For the past 30 years, the State Partnership Program has been actively working to create relations successfully, and it has expanded to include 88 relationships with 100 countries worldwide.
The U.S. European Command decided in 1991 to establish the Joint Contact Team Program in the Baltic Region with the participation of Reserve component soldiers and airmen. This decision was the genesis of the SPP. A subsequent proposal from the National Guard Bureau paired states in the United States with three nations emerging from the former Soviet Bloc. This led to the State Partnership Program (SPP), which has since become an essential tool for U.S. security cooperation. It facilitates collaboration across all aspects of international civil-military affairs and encourages people-to-people ties at the state level.
This efficient program is carried out by state adjutants general in support of combatant commander and U.S. Chief of Mission security cooperation objectives and Department of Defense policy goals. It is being managed by National Guard Bureau, which takes its cues for the program’s direction from the State Department’s aims for its foreign policy.
Through the SPP, the National Guard leverages whole-of-society relationships and capabilities to promote broader interagency and corollary engagements across military, government, economic, and social sectors and conducts military-to-military meetings in support of defence security goals. These engagements help to achieve defence security goals.
