Routing

In July 2004 the State Department openedthe Office of the Coordinator for Reconstructionand Stabilization (S/CRS). Its official mandate isto “help stabilize and reconstruct societies intransition from conflict or civil strife, so they canreach a sustainable path toward peace, democra-cy and a market economy.” The idea of a stand-ing nation-building office has strong support inthe Bush administration, among academics andforeign policy analysts, and from key players inCongress.

The arguments in favor of creating such anoffice are rooted in the belief that failed states arethreats to U.S. national security. S/CRS’s earlyprojects included postconflict planning forSudan, Haiti, and Cuba, all countries largelyunrelated to U.S. national security concerns.Although failed states can present threats, it is a

mistake to argue that they frequently do. The fewattempts that have been made to quantify what“state failure” means demonstrate that it is notinherently threatening.

Moreover, attempting to remedy state failurewould pose serious problems for U.S. foreign pol-icy. U.S. nation-building projects in the past had ahighly dubious track record, and there is no indi-cation that future projects would fare any better.

A standing office devoted to nation building isa cure worse than the disease. Sober assessment ofthe U.S. national interest and a more judiciousapproach to intervention abroad would be betterguiding principles than assuming that all failed orfailing states pose a threat. When interventionsare absolutely necessary, existing institutionalcapacity is sufficient to carry out stabilization andreconstruction missions.

Failed States and Flawed LogicThe Case against a Standing Nation-Building Office

by Justin Logan and Christopher Preble

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Justin Logan is a foreign policy analyst and Christopher Preble is director of foreign policy studies at the CatoInstitute.

Executive Summary

No. 560 January 11, 2006

Introduction

In July 2004 the State Department openedthe Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruc-tion and Stabilization (S/CRS), borrowingfunds and personnel from elsewhere in thedepartment. The creation of the office wasinspired by a sense of Congress resolutionspearheaded by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) inthe Senate Foreign Relations Committee andcosponsored by Sens. Joseph Biden (D-DE)and Chuck Hagel (R-NE).1 The resolutionsought to “provide for the development, as acore mission of the Department of State andthe United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment, of an effective expert civilianresponse capability to carry out stabilizationand reconstruction activities in a country orregion that is in, or is in transition from, con-flict or strife.”2

The Senate bill proposed the creation of astanding Response Readiness Corps of 250people drawn from the State Department,the Department of Defense, and other execu-tive agencies to conduct nation-buildingactivities. The bill also recommended the for-mation of a Response Readiness Reserve witha staff of more than 500 that could be calledup “as needed to carry out the purpose of theCorps.” Under the Senate bill, S/CRS wouldreceive initial funding of $100 million; eachyear thereafter S/CRS would receive “suchsums as may be necessary to replenish” theinitial funds.3

The reasoning behind the creation of suchan office was clear. Lugar, explaining the bill ata March 2004 hearing, argued, “Internationalcrises are inevitable, and in most cases, U.S.security interests will be threatened by sus-tained instability.”4 A few weeks later, duringan interview on National Public Radio, Lugarsaid, “The sea change, really, in our foreignpolicy is that now it is acceptable and, in fact,desirable for Americans to talk about success-ful nation building.”5

Carlos Pascual, the first coordinator forreconstruction and stabilization, and StevenD. Krasner, director of the State Department’spolicy planning staff, argue that “weak and

failed states pose an acute risk to U.S. andglobal security.”6 Behind those sentimentslooms the volatile and unraveling security sit-uation in Iraq. According to the CongressionalResearch Service,

For many analysts and policymakers,the ongoing Iraq operation illustrates aU.S. government need for new planningand coordination arrangements thatwould provide a leadership role for civil-ians in post-conflict phases of militaryoperations and new civilian capabilitiesto augment and relieve the military assoon as possible, and greater interna-tional coordination.7

The legislative process eventually producedPublic Law 108-447, a version of the Senate billthat only establishes the office and lays out itsmandate. In addition to “monitoring politicaland economic instability worldwide to antici-pate the need for mobilizing United States andinternational assistance for countries or regions[in, or in transition from, conflict or civil strife],”the office is tasked with “determining the appro-priate non-military [responses of the] UnitedStates, including but not limited to demobiliza-tion, policing, human rights monitoring, andpublic information efforts.”8 That law did notprovide for any of the funding or staffing pro-posals contained within the original bill.

Although the law created a legal basis forS/CRS, Congress starved S/CRS of funding inthe 2006 foreign operations bill. Congress didallocate $24.1 million to staff S/CRS, but itzeroed out the $100 million request for a “con-flict response fund,” which would have creat-ed a standing corps of nation builders. Duringthe conference on the bill, Congress requestedthat, before the State Department resubmits afunding request for the conflict response fundin 2007, it provide Congress with a “compre-hensive, disciplined and coherent strategydetailing how [S/CRS] will coordinate” theU.S. approach to postconflict operations.9

When the State Department resubmits therequest for funding, members of Congressshould consider that the arguments in favor of

2

When the StateDepartment

resubmits therequest for

S/CRS funding, members of

Congress shouldconsider that the

arguments infavor of the officeare deeply flawed.

the office—namely, that instability in itselfrepresents a threat to America and that nationbuilding must be the cure—are deeply flawed.

Most nation-building missions are farremoved from U.S. national security interests.Such operations threaten to embroil Americansin an array of conflicts abroad for indefiniteperiods of time, with vague or ambiguous pub-lic mandates, and with little likelihood of suc-cess. In short, this entire approach to securitypolicy is a recipe for squandering Americanpower, American money, and potentiallyAmerican lives.

This paper will challenge the claim thatstate failure necessarily poses a security threatto the United States, using data on failed andfailing states from several scholarly and non-governmental sources. We then explore thefaulty reasoning behind the scholarly workthat lends support to the idea of a nation-building office. Next, we examine the failed,costly legacy of U.S. nation-building projects inthe past and argue that the creation of a stand-ing office, contrary to the arguments of itsadvocates, offers little hope of improving onthat track record. The paper also addresses theparticular concerns arising from the Iraq war,and we respond to claims that S/CRS couldhave made the Iraq project more successful.Finally, we argue that insofar as the expansionof political and economic liberalism abroad isan important goal of U.S. foreign policy, thepursuit of that goal does not require an insti-tutional nation-building capacity.

Here a Threat, There a Threat . . .

The notion that state failure constitutes adirect threat to the United States is alarming-ly widespread and has been in circulation forsome time. In 1992 then–UN secretary gener-al Boutros Boutros-Ghali laid the founda-tions for that principle in a treatise to theSecurity Council titled “An Agenda for Peace,Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, andPeace-Keeping.” In that document, Boutros-Ghali explained:

The time of absolute and exclusive sov-ereignty . . . has passed; its theory wasnever matched by its reality. It is the taskof leaders of States today to understandthis and to find a balance between theneeds of good internal governance andthe requirements of an ever more inter-dependent world.10

Although Boutros-Ghali was speakingabout the United Nations, he prescribed acourse of nation building as the cure for theworld’s ills and as the way to foster peace andsecurity. Where there was conflict, Boutros-Ghali argued, the United Nations should seeka dizzying array of goals, including “disarmingthe previously warring parties and the restora-tion of order, [pursuing] custody and possibledestruction of weapons, repatriating refugees,advisory and training support for security per-sonnel, monitoring elections, advancingefforts to protect human rights, [and] reform-ing or strengthening governmental institu-tions and promoting formal and informalprocesses of political participation.”11

The Clinton administration wholeheart-edly embraced nation building as an impor-tant part of U.S. national security policy. Inan address at the Johns Hopkins UniversitySchool of Advanced International Studies inSeptember 1993, National Security AdviserAnthony Lake enunciated the Clinton doc-trine of “enlargement”:

[T]o the extent democracy and marketeconomics hold sway in other nations,our own nation will be more secure,prosperous and influential, while thebroader world will be more humaneand peaceful. . . . The successor to adoctrine of containment must be astrategy of enlargement—enlargementof the world’s free community of mar-ket democracies.12

“Enlargement,” as it turned out, was rathermessy in practice and lacked broad domesticsupport within the United States. PresidentClinton’s first major foreign policy action

3

Most nation-building missions are farremoved fromU.S. nationalsecurity interests.

turned into a tactical and strategic catastrophein Somalia, when his administration attempt-ed nation-building measures in that country,resulting in the deaths of 22 American servicepersonnel. The Somalia operation led to ahasty retreat and a suspicion around the worldthat the United States was a paper tiger, acountry that would run home with its tailtucked between its legs at the first sign of casu-alties.13 More accurately, the Somalia experi-ence showed that few Americans are willing torisk American lives when vital national inter-ests are not at stake.

