Middle East Democracy are out today with a new report questioning the return on investment of the estimated $1.3 billion in military aid Washington provides to Cairo each year.
The regime’s widespread human rights abuses, meanwhile, demand “a thorough re-evaluation of the size of the annual U.S. aid package, and the conditions under which it is provided,” it concludes.

As William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, has pointed out, such ICBMs “are redundant because invulnerable submarine-launched ballistic missiles are sufficient for deterring other countries from attacking the United States. They are dangerous because they operate on hair-trigger alert, with launch decisions needing to be made in some cases within minutes. This increases the risk of an accidental nuclear war.”

“The plans, whether they materialise or not, seem to indicate that the Pentagon is interested in expanding its infrastructure in Africa, for drone ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and drone warfare, as well as training camps and lily-pad bases for increasing the US capacity to project force in key regions, the Horn of Africa, East Africa and the Sahel,” said Salih Booker, the president and chief executive of the Center for International Policy in Washington DC.

If the new coronavirus pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that we need to rethink what we need to do to keep America safe. That’s why Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s recent tweet calling modernization of U.S. nuclear forces a “top priority ... to protect the American people and our allies” seemed so tone deaf.

For more than a year, millions of Algerian protesters have relentlessly taken to the streets to demand the erasure of the country’s corrupt deep state. Now, after months of protests, arrests and a hopeful belief in their end goal, the novel coronavirus has brought their activity to a screeching halt.

In the past week, we have been treated to a series of oped essays that are supportive of expanded American military power and a political, if not military, confrontation with China.

The United States should slash military aid to Egypt and stop turning a blind eye to human rights abuses under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a new report recommends.
The study, released on Wednesday by two Washington-based think tanks, the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and the Center for International Policy (CIP), said that the unconditional support Washington lends to Egypt has created a "sense of entitlement" among the country's leaders.

If these programs are not reined in soon, they may become unstoppable. Once contractors start “bending metal,” as my colleague William Hartung said recently, these programs become much harder to cancel. Defense contractors spread production across the country, creating political support for programs in the Pentagon and Congress.

By maligning the entire intelligence community, Trump has not made Americans safer, and has compromised the possibility for a legitimate debate on intelligence actions abroad. The rebuilding process at the CIA and the other 16 intelligence agencies and departments will be difficult and prolonged.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has built his regime on fear and repression, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that his response to the Covid-19 crisis is following the same script. Unless there is a sharp change of direction, the results of this military-driven approach will be disastrous for the Filipino people.

On the other side, despite this support from across the political spectrum to reduce the Pentagon’s budget and focus more on non-military threats to national security—an argument the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force made long before the coronavirus pandemic—there stands one of the most powerful players in American politics: the military-industrial complex.