On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump’s suspension of military assistance to Ukraine caused two members of the Office of Management and Budget to resign immediately. OMB official Mark Sandy reported that “frustrations about not understanding the reason for the hold” caused one unnamed member of the White House staff to depart, while a second followed on the grounds that the whole action was illegal.
The idea that Trump could withhold aid to Ukraine for any reason at all seems to be at odds with the actual language of the authorizing legislation. That legislation did require that Ukraine be certified to have met guidelines for fighting corruption and promoting democracy, but the task of determining whether or not Ukraine had cleared that hurdle was assigned to the Department of Defense, and as DOD official Laura Cooper testified in the impeachment hearings, the assistance was cleared on May 23. At that time, the DOD even wrote a letter to members of Congress informing them that the assistance to Ukraine was good to go.
As the website Just Security makes clear, there are only a very few things that can be used to justify a delay in disbursing funds that have been authorized by Congress, signed into law, and certified as meeting the requirements set forth in legislation. None of them applies in this case. Trump’s hold on funds to Ukraine is an “abuse of its apportionment authority and constituted an illegal deferral.” And, as Sandy testified, the Trump White House was made well aware that the hold was illegal—and it did it anyway.
During the impeachment hearings, Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, and others on the Republican bench attempted to diminish the scale of what Trump did in Ukraine by pointing out that assistance to other countries either was on hold or had been delayed. That’s true—and in some cases it wasn’t illegal, because the legislation in those cases included additional circumstances that allowed a deferral of assistance. But there’s at least one other instance in which Trump has delayed assistance that is at least as bad as the case of Ukraine. Because that assistance remains delayed, with no stated reason, and it’s causing even more disruption in a Middle East that Trump has already turned up to a boil.
As Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy points out, Trump has pulled all funds that were supposed to go to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). After years of being torn apart by proxy forces from Iran and Syria, and decades of being used as a pawn in a larger game of regional control, Lebanon is poised to bring itself together around a unified force that crosses religious boundaries and pushes back against extremists on both sides. Congress has authorized $105 million to assist the LAF in reducing the role of Hezbollah and pushing back against growing threats of Russian invasion. But Trump suspended that aid, without providing a reason.
As Reuters reported in October, protests in Beirut recently led to the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. But that’s a good thing. Because, as the Brookings Institute details, it shows that Hezbollah’s role in the war-torn country is weakening, and that the LAF has “responded with admirable courage, restraint, and independence in defying calls by Hezbollah leaders and private pleas from the presidential palace to clear the streets.” These protests were a welcome sign of growing freedom and respect for human rights in an area where military force has all too frequently given power to extremists.
Lebanon and the LAF are in a position where the long-fractured society and nation could begin the difficult process of reintegrating, but only if they can protect themselves from forces coming in from Syria—including Russian forces.
By withholding funds, Trump is leaving the protesters open to attack by Hezbollah, and opening the nation to invasion by forces that, just as in Ukraine, see the delay in the disbursal of U.S. funds as a sign that the United States is no longer interested in acting as a partner.
Lebanon is a nation on the brink. Donald Trump is pushing it in the wrong direction. Just as in Ukraine, he could be opening them up to Russian control. And he’s not even bothering to provide an excuse.