FOREIGN ASSISTANCE AND POLITICAL STABILITY IN RESTIVE STATES: U.S. INTERVENTIONS IN YEMEN REVISITED

Abstract

Yemen has often been described as a country with historical struggles for sustained political stability amidst her poor economy. The negative situation accounted for the option of seeking foreign aid from the United States and other multilateral agencies for the country to sustain its economy and achieve political stability. However, the worry is on the implications of the foreign assistance for the troubled state. This necessitated this study whose objectives are to determine how the U.S. economic and military assistance to Yemen engendered the 2011 widespread revolutionary protest and to ascertain the implication of U.S. government’s military assistance on demand for regime change in Yemen. Anchored on the Marxian theory of dialectical materialism, the qualitative mechanism of data collection and analysis was applied in the study. Data were collated from secondary sources which include institutional materials while qualitative descriptive method was used for data analysis. Among other things, the study found out that the military aid provided to Yemen by the U.S. was rather utilized to strategically strengthen and embolden the security forces in order to maintain massive crackdown on peaceful protesters against regime change. The study equally established that political stability in the country has nosedived on the account of the foreign assistance. In view of the findings, the study recommends that the administration of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Al Hadi needs to cooperate with the people of Yemen as partners in rebuilding the troubled country. It also recommends that the administration needs to review the partnership existing between Yemen and foreign partners, particularly the U.S. in order to identify areas that may require some adjustments.