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There aren’t any real surprises here except, who’s saying
it and perhaps, the second and third recommendations below, in bold: Quote: “In nation-building, Mr. Dobbins and his
Rand colleagues have concluded that larger peacekeeping forces are better than smaller
ones. Not only do small peacekeeping forces encourage potential adversaries to
think they can challenge the peacekeepers but they also force the peacekeepers
to rely more on firepower to make
up for their limited numbers, raising the risk
of civilian casualties and increased disaffection among the
population. "The highest levels of casualties have occurred in the
operations with the lowest levels of U.S. troops, suggesting an inverse ratio
between force levels and the level or risk," the Rand book notes. Quote: "Occupied people look first for
security," Mr. Dobbins said. "If you provide security, they will
provide cooperation," he added. "If you are not providing security,
they will remain passive, uncommitted and will allow extremists to circulate in
their midst." Quote: "A provisional government does seem
to me to be feasible and almost inevitable," Mr. Dobbins said. "The
opportunity to be able to more methodically put in place the prerequisites for
a genuine democratic system before you move to Iraqi self-government has been
lost." DISPATCHES Nation Building
in Iraq: Lessons from the Past By Michael R. Gordon, NYT, November 21, 2003
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — James
Dobbins has long been one of those troubleshooters who never seem to
miss a crisis. As the special
United States envoy for Afghanistan, Mr. Dobbins was responsible for finding and
installing a successor to the Taliban after they were toppled in 2001. During
the 1990's, Mr. Dobbins hop-scotched from one trouble spot to another as he
served as special envoy to Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia. So when he offers a critique of the Bush administration's
nation-building effort in Iraq, it is worth paying attention. Now out of
government, Mr. Dobbins, who has worked for Republican as well as Democratic
administrations, does not have a partisan ax to grind. I spoke with Mr. Dobbins after reading "America's Role in Nation-Building:
>From Germany to Iraq," which Mr. Dobbins co-wrote with
other experts at the Rand Corporation,
where he is now a senior official.
L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator of Iraq, describes the
recent book as a valuable "how to" manual on nation-building. Nevertheless, Mr. Dobbins believes that
much of the Bush administration's planning for the political and physical
reconstruction of Iraq is an object lesson in how not to go about the
nation-building task. Mr. Dobbins's basic argument is this: The Bush
administration would have been better prepared for its Iraq mission if it had
heeded the lessons of the United States' ongoing peacekeeping missions in the
Balkans and other recent nation-building efforts. Those are cases, he argues, in which the United States had
to contend with a security vacuum and the potential for ethnic strife, and
designed a force to maintain order. But the Bush administration, he argues, has such disdain for
anything associated with former President Bill Clinton that it largely ignored
useful lessons from recent United States peacekeeping operations. To the extent
it looked to history, Mr. Bush's administration turned to the American
occupation of Germany and Japan more than half a century ago. It was, Mr. Dobbins says, a costly exercise in
"political correctness."
"Iraq in 2003 looks more like Yugoslavia in 1996 than Germany and
Japan in 1945," Mr. Dobbins says. "What they have not done is look to
the models worked out in the 1990's for sharing the burden and allowing others
to participate in the management of the enterprise." Iraq poses its own unique challenges, but Mr. Dobbins argues
that the nation-building problems there more closely resemble those faced in
Bosnia and Kosovo than in Germany. Like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq is a
multi-ethnic state that was held together by a dictator. Like Bosnia and
Kosovo, it has a Muslim population. Unlike Germany, Iraq does not have an
ethnically homogenous population or a first-world economy. Nor has it been
devastated by total war. The failure to reflect on the sort of security breakdowns
and power vacuums that the United States confronted in the former Yugoslavia,
or Afghanistan and Haiti for that matter, Mr. Dobbins said, left the Bush
administration less prepared for post-Hussein Iraq than it should have been.
There is little historical support for the Defense Department's initial claim
that it would take fewer troops to occupy Iraq and stabilize the country than
to topple the Saddam Hussein regime. In nation-building, Mr. Dobbins and his Rand colleagues have
concluded that larger peacekeeping forces are better than smaller ones. Not
only do small peacekeeping forces encourage potential adversaries to think they
can challenge the peacekeepers but they also force the peacekeepers to rely
more on firepower to make up for their limited numbers, raising the risk of
civilian casualties and increased disaffection among the population. "The highest levels of casualties have occurred in the
operations with the lowest levels of U.S. troops, suggesting an inverse ratio
between force levels and the level or risk," the Rand book notes. In his book, Mr. Dobbins cites a rough strategic rule of thumb from the Balkans. It takes about 20 peacekeepers for each
1,000 civilians to safeguard the peace. Applying that rule to Iraq would yield a peacekeeping force
of more than
450,000 in Iraq,
a far cry from the 155,000 or so American and allied troops now trying to bring
the "former regime loyalists," foreign fighters, and anti-occupation
Iraqis to heel. Those are the
sorts of calculations that led the former Army chief of staff Eric K. Shinseki
to tell Congress before the war that it could take several hundreds of
thousands of troops to control Iraq. Such a force level, of course, would be hard for the United
States to sustain alone for a long period, which is why Mr. Dobbins favors a
multilateral approach. The United
States had 50 percent of the world's gross domestic product in 1945, Mr.
