Sign Up for ASP Alerts This essay is part of the ongoing American Security Project series, Iraq: Lessons Learned. Read more essays in this series here.
By Morton H. Halperin
December 20, 2007
America needs a new agency dedicated to helping failed states create and sustain the institutions needed to restore order and begin the process of reconstruction and development; one with the capacity to perform reconstruction responsibilities with an adequate budget, a mandate from the Congress and a career service. It also needs the authority to call up skilled manpower from our civilian society, as the military does.
After the U.S.-led military victory in Iraq, the United States was as unprepared for what followed as it was in Bosnia, in Haiti, and in Kosovo, to name only three previous military interventions. In each case, during the months of planning for military intervention, there was no authoritative planning for what would need to follow. Many agencies planned for the reconstruction of each country, as the State Department did for Iraq. However, they did so without any clear mandate from the President and without a budget and a staff designed for these responsibilities.
The post-war tasks that need to be performed are by now well known. Most urgently, law and order needs to be established. This means real police not military “police” who are trained for totally different functions, and it means quickly standing up an improvised criminal justice and prison system. Then – urgently – training needs to begin to create indigenous institutions to perform these and many other tasks, including drafting a constitution, running free and fair elections, and moving the economy forward.
The lesson of Iraq should be clear. The military does not have the capacity to perform
these tasks and putting together an ad-hoc reconstruction process is counter-productive and inefficient. The Bush administration tried to deal with this problem by setting up a “coordinating mechanism” in the State Department, but this solution is far from sufficient. We need a new agency for failed states.
This agency would be created by bringing together elements of existing agencies with operational capacity and budget authority, including the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in USAID, part of the Refugee Bureau in the State Department and other functions scattered throughout State, the Justice Department, and other agencies.
If such an agency were created it could begin planning for post-combat operations at the same time the military begins planning for its intervention. Knowing that it would be in charge of this process, the agency could recruit people in-country and begin the process of training them for positions in the indigenous entities that would be urgently required, including local police. The agency could also call up and provide language and other training for police and other personnel to deal with the immediate aftermath of the intervention.
When the Cold War began we recognized that we did not have the institutions that we needed to face this new threat and we created a host of new agencies, including the Air Force, the Department of Defense, the CIA and, later, USAID and USIA. Since the Cold War ended, and even since 9/11, we have created only a single new agency – the Department of Homeland Security – despite profound changes in the international environment. Moving the boxes around to create a new department or creating a new “coordinating mechanism” is not a substitute for building a real agency with a career staff, congressionally approved mandate and budget.
Indeed, we need several new agencies to address the emerging threats and opportunities of the 21st century, but the clearest requirement, well illustrated by the Iraq experience, is for a civilian agency to guide post-conflict transition. We always think the current crisis will be the last, but it will not and we should not make this mistake again.
Morton H. Halperin is Director of U.S. Advocacy at the Open Society Institute and Executive Director of the Open Society Policy Center. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Dr. Halperin served in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations, most recently as Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State (1998-2001). From 1975-92, Dr. Halperin directed the Center for National Security Studies, a project of the American Civil Liberties Union which sought to reconcile requirements of national security with civil liberties. From 1984-92, he also directed the Washington Office of the ACLU where he was responsible for its national legislative program. Dr. Halperin has published a number of books, including Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, The Democracy Advantage, and Protecting Democracy.
Submit your comment