NATION-BUILDING OR NOT
COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 6 Dec 2009
"This is not the prior days when people would come on your show and talk about how we were going to help the Afghans build a modern democracy and build a more functioning state and do all these wonderful things," she asserted. "Our primary focus is on the security of the United States of America" and "how we protect and defend against future attacks."
–Secretary of State Clinton to ABC News, reported 17 November 2009
Just what are the U.S. and its coalition allies doing not only in Pakistan but also in Afghanistan and Iraq? Is it state-building or nation-building? Is it development or reconstruction? Or, is it a little of this and little of that? To further complicate the lexicon, one often reads about “nation-building Lite.” With thousands of lives and countless resources at stake, policy should not be reduced to a phrase reminiscent of a weak and cheap can of beer.
The academic community, the media, as well as the public/government sector uses the terms nation-building and state-building almost interchangeably but they reflect vastly different approaches, disciplines, tactics, goals, personalities, and strategies.
The four operations: state-building, nation-building, development, and reconstruction are not only operational and tactical code words but also battles over bureaucratic turf. Turf is connected to budget and budget to time frame and all this points to confusion not only to the means but also to the ends of policy. Moreover, who actually carries out these myriad tasks and who benefits, both directly and indirectly, needs to explained and sharpened.
When we get to the term “reconstruction” the terminology becomes more opaque. The World Bank defines reconstruction as institution building. But what are you actually reconstructing? The answer to some is obvious: the physical structure destroyed by war. At the institutional level, and this is where the Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama, the main architects of U.S. Foreign policy, have to get their terminology correct before they can convince and explain.
Returning to the basic dilemma of state building, nation-building, development, and reconstruction, when did these terms become part of our lexicon?
Germany and Japan are usually the starting point for any discussion over nation-building. This is absolutely the wrong place to begin as both were: 1) totally defeated with all their war-making capacity ended, 2) totally occupied, 3) were advanced industrialized economies, 4) were never colonized, 5) had ethics of both individual and group achievement and high literacy rates and lastly, had prewar experience in democratic governance, a complex media, and competing political parties. By using these as the starting point on nation-building, American policy-makers condone and encourage the exercise of war ad occupation.
Germany was a divided occupation. Japan was run almost totally by the Americans. In Japan, the bureaucracy was purged but functioned during the Occupation and the Emperor remained on the throne as a symbol of national unity and also actively working with the overall goals of the Americans. In Germany, the Nazi bureaucracy was totally eliminated. These distinctions are important and the comparisons of the two occupations deserve multi-volume comparisons but what is critical here is that before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and Secretary of State Powell as well as others boldly stated that the occupation of Iraq would be modeled after Germany and Japan.
If a pretext for invasion and war was nation-building built on Japan and Germany then the naïveté becomes even more inexcusable. If we eliminate Germany and Japan as successful case studies of nation-building then where does Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan and all of post-colonial Africa fit it? If nation-building refers to regime change, invasion, occupation and then a formula of quickly held elections and the “shock therapy” of market liberalization then many of the results of nation-building would be illiberal democracies with high degrees of corruption and dysfunctional institutions.
If NATO, Australia, the U.S. and Canada, not to mention a recent pledge by Japan for 5 billion U.S. dollars in aide in Afghanistan, actually think they are engaging in nation-building then they are they unwittingly committed to building a failed state that they themselves helped to create and nurture. But there may be there may be other reasons to play the nation-building card. If one result of nation-building is the placing of the nascent state within the orbit of the most powerful western economies and polities then the exercise will be carried out despite the human and economic costs? If this is nation-building then it is no more than neo-colonialism and imperialism wrapped in the jargon of democratization and development.
If we eliminate Germany and Japan from the context of nation-building the scorecard seems bleak. Yet if one looks at South America today one can see the recent rise of democratic governments that took place despite the interference of outside states in their nation building. During the Cold War what America wanted in South America were anti-communist regimes not democracies. What does America and its coalition partners want today? Is it anti-Taliban regimes or democracies? Can they have both, that is an anti-Taliban regime that is also democratic? If the goal were an anti-Taliban regime then democratization and equitable and sustainable development would be given a lower priority than the empowerment of the military and security sectors.