Dobbins notes. Not only could it
afford to finance the reconstruction of Europe and Japan, but there was no alternative.
By the 1990's, however, the share of G.D.P. was 22 percent. Sharing the burden for peacekeeping
operations, he argues, was reasonable, politically desirable and an appropriate
model for Iraq. The failure to anticipate the breakdown in order, to deploy
sufficient forces at the outset and to take a more multinational approach has
undermined the Bush administration's broader political strategy in Iraq and
limited its options, Mr. Dobbins asserts.
Mr. Bush's administration had favored an approach that called for a new
Iraqi constitution to be drafted before holding elections for a new government,
and Mr. Dobbins sees much merit in that plan. But to carry out such a methodical strategy, he says, the
United States needed a higher degree of public support and patience on the part
of ordinary Iraqis and more success in establishing security than it has been
able to achieve. "Occupied people look first for security," Mr.
Dobbins said. "If you provide security, they will provide
cooperation," he added. "If you are not providing security, they will
remain passive, uncommitted and will allow extremists to circulate in their
midst." Stung by the continued turmoil in Iraq and continued
resistance to the American role there, the Bush administration has recently
changed course: it is now seeking to establish a provisional government in
advance of a constitution. "A provisional government does seem to me to be
feasible and almost inevitable," Mr. Dobbins said. "The opportunity
to be able to more methodically put in place the prerequisites for a genuine
democratic system before you move to Iraqi self-government has been lost." There are many problems in Iraq. But
according to Mr. Dobbins's analysis, some of the American wounds have been
self-inflicted. At this point, Mr. Dobbins is urging a major course
correction. The Bush
administration, he says, should expedite three transitions. First, he says, the United States should
speed the transition to a provisional government, something the Bush
administration has recently decided to do. Second, Mr. Dobbins says, the American-led occupation
authority headed by Mr. Bremer should be replaced by an international administration,
which would be headed by a new high commissioner for Iraq. Third,
NATO should take on the peacekeeping mission in Iraq. While Mr. Dobbins believes it is important to quickly grant
the Iraqis more sovereignty by establishing a provisional government, he also
argues that a group of unelected Iraqi officials cannot be relied on to
continue the trend toward democracy.
So oversight is needed. But
it needs to be a truly international oversight, he argues, to share the burden
for the occupation and give it more legitimacy inside and outside Iraq. The Bush administration is unlikely to cede control to an
international body. One of the administration's objections, Mr. Dobbins
reports, is that such a move would enable an international organization, and
not the United States, to decide when the nation-building mission was over and
when the troops could leave. That
could mean that the effort could drag on for years, as it has in the Balkans. But given the difficulties in Iraq, a long-term commitment
to the political and physical reconstruction of Iraq and the lengthy deployment
of peacekeeping forces seem to be unavoidable. Citing the lessons of the past decade, Mr. Dobbins argues
that it will even be desirable.
Long, rather than short, engagements, he said, are more likely to
succeed. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Meanwhile, Bush2 continues to lose credibility among fiscal
conservatives as well as foreign policy hawks. Brooks had to stifle his ‘gimme a break’ laughter discussing
Bush2 on steel tariffs on Friday’s NewsHour weekly political summary. George Will has also broken ranks with
the party line. Hopefully Sec Rumsfeld ran into some straight talking GIs and field
commanders, some like the young man quoted below in a column by Lawrence Korb
at the Center for American Progress, Nov. 26th, One more chance to get it right:
“When
I was in Iraq a couple of weeks ago, an American soldier told me that if
one-time baseball team owner George Bush was judged by the baseball standard of
three strikes and you are out, he would be gone. Since we are not playing by
baseball rules, the Bush administration will get another run at pursuing an
effective policy to achieve its goals in Iraq. For the sake of this country and
the Iraqis let’s hope he gets it right this time, because at the end of the day
this is not a game. This is a matter of life and death.” |
