The answer isn’t about spending more or spending less. It’s about better design — built around clear American interests, measurable outcomes, and shared responsibility from day one.  

Where our objectives align with allies and partners, they should share the costs, the capabilities, and the responsibility for getting there. And host countries — those that receive U.S. foreign assistance — need a real stake in the outcome, including responsibility for the reforms that make progress stick.  

As national outreach director at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, I spend much of my time outside Washington talking with members of Congress from both parties and with business and faith leaders, military veterans, farmers, and other Americans. Their questions are practical: What result are we trying to achieve? How does it make America safer or more prosperous? What are our allies and partner governments contributing? And how will we know when the job is done?  

What I hear in those conversations isn’t a call to walk away from American leadership — it’s a demand that we lead smarter, with real partners and real results.

These common sense questions are the bedrock behind the Blueprint for Effective International Assistance, which USGLC released on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. It sets out five core principles: aligning with American interests, leveraging private capital and the private sector, harnessing American innovation, delivering measurable results, and the piece that pulls it all together: burden sharing.

Burden sharing works at two levels. With allies and other partners, it means pooling resources and capabilities where we share objectives — not asking others to support priorities they do not share.

For example, that could mean working alongside Japan, South Korea, and Australia, which bring their own capital and regional credibility to the Indo-Pacific region. Or in Africa and the Middle East, it means aligning with the European Union and the United Kingdom, which already have deep relationships and resources of their own on the ground.

And with host countries, it means prioritizing local ownership: investing their own resources, making difficult reforms, and taking responsibility for the conditions that allow growth to take root.

For host countries, having skin in the game cannot be measured only in dollars. Governments must confront the barriers that keep businesses from investing and economies from growing — especially corruption, weak rule of law, and insecure property rights.

American assistance can help build capacity and support reform, but it cannot substitute for political will. Host-country leaders must create the conditions in which local entrepreneurs and international investors can succeed. U.S. assistance should help strengthen the institutions, infrastructure, and expertise needed to turn those reforms into lasting growth. Together, these are the foundations for greater self-reliance and stronger trading partnerships.

Proven models for burden sharing have been around for decades. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria ties investments to country-level performance and brings other donors alongside the U.S. Under U.S. law, the American share cannot exceed one-third of total contribution — effectively requiring at least $2 from others for every U.S. dollar. That structure gives the U.S. a common objective and shared accountability, while stretching every American tax dollar further. Since 2002, the fund has helped save 72 million lives, and its new grant cycle puts even greater weight on country cofinancing and predictable transition pathways.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation provides the complementary host-country burden-sharing model. Its time-limited investments pair country-led priorities with policy reforms, measurable benchmarks, and domestic commitments. The U.S. can help finance infrastructure and build capacity, but partner governments have to fix the legal, institutional, and governance barriers that keep those investments from producing lasting growth. And it works: Of the 33 countries that have signed an MCC compact, half are now in a higher World Bank income bracket than when their partnership began.

Shared responsibility also means shared accountability. Effective assistance needs clear goals, transparent benchmarks, reliable data, and regular review. Programs that work should be strengthened or expanded. Programs that do not should be reformed or ended. Partner commitments should be realistic, but meaningful enough to build lasting capacity rather than permanent dependency.

At the end of the day, durability is key. If commitments disappear when budgets tighten or political leadership changes, partner governments have little incentive to make difficult reforms or invest their own resources. Clear expectations, credible commitments, a transition plan tied to countries’ growing capacity, and regular accountability give every participant a reason to stay at the table and deliver.

America’s security and prosperity depend on that kind of leadership — but leadership isn’t the same as writing checks and hoping for the best. We need to lead differently: sharing the costs and capabilities with allies who share our objectives, and expecting host countries to do the hard work of removing the barriers to their own growth while helping them build the capacity to sustain progress.

Get that right, and international assistance stops being a permanent expense and becomes what it was always meant to be — the bridge from aid recipient to full trading partner, standing with us as peers in trade and security.