Waiting to Win: The FMS Accountability Gap: Addendum
Document submitted July 9, 2025, as an addendum to testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services on May 15, 2025.
Lisa Saum-Manning is associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Program, a senior political scientist at RAND, and a professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. Her research interests focus on aspects of strategic planning for the U.S. Armed Forces and the U.S. Department of State, including security cooperation/foreign military sales and acquisition, space, counternarcotics and countertransnational organized crime, conflict prevention in fragile countries, unconventional warfare, and WMD nonproliferation. Saum-Manning currently serves as a senior fellow to the Pacific Council on International Policy and previously served as a senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Conflict Stabilization Operations as the office implemented the congressionally mandated Global Fragility Act. Additional recent field research focuses on building sustainable security capacity in Africa, Central and South America, and disaster recovery in Puerto Rico. Saum-Manning's career trajectory at RAND began with a deployment to Afghanistan, where she served as an analyst for the Commanding General of the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command (CFSOCC-A). Her role was to provide research and analysis on capacity-building and development in Afghanistan. Prior to RAND, Saum-Manning worked in the Nonproliferation and National Security Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where her research assessed nuclear infrastructure capacity-building in developing countries. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Education
Ph.D. in political science, University of California, Los Angeles; B.A. in Spanish, Ohio State University
Languages
Spanish
Concurrent Non-RAND Positions
Professor, RAND School of Public Policy
Selected Work
- Lisa Saum-Manning, "Best Practices and Lessons Learned from Community Engagement and Data Collection Strategies in Post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico," Journal of Homeland Security Management, 18(3), 2021
- Alexis A. Blanc and Lisa Saum-Manning., "The No-First-Use Debate: Arguments, Assumptions, and an Assessment," SAIS, 39(2), 2019
- Lisa Saum-Manning, "All Good Things Must End: Don't worry about Russia backing away from the International Space Station or an old arms control plan.," US News and World Report, 2015
- Lisa Saum-Manning, "VSO/ALP: Comparing Past and Current Challenges to Afghan Local Defense," Small Wars Journal, 2012
- Saum-Manning, Lisa, Waiting to Win: The FMS Accountability Gap, RAND Corporation (CT-A4055-1), 2025
Authored by Lisa Saum-Manning
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