Max Boot: We should pay to plan for nation building
AMERICA REMAINS an empire in denial.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been engaged nonstop in trying to rebuild war-ravaged lands. U.S. troops have taken the lead in Panama, Somalia, Haiti (twice), Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. has also offered considerable support to international efforts in East Timor, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan and other places.
A hundred years ago, this type of involvement in other countries' internal affairs would have been called, frankly, liberal imperialism. Today, we prefer euphemisms such as nation building, peacekeeping and stabilization. But whatever you call such operations, they are essential to stop the spread of problems such as infectious diseases, terrorism, genocide, narco-trafficking and refugee flows. The 9/11 attacks offered a nightmare scenario of what can happen if the U.S. ignores even a place as small and remote as Afghanistan.
The issue is no longer whether we will do nation building but how well will we do it? So far, we haven't done a great job, in part because it is a notoriously difficult task, but also because we have not put the same kind of effort into postwar work that we have devoted to winning military campaigns. The costs of this neglect are all too apparent in Iraq, where the U.S. was grossly unprepared for the challenges we have faced since the fall of Baghdad in May 2003.
The task of running a country of 25 million people was turned over initially to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which had been created just two months before the invasion. Then came the equally slapdash Coalition Provisional Authority, which was so short of resources that soldiers joked that its initials stood for Can't Provide Anything.
To some extent, the problems in Iraq were a consequence of George W. Bush's oft-expressed disdain for nation building — an attitude we can be thankful he has rethought. In August 2004, the administration took an important step forward by creating a new organization within the State Department — the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization — responsible for preparing for future nation-building assignments.
Led by an energetic veteran ambassador named Carlos Pascual (who is quitting at year's end), this office has gotten off to a good start. It has been working on a process that would bring civilian agencies and nongovernmental groups together with the Department of Defense to plan for future contingencies. It has posted on its website a matrix of essential post-conflict tasks — a "how-to" list that U.S. officials in Iraq desperately needed but didn't have in 2003. It has also made plans to mobilize SWAT teams of diplomats and other civilians to work alongside soldiers.
But all this good work has been placed in jeopardy by congressional shortsightedness. The administration asked for $100 million to fund the reconstruction office's centerpiece initiative, the Conflict Response Fund, which is designed to prepare programs and personnel — including a reserve corps of civilian reconstruction experts — who would be ready to go as soon as a conflict ends. This kind of timely response might have averted the looting and lawlessness that allowed the situation in Iraq to spin out of control in the spring of 2003.
But congressional appropriators recently "zeroed out" the administration's budget request. Citizens Against Government Waste reports that this year, appropriators spent $27.3 billion on a record 13,997 pork-barrel projects. Although lawmakers could find money for the Paper Industry Hall of Fame, the National Wild Turkey Federation and the Aleut Marine Mammal Commission, they couldn't find a dime to avert future nation-building catastrophes.
The reconstruction office will still receive about $24 million from the overall State Department budget. And the Pentagon, which keenly felt the lack of civilian assistance in Iraq, is eager to provide $200 million in goods and services from its own budget for the State Department to use in future emergencies. But this will hardly fill the gaping hole left in postwar planning by penny-wise, pound-foolish legislators.
Pascual pointed out in a speech last month that if a little more upfront capacity had allowed the U.S. to withdraw just one division from Iraq one month early, "we would save $1.2 billion, which is about 10 times the amount that we are requesting from the U.S. Congress for one fiscal year." But apparently Congress prefers to clean up messes rather than to avert them.
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Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been engaged nonstop in trying to rebuild war-ravaged lands. U.S. troops have taken the lead in Panama, Somalia, Haiti (twice), Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. has also offered considerable support to international efforts in East Timor, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan and other places.
A hundred years ago, this type of involvement in other countries' internal affairs would have been called, frankly, liberal imperialism. Today, we prefer euphemisms such as nation building, peacekeeping and stabilization. But whatever you call such operations, they are essential to stop the spread of problems such as infectious diseases, terrorism, genocide, narco-trafficking and refugee flows. The 9/11 attacks offered a nightmare scenario of what can happen if the U.S. ignores even a place as small and remote as Afghanistan.
The issue is no longer whether we will do nation building but how well will we do it? So far, we haven't done a great job, in part because it is a notoriously difficult task, but also because we have not put the same kind of effort into postwar work that we have devoted to winning military campaigns. The costs of this neglect are all too apparent in Iraq, where the U.S. was grossly unprepared for the challenges we have faced since the fall of Baghdad in May 2003.
The task of running a country of 25 million people was turned over initially to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which had been created just two months before the invasion. Then came the equally slapdash Coalition Provisional Authority, which was so short of resources that soldiers joked that its initials stood for Can't Provide Anything.
To some extent, the problems in Iraq were a consequence of George W. Bush's oft-expressed disdain for nation building — an attitude we can be thankful he has rethought. In August 2004, the administration took an important step forward by creating a new organization within the State Department — the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization — responsible for preparing for future nation-building assignments.
Led by an energetic veteran ambassador named Carlos Pascual (who is quitting at year's end), this office has gotten off to a good start. It has been working on a process that would bring civilian agencies and nongovernmental groups together with the Department of Defense to plan for future contingencies. It has posted on its website a matrix of essential post-conflict tasks — a "how-to" list that U.S. officials in Iraq desperately needed but didn't have in 2003. It has also made plans to mobilize SWAT teams of diplomats and other civilians to work alongside soldiers.
But all this good work has been placed in jeopardy by congressional shortsightedness. The administration asked for $100 million to fund the reconstruction office's centerpiece initiative, the Conflict Response Fund, which is designed to prepare programs and personnel — including a reserve corps of civilian reconstruction experts — who would be ready to go as soon as a conflict ends. This kind of timely response might have averted the looting and lawlessness that allowed the situation in Iraq to spin out of control in the spring of 2003.
But congressional appropriators recently "zeroed out" the administration's budget request. Citizens Against Government Waste reports that this year, appropriators spent $27.3 billion on a record 13,997 pork-barrel projects. Although lawmakers could find money for the Paper Industry Hall of Fame, the National Wild Turkey Federation and the Aleut Marine Mammal Commission, they couldn't find a dime to avert future nation-building catastrophes.
The reconstruction office will still receive about $24 million from the overall State Department budget. And the Pentagon, which keenly felt the lack of civilian assistance in Iraq, is eager to provide $200 million in goods and services from its own budget for the State Department to use in future emergencies. But this will hardly fill the gaping hole left in postwar planning by penny-wise, pound-foolish legislators.
Pascual pointed out in a speech last month that if a little more upfront capacity had allowed the U.S. to withdraw just one division from Iraq one month early, "we would save $1.2 billion, which is about 10 times the amount that we are requesting from the U.S. Congress for one fiscal year." But apparently Congress prefers to clean up messes rather than to avert them.