U.S. states and their global country partnerships explained

States and countries. Did you know that around 95 countries in the world have a specific connection to a U.S. state? I didn't, but as it turns out, a somewhat interesting thing exists called the State Partnership Program, which connects a specific U.S. state to a sovereign country somewhere in the world, establishing these relationships to achieve a number of objectives. Those objectives are usually to establish US influence in a region, further their national interests, while simultaneously aiding the host country in various ways. Three examples, since 2003, there are partnership programs between South Africa and New York, Egypt and Texas, and Mongolia and Alaska, among 95 others in total. In this video, we're going to learn what the State Partnership Program is, why it was created and what its goals were and are today, how the program effectively works and which partnerships exist today or have existed in the past. So, what is the State Partnership Program? The State Partnership Program or SPP is a joint program of the United States Department of Defense and individual states of the country including territories and Washington DC which become partners of a sovereign nation somewhere in the world upon the request of said nation. In this really cool interactive map of the US we can click on each state and territory and see which countries they are partners of as well as the year in which that partnership was established. All countries have at least one partner nation. Idaho is sort of the only exception. Its partner nation is Cambodia and the relationship is stated as dormant. In addition to the states, the territories of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands also take part in this. Further ahead, we'll do the opposite and go through a map of the world where we can see each country's partner U.S. state. You can check the timestamps if you want to skip to that. But let's provide some historical context for this State Partnership Program. It was created in 1993 as a version of something called the Joint Contact Team Program. And in order to understand the point of the SPP, we need to briefly understand what its predecessor was. The JCTP, established in 1992, was created after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, sort of the Russian equivalent to NATO at the time. All of these countries, formerly under Soviet influence or full-on control, were now independent, attempting to secure their new sovereignty and establish democratic regimes and their own military forces. It featured long-term presence of extensive and expensive teams of advisory specialists to aid these new countries in achieving their goals, and of course, having the added bonus of establishing good relations with them and buying some US influence. The JCTP still exists, but it's now a part of the NATO Partnership for Peace program, which prepares nations for membership in NATO, but essentially both the programs do the same. The SPP is just not as intense, if you will, it's cheaper, has a lesser American presence, as described by themselves, and can include civilian agencies. It's more of a wide-ranging cooperation partnership rather than preparation for something specific. Although a big component of it, which is rather strange, is that the designated state sends a unit of their national guard to the partner country where they conduct joint exercises. These aren't always military missions with security as a focus, sometimes just humanitarian and crisis relief ones. At the end of the day, that's what the state partnership program is, an agreement between the United states, through one of its states, and a foreign government to conduct joint security operations with the US National Guard. They may or may not lead to membership of the partner nation in some regional defense organization. Now, before we keep going, a quick thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this video. BetterHelp is the world's largest therapy service and it's 100% online. With BetterHelp, you can tap into a network of over 25,000 licensed and experienced therapists who can help you with a wide range of issues. To get started, you just answer a few questions about your needs and preferences in therapy. That way, BetterHelp can match you with the right therapist from their network. Then, you can talk to your therapist however you feel comfortable, whether it's via text, chat, phone, or video call. You can message your therapist at any time and schedule live sessions when it's convenient for you. 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The nation requests participation through a U.S. ambassador. The ambassador then endorses the request and submits it to the commander assigned to their region. Then the commander submits the nomination to the Secretary of Defense, who prioritizes annual nominations according to their global strategic priority. After choosing the accepted partner nations, he reaches out to the Chief of the National Guard for recommendations of which U.S. states should be the partners. The National Guard submits these recommendations and then they are approved and a signing ceremony follows in the new partner nation with the partnership beginning and the assigned state deploying a unit of their national guard to the nation to execute whatever strategy has been decided. Also I'm not sure if there's any criteria regarding the attributed partner state, some states have more than one partner nation, maybe historical or population connections are taken into account. Upon deployment, the unit is coordinated through a representative of the U.S. Armed Forces, the U.S. Ambassador in said nation, a representative of the nation itself, and any other agencies that are a part of the local program. This is to assure that the National Guard's support is tailored to meet both the U.S., especially their ambassadors, and the host country's objectives. They