| Background. Security assistance and security cooperation have been mainstays in U.S. foreign policy. The relationship between how U.S. security assistance affects the security cooperation of other nations with the U.S. is of interest with U.S. security interests expanding worldwide. A study of this relationship is reported here.;Methods. The study examined two separate groups, allied seeking and non-allied seeking nations, which had all received security assistance and provided forces to U.S. led security initiatives. Quantitative results are shown for measuring both military financing and sales, which are subsets of assistance, compared to force contributions. The analysis was performed on actual and normalized data in order to accommodate for differences in military budgets or populations between nations.;Results. The data suggests a resiliency of partner nations, both allied seeking and non-allied seeking, to provide troop contributions in the face of consistent or decreasing levels of military financing and sales. Although, over time, allied seeking nations were more consistent force providers than non-allied seeking nations. The normalization of military assistance data established ranges of military assistance, financing and sales, as potential indicators for force contribution.;Conclusions. The analysis indicates that military assistance does not act as a lever eliciting security cooperation in the form of force contributions, but that the existence of a pre-existing security relationship or the desire to attain membership in an alliance may be factors in security cooperation. |