Nonetheless, the Clinton administrationthought it could recover from the Somaliadebacle. It tinkered with the formula for inter-vention and tried out its new theories in placesas diverse (and far removed from U.S. interests)as Haiti and Kosovo. Those interventions costbillions of dollars14 and resulted in neither thespread of liberal democracy nor the enhance-ment of U.S. national security. At the time ofthis writing, Haiti remains a failed state, andthe crisis in Kosovo is only forestalled by thepresence of international peacekeepers. Itspolitical status is entirely unresolved.15

Even amid the disaster that was the Clintonforeign policy, nation-building theorists wereundeterred. In a widely read and influentialarticle in 1994, the Atlantic Monthly’s RobertKaplan warned about what he saw as “the com-ing anarchy.” In Kaplan’s view, Western strate-gists needed to start concerning themselveswith “what is occurring . . . throughout WestAfrica and much of the underdeveloped world:the withering away of central governments, therise of tribal and regional domains, theunchecked spread of disease, and the growingpervasiveness of war.”16 Kaplan went on towarn, “The coming upheaval, in which foreignembassies are shut down, states collapse, andcontact with the outside world takes placethrough dangerous, disease-ridden coastaltrading posts, will loom large in the century weare entering.”17 Kaplan based his case heavilyon Malthusian economics and the notion that“the environment . . . is the national-securityissue of the early twenty-first century,” becausecompetition for scarce resources and collective

action problems of environmental degrada-tion would precipitate conflicts.18

Notwithstanding the fact that many ofKaplan’s suppositions were rhetorically over-heated, his and others’ contributions to thenational debate over foreign policy after theCold War pointed in an inevitable direction:toward the idea that insecurity and instabili-ty in far-flung corners of the globe should beplaced at the top of the list of U.S. foreignpolicy concerns.

The 2000 presidential election took place inthe shadow of the nation-building adventuresof the 1990s. Candidate George W. Bushseemed skeptical about the utility and necessityof nation building. Bush argued that the role ofU.S. foreign policy should be to protect the vitalinterests of the United States. During the sec-ond presidential debate, candidate Bush took ashot at the interventionism of the 1990s, stat-ing, “I’m not so sure the role of the UnitedStates is to go around the world and say, ‘This isthe way it’s got to be.’”19 Bush pointed to thehigh costs and dubious outcomes of nationbuilding, stating, “I don’t think our troopsought to be used for what’s called nation build-ing. . . . I mean, we’re going to have some kind ofnation-building corps from America? Absolute-ly not.”20 Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s nationalsecurity adviser during the campaign, famouslydescribed the Bush view thus: “Carrying outcivil administration and police functions is sim-ply going to degrade the American capability todo the things America has to do. We don’t needto have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids tokindergarten.”21

After September 11, 2001, however, theBush administration changed course dramati-cally. The United States National Security Strategy,released in September 2002, made “expand[ing]the circle of development by opening societiesand building the infrastructure of democracy”a central plank of America’s response to the9/11 attacks.22 Part of the administration’s newsecurity policy would be to “help build policeforces, court systems, and legal codes, local andprovincial government institutions, and elec-toral systems.”23 The overarching goal was to“make the world not just safer but better.”24

4

The Haiti and Kosovo

interventions costbillions of

dollars andresulted in

neither the spreadof liberal

democracy northe enhancement

of U.S. nationalsecurity.

Clearly, the president had changed his mindabout the wisdom of attempting to buildnations.

Alongside the Bush administration’s new-found appreciation for nation building, thefailed-states-as-security-threat idea prolifer-ated rapidly. Indeed, it has become practical-ly an article of faith. The administration’sOctober 2005 National Intelligence Strategyclaims (without support) that “the lack offreedom in one state endangers the peace andfreedom of others, and . . . failed states are arefuge and breeding ground of extremism.”Accordingly, the strategy asks our over-worked intelligence services not just to gath-er information on America’s enemies but to“[b]olster the growth of democracy and sus-tain peaceful democratic states.”25

Academics and pundits agree that statefailure is a serious security issue. For example,Lawrence J. Korb and Robert O. Boorstin ofthe Center for American Progress warn that“weak and failing states pose as great a dangerto the American people and international sta-bility as do potential conflicts among the greatpowers.”26 A task force report from the Centerfor Strategic and International Studies agreed:“[A]s a superpower with a global presence andglobal interests, the United States does have astake in remedying failed states.”27 FrancisFukuyama, professor at the Johns HopkinsSchool of Advanced International Studies,says that “it should be abundantly clear thatstate weakness and failure is [sic] the singlemost critical threat to U.S. national security.”28

In his book The Pentagon’s New MapThomas P. M. Barnett, formerly a professor atthe U.S. Naval War College, went even further,arguing that even the above claims fail to cap-ture the breadth of the problem. Barnettbelieves that all countries suffering from “dis-connectedness”—detachment from the globaleconomy—pose the central threat to U.S.national security. “Eradicating disconnected-ness, therefore, becomes the defining securitytask of our age.”29 For Barnett, an ambitiousprocess of forcibly “exporting security” is nec-essary to remedy disconnectedness in “CentralAsia, but also [in] the Middle East, Africa, the

Caribbean Rim, and—yes—even SoutheastAsia.”30 Pursuing that strategy, Barnett ad-mits, would require a radical realignment ofthe armed forces into a “Leviathan Force” forwar fighting and a “SysAdmin Force” to policeand administer countries after the UnitedStates changes their regimes.31

Once an idea of the left, the belief thatfailed states are threatening has found a homeon the political right as well. In July 2005Brent Scowcroft, a longtime Republican real-ist, cochaired a task force on postconflictcapabilities convened by the Council onForeign Relations. Although somewhat lesshyperbolic than other reports, its report pro-ceeds from the assumption that “[a]ction tostabilize and rebuild states marked by conflictis not ‘foreign policy as social work,’ a favoritequip of the 1990s. It is equally a humanitarianconcern and a national security priority.”32

The report advocated tasking the nationalsecurity adviser with crafting “overarchingpolicy associated with stabilization and recon-struction activities,” making stability opera-tions “a strategic priority for the armedforces,” elevating S/CRS’s director to under-secretary of state, and funding S/CRS with notjust $100 million but an annual “replenishingreserve fund” of $500 million—nearly a five-fold increase over the proposed budget.33

Failed States andFailed Reasoning

All of those arguments suffer not so muchfrom inaccuracy as from analytical sloppiness.It would be absurd to claim that the ongoingstate failure in, say, Haiti, poses a national secu-rity threat of the same order as would, forexample, state failure in Indonesia, with itspopulation of 240 million, or in nuclear-armedPakistan. In fact, the overwhelming majority offailed states have posed no security threat tothe United States. The blanket characteriza-tion that failed states represent anything mono-lithic is misleading. Rather, the dangers thatcan arise from failed states are not the productof state failure itself; threats are the result of

5

The overwhelm-ing majority offailed states haveposed no securitythreat to theUnited States.The blanket characterizationthat failed statesrepresent anythingmonolithic ismisleading.

other conditions, such as the presence of ter-rorist cells or other malign actors within afailed state. It is not the “failure” that threatens.

American intelligence services, U.S. diplo-mats, and the entire national security bureauc-racy are already properly tasked with determin-ing which states, failed or otherwise, presentthreats to U.S. national security. While Septem-ber 11 certainly underscored the potential dan-gers that nontraditional threats could pose, itdid nothing to transform each poorly governednation into a pressing national security concern.

That is not to say that threats cannotemanate from failed states. Afghanistan in thelate 1990s met anyone’s definition of a failedstate, and the chaos in Afghanistan clearlycontributed to Osama bin Laden’s decision torelocate his operations there from Sudan in1996. However, the security threat to Americaarose amid fitful cooperation between al-Qaeda and the Taliban government. TheTaliban were aware that al-Qaeda trainingcamps existed in Afghanistan. September 11was the result of a failure of U.S. leadership torecognize the implications of bin Laden’splans coupled with the inability to deter theTaliban regime from actively supporting al-Qaeda. Afghanistan under the Taliban wasboth a failed state and a threat, but, in thatrespect, it was actually quite a rarity.

And the fact that al-Qaeda and other ter-rorist organizations can and do operate infailed states provides no unique insight, either.Al-Qaeda and its affiliates operate effectivelyfrom Germany, Canada, and other countriesthat are by no means failed states. In fact, deal-ing with terrorist threats in failed states can insome ways be easier than dealing with them incohesive modern states. As Gary Dempseypointed out in 2002:

Failed states are where the terrorists aremost vulnerable to covert action, com-mando raids, surprise attacks, and localinformants willing to work for a few dol-lars. Failed states are not “safe havens”;they are defenseless positions.34

At times, the claims that failed states are

inherently threatening seem so dubious thatone wonders whether the arguments may notsimply be a vehicle for generating support forforeign interventions. For example, Stephen D.Krasner, now the State Department’s director ofpolicy planning, and Jack Goldsmith, then aprofessor of law at the University of Chicago,wrote an article in 2003 in which they identifiedthe “problematic absence of democratic supportfor humanitarian intervention.”35 Goldsmithand Krasner cite the International Commissionon Intervention and State Sovereignty, whichargued that “the budgetary cost and risk to per-sonnel involved in any military action may infact make it politically imperative for the inter-vening state to be able to claim some degree ofself-interest in the intervention, however altruis-tic its primary motive might actually be.”36

Goldsmith and Krasner conclude:

This absence of democratic support is afundamental problem for those whoinsist that nations should intervene toarrest human suffering in other nations. . . this means that political leaders can-not engage in acts of altruism abroadmuch beyond what constituents and/orinterest groups will support. This con-clusion is fatal to the interventionistproject.37

With that in mind, it is wise to view sweepingclaims about the supposed threats posed byfailed states with considerable skepticism.

What would be more helpful, and moreprudent, than issuing categorical statementsabout what failed states mean for the UnitedStates would be to examine countries, failed orotherwise, on the basis of discrete measures ofthreat assessment: to what extent does a gov-ernment—or nonstate actors operating withina state—intend and have the means to attackAmerica? Afghanistan serves as a starkreminder that we must not overlook failedstates, but it does not justify moving failedstates to the top of the list of security concerns.And even a cursory look at the empirical dataon failed states shows that state failure rarelytranslates into threats to the United States.

6

Dealing with terrorist threats

in failed statescan in some ways

be easier thandealing with them

in cohesive modern states.

How Can We MeasureState Failure, and

Which States Are “Failed”?To assess whether or not state failure poses a

threat to U.S. national security, we must firstdefine what “state failure” means and thenexamine the historical cases that meet that defi-nition. The most comprehensive and analytical-ly rigorous study of state failure was a task forcereport commissioned by the Central Intelli-gence Agency’s Directorate of Intelligence in2000.38 In that report, the authors sought toquantify and examine episodes of state failurebetween 1955 and 1998. Working from theirfirst definition of state failure (when “centralstate authority collapses for several years”), theauthors were able to find only 20 cases of bonafide state failure, too small a number to producestatistically significant conclusions. As a conse-quence, the authors chose to broaden the defin-ition to include the following lesser events.39

• Revolutionary wars (REV), defined as“sustained violent conflict between gov-ernments and politically organized chal-lengers that seek to overthrow the cen-tral government, replace its leaders, orseize power in one region”;

• Ethnic wars (ETH), defined as “sustainedviolent conflict in which national, ethnic,religious, or other communal minoritieschallenge governments to seek majorchanges in status”;

• Adverse regime changes (REG), defined as“major, abrupt shifts in patterns of gover-nance, including state collapse, periods ofsevere elite or regime instability, and shiftsaway from democratic toward authoritar-ian rule”; and

• Genocides and politicides (GEN), definedas “sustained policies by states or theiragents, or, in civil wars, by either of thecontending authorities that result in thedeaths of a substantial portion of a com-munal or political group.”40

After establishing those new criteria, the

authors found 114 cases of state failure be-tween 1955 and 1998.

Since one could make the case that statefailure during the Cold War presented less of athreat than it does in today’s increasingly inter-connected world, we explore only those cases ofstate failure occurring since or ongoing after1990. Table 1 shows the task force’s state fail-ure cases since 1990. The column labeled“NTF” highlights years in which the states inquestion exhibited what the authors call “near-total failures of state authority,” which moreclosely mirror the original definition of statefailure that the task force rejected.41

A look at Table 1 calls into question some ofthe implications of the task force’s revisedmethodology. The new methodology increasedthe number of failed states nearly sixfold byvirtue of a changed definition of what consti-tuted state failure. Although the authors madethat change in order to achieve a degree of sta-tistical significance,42 they contended that thenew methodology was chosen because “eventsthat fall beneath [the] total-collapse thresholdoften pose challenges to U.S. foreign policy aswell.”43 That speculative and highly subjectivestandard has produced a data set that charac-terizes China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Indo-nesia, Israel, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, andTurkey all as failed states as of December 1998.Surely it pollutes the discussion of failed statesif Israel and Sierra Leone fall under the samegeneral heading.

Further, an examination of the states char-acterized as failures reveals that, in fact, failedstates rarely present security threats. Althoughthe authors of the task force report did notdefine “challenges to U.S. foreign policy,” it isclear that the vast majority of countries char-acterized as failures did not (and do not) pre-sent threats that warrant broad U.S. govern-ment intervention on the order envisioned bythe creators of S/CRS.44 And to the extent thatany of the states listed did represent securitythreats, broad nation-building missions tar-geted at the condition of state failure ratherthan the threat itself would not have been themost appropriate response.

For example, military action that would have

7

At times, theclaims that failedstates are inherently threat-ening seem sodubious that onewonders whetherthe argumentsmay not simplybe a vehicle forgenerating support for foreign interventions.

8

Table 1State Failure Incidents, 1990–98

State Years Types of Conflict NTF

Afghanistan 4/78– REG, REV, GEN, REG, ETH, REV 1992–95Albania 5/96–5/97 REG, REVAlgeria 5/91– REG, REVArmenia 12/96–9/96 REGAzerbaijan 2/88–6/97 ETH, REGBelarus 4/95–11/96 REGBosnia and Herzegovina 3/92–9/96 REG, ETH, GEN 1992–96Burma 8/61– ETH, REG, GEN, REVBurundi 8/88– ETH, GEN, REG, GEN 1992–96Cambodia 7/97–12/98 REGChina 7/55– ETH, REVColombia 5/84– REVComoros 9/95–3/96 REGCongo—Brazzaville 6/97–10/97 REV, REGCongo—Kinshasa 9/91– REG, ETH, REV 1997–Croatia 6/91–12/95 ETHEgypt 4/86– REVThe Gambia 7/94–7/94 REGGeorgia 6/91–12/93 ETH, REVGeorgia 5/98– ETHGuinea—Bisseau 6/98– REV, REG 1998India 7/52– ETHIran 10/77– REV, REG, ETH, REV, GENIraq 9/80– ETH, GEN, ETHIndonesia 2/97– REV, ETHIsrael 6/67– ETHKazakhstan 8/95–8/95 REGKenya 10/91–9/93 ETHKyrgyzstan 12/95–2/96 REGLesotho 8/94–12/98 REG, REG, REVLiberia 12/89–8/97 REV, REG 1990–96Mexico 1/94–2/94 ETHNiger 1/96–7/96 REGPakistan 8/83– ETHPhilippines 11/69– REG, REV, ETH, GENRwanda 10/90– ETH, REG, GEN 1994Senegal 6/91– ETHSierra Leone 3/91– REV, REG 1997–Somalia 5/88– ETH, REV, GEN, REG 1990–Sri Lanka 7/83– ETH, REV, GENSudan 7/83– ETH, GEN, REGTajikistan 4/92– REV, REG 1992Thailand 2/91– REG, ETHTurkey 9/80– REG, ETH

9

State Years Types of Conflict NTF

Uganda 2/66– GEN, ETH, GEN, REVUSSR 12/86–12/91 ETH, REG 1991Yemen 5/90–10/94 REGYugoslavia 4/90–1/92 REG, ETH 1991Yugoslavia 2/98– ETHZambia 5/96–11/96 REG

Source: State Failure Task Force Report: Phase III Findings, September 30, 2000, pp. 64–79.

Table 2Fund for Peace/Foreign Policy List of Failed States as of 2004

State Ranking State Ranking

Côte d'Ivoire 1 Guatemala 31Dem. Rep. of the Congo 2 Tanzania 32Sudan 3 Equatorial Guinea 33Iraq 4 Pakistan 34Somalia 5 Nepal 35Sierra Leone 6 Paraguay 36Chad 7 Lebanon 37Yemen 8 Egypt 38Liberia 9 Ukraine 39Haiti 10 Peru 40Afghanistan 11 Honduras 41Rwanda 12 Mozambique 42North Korea 13 Angola 43Colombia 14 Belarus 44Zimbabwe 15 Saudi Arabia 45Guinea 16 Ecuador 46Bangladesh 17 Indonesia 47Burundi 18 Turkey 48Dominican Republic 19 Tajikistan 49Central African Republic 20 Azerbaijan 50Venezuela 21 Bahrain 51Bosnia and Herzegovina 22 Vietnam 52Burma/Myanmar 23 Cameroon 53Uzbekistan 24 Nigeria 54Kenya 25 Eritrea 55Bhutan 26 Philippines 56Uganda 27 Iran 57Laos 28 Cuba 58Syria 29 Russia 59Ethiopia 30 The Gambia 60

Source: Foreign Policy, July–August 2005.

assaulted the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistancould well have left Afghanistan a failed state butat the same time greatly reduced the threat ema-nating from that country. Attacking a threatrarely involves paving roads or establishing newjudicial standards. For instance, in September2000 a joint Defense Department–CIA opera-tion used Predator drone aircraft to reconnoiterand potentially target bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan. On its firstflight the Predator caught sight of a “securitydetail around a tall man in a white robe at BinLadin’s Tarnak Farms compound outsideKandahar.” The intelligence community wouldlater conclude that that man was likely Osamabin Laden.45 Pursuing the Predator program andtargeting bin Laden would have dealt a mean-ingful blow to al-Qaeda in 2000, while doing lit-tle to address Afghanistan’s governance. Afghan-istan would have remained a failed state, but thethreat to the United States would have beengreatly reduced.

Other lists of failed states confirm that statefailure in itself does not constitute a securitythreat. The British Department for InternationalDevelopment (DFID) used the World Bank’sCountry Policy and Institutional Assessmentsmethodology to draw up its own list of “fragile”states, defined almost exactly the same as are“failed” states in other studies.46 DFID’s listincluded such countries as Burundi, Cameroon,Comoros, Guinea Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Indo-nesia, Kenya, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, SãoTomé and Principe, Sierra Leone, the SolomonIslands, Timor Leste, Tonga, and Vanuatu.47

DFID says that fragile states are problematicbecause they “are more likely to . . . fall prey tocriminal and terrorist networks,”48 but it is diffi-cult to understand how many of the above coun-tries could present security threats to the UnitedStates in any foreseeable scenario.

The Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy maga-zine published their own “failed states index”in the July–August 2005 issue of Foreign Policy.Using 12 indicators of state failure,49 theirmethodology yielded a list much like those ofthe CIA task force and the DFID. The top 20countries are considered “critical,” the next 20“in danger,” and the final 20 “borderline.”50

The Fund for Peace/Foreign Policy list of failedstates is given in Table 2.

The Fund for Peace/Foreign Policy list rais-es more questions than it answers about thestate-failure-as-threat thesis. By the method-ology used, the Ivory Coast is more “failed”than Iran, North Korea, and even Iraq. If oneassumes that state failure in itself representsa threat, then the logical conclusion is thatAmerican security concerns for the IvoryCoast would be greater than they are for anyof the less-failed nations. But that is obvious-ly not the case. There are much better metricsfor assessing levels of threat than the degreeof state failure. The lists of “failed states” and“security threats” will no doubt overlap, butcorrelation does not equal causation. Theobvious nonthreats that appear on all lists offailed states undermine the claim that thereis something particular about failed statesthat is necessarily threatening.

An Unbounded Mandateand Its Potential

ConsequencesS/CRS believes the advancement of political

and economic reforms—in particular, thespread of democracy—constitutes part of itsmandate. However, that way of thinking carrieswith it serious risks. For example, the CIA taskforce report, from which Table 1 is taken, callsinto doubt the wisdom of attempting to pushcountries from autocracy to democracy. Taskforce members Jack A. Goldstone and JayUlfelder admit that “the transition from autoc-racy to democracy is not a simple process;indeed, the highest risk of political crisis lies inthe middle ground, in autocracies with somepolitical competition and in nominal democ-racies with factional competition and/or dom-inant chief executives.” Goldstone and Ulfelderworry that states in that stage “appear mostvulnerable to the outbreak of large-scale vio-lence, antidemocratic coups, and state col-lapse.”51

It is not only internal unrest that can followin the wake of regime transformation. The risk

10

Attacking a threatrarely involves

paving roads orestablishing new

judicial standards.

of full-blown war actually tends to increase incountries where political change has recentlyoccurred. Professors Edward D. Mansfield ofthe University of Pennsylvania and JackSnyder of Columbia University point out that

countries do not become mature democ-racies overnight. More typically, they gothrough a rocky transitional period,where democratic control over foreignpolicy is partial, where mass politicsmixes in a volatile way with authoritarianelite politics, and where democratizationsuffers reversals. In this transitionalphase of democratization, countriesbecome more aggressive and war-prone,not less, and they do fight wars withdemocratic states.52

Thus, if U.S. foreign policy seeks to preventwidespread internal unrest or minimize therisk of war in the near term, or both, it maywish to eschew ambitious projects of “democ-ratization,” or else be willing and able to occu-py target countries indefinitely in the hopesthat a fully formed democracy will eventuallyemerge. Without achieving “risk-mitigating”conditions such as “high levels of materialwell-being and openness to trade,” the CIAtask force report warns, “[s]imply installing ademocratic or partially democratic regime isunlikely to produce political stability.”53

In many cases, then, well-intentionedinterventions could push states headlonginto chaos and possibly even create securitythreats where none existed before. Althoughthe pursuit of stability should not representthe totality of U.S. foreign policy, we shouldbe confident that any intervention will pro-duce outcomes beneficial to U.S. interests atan acceptable cost. Unfortunately, nationbuilding has an extremely poor track recordof achieving beneficial outcomes at accept-able costs, and it is far from clear that S/CRScan reverse the lessons of history.

Considering the three lists of failed statesdiscussed above (CIA task force, ForeignPolicy/Fund for Peace, and DFID), certaintrends in classification emerge. Almost all of

the countries in question are poor to varyingdegrees, and most of them are struggling withthe aftereffects of 20th-century colonialism. AsMarina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowmentfor International Peace and Stefan Mair of theSWP German Institute for International andSecurity Affairs point out, “There is hardly alow-income country that does not face the pos-sibility of failure.”54 In addition, one can seethat the vast majority of failed states todaywere once colonized by a foreign power. Of the77 countries that appear on at least one of thelists above, 64 were decolonized or achievedindependence for the first time during the20th century. More than half emerged fromWestern colonialism.

If so many of those nations are postcolonialconstructs, meaning they became nations onlywhen they were dubbed such by exiting colonialpowers, that calls into question the fundamen-tal structure of the nations S/CRS would beattempting to build. Francis Fukuyama arguesthat we ought not to talk of nation building atall; rather, he prefers the term “state building.”That is because “nation building in the sense ofthe creation of a community bound together byshared history and culture is well beyond theability of any outside power to achieve . . . onlystates can be deliberately constructed. If anation arises from this, it is more a matter ofluck than design.”55 Fukuyama’s admission,however, begs the question: can a cohesive statebe successfully built where there is no nation?In many failed states, there exist several“nations.”

The case of Bosnia is instructive in this con-text. Ten years after the Dayton accords, Bosniastill lacks any meaningful sense of sovereignty.After years of foreign administration and bil-lions of dollars spent on democratization, thatcountry remains under the control of the Officeof the High Representative. According to GeraldKnaus and Felix Martin of the EuropeanStability Initiative, a European think tank, theOHR “can interpret its own mandate and so hasessentially unlimited legal powers. It can dismisspresidents, prime ministers, judges, and mayorswithout having to submit its decisions forreview by any independent appeals body. It can

11

Nation buildinghas an extremelypoor track recordof achieving beneficial outcomes atacceptable costs,and it is far fromclear that S/CRScan reverse thelessons of history.

veto candidates for ministerial positions with-out needing publicly to present any evidence forits stance. It can impose legislation and createnew institutions without having to estimate thecost to the Bosnian taxpayers.” Indeed, theauthors admit, “such political arrangementsbear an uncanny resemblance to . . . that of animperial power over its colonial possessions.”56

In Bosnia, then, the enduring troubles ofan ethnically and culturally diverse societywere either too great to overcome, or the out-side authorities in charge of the nation-build-ing project were unwilling to let Bosnians try.As a result, Bosnia remains under the admin-istration of outsiders, with no end in sight.That is precisely the type of mission in whichS/CRS would be involved in the future.

Nation Building orBenevolent Colonialism?Since the empirical research on failed states

does not demonstrate that they necessarilypresent threats, it is difficult to understandwhy the belief that they do is so widely held. Alook at the scholarly literature on failed stateshelps to shed some light on the intellectualunderpinnings of the logic behind S/CRS.Much of the analysis—including the work ofthe same public officials now arguing for theinstitutionalization of S/CRS—is quite explic-it in explaining how and why the United Statesshould base its foreign policy on overarchingprojects to address state failure. A number ofscholars have advocated an office much alongthe lines of S/CRS, yet their final goal is evenmore ambitious.

Many advocates of nation building favorunraveling the Westphalian system of sover-eignty that has prevailed roughly since theend of the 30 Years’ War in 1648 andinstalling in its place a different world orderbased on the rejection of sovereignty. Somehave gone so far as to call for the restorationof colonial control over poorly governedparts of the world.57

Retired diplomats Gerald B. Helman andSteven R. Ratner proclaimed in 1993 that “it

is becoming clear that something must bedone” about failed states.58 They scorned the“talisman of ‘sovereignty,’” which they saw asan obstacle to an ambitious program ofnation building. “That ill-defined and amor-phous notion of international law,” they com-plained, “has been used to denote everythingfrom a state’s political independence . . . to themore extreme view that all the internal affairsof a state are beyond the scrutiny of the inter-national community.”59

Helman and Ratner set the tone for thesovereignty debate as it would go forward. By2003 retired diplomats James R. Hooper andPaul R. Williams argued for what they called“earned sovereignty”: the idea being that tar-get states would need to climb back into thegood graces of the intervening power to regaintheir sovereignty. In some cases, that wouldtake the form of “shared sovereignty”: domes-tic governments would perform whateverfunctions were allowed by the intervener, butother duties would be retained by the outsideactor. “The element of shared sovereignty isquite flexible . . . as well as the time frame ofshared sovereignty. . . . In some instances, itmay be indefinite and subject to the fulfill-ment of certain conditions as opposed to spec-ified timelines.”60 The premise seems to bethat countries will be returned to the controlof their indigenous populations when theintervener decides it is appropriate.

According to James D. Fearon and David D.Laitin, both political science professors atStanford University, the new doctrine “may bedescribed as neotrusteeship, or more provoca-tively, postmodern imperialism.”61 As Fearonand Laitin see it, this imperialism should notcarry the stigma of 19th- or 20th-century impe-rialism. “[W]e are not advocating or endorsingimperialism with the connotation of exploita-tion and permanent rule by foreigners.” On thecontrary, Fearon and Laitin explain that “post-modern imperialism may have exploitativeaspects, but these are to be condemned.”62

A New Principle for International Order?While perhaps not intentionally exploita-

tive, postmodern imperialism certainly does

12

Many advocatesof nation

building favorunraveling the

system of sovereignty. Some

have gone so faras to call for the

restoration ofcolonial control

over poorly governed parts of

the world.

appear to entail protracted and perhaps per-manent rule by foreigners. Fearon and Laitinadmit that, in postmodern imperialism, “thesearch for an exit strategy is delusional, if thismeans a plan under which full control ofdomestic security is to be handed back to localauthorities by a certain date in the nearfuture.”63 To the contrary: “for some casescomplete exit by the interveners may never bepossible”; rather, the endgame is “to make thenational level of government irrelevant forpeople in comparison to the local and supra-national levels.”64 Thus, in Fearon and Laitin’smodel, nation building may not be an appro-priate term; their ideas would more accuratelybe described as nation ending, replacingnational governments with a supranationalgoverning order. Evidently the nation-statewithers away and dies.

For his part, Stephen D. Krasner, now thedirector of the State Department’s policy plan-ning staff and a leading advocate of S/CRS,was much more candid about his views onfailed states before he joined the government.

Krasner believes that the “rules of conven-tional sovereignty . . . no longer work, and theirinadequacies have had deleterious conse-quences for the strong as well as the weak.”65

Krasner concludes that, to resolve that dilem-ma, “alternative institutional arrangementssupported by external actors, such as de factotrusteeships and shared sovereignty, should beadded to the list of policy options.”66 He isexplicit about the implications of those policies:

In a trusteeship, international actorswould assume control over local func-tions for an indefinite period of time.They might also eliminate the interna-tional legal sovereignty of the entity orcontrol treaty-making powers in wholeor in part (e.g., in specific areas such assecurity or trade). There would be noassumption of a withdrawal in theshort or medium term.67

Krasner’s candor about the implicationsof his policy views, however, was not equaledby a willingness to label them accurately. “For

policy purposes, it would be best to refer toshared sovereignty as ‘partnerships.’ Thiswould more easily let policymakers engage inorganized hypocrisy, that is, saying one thingand doing another. . . . Shared sovereignty orpartnerships would make no claim to beingan explicit alternative to conventional sover-eignty. It would allow actors to obfuscate thefact that their behavior would be inconsis-tent with their principles.”68

John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorneygeneral in the Office of Legal Counsel in theDepartment of Justice, argued along similarlines during a 2005 lecture at the AmericanEnterprise Institute: “Where the United States,its allies, and the United Nations have erred . . .is to assume that because strong nation-statesare the guarantors of international stability,every territory must have a nation-state. Hence,the United States and its NATO allies have setas their goal in Afghanistan the reconstructionof state institutions, rather than a trusteeshipor colonial arrangement.”69

Yoo’s prescription, like all of the otherproposals above, could well precipitate a rad-ical reordering of the international system.The implications of such a change, over time,could be far-reaching and potentially harm-ful to U.S. national interests.

One particularly striking aspect of the argu-ments against sovereignty and in favor ofnation building in failed states is how ill-defined the terms of debate have been. How canwe measure state failure? What are the histori-cal correlations between the attributes of failedstates and the supposed security threats theypose? As shown above, by the established defin-itions of state failure and a reasonable interpre-tation of the word “threat,” failed states almostalways miss the mark. As Professor JeremyRabkin of Cornell University points out, “Thearguments for subordinating or denying sover-eignty are so unconvincing on their own termsthat one is bound to feel they respond less toactual analysis of costs and benefits than to aninchoate moral outlook.”70

If Not Sovereignty, Then What?Some foreign policy thinkers have been call-

13

One particularlystriking aspect of the argumentsagainst sovereign-ty and in favor ofnation buildingin failed states ishow ill-definedthe terms ofdebate have been.

ing for a colonial rebirth for some time. Asearly as 1997 neoconservative thinker IrvingKristol was hailing an “emerging Americanimperium” and calling on Americans to “awak-en to the fact that we have become an imperialnation.”71 Historian Paul Johnson respondedto the 9/11 attacks by arguing that the answerto terrorism was colonialism.72 Also writing inthe weeks following 9/11, avowed imperialistMax Boot took to the pages of the WeeklyStandard to make the “Case for AmericanEmpire.”73

Calls for empire became more common,more sophisticated, and more mainstream withthe passage of time. Writing in Foreign Affairs inMarch 2002, Washington Post columnist Sebas-tian Mallaby said: “The logic of neoimperialismis too compelling for the Bush administrationto resist. The chaos in the world is too threaten-ing to ignore, and existing methods for dealingwith that chaos have been tried and found want-ing.”74 Francis Fukuyama wonders in the con-text of failed states “whether there is any realalternative to a quasi-permanent, quasi-colonialrelationship between the ‘beneficiary’ countryand the international community.”75 In the fallof 2003, Jeffrey E. Garten, dean of the YaleSchool of Management, called on the U.S. gov-ernment to organize a colonial service.76

It may seem hyperbolic to liken S/CRS to acolonial office. Americans are rightly uncom-fortable with the implication that U.S. policiesresemble those of past empires. They are evenmore loath to label them “imperial.” PresidentBush is most emphatic on that point: duringthe 2004 State of the Union address, for exam-ple, the president asserted that America’s“mission comes from our most basic beliefs.We have no desire to dominate, no ambitionsof empire.”77 But regardless of the terminolo-gy used or even the intentions, the logicbehind the creation of S/CRS and a meaning-ful pursuit of the office’s mandate would leadto an American foreign policy with globalgoals and global responsibilities comparableto those of past empires. Indeed, CarlosPascual, the first coordinator for reconstruc-tion and stabilization and incoming vice pres-ident for foreign policy studies at the

Brookings Institution, interprets part of S/CRS’s mandate as seeking to “provide for glob-al security.”78

Anti-sovereignty academics, pro-empire pun-dits, and pro-nation-building bureaucrats arelargely of one mind. The internal logic behindS/CRS is perfectly coherent, if one can accept thepremises. If instability anywhere in the worldposes a threat to America, and if the bestrecourse is to nation build in those countries,and further, if one acknowledges that to be suc-cessful, nation building must be done at verygreat expense over a very long period of time, thefunctional distinction between S/CRS and acolonial office all but evaporates. The flaws existnot in the internal logic but in the premise thatfailed states present a problem and that nationbuilding can be a solution.

Although most Americans are appalled atthe mere suggestion of imperial designs, avowedadvocates of empire have not hidden their plea-sure at the creation of S/CRS. In advancing thecase for an American colonial office, Max Bootonce noted that “of course, [a colonial office]cannot be called that. It needs an anodyneeuphemism such as Office of Reconstructionand Humanitarian Assistance.”79 In 2005 Bootexpanded on that idea in the context of S/CRS:“The United States needs its own version of theBritish Colonial Office for the postimperial age.The recent decision to set up and Office ofReconstruction and Stabilization within theState Department is a good start. . . .”80 Anotheradvocate of American imperialism, NiallFerguson, was summoned to the Departmentsof the Treasury and State in the fall of 2002 todiscuss his case for empire.81

As John Judis has noted, one large discrepan-cy between traditional imperialism and the con-duct of U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century isthat the United States does not seek to establisha formal empire.82 The United States seeks nei-ther to plunder resources nor Christianize for-eign populations. Indeed, the operations in Iraqand Afghanistan, and even the nation-buildingprojects of the 1990s, have carried significanteconomic costs, not benefits. The differences inintentions and goals, however, should notobscure the fact that resource shortfalls and

14

The logic behindthe creation of

S/CRS and ameaningful

pursuit of theoffice’s mandatewould lead to an

American foreignpolicy with global

goals and globalresponsibilitiescomparable to

those of pastempires.

pushback from indigenous populations wouldlikely occur no matter what the endgame.

Given that failed states in themselves donot present threats to U.S. national security,an office of nation building in the form ofS/CRS would truly be a cure worse than thedisease. That is partly because S/CRS’s nebu-lous mission of helping to “stabilize andreconstruct societies in transition from con-flict or civil strife, so they can reach a sus-tainable path toward peace, democracy and amarket economy”83 portends an entire set ofserious problems, with which S/CRS’s parti-sans rarely grapple.

The Case for Sovereignty

The implications of the erosion of sover-eignty in the international system are partic-ularly troubling, as are the potential respons-es of the citizens of target states. As WinstonChurchill said of democracy, sovereignty maybe the worst system around, except all theothers. A system of sovereignty grants a ker-nel of legitimacy to regimes that rule barbar-ically, it values as equals countries that clear-ly are not, and it frequently endorses bordersthat were capriciously drawn by imperialpowers. However, it is far from clear that anyavailable alternative is better.

If the United States proceeds on a courseof nation building, based largely on thepremise that sovereignty should be deempha-sized, where will that logic stop? Who gets todecide which states will be allowed to retaintheir sovereignty (or what “type” of sovereign-ty) and which states will be determined tohave forfeited their sovereignty? Will otherpowers use our own rhetoric that deempha-sizes sovereignty against us in order to justifyexpansionist foreign policies? Potential flash-points in eastern Europe and East Asia wouldnot be hard to envision. The apparent sup-port for a long-term but dramatic change tothe international system has puzzled scholarssince 9/11.

Indeed, the United States should seek tocodify the current international system, not

undermine it. Since the United States now sitslargely unchallenged at the top of the existinginternational order, it would be perplexing forthe reigning superpower to dismantle the sys-tem that currently institutionalizes its owndominance. As John J. Mearsheimer of theUniversity of Chicago has written:

[T]he ideal situation for any great poweris to be the only regional hegemon inthe world. That state would be a statusquo power, and it would go to consider-able lengths to preserve the existing dis-tribution of power. The United States isin that enviable position today; it domi-nates the Western Hemisphere andthere is no hegemon in any other area ofthe world.84

Although Mearsheimer was writing beforethe September 11 attacks, it has by no meansbeen established that nonstate terrorism pre-sents such an existential threat to the UnitedStates that it should seek a radical change tothe international order.

Unraveling state sovereignty in order tonation build could paradoxically underminestability and peace, whether during the turbu-lence of democratization or if democratiza-tion fails to produce a cohesive state. In short,an agenda for fixing failed states could back-fire, jeopardizing genuine American interests.Further, given finite resources for dealing withmyriad real threats, nation building could dis-tract Americans from their focus on the waron al-Qaeda. A lack of discrimination withrespect to intervention can also squander notonly American power but American legitimacyand credibility. But the problem goes beyondthe opportunity costs of misplaced resourcesand attention. Overreach could make theworld more volatile and violent in the nearterm. As Rabkin points out:

If peace is our priority, we would servethat priority more effectively by focus-ing on the particular states that threat-en peace, and the particular practices ofthese states that are most threatening—

15

An agenda forfixing failedstates could backfire, jeopar-dizing genuineAmerican interests.

such as their sponsorship of interna-tional terrorism and their attempts toacquire weapons of mass destruction.85

Moreover, some recent research suggeststhat a strategy of nation building, whichwould necessarily be highly contingent onsecurity enforced by a foreign military pres-ence, may result in an increase of suicide ter-rorism. Robert A. Pape, a political scienceprofessor at the University of Chicago, sur-veyed all recorded suicide terrorist attacksbetween 1980 and 2003. Pape concluded that“nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have incommon . . . a specific secular and strategicgoal: to compel modern democracies to with-draw military forces from territory that theterrorists consider to be their homeland.”86

Of course, there have been many interven-tions and nation-building projects that havenot resulted in terrorist blowback, but if theprospect exists that nation-building opera-tions could produce more terrorism directedat the United States, that should factor heav-ily in a discussion of whether to engage insuch interventions—especially when U.S.national security interests are not directly atstake.

If the costs of successfully administeringforeign countries were low and the prospectsfor success high, the new strategy might makesense. However, a simple look at what it takesto “get nation building right” demonstratesthat the costs of making nation building a coreobject of U.S. foreign policy—as envisioned bythe advocates of S/CRS—would greatly out-weigh any benefits.

Nation Building: Elusive Successes, Plentiful Failures

At least three key questions must beanswered in the course of the debate overwhether or not to prosecute a comprehensiveU.S. foreign policy predicated on repairingfailed states. First, what is the historical trackrecord of success? Second, what costs must bepaid in order to have a reasonable expectation

of success? Finally, what are the implications offailure?

In the most thorough survey of Americannation-building missions, the RAND Corpor-ation in 2003 evaluated seven cases: Japan andWest Germany after World War II, Somalia in1992–94, Haiti in 1994–96, Bosnia from 1995to the present, Kosovo from 1999 to the pres-ent, and Afghanistan from 2001 to the present.The authors count Japan and West Germanyas successes but all the others as failures to var-ious degrees.87 They then seek to determinewhat made the Japanese and West Germanoperations succeed when all of the interven-tions since have failed.88

The answer is complex and not entirely sat-isfactory. One of the central points that recurthroughout the work is that “[n]ation building. . . is a time- and resource-consuming effort.”89

Indeed, “among controllable factors, the mostimportant determinant is the level of effort—measured in time, manpower, and money.”90

But expenditures on the two successes—WestGermany and Japan—consumed only a frac-tion of the aid per capita spent on the failuresin Bosnia and Kosovo.91 Why, with a lowerresource expenditure and—at least in Japan—ashorter occupation, would we expect betterresults?

One plausible answer the authors offer isthat, in the case of Japan, the entire country wasdevastated by war: Japan’s population had beenwracked by sustained firebombing and the det-onation of two atomic bombs. Germany hadalso been devastated by firebombing, and thesense of total defeat was widespread. The lessonthe authors draw from that distinction is that“[w]hen conflicts have ended less conclusivelyand destructively (or not at all) . . . the postcon-flict security challenges have proven more diffi-cult.”92

The Defense Science Board (DSB), a panelthat advises the Defense Department on strat-egy, came to much the same conclusion. In its2004 Summer Study on Transition to and fromHostilities, the DSB concluded that in stabiliza-tion and reconstruction (S&R) missions, “mil-itary defeat of the enemy forces [is] essentialbut not sufficient to achieve long-term aims”

16

The costs of making nationbuilding a core

object of U.S. foreign policy—asenvisioned by the

advocates ofS/CRS—would

greatly outweighany benefits.

and that although “postconflict success oftendepends on significant political changes,” the“barriers to transformation of [an] opponent’ssociety [are] immense.”93 Without the requi-site outright defeat of the warring party or par-ties, fighting may persist, potentially under-mining the reconstruction efforts.

In other words, successful nation buildingis highly contingent on security within thecountry. Given that, it is particularly strikingthat the question of military involvement inpostconflict stabilization and reconstructionis often left out of the S/CRS debate entirely.Supporters of S/CRS rarely mention, let alonedescribe, the role that the U.S. military will beasked to play in such operations. Known inmilitary jargon as MOOTW (military opera-tions other than war), the non-war-fightingroles that the military would be asked to playwould be overwhelmingly taxing to both thearmed services themselves and to the UnitedStates.

The Military Requirementsof Nation Building

In every stabilization and reconstructioneffort, there will have to be a military compo-nent. By definition, the target state will beemerging from conflict or collapse, and theAmerican administrators will need to operatewithin a relatively secure environment as theyinitiate and implement S&R programs. Buthow many troops does it take to support anS&R mission? What types of troops? Andhow long will they have to stay?

The answers based on the historical recordare not heartening. One of the best estimatesregarding the military requirements of post-conflict missions comes from the DSB. Itsstudy assesses nation-building operations overthe past two millennia and lays out somesobering facts:

Stabilization operations can be verylabor intensive. . . . The United Stateswill sometimes have ambitious goals fortransforming a society in a conflicted

environment. Those goals may welldemand 20 troops per 1,000 inhabi-tants . . . working for five to eight years.Given that we may have three to five sta-bilization and reconstruction activitiesunderway concurrently, it is clear thatvery substantial resources are needed toaccomplish national objectives.94

Extrapolating from the DSB’s numbers toparticular countries paints an even darker pic-ture. Achieving “ambitious goals” in Iraq, forexample, under the DSB framework wouldhave required roughly 500,000 troops in Iraqfor five to eight years. Less populous countriessuch as Haiti, by the DSB’s rule of thumb,would call for roughly 162,000 Americantroops. Even “less ambitious” goals are ex-tremely burdensome: less ambitious goals inIraq would call for roughly 125,000 U.S.troops for five to eight years; in Haiti theywould call for 40,500 troops.95

Table 3 uses the Fund for Peace/ForeignPolicy list of failed states and juxtaposes thepopulations of the top 20, “critical,” stateswith the number of foreign troops that couldbe needed for S&R missions, using the DSB’scalculation.

By DSB’s calculations, successfully run-ning three to five concurrent nation-buildingoperations could require hundreds of thou-sands of American service personnel in hostiletheaters overseas for several years. If history isany guide, effective execution often requiresdeployments approaching 10 years or more.

As for efficacy, the current U.S. ambassadorto the United Nations John Bolton rightlypointed out in 2000 that “the ability of externalactors to create a functioning civil society infailed states is really quite limited.”96 Histori-cally, American troops and administrators havehad only a small impact on even the most mod-est of goals: increasing the rule of law anddecreasing the level of violence. Another reportfrom the RAND Corporation gauges theKosovo and (UN-led) East Timor interventionsas successes according to those modest bench-marks, but Panama, El Salvador, Somalia,Bosnia, and Haiti are all considered unsuccess-

17

Historically,American troopsand administra-tors have hadonly a smallimpact on eventhe most modestof goals: increasing therule of law anddecreasing thelevel of violence.

ful or mixed.97 The DSB’s assessment is alsosobering. DSB analyzed historical S&R projectsand concluded that “[t]he pattern suggests a lessthan impressive record—one that has notimproved with time and historical experience.”98

In addition, nation-building missions areextremely expensive, regardless of whether theysucceed or fail. For example, Zalmay Khalilzad,former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan andcurrent ambassador to Iraq, believes that in thecase of Afghanistan, “it will take annual assis-tance [of more than $4.5 billion] or higher forfive to seven years to achieve our goals.”99

Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti costmore than $2 billion.100 Operations ProvideRelief and Restore Hope in Somalia ended upcosting $2.2 billion.101 As of 2002 the United

States had spent more than $23 billion inter-vening in the Balkans since the early 1990s.102

Add to those high economic, military, andpotential political costs the fact that evenstaunch advocates of nation building such asFrancis Fukuyama admit that nation-buildingefforts have “an extremely troubled record ofsuccess.” As Fukuyama concedes, “It is not sim-ply that nation building hasn’t worked; in caseslike sub-Saharan Africa, many of these effortshave actually eroded institutional capacity overtime.”103 There simply is no “model” for nationbuilding. That undermines the argument ofS/CRS’s advocates that the government canbuild institutional knowledge that will allowlessons from one mission to be transferred to anew one. The one commonality in nation-

18

The one commonality innation-building

operations is thatsuccess is a function of

determination.

Table 3“Critical” Failed States with Defense Science Board Estimations for Troops Needed

Troops Required for

Country Ranking Populationa Ambitious Goalsb Less Ambitious Goalsc

Côte d’Ivoire 1 17,298,040 345,961 86,490Dem. Rep. of the Congo 2 60,085,804 1,201,716 300,429Sudan 3 40,187,486 803,750 200,937Iraq 4 26,074,906 521,498 130,375Somalia 5 8,591,629 171,833 42,958Sierra Leone 6 6,017,643 120,353 30,088Chad 7 9,826,419 196,528 49,132Yemen 8 20,727,063 414,541 103,635Liberia 9 3,482,211 69,644 17,411Haiti 10 8,121,622 162,432 40,608Afghanistan 11 29,928,987 598,580 149,645Rwanda 12 8,440,820 168,816 42,204North Korea 13 22,912,177 458,244 114,561Colombia 14 42,954,279 859,086 214,771Zimbabwe 15 12,746,990 254,940 63,735Guinea 16 9,467,866 189,357 47,339Bangladesh 17 144,319,628 2,886,393 721,598Burundi 18 6,370,609 127,412 31,853Dominican Republic 19 8,950,034 179,001 44,750Central African Republic 20 3,799,897 75,998 18,999

a Population figures from CIA World Factbook, online at http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook. b “Ambitious goals” equal 20 troops per 1,000 indigens.c “Less ambitious goals” equal 5 troops per 1,000 indigens.

building operations is that success is a functionof determination: a relentless determination toimpose a nation’s will, manifested through bil-lions of dollars spent, years and years of occu-pation, and, in some cases, scores of lives lost.

Other advocates of nation building agree.According to Stephen Krasner, “The acceptedinternational practices to promote democracy . . .haven’t proved to be all that satisfactory.” In 2003Krasner admitted, “The simple fact is that we donot know how to do democracy building.”104

Unless our knowledge has grown dramatically intwo years, that is not exactly inspiring languagecoming from one of the top U.S. officials incharge of democracy building.

If we intend to seriously embark on a planto build nations, we must be prepared to bearheavy costs in time, money, and even inAmerican lives—or we must be prepared to fail.As Fukuyama concedes, nation building “hasbeen most successful . . . where U.S. forces haveremained for generations. We should not getinvolved to begin with if we are not willing topay those high costs.”105

In the inadequate debate about creation ofS/CRS, the real costs of vigorously pursuing theoffice’s mandate have escaped scrutiny. Forexample, one member of the DSB’s SummerStudy team argued that S/CRS as currently pro-posed “is so small and so modest that it’s notgoing to make a difference” on the ground.106

Similarly, two of the task force reports on statefailure note that, in order for S/CRS to have anyeffect, it would need vastly more funding thanhas been requested thus far. The Council onForeign Relations report argues that S/CRSwould need up to $500 million per year, and theCenter for Global Development suggests a fig-ure of $1 billion per year.107 But even those fig-ures are far too low, given the historical costs ofnation building.

The small size and half-measure approachof S/CRS raises yet another troubling prospect.Neither the legislation establishing S/CRS northe public statements by its officers clarifywhen and where S/CRS will be authorized todeploy. Would there need to be a congressionalresolution? An executive order? If U.S. person-nel are on the ground in dangerous parts of the

world, America could become entangled in mil-itary engagements when its vital interests arenot at stake. For instance, if our nation buildersare killed in the line of duty, will there be a U.S.military response? It seems likely that Congressand the American people would demand mili-tary retaliation, and at that point the UnitedStates could become involved in either a spiral-ing military escalation (as in Vietnam) or ahumiliating retreat (as in Somalia). Both ofthose prospects are troubling and may emergeif a nation-building office obtains an institu-tional mandate without broad public support.

In a sense, the position of the more extremeof the neoimperialists is more coherent thanthat of people who think we can nation buildon the cheap. Niall Ferguson, for example, fan-tasized that a proper approach to Iraq mightrequire something on the order of 1,000,000foreign troops on the ground in Iraq for up to70 years.108 If resources were unlimited, or ifthe American people were prepared to shoul-der such burdens, one could envision a morepositive outcome for Iraq on those terms. Butthe notion that enterprises like Iraq—or evenless ambitious missions—will not be extremelycostly is badly mistaken.

And Iraq, to be sure, looms large in thedebate over postconflict reconstruction mis-sions. Many people who would otherwise notbe disposed to support the creation of anoffice like S/CRS may look at Iraq and think,“Well, if we’re going to do these types ofthings anyway, we may as well get it right.”

That is an entirely reasonable sentiment.Unfortunately, there is no reason to believethat S/CRS would have been the key to successin Iraq. Still, some observers may argue furtherthat there was a dearth of planning for Iraq, soan office like S/CRS might have headed offsome of the poor decisions made during theoccupation. That is a pernicious myth thatdeserves thorough treatment.

S&R in Iraq

As the Bush administration committednumerous errors during the occupation of

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If we intend toseriously embarkon a plan to buildnations, we mustbe prepared tobear heavy costsin time, money,and even inAmerican lives—or we must beprepared to fail.

Iraq, critics began to accuse it of having failedto plan for postwar conditions. That line ofargument became particularly sharp duringthe 2004 presidential election109 and has per-sisted since. But was there in fact a failure toplan on the part of the government?

The short answer is no. Thousands ofpages of documents on countless aspects ofpostwar S&R issues were produced, mostfamously by the State Department’s Future ofIraq project (FOI). Thomas Warrick, a careercivil servant, convened a large panel of Iraqiexiles, U.S. diplomats, academics, and otherspecialists to examine the potential problemsof and prospects for a postwar Iraq. The proj-ect was begun in April 2002 and was under-taken on Warrick’s own initiative in his role asa special adviser on Northern Gulf affairs.The FOI foresaw a number of issues thatwould need to be taken up over the course ofthe postwar S&R operations. Perhaps mostimportant, the FOI warned that grave prob-lems could emerge if the Iraqi army were dis-banded abruptly.110

While the FOI believed the postwar cir-cumstances would be perilous, the civilianleadership at the Pentagon was working fromtwo competing assumptions. According to theLos Angeles Times, officials at the Pentagonassumed that coalition forces would “inherit afully functioning modern state, with govern-ment ministries, police forces and public utili-ties in working order—a ‘plug and play’ occu-pation,” and “that the resistance would endquickly.”111 Pentagon adviser Richard Perlewould admit in the summer of 2003 that theDOD civilians’ plan centered on installingIraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi as the new leader ofIraq. In Perle’s view, had the Chalabi plan beenenacted, “we’d be in much better shapetoday.”112

Critics of the FOI point out that the proj-ect did have shortcomings, that it was not aprecise plan, and that it lacked detailed analy-ses of all aspects of a postconflict strategy forIraq.113 That is true. We are not claiming thatthe FOI had a path to victory in Iraq. Rather,we are suggesting that the FOI’s assumptionsand concerns about the postconflict environ-

ment proved to be largely accurate. Workingfrom a proper set of assumptions—such asthe notion that there would indeed be aninsurgency or that cashiering the Iraqi armywould be a disaster—when planning for secu-rity and other stabilization measures is nec-essary for success. The FOI made the rightassumptions about what the postconflictenvironment would look like; if thoseassumptions had been embraced by policy-makers, the postwar planning (and perhapseven the decision to go to war) would havebeen based on a much more sober apprecia-tion of what the United States would be fac-ing in the aftermath of the war.

As James Dobbins of the RAND Corpor-ation would say of the prewar preparations:“It’s not true that there wasn’t adequate plan-ning. There was a volume of planning. Morethan the Clinton administration did for any ofits interventions.” Dobbins added that theproblem was that DOD “should have antici-pated that when the old regime collapsed,there would be a period of disorder, a vacuumof power. . . . They should have anticipatedextremist elements would seek to fill this vacu-um of power.”114 The FOI project and otherassessments warned of just those problems.For whatever reason, the warnings wentunheeded.

Warrick, the head of the FOI, was laterasked to bring the knowledge he had gleanedfrom organizing the project to the occupationauthorities. Jay Garner, who had taken over theOffice of Reconstruction and HumanitarianAssistance in February 2003, requested thatWarrick come to Iraq and work for ORHA afterthe conflict had started. Inexplicably, the civil-ian leadership at the Pentagon blockedWarrick from accepting the appointment, andthe FOI materials remained largely unuseduntil later in the occupation, at which pointthey reportedly became the “bible” for theCoalition Provisional Authority.115

The uniformed military repeatedly voicedconcerns about the lack of postwar planningthey had at their disposal. During a presentationof the plans for the Iraq War in March 2003, themonth the war started, an Army lieutenant

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Working from a proper set of

assumptionswhen planning

for security and other

stabilization measures is

necessary for success.

colonel who was giving a Power Point presenta-tion on the war plan flipped to the slide that wasto describe the postconflict plans. The slide saidsimply “To Be Provided.”116 Gen. George Casey,who would later become the commander ofcoalition troops in Iraq, continually pressed toget access to the Phase 4 plans—the military’sname for postconflict planning. At one point,according to a senior defense official, “Casey wasscreaming, ‘Where is our Phase 4 plan?’”117 Boththe State Department and the uniformed mili-tary recognized the need for a postconflict planand made scrambling attempts to provide one.By all appearances, the leadership in thePentagon or at the White House, or both, decid-ed either to ignore the planning or to discard it.

And it was not just a case of the StateDepartment’s work not getting to the Pentagon.The U.S. Army War College conducted studieson postwar reconstruction as well. Among theinsights one of its reports offered were the fol-lowing:

• “Rebuilding Iraq will require a consider-able commitment of American resources,but the longer U.S. presence is main-tained, the more likely violent resistancewill develop.”

• “To be successful, an occupation such asthat contemplated after any hostilitiesin Iraq requires much detailed intera-gency planning, many forces, multi-yearmilitary commitment, and a nationalcommitment to nation building.”

• “An exit strategy will require the establish-ment of political stability, which will bedifficult to achieve given Iraq’s fragment-ed population, weak political institutions,and propensity for rule by violence.”

• “To tear apart the [Iraqi] Army in thewar’s aftermath could lead to the destruc-tion of one of the only forces for unitywithin the society. Breaking up large ele-ments of the army also raises the possibil-ity that demobilized soldiers could affili-ate with ethnic or tribal militias.”

• “The possibility of the United States win-ning the war and losing the peace in Iraqis real and serious. Rehabilitating Iraq

will consequently be an important chal-lenge that threatens to consume hugeamounts of resources without guaran-teed results.”118

The institutional knowledge within theWar College regarding the general difficulty ofS&R operations went at least as far back as1995. In that year James T. Quinlivan of RANDpublished an article in Parameters simply titled“Force Requirements in Stability Operations.”Among the many prescient warnings were thefollowing:

• “In any stability operation it is almostcertain that the force devoted to estab-lishing order will [need to] be both larg-er in numerical terms than the forcesdedicated to field combat and morealigned to political aspects of a ‘heartsand minds’ concept of operations.”

• “Very few states have populations sosmall that they could be stabilized withmodest-sized forces.”

• “Unless the capital city is quickly broughtunder both control and visible order, thecredibility—locally and globally—of theintervention as a force for stability drainsaway together with whatever politicallegitimacy the intervention possessed.”

• “Force ratios larger than ten membersof the security forces for every thousandof population are not uncommon incurrent operations. . . . Sustaining a sta-bilizing force at such a force ratio for acity as large as one million . . . couldrequire a deployment of about a quarterof all regular infantry battalions in theU.S. Army.”119

Quinlivan went on to point out that theUnited States itself boasts roughly 2.3 policeofficers per 1,000 population. Troop levels inIraq have hovered near 5 troops per 1,000indigens since the invasion. To suppose thatthe maintenance of order in postwar Iraqwould require only twice as many securityforces as there are police in the United Statesseems an absurd leap of faith.

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The uniformedmilitary repeatedly voicedconcerns aboutthe lack of postwar planningfor Iraq.

But perhaps the most damning fact is thatthe president’s own National Security Councildrafted a memo in February 2003 assessingthe historical record and suggesting that, ifhistorical precedent were followed, 500,000troops would be necessary to successfully pur-sue stabilization and reconstruction in Iraq.120

It is unclear whether that report made it to thepresident himself, but then–national securityadviser Condoleezza Rice did read the memo.Here again, the assessment was either ignoredor dismissed.

An open discussion about the extremelyhigh costs of the project in Iraq might havegreatly damaged the case for war. The com-mon theme running through essentially all ofthe postwar planning was that the project inIraq was going to be incredibly difficult andrequire a great deal of resources and sacrifice.Contrast that view with the view of the civilianleadership at the Pentagon at that time. ThePentagon believed that, by and large, resis-tance would be light and that a new liberalIraqi leader could be implanted without agreat deal of trouble. Accordingly, it appearsthat the Pentagon brushed aside pessimisticassessments from the Department of Stateand the War College as unduly negative. It isunclear how or why all of that would havebeen avoided had S/CRS existed at the time.Political decisions were made, and the admin-istration decided to work from an optimisticset of assumptions.

Although President Bush recently designat-ed S/CRS as the lead office in postconflictreconstruction projects, including the ongoingoperations in Iraq, S/CRS officials have offeredno revolutionary plan for fixing Iraq. Moreover,according to a senior State Department official,S/CRS was not designed with situations likeIraq in mind because the State Department“doesn’t foresee any more Iraqs.” Instead,according to the official, S/CRS was intendedto handle crises in places like “Monrovia[Liberia], Freetown [Sierra Leone], Haiti.”121

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmedthat vision during a Town Hall Meeting at theState Department in June 2005. Rice stated thatS/CRS is “working, right now, for instance on a

plan for Sudan because it is our hope that atsome point, we’ll be in a post-conflict stabiliza-tion phase in Sudan. We know that we’re goingto face this in Liberia. We’re doing it in Haiti.”122

The fledgling S/CRS office has alreadycaused controversy by apparently makingregime change in Cuba part of its portfolio inaddition to the humanitarian operations fore-seen in Liberia and Sudan. Caleb McCarry wasappointed as the Cuba coordinator for S/CRSon the recommendation of the Commissionfor Assistance for a Free Cuba, a group thatseeks to “accelerate the demise of Castro’styranny.” McCarry quickly introduced a planfor Cuba that the United States Institute forPeace, a government-funded think tank,denounced as “an exercise in destabilization,not stabilization.”123

None of that has stopped S/CRS’s leader-ship from dropping hints that the real valueof their office is that it would have been ableto save Iraq. During testimony before theSenate Foreign Relations Committee in June2005, Carlos Pascual, the coordinator for sta-bilization and reconstruction, suggested that

in the case of Iraq, by changing thedynamics enough to allow just one divi-sion to leave one month early we wouldhave saved $1.2 billion. We save hun-dreds of millions by allowing peacekeep-ers to end operations sooner. Fundingthe types of initiatives S/CRS is develop-ing is not only an investment in peaceand democracy; it saves money. Evenmore importantly, it saves lives byremoving our troops from harm’s way.We owe it to our troops, to the Americanpeople, to our national prestige, and tothose around the world who struggle toemerge from conflict, to improve ourcapabilities.124

It is very difficult to believe that $100 mil-lion given to a small office in the StateDepartment could have saved billions in alarge and fractious country like Iraq by bring-ing U.S. troops home sooner. Iraqis still har-bor deep-seated and animating political differ-

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An open discussion about

the extremelyhigh costs of the

project in Iraqmight have

greatly damagedthe case for war.

ences. They are largely hostile toward interfer-ence by outsiders, having suffered exploitationby the Ottoman Empire and more recently bythe British Empire. The ability of outsidediplomats to make those problems evaporateseems dubious—take, for example, the earnestlabors of a host of American diplomats whohave attempted (and are still attempting) toreconcile the conflicts in Palestine and Israel,Bosnia, and elsewhere.

Indeed, given that virtually all of the empir-ical evidence indicates that successful nationbuilding is predicated on the ability to stay in-country for a very long time with many troopsand a large amount of money, it is unclearhow Pascual could support his testimony.Moreover, given that the State Department’sown personnel have as much as admitted thatS/CRS has no unique insight to offer on theIraq mission, and given that they have saidthat they seek not to work in strategicallyimportant countries such as Iraq but rather instrategically detached countries such as SierraLeone and Liberia, it is hard to take Pascual’sargument seriously. A permanent office likeS/CRS would place greater demands on themilitary. The likely result is more U.S. troops inmore theaters abroad for long periods of time.

Conclusion

People who favor S/CRS envision the worldas both more threatening and simpler than itactually is. It is not as threatening as they see it,because their fear of failed states is largelyoverblown: failed states most often do not rep-resent security threats. At the same time, theworld is vastly more complex than they wouldhave it: nation building in failed states isextremely difficult; again, in Krasner’s words,“The simple fact is that we do not know how todo democracy-building.” Most often, attemptsat nation building have resulted in billions ofdollars spent, a distraction from genuine issuesof national security, and failure, even on thenation builders’ own terms.

If it were to materialize, there is certainly apoint at which Robert Kaplan’s “coming

anarchy” would threaten American interests.For example, Niall Ferguson supposes that, ifAmerica were to step back from its role as aglobal policeman, the world would be char-acterized by

Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incip-ient anarchy. A coming retreat into forti-fied cities. These are the Dark Age experi-ences that a world without a hyperpowermight quickly find itself reliving.125

But that hypothetical is unfounded andsilly. To find a historical precedent on whichto base his argument, Ferguson had to reachback to the ninth century. Ferguson’s predic-tion of a “Dark Age” hinges on a belief thatAmerica will collapse (because of excessiveconsumption, an inadequately large army, andan “attention deficit” in regard to its empire),the European Union will collapse (because ofan inflexible welfare state and shifting demo-graphics), and China will collapse (because ofa currency or banking crisis).126 In fact, there islittle reason to believe that the world willdescend down this path if America hews to arestrained foreign policy focused on preserv-ing American national security and advancingvital U.S. interests.

The world has made great strides in bothpolitical and economic freedom in recentyears, and direct American intervention hasrarely been a factor. Obviously, the collapseof the eastern bloc at the end of the Cold Warcaused a precipitous advance in freedom—both political and economic—without U.S.officials on the ground attempting to directthe change. But even taking the end of theCold War into account, between 1994 and2004 the world continued to make advances.According to Freedom House, 46 percent ofthe world’s countries are politically “free” asopposed to 40 percent in 1994.127 The num-bers of “partly free” and “not free” countrieshave declined since 1994.

Similarly, economic liberalization contin-ues to move forward. According to the 2005edition of the Economic Freedom of the WorldAnnual Report, average economic freedom has

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A permanentoffice like S/CRSwould placegreater demandson the military.The likely resultis more U.S.troops in moretheaters abroadfor long periodsof time.