In the post-Cold War period, the failure of outside actors to be successful in nation-building has been generally placed on divided ethnicities and tribalism. These are convenient rationalizations for failures. The failures however have deeper causes. Ethnic divisions and tribal loyalties can be fanned by a number of sources both indigenous but most importantly exogenous. If we go return Japan and Germany we must note:
“U.S. aid allocations (all grant assistance ) for Iraq appropriated from 2003 to 2006 total $28.9 billion. About $17.6 billion (62%) went for economic and political reconstruction assistance. The remaining $10.9 billion (38%) was targeted at bolstering Iraqi security. A higher proportion of Iraqi aid has been provided foreconomic reconstruction of critical infrastructure than was the case for Germany andJapan.
Total U.S. assistance to Iraq thus far is roughly equivalent to total assistance(adjusted for inflation) provided to Germany — and almost double that provided toJapan — from 1946-1952. For Germany, in constant 2005 dollars the United States provided a total of $29.3 billion in assistance from 1946-1952 with 60% in economic grants and nearly 30% in economic loans, and the remainder in military aid. Beginning in 1949, the Marshall Plan provided $1.4 billion with the specific objective of promoting economic recovery….Adjusting for inflation, the constant 2005 dollar total for Marshall Plan aid was $9.3 billion, of which 84% billion was grants and 16% was loans. (West Germany eventually repaid one-third of total U.S. assistance it received.)
Source: Congressional Research Service, Report to Congress, 23 March 2006 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33331.pdf
During the period of the German and Japan occupations, the U.S. accounted for half of the world’s gross domestic product. Today the number hovers around 22%. This stark fact makes the exercise of nation-building automatically more multilateral. This also means that wider participation is needed. With wider participation how does one also achieve unity of purpose? This is especially true in a divided U.N. Security Council. In postwar Japan this was never an issue. The U.S. was able to do more with less.
That Occupation lasted a mere six years, But if one looks at the escalating costs of nation-building in the post Cold war period, the obvious question to ask: Who benefits? Or, to out it another way – where did all the money go? The failure is not on so-called tribalism and ethnic divisions but on the complicit corruption of installed governments and contractors. International organizations as well as some international NGO’s also benefit from poor governance and worst practices. Calling it tribalism misses the point but this is the intention.
It is reassuring to see that there is an active debate among donor rich countries. Anyone in the field knows that despite the new models coming from the British and the OECD there is still no consensus on how to proceed. Catchword phrases like “disarm, demobilize and reintegrate armies” are meaningless if the policies cannot be put in practice or if the conflict is still raging. Everyone understands the values of human security but how does one provide employment in a ravaged economy? Everyone realizes that donors and international aide do not go the areas and groups most in need? How does one redirect coordinate and refocus aide?
Building government capacity (state-building) especially in post-conflict states will require years if not decades of assistance and financing. How can multi-lateral development assistance be coordinated, financed and maintained? Policy makers must also develop a more nuanced approach that guarantees that all stakeholders, and not just the elites, have sufficient space, voice, and respect in the setting and implementation of agendas.
President Obama, a former community organizer, must know that solutions and agendas cannot be imposed. Nation-building begs the fundamental questions of: who does it and how is it done? Any increase in outside military operations will result in a predictable Newtonian response. If nation-building, at the positive level, means ensuring, protecting, sustaining and nurturing communities of memory, values, and experience then it is obvious that a commitment must be made towards reconciliation. Once communities are safe then they will form a composite of nations in which the state can respect as well as empower.
Everyone knows that “words are deeds.” Just what are the U.S. and its coalition allies doing not only in Pakistan but also in Afghanistan and Iraq? Is it state-building or nation-building? Is it development or reconstruction? Most importantly, just what do the peoples of Pakistan and Afghanistan think the U.S. and its coalition allies are doing? One hundred years ago, one may have asked similar questions of the British Raj.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 6 Dec 2009.
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