The State Department, Agency for International Development, CIA, Agriculture Department, Peace Corps and other components of the federal government that might have a role to play in a nation-building operation have made few preparations to do so
A victory requires army of builders
Priority: Without properly trained and coordinated military and civilian nation-building agencies, the United States cannot win the war on terror.
By Larry Goodson
Special To The Sun
Originally published June 6, 2004
Here's some good news: In Afghanistan, after two years of inadequate funding for reconstruction and a short-sighted military plan, there's finally a good plan and money for it.
The plan involves putting more than a dozen small provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) - about 80 soldiers and civilian administrators - into the countryside, supporting them with a larger force if necessary, and bringing enough security that reconstruction money can flow in, elections can go forward, and Afghanistan can get back on its feet. To ensure that this plan is coordinated correctly, America's top general in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, engages in unusually close cooperation with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.
But here's the catch: For two years Afghanistan struggled to make progress, and even now it is at risk of failure, not because of threats in Kabul, but because of problems in Washington.
America is not serious about nation-building, but it needs to get serious, because only nation-building can address the causes of state failure that threaten national security and international peace. Nation-building involves numerous activities that are not properly found anywhere in the U.S. government. Some nation-building jobs include infrastructure building and rebuilding, provision of security, development of governance institutions, and provision of basic services and welfare functions until permanent governments can be developed to take on those tasks.
In part because of its historical experience with nation-building, the U.S. Army has developed some of the components necessary to perform these tasks, at least in a rudimentary fashion. No other branch of the armed services, or civilian component of the federal government, has done that much. And the Army has never been excited about nation-building operations and has never made developing an appropriate force structure, doctrine or training in such operations a priority.
For example, nearly all civil affairs Army units are found in the reserves and National Guard, as are some 60 percent of the military police and engineers. That means deploying those units disrupts local communities and families, and it means less training for the kinds of activities that are needed in post-conflict situations.
Military training typically occurs at the unit level and is aimed at performing unit tasks. Regular Army battalions might train to destroy or capture enemy positions, but there is little coordinated training between them and the primarily Reserve components that might follow them into a town to establish an occupation government, rebuild its infrastructure and establish basic security.
PDD 56
The non-Army parts of nation-building are even less developed.
In 1997, President Bill Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 56, which was supposed to establish an interagency planning and training process for handling "complex contingency operations" (i.e. nation-building situations).
But little was done to implement PDD 56, and the State Department, Agency for International Development, CIA, Agriculture Department, Peace Corps and other components of the federal government that might have a role to play in a nation-building operation have made few preparations to do so. Certainly, they have no integrated components ready to interact with the Army.
In addition, important nation-building activities are found in nongovernmental organizations such as the International Red Cross, Save the Children, CARE and many others, and among consulting groups and contractors such as Halliburton, Bechtel and Louis Berger.
All of these organizations, as well as various multilateral institutions such as U.N. agencies and the World Bank, end up playing critical roles in nation-building operations. But they almost never are brought in to the planning process in a systematic way.
Structure overhaul
Many reforms have been proposed to address our nation-building inadequacies, but only a massive overhaul of our Cold War-era national security structure can provide the integrated and synergistic organization needed to do the job properly.
We have done this before. After World War II, the National Security Act of 1947 created the National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense (out of the preexisting War and Navy Departments).
More recently, the events of 9/11 caused us to create the Department of Homeland Security, bringing together numerous agencies under one bureaucratic roof.
Shouldn't the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq cause us to rethink how we're set up to safeguard or restore the security of other "homelands" whose stability is of vital interest to us, lest they become nests and avenues for terrorists who want to launch catastrophic attacks on our homeland?
Joint agency
To face the challenges of the post-9/11 world, the United States needs a joint military-civilian Office of Nation-Building that includes security forces, civil affairs teams, medical personnel, engineers and builders, regional specialists and linguists, agronomists and relief specialists, urban planners and educators, and concomitant support personnel.
This organization needs the guidance of new nation-building doctrine that specifies its chain of command and provides guidance on questions of unilateralism vs. multilateralism, capacity building vs. sovereignty, and coordination with other government agencies.
A nation-building training center should be created to provide a place for research and joint training of dedicated forces and personnel drawn from supporting government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and contractors.
To establish, fund, equip, train and deploy such an organization should be a crash priority for the United States. Clearly such a force is needed right now in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Moreover, such a capability could be used in nonconflict situations, such as states on the verge of failure that require stabilization, infrastructure improvement and governance assistance.
Strategic victory
Without the capability to carry out such missions, the United States cannot achieve strategic victory in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan and cannot win the war on terrorism.
Strategic victory is attained not only through defense of the homeland or offense against terrorists, but by helping other nations to create accountable governments and economies. That eliminates the conditions that foster discontent and anti-American terror.
America needs not only an army of warriors, but an army of builders.
Larry P. Goodson is author of "Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban" and the forthcoming "The Talibanization of Pakistan."
Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun
