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The NeoCon Pax America recognized that it needs to manage its
territorial conquests better than it did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not to worry. They’ve been working on that. It seems that these folks are not counting on utilizing the
UN in the future. KwC A Quiet Transformation OpEd by David
Ignatius, Washington Post, Wednesday, May 18, 2005; A17 As the United States
was struggling with the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, the historian Niall
Ferguson published a book arguing that America needed the modern equivalent of
the old British Colonial Office to build political stability in far-flung places.
The U.S. military was good at breaking things, he suggested in
"Colossus," but not so good at putting them back together. Nobody in the Bush
administration would endorse the neo-imperial language of Ferguson's argument.
But behind the scenes, the administration is debating a range of major policy
changes that would move in that direction -- transforming the military
services, the State Department and other agencies in ways that would help the
United States do better what it botched so badly in Iraq. Don't call it the
"Colonial Office," but in many ways, that's a model for the kind of
far-flung stabilization force that officials are discussing. The driver for these
changes, as with so much else in Washington, is the administration's equivalent
of the Energizer Bunny, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The debate is mostly
taking place out of view among a small group of defense and foreign policy
experts. But it involves issues that are crucial for the future of the country.
So here's a primer, based on unclassified reports that are mostly available on
the Internet. The most creative
analysis is a study that Rumsfeld requested last year from the elite Defense Science Board. Released in December and titled
"Transition to and from Hostilities," the study is a blueprint for
changes across the government that would give the United States the
nation-building capability it has too often lacked in Iraq. The Pentagon study
starts with the premise that Afghanistan and Iraq are not isolated problems. Since the end of the Cold War, the study
notes, the United States has embarked on stabilization and reconstruction
operations every 18 to 24 months. And these are hardly quick-hit deployments; in fact, they typically last five to eight years. The problem is that America has conducted
these slow reconstruction efforts with military forces that are trained and
equipped for rapid, devastating assault. That mismatch is at the heart of U.S.
problems in Iraq. The first
recommendation by the Defense Science Board was that the military apply its
genius for logistics and management to peacemaking as well as war-fighting. The
study urged a new contingency planning process to identify countries where U.S.
intervention might be necessary -- and to make sure U.S. forces have the
necessary language skills, area knowledge and civil affairs expertise. Again,
these were precisely the reconstruction tools U.S. forces lacked as they raced
to Baghdad in March 2003. The study noted pointedly that in 2004 the Defense
Department had 6,723 French speakers, 6,931 German speakers, 4,194 Russian
speakers -- and only 2,864 Arabic speakers. In a recommendation
that surely gave heartburn to Army generals who hold tight to their traditional
war-fighting mission, the study stressed: "Stabilization and reconstruction
missions must become a core competency of both the Departments of Defense and
State. The military services need to reshape and rebalance their forces to
provide a stabilization and reconstruction capability." The Defense Science
Board study tracks arguments made by the most influential defense intellectual
writing these days, Thomas
P.M. Barnett.
He argued last year in "The
Pentagon's New Map"
that the U.S. military should be divided into two forces that reflect its
differing missions: a
"Leviathan" force, centered around the Air Force and Navy, that could
apply overwhelming power quickly anywhere in the world; and what he called a
"System Administrator" force, based in the Army and Marines, that
could win the decisive battle to stabilize and rebuild nations in the aftermath
of conflict. These radical
post-Iraq ideas are beginning to take root. At the State Department, there's a
new Office of the
Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization under director Carlos Pascual. It has just 40
people at this stage, but it's beginning to coordinate activities of the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA
and the Agency for International Development, so that the chaotic mismanagement of the
initial Iraq reconstruction effort isn't repeated. Meanwhile, Republican Sen.
Richard Lugar and Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden have joined to sponsor a bill
that would put many of the recommendations of the Defense Science Board study
into law. Ferguson wondered in
"Colossus" whether the United States had the aptitude, patience or
financial resources to operate what would amount to a 21st-century imperial
system. That remains the crucial question. It would be a mistake
for America to transform its military services for a mission the public doesn't
understand or support.
Rumsfeld is asking the right questions about what America should learn from its
setbacks in Iraq, but the
country as a whole must join in the debate. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701327.html |
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