Evolution of U.S. Military Aid Priorities under Trump and Biden Administrations

Abstract

Aid policy is one of the important foreign policy tools in the US struggle for global leadership. The US federal government spends about $60–70 billion annually on this area of public policy. Most of these truly large-scale financial resources are spent on economic assistance, but a lot is dedicated to military assistance too. This article, using the institutionalism methodology, examines how the US military assistance depends on the international situation, the internal political environment in the United States itself, as well as on the significance of a particular recipient country in the logic of American national interests. The author focuses on the rules of prioritizing this type of assistance and a possible evolution of the existing practice. A particular emphasis is on the study of American military assistance to Ukraine in the period 2022–2023. The author analyzes the dynamics of its provision depending on the goals of the United States, the international military situation, as well as the methods of providing such support, tools and programs for its implementation. It is shown how the United States administration is trying to manage this armed conflict in accordance with its own interests through the transfer of weapons and military equipment. It was investigated via what mechanisms military assistance is financed and, subsequently, how the delivery times of weapons and equipment depend on them, when exactly a part of military items is supplied from the US Army reserves. Also, the ways in which special initiatives and funds are used to accumulate finances to implement aid policy for a certain country were examined. In addition, the paper considers the situations when the United States of America provides military aid, which formally does not qualify as aid, since not being purchased with the money of American taxpayers, but at the same time it is still should formally considered as such.