re: "Taking Exception: Nation-Building Office Is No Solution"
Justin Logan and Christopher Preble at Small Wars Journal have written an article disagreeing with the premises behind Sec. Rice and Sen. Lugar's recent proposals regarding nation-building.
Money quote(s):
"(T)hey argue, the creation of a nation-building office within the State Department is “essential for our national security.” This proposal is based on a fundamental misreading of the predicament we face today, and threatens to compound our recent strategic errors."
"Rice and Lugar propose populating the nation-building office with 250 full-time staffers, who would then draw on a reserve corps of perhaps some 2,000 federal employees, plus another 500-person cadre of think-tankers and civilians."
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"(T)he authors’ (Sec. Rice and Sen. Lugar) assertion that some of the greatest threats to our national security emerge from failed states is indeed an article of faith in the foreign policy community. It’s also wrong. Afghanistan in the late 1990s was both a failed state and a threat, but most failed states are not threats. Beyond the Afghanistan example, the advocates for focusing on failed states are hard-pressed to point to any additional cases in which failed states have actually posed threats to America. “Failedness” is a poor measure of threat.
To the extent that a failed state is threatening, addressing the “failure” does little to attack the danger. To have attacked the threat that resided in Afghanistan would have had basically no effect on the health of the Afghan state. Killing Osama bin Laden and his comrades in 1999 or 2000 would have substantially reduced the threat of an attack on the scale of 9/11; sending in American or international development people would have done nothing. Attacking a threat rarely involves paving roads or establishing new judicial standards.
It is strategic overreach, not the lack of a nation-building office, that has sapped our diplomatic corps and military. But if Secretary Rice and Senator Lugar are unwilling to reconsider American interventionism, the office they propose is ill-suited to the task they set out for it. The gulf between the office’s proposed resources and its mission is enormous. Their proposal is akin to taping a band-aid across a severed limb.
If we really were serious about fixing failed states, we would need to massively expand not just the foreign service, but also U.S. ground forces, because, while most nation-building missions fail, the few successes have required massive numbers of troops willing to stay in country for years."
Go read the whole thing.
Money quote(s):
"(T)hey argue, the creation of a nation-building office within the State Department is “essential for our national security.” This proposal is based on a fundamental misreading of the predicament we face today, and threatens to compound our recent strategic errors."
"Rice and Lugar propose populating the nation-building office with 250 full-time staffers, who would then draw on a reserve corps of perhaps some 2,000 federal employees, plus another 500-person cadre of think-tankers and civilians."
&
"(T)he authors’ (Sec. Rice and Sen. Lugar) assertion that some of the greatest threats to our national security emerge from failed states is indeed an article of faith in the foreign policy community. It’s also wrong. Afghanistan in the late 1990s was both a failed state and a threat, but most failed states are not threats. Beyond the Afghanistan example, the advocates for focusing on failed states are hard-pressed to point to any additional cases in which failed states have actually posed threats to America. “Failedness” is a poor measure of threat.
To the extent that a failed state is threatening, addressing the “failure” does little to attack the danger. To have attacked the threat that resided in Afghanistan would have had basically no effect on the health of the Afghan state. Killing Osama bin Laden and his comrades in 1999 or 2000 would have substantially reduced the threat of an attack on the scale of 9/11; sending in American or international development people would have done nothing. Attacking a threat rarely involves paving roads or establishing new judicial standards.
It is strategic overreach, not the lack of a nation-building office, that has sapped our diplomatic corps and military. But if Secretary Rice and Senator Lugar are unwilling to reconsider American interventionism, the office they propose is ill-suited to the task they set out for it. The gulf between the office’s proposed resources and its mission is enormous. Their proposal is akin to taping a band-aid across a severed limb.
If we really were serious about fixing failed states, we would need to massively expand not just the foreign service, but also U.S. ground forces, because, while most nation-building missions fail, the few successes have required massive numbers of troops willing to stay in country for years."
Go read the whole thing.
posted by Consul-At-Arms at 6:48 AM
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