American-Hellenic-Israeli Eastern Mediterranean Counterterrorism and Maritime Security Partnership Act of 2025

— 185 — Department of State l First, the U.S. must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear technology and delivery capabilities and more broadly block Iranian ambitions. This means, inter alia, reinstituting and expanding Trump Administration sanctions; providing security assistance for regional partners; supporting, through public diplomacy and otherwise, freedom-seeking Iranian people in their revolt against the mullahs; and ensuring Israel has both the military means and the political support and flexibility to take what it deems to be appropriate measures to defend itself against the Iranian regime and its regional proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. l Second, the next Administration should build on the Trump Administration’s diplomatic successes by encouraging other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, to enter the Abraham Accords. Related policies should include reversing, as appropriate, the Biden Administration’s degradation of the long-standing partnership with Saudi Arabia. The Palestinian Authority should be defunded. A further key priority is keeping Türkiye in the Western fold and a NATO ally. This includes a vigorous outreach to Türkiye to dissuade it from “hedging” toward Russia or China, which is likely to require a rethinking of U.S. support for YPG/PKK [People’s Protection Units/Kurdistan Worker’s Party] Kurdish forces, which Ankara believes are an existential threat to its security. For the foreseeable future— and much longer than one new Administration—Middle Eastern oil will play a key role in the world economy. Therefore, the U.S. must continue to support its allies and compete with its economic adversaries, including China. Relations with Saudi Arabia should be strengthened in a way that seriously curtails Chinese influence in Riyadh. l Third, it is in the U.S. national interest to build a Middle East security pact that includes Israel, Egypt, the Gulf states, and potentially India, as a second “Quad” arrangement. Protecting freedom of navigation in the Gulf and in the Red Sea/Suez Canal is vital to the world economy and therefore to U.S. prosperity as well. In North Africa, security cooperation with European allies, especially France, will be vital to limit growing Islamist threats and the incursion of Russian influence through positionings of the Wagner Group. l The U.S. cannot neglect a concern for human rights and minority rights, which must be balanced with strategic and security considerations. Special attention must be paid to challenges of religious freedom, especially the status of Middle Eastern Christians and other religious minorities, as well as the human trafficking endemic to the region. — 186 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Sub-Saharan Africa Africa’s importance to U.S. foreign policy and strategic interests is rising and will only continue to grow. Its explosive population growth, large reserves of industry-dependent minerals, proximity to key maritime shipping routes, and its collective diplomatic power ensure the continent’s global importance. Yet as Afri- ca’s strategic significance has grown, the U.S.’s relative influence there has declined. Terrorist activity on the continent has increased, while America’s competitors are making significant gains for their own national interests. The PRC’s companies dominate the African supply chain for certain minerals critical to emerging tech- nologies. African nations comprise major country-bloc elements that shield the PRC and Russia from international isolation for their human rights abuses—and African nations staunchly support PRC foreign policy goals on issues such as Hong Kong occupation, South China Seas dispute arbitration, and Taiwan. The new Administration can correct this strategic failing of existing policy by prioritizing Africa and by undertaking fundamental changes in how the United States works with African nations. At a bare minimum, the next Administration should: l Shift strategic focus from assistance to growth. Reorient the focus of U.S. overseas development assistance away from stand-alone humanitarian development aid and toward fostering free market systems in African countries by incentivizing and facilitating U.S. private sector engagement in these countries. Development aid alone does little to develop countries and can fuel corruption and violent conflict. While the United States should always be willing to offer emergency and humanitarian relief, both U.S. and African long-term interests are better served by a free market-based, private growth-focused strategy to Africa’s economic challenges. l Counter malign Chinese activity on the continent. This should include the development of powerful public diplomacy efforts to counter Chinese influence campaigns with commitments to freedom of speech and the free flow of information; the creation of a template “digital hygiene” program that African countries can access to sanitize and protect their sensitive communications networks from espionage by the PRC and other hostile actors; the recognition of Somaliland statehood as a hedge against the U.S.’s deteriorating position in Djibouti; and a focus on supporting American companies involved in industries important to U.S. national interests or that have a competitive advantage in Africa. l Counter the furtherance of terrorism. African country-based terrorist groups like Boko Haram may currently lack the capability to attack the