state that the unique civil-military nature of the U.S. National Guard allows for its participation in a wide range of activities, such as emergency management and disaster response, border and port security, medical capacities, economic security, natural resource protection, peacekeeping operations, counter-trafficking, counter-terrorism, among many others. In these pictures we can see some examples of the activities, from a Thai firefighter training with the Washington Guards, to North Dakota Guardsmen training soldiers from Ghana on flood protection, a Mongolian general observing guardsmen from Alaska perform veterinary services, or a soldier from Kansas and Armenia training together on de-mining operations. The SPP has, according to itself, a number of benefits, both for the American states as the four nations. In a report submitted to the US Congress in 2012, they name a few of them, like providing experience and training for the guardsmen, developing relationships with the host countries, information sharing between nations, among others. So now that we figured out how the partnerships effectively work and what they can involve, let's learn about the current existing partnerships throughout the world. There are 87 with 95 countries. They're all individual one-on-one partnerships except one of them which involves 7 Caribbean island nations. Although in some partnerships, more than one unit of the partner state national guard is deployed. The partnerships are organized into 6 regions of the world. US AFRICOM for Africa with 16 partnerships. I'm not going to read all of them. There's no point in just saying a list out loud. They're going to be on screen so you can pause to go through them if you'd like. These include partnerships such as Morocco with Utah, South Africa with New York, Nigeria with California, and Burkina Faso with Washington DC. US CENTCOM for the Middle East and Central Asia having nine partnerships such as Egypt with Texas or Tajikistan with Virginia. US-EU-COM for Europe, one of the largest partnership regions, which makes sense since the original program from which the SPP was created was meant to aid post-Soviet nations. Here there are 24 partnerships, they're clearly divided into two time periods, the one right after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s and then more modern times. Czechia is I believe the only country to have two states as their partner, both Nebraska and Texas. Romania has Alabama, Ukraine California, Georgia Georgia, Serbia Ohio, Kosovo and Iowa among many others you can see. US Indo-Pacom for the Indo-Pacific including South East Asia which has 13 such as the Philippines with Hawaii, Mongolia with Alaska or Vietnam with Oregon. US Northcom for North America only has one partner, the Bahamas with Rhode Island. And finally, US Southcom for Central and South America, which matches Europe having 24 partnerships. Honduras and Puerto Rico, showing us the partners of four nations also include territories, and not just states. Venezuela with Florida, Uruguay with Connecticut, Chile with Texas. Perhaps the criteria here was the similar flag, as well as Haiti with Louisiana, where there is a large Haitian community. It's really unclear what the criteria for the state partner selection is. Sometimes it seems random. other times there seems to be some reason for it. This map provides us with a good view of where the partnerships are. South America is basically all a part of the program save Argentina and Brazil in this map but the map is outdated from 2013. Both Argentina and Brazil have joined with Georgia and New York in 2016 and 2018 respectively. Let's go through each region of this map and update it to show new member states allowing us to see which the newest nations to have joined are. Africa is very sparsely filled with members, there's no fixed regions that take part in it as we see in other continents, but many have joined since this map was made. Benin, Togo, both with North Dakota, showing us how sometimes the same US state has more than one partner nation. Djibouti, Kenya, Niger, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, and Cabo Verde have all recently joined as recently as 2022. In Europe, here in green, the three Caucasus nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia are key members of the partnership, showing how the initial program was meant for border regions with the Soviet Union. It's also very satisfying that Georgia's partner state is Georgia. Austria and Cyprus have joined since the map was made as well. In the Middle East and Central Asia, more have joined too since 2013. Qatar, Egypt, Oman, and Turkmenistan, which makes it so all the Central Asia Istans are a part of this program. again showing the dedicated influence in post-Soviet areas. And finally, in Southeast Asia, the Indo-Pacific region, we can see how this whole area is also a part of the Partnership Program. Since 2013, more have joined too, Tonga and Fiji, Malaysia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, as well as Sri Lanka and the Maldives. So, that is the mostly unknown Partnership Program between states of the US and sovereign countries across the world, the State Partnership Program, how it was created in the following years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Pact of Warsaw, with its initial objective being to provide these nations with support in regaining their independence. Having proven itself successful in both aiding the nations, but also expanding US influence and establishing good relations with the host nations, the program was expanded into various regions across the world, continuing and even growing up to today. Did you know this existed and do you have any corrections or additional information about it? Let me know in the comments along with your opinions and thoughts about it. Thanks so much for watching this video. Subscribe if you want and I will see you next time for more general knowledge.