The recent experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has soured most Americans on “nation-building”—or what should more properly be called institution-building or state-building. This aversion is understandable but misguided. Recent experience should lead us to redouble our commitment to helping allies build stable, legitimate, and effective institutions because the cost of failure is high.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, state-building was making decent progress before President Obama unwisely decided to reduce U.S. troop commitments—in the case of Iraq, pulling out completely. By 2011, after years of costly stumbles and missteps, Iraq was relatively peaceful and stable, and its political institutions were functioning. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had been all but defeated. Shiite extremists had seen their influence wane. No less a figure than Vice President Biden said in 2010: “I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration… You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”
Biden was right, but that achievement was undone by the removal of U.S. troops which had performed a critical stabilizing role even after they had stopped going into combat on a regular basis. Without effective American oversight, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pursued a Shiite sectarian agenda that alienated Sunnis and led to the rise of ISIS. Today, with Iraqi and Kurdish forces assaulting Mosul, the last ISIS bastion in Iraq, it is imperative to build a more stable state structure or risk a repeat to the turmoil of the 2003-2007 and 2012-2014 periods, which allowed jihadist fanatics to seize control of the entire “Sunni Triangle.”
Such a state will not arise on its own–not with the Iranian-backed Shiite extremists so determined to impose their own sectarian agenda. It will require active American intervention and oversight. Keeping a substantial force of U.S. troops in Iraq will be a sine qua non for exercising influence, but troop presence by itself it will not be sufficient. In other states around the greater Middle East–in particular, utterly chaotic lands such as Yemen, Somalia, and Libya–the U.S. will not send large numbers of troops, but must still somehow strive to create stability or else become locked into a losing battle against terrorists. Drone strikes are insufficient to win such conflicts; individual terrorist leaders can be killed, but they can be easily replaced as long as there is no moderate government capable of exercising control over its territory.
That brings us back to state-building–the only way to win lasting victories against terrorist organizations that flourish in ungoverned space. The U.S. has had considerable nation-building successes from Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and, more recently, El Salvador and Colombia, but it remains a nation-builder in denial. We shy away from the task and thus are ill-prepared to deal with the challenges that we confront.
Last weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an important essay to help us do better in this critical realm of national security. The authors are Roger B. Myerson, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, and J. Kael Weston, a State Department official with years of distinguished experience on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. They offer some common sense tips for improving our performance at state-building, including “avoid centralization” and “push for power-sharing.” Attempts to centralize power in Baghdad and Kabul have floundered; much better to spread power around to the provinces.
Their most important recommendation is to “staff up.”
“The U.S. needs a new agency devoted explicitly to state-building missions,” they wrote, “with its own deep bench of Americans with specialized skills. These experts would combine knowledge of local governance, financial savvy, managerial skill and linguistic ability, along with the basic military training necessary to operate confidently in conflict zones.”
I have been making the same argument since 2003. In June, former USAID official Michale Miklaucic and I published a Council on Foreign Relations Policy Innovation Memorandum suggesting that USAID should be repurposed into a state-guiding agency focused on bolstering government institutions in countries of strategic concern to the United States.
Such recommendations run counter to the Washington aversion to “nation-building.” But we will never prevail in the war on terrorism until we recognize the need to help build functioning states rather than simply playing whack-a-mole with terrorists.
