The world is a fluid place. In September 2024, Joe Biden was president, struggling like many a predecessor to manage the volatile Middle East, among a host of other global challenges. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was still threatening Israel with annihilation, Yahya Sinwar was taunting Tel Aviv from his Gazan tunnels surrounded by Israeli hostages, and Bashar Al Assad was sitting comfortably in Damascus, reveling in his own resilience. At the time, U.S. policies and associated foreign assistance initiatives in the region were aimed at countering these threats while bolstering regional allies such as Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, and isolating Iran, the patron of much of the region’s problems.
Fast forward to February 2025, and Donald Trump is now the Commander in Chief, again. As with Joe Biden, in rapid order, Nasrallah, Sinwar, and Assad have all since been retired, the first two permanently. The last is likely to meet a similar fate should he displease his current Moscow landlord; Assad is well aware of the “accidental” deaths of many Putin allies when no longer of value to the Kremlin.
Given changing global realities, the review of U.S. foreign assistance programs currently underway in Washington today is timely and appropriate. Regular course corrections ensure national resources continually meet the challenges of the day. Foreign assistance responds to defined threats to U.S. national security and must be re-examined when circumstances change. As foreign policy practitioners know, however, assistance only follows policy, so perhaps it is with the latter that any review should start. Abruptly suspending all foreign assistance and dismantling the system through which it is delivered in the name of economizing poses potentially significant risks for national security, leaving the U.S. and its allies vulnerable to new and unforeseen threats.
Case in point, with the fall of the Assad regime to an Al Qaeda affiliate headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa in late 2024, a set of challenges managed by the U.S. for a decade had, overnight, been replaced by another with unknown implications for the U.S. and the region. A new, or at the very least an updated, Syria policy is no doubt warranted. Among questions that need to be asked: what is the future status of the U.S.-backed Autonomous Region in Syria’s northeast, or the estimated 2,000 U.S. military personnel in the same desert territory? With the rationale for both arguably diminished by Assad’s ouster, it might be time for a policy shift, right? Unfortunately, given the timing of the Assad regime’s collapse a month after President Trump’s electoral win, bureaucratic inertia and a lame duck White House combined to cripple decision-making at a pivotal moment for the region and U.S. interests. So, the review of Syria policy was left to the new administration.
Same for Lebanon, where serious attrition of Hezbollah’s military capabilities, combined with the decapitation of its leadership, presented a generational opportunity to address an existential threat to Israel, not to mention Iran’s highway of terror to the Mediterranean. Whereas previous U.S. policy had for the better part of a decade tacitly accepted Hezbollah’s preeminent position in the country, here is the moment to rebalance the regional order, but only if policy would catch up with events on the ground. Again, as with Syria, the outgoing administration was not inclined to stick its neck out during its lame duck period, thus punting on any policy review and/or pivot.
The Trump administration has thus found itself in the unenviable situation of having to deal not only with its own transition but also the urgent need to review and potentially revise existing U.S. foreign policy objectives across the globe, some of which have been on autopilot for some time. In the Middle East, Syria and Lebanon are but two examples, Libya another, but they underline how timing is everything. In the almost three months since Assad beat a hasty retreat to Moscow, while U.S. policy languished, the head of a sanctioned extremist organization has declared himself president of Syria. Across the region, extremists, not surprisingly, have been rejoicing, seeing in this turn of events a source of inspiration and emulation. From Cairo to the Gulf, there is understandable unease. And while Hezbollah may be down, no one should yet count them out; Tehran, for one, is not and will continue to instigate its proxies however it can and wherever they may be (e.g., Houthis in Yemen) to distract from its being the origin of much of the region’s ills.
Yes, there is a need for a review of where and how U.S. foreign policy is effectively addressing threats to national security, or not. Policy priorities alone should determine how foreign assistance is targeted; otherwise, under the current assistance review, there is a risk of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater, while vacuums are inadvertently created that our adversaries are prepared and more than happy to fill. During any review, however, one thing must be kept in mind: the clock is ticking, and global threats to national security are not idle.