— 274 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Pakistan is a prime example of foreign aid policies disconnected from U.S. national interests. The country has been the recipient of more than $12 billion in U.S. foreign aid since 2010, yet it remains intensely anti-American and corrupt, has backed the Taliban continuously since 2001, jump-started North Korea’s nuclear bomb program, brutalizes its religious minorities, and is a willing client of China while taking on unrepayable loans from the U.S. taxpayer-funded International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Middle East. The Middle East is far more vulnerable today than it was in 2020 because the Biden Administration’s strategy for the region is adrift. Tunisia has slid into autocracy, Iraq is plummeting further into Iran’s orbit, and U.S. soldiers continue to risk their lives for unclear ends amid the ruins of Syria. Meanwhile, billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid props up regimes allied with Iran. President Trump’s Abraham Accords signaled the end of the centrality of the Arab–Israeli conflict, which paralyzed U.S. approaches to the region, and focused instead on Iran as the principal threat to America from this region. During the Trump Administration, USAID’s allocations reflected the new opportunities created by the Accords and sought to strengthen regional alliances against Iran through expanded regional trade and investment and to promote genuine polit- ical stability tethered to strong American leadership. USAID formally partnered with the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Morocco, Qatar, and Kuwait to catalyze regional partnerships in Africa. Under the Biden Administration, however, USAID has returned to a model that deepens the region’s dependence on aid. A new conservative President should reset USAID’s programming in the Middle East in line with our national security interests and committed to the goal of ending the need for foreign aid through development that is led by the private sector. Specifically: l Foreign aid must advance the Abraham Accords. Increased trade and investment between Israel and its Arab neighbors represent the most effective path toward reducing poverty, fostering the emergence of a middle class, and solidifying peace. USAID should therefore focus its development assistance on countries such as Morocco and Sudan through joint investment collaboration with the more economically advanced economies such as the UAE and Israel. l USAID should consider cutting aid to states allied to Iran, limiting assistance in these countries to the advancement of narrow strategic priorities and support for basic American values, such as aid to persecuted religious minorities. USAID continues to expend hundreds of millions of dollars in nonhumanitarian aid to antagonistic regimes in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. After billions of dollars of aid and many — 275 — Agency for International Development years of effort, these countries remain hopelessly dysfunctional—a fact that exposes the failure of a foreign aid model that is disconnected to our national security and without exit strategies to promote self-reliance. We must admit that USAID’s investments in the education sector, for example, serve no other purpose than to subsidize corrupt, incompetent, and hostile regimes. l USAID should undergo operational changes to secure better development outcomes by reducing its missions’ footprints in the Middle East given that most personnel in the region are unable to leave their highly protected and expensive compounds and carry out their oversight functions. It should redirect program funding away from expensive and poorly performing international partners to more cost-effective local entities that require a minimal USAID field presence. Africa. Since its inception, USAID has had a strong presence in Africa, saving millions of lives through its pandemic and infectious disease responses, especially for malaria and HIV-AIDS. It has led global efforts to provide lifesaving emergency assistance to those who are fleeing conflict and suffering from devastating natural disasters. American generosity knows no equal. Yet the agency’s efforts to reduce poverty and hunger have failed as it spends ever-higher amounts of aid partnering with a costly and ineffective aid indus- trial complex that has little interest in “working itself out of a job.” Long-term, multibillion-dollar humanitarian responses lack exit strategies, while numer- ous development projects lead neither to measurable results nor to government reforms. Despite the tens of billions of dollars spent, the continent remains poor, unstable, and riven with conflict, corruption, and Islamic terrorism. This situation has also resulted in vast illegal migration from the continent. Failure to generate wealth has provided opportunities for China to step in and become the continent’s leader in trade, loans, and investment. As a result, Beijing controls most of the continent’s strategic minerals that are critical to advanced technology. Moreover, USAID is criticized by Africans for exporting cultural values that are anathema to their traditional norms, further abetting Chinese continen- tal supremacy. The Biden Administration’s radical global climate policies have cut off billions in investment to develop clean fossil fuels, denying Africa’s billion-plus people access to cheap energy to further their own development and finance their own social services in health, water, education, and agriculture, while increasing its dependence on China’s renewables industry. It has exacerbated hunger by increas- ing the costs of fertilizers to levels that many African farmers can no longer afford. Poverty-inducing dependence on aid grows daily.

— 156 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise New Policies The Coast Guard’s mission set should be scaled down to match congressio- nal budgeting in the long term, with any increased funding going to acquisitions based on an updated Fleet Mix Analysis. The current shipbuilding plan is insuf- ficient based on USCG analysis, and the necessary numbers of planned Offshore Patrol Cutters and National Security Cutters are not supported by congressional budgets. The Coast Guard should be required to submit to Congress a long-range shipbuilding plan modeled on the Navy’s 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan. Ideally this should become part of the Navy plan in a new comprehensive naval long-range shipbuilding plan to ensure better coherency in the services’ requirements. Outside of home waters, and following the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, the Coast Guard should prioritize limited resources to the nation’s expansive Pacific waters to counter growing Chinese influence and encroachment. Expansion of facilities in American Samoa and basing of cutters there is one clear step in this direction and should be accelerated; looking to free association states (Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands) for enhanced and persistent presence, assuming adequate congressional funding, is another such step. The Secretary of the Navy should convene a naval board to review and reset requirements for Coast Guard wartime mission support. To inform and validate these updated requirements, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Coast Guard Commandant should execute dedicated annual joint wartime drills focused on USCG’s wartime missions in the Pacific (the money for these activities should be allocated from DOD). An interagency maritime coordination office focused on developing and overseeing comprehensive efforts to advance the nation’s mari- time interests and increase its military and commercial competitiveness should be established. Given the USCG’s history of underfunded missions, if the Coast Guard is to con- tinue to maintain the Arctic mission, money to do so adequately will be required over and above current funding levels. Consideration should be given to shifting the Arctic mission to the Navy. Either way, the Arctic mission should be closely coordinated with our Canadian, Danish, and other allies. Personnel USCG is facing recruitment challenges similar to those faced by the military services. The Administration should stop the messaging on wokeness and diversity and focus instead on attracting the best talent for USCG. Simultaneously, consis- tent with the Department of Defense, USCG should also make a serious effort to re-vet any promotions and hiring that occurred on the Biden Administration’s watch while also re-onboarding any USCG personnel who were dismissed from service for refusing to take the COVID-19 “vaccine,” with time in service credited — 157 — Department of Homeland Security to such returnees. These two steps could be foundational for any improvements in the recruiting process. U.S. SECRET SERVICE (USSS) Needed Reforms The U.S. Secret Service must be the world’s best protective agency. Currently, the agency is distracted by its dual mission of protection and financial investigations. The result has been a long series of high-profile embarrassments and security fail- ures, perhaps most notably its allowing of then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to be inside the Democratic National Committee office on January 6, 2021, while a pipe bomb was outside. Despite the great size and scope of the January 6 inves- tigation, this high-profile incident of danger to a protectee remains unresolved. The failures of the USSS protective mission are too numerous to list here. A December 2015 bipartisan report from the House Oversight Committee listed dozens of such incidents as well as needed recommendations for reform.14 This chapter adopts those findings and recommendations in whole, especially the finding that USSS’s dual-mission structure detracts from the agency’s protective capabilities. At the time of that report, USSS agents spent only one-third of their work hours on protection-related activities as opposed to investigative activities. USSS was established initially to investigate counterfeit currency, but its mission has evolved over the decades to prioritize electronic financial crimes. For example, as this chap- ter was being written, all 15 of the USSS’s most wanted individuals were wanted for financial crimes, many of them international in nature. Notably, the last head of the agency left not for a protection-related job, but to be the Chief Security Officer of social media company SnapChat. This is a pattern that has developed over the years, with agents seeking to burnish their online financial crimes credentials to secure corporate security jobs. Coupled with some of the lowest morale in the federal government, the agency has completely lost sight of the primacy of its protective mission. New Policies USSS should transfer to the Department of Justice and Department of the Treasury all investigations that are not related to its protective function. It should begin the logistical operation of closing all field offices throughout the country and internationally to the extent they are not taken over by Treasury or Justice. USSS agents stationed outside of Washington, D.C., should be transferred to work in Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices where they would continue to be the “boots on the ground” to follow up on threat reports throughout the country and liaise with local law enforcement for visits by protectees.