Fighting Wars And Building Nations

The Republicans in the House of Representatives are cranked up to cut the American foreign aid budge with a particular emphasis on payments to the UN.  To say the Obama administration and the UN high command are opposed to the idea is to state the obvious.

Today, even as the greatly feared shutdown looms, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was on the Hill making his case for the US not to cut funding to the organization.  He reportedly met with a solid Republican wall of opposition.  Even Ban's statement that he had ordered his "managers" to take a whopping three percent cut in operating budgets gained no traction with the stony faced elephants.  No surprise there, given the willingness of some Republicans to take a much bigger whack out of domestic programs.

By and large it is difficult to justify the enormous amount of money paid over to the UN by the American taxpayer, present and future.  Most of the bucks are provided without any strings or even the pretense of effective oversight and accounting.  Many of the dead presidents are spent to the advantage of countries and programs antithetical to US interests.  More are simply siphoned away in the great morass of inefficiency, graft, corruption, and general misfeasance which has characterized so many UN programs for decades.

The money expended on so-called "peacekeeping" activities is wasted at the least.  Few if any of these actions have protected those most in need.  Few have actually kept peace.  Even fewer have imposed peace where such was the greatest necessity next to oxygen in keeping people alive.  With the general exception of Western forces deployed under blue helmets, many of the UN contingents are best noted for their ability to loot, plunder, rape, and contribute to the atmosphere of fear which permeates all combat zones.

Overall, American contributions to the UN should, like foreign aid programs generally, contribute to the achievement of US national interests and policy goals.  To do otherwise is simply stupid.  The Republicans are correct in historical terms by insisting a direct and material link between foreign aid, including UN payments, and our national and strategic interests.

Of course, it can be difficult to the point of impossibility to determine if any given foreign aid program is actually facilitating US interests.  For example, have the billions of bucks extorted from Uncle Sam by one Pakistani government after another really done much to advance critical American interests in the region?  Or, have the billions of tribute served by nightfall to destabilize the sub-continent, further the growth of the Pakistani nuclear program, and served to multiply the internal frictions of the Pakistani public?

The difficulties attendant upon assessing the benefits of direct, bi-lateral aid are multiplied when considering programs administered by the UN which are partially funded by the US.  The several semi-autonomous or completely independent subsidiary bodies of the UN along with the many programs run under the auspices of the Secretariat serve to further complicate the task of evaluating the diplomatic bang purchased by the taxpayer buck.

This is not to state that the Republican notion of treating the UN as a cafeteria where we would pay for what we approved of or what best served our short-term interests while ignoring the rest constitutes the best or most effective solution to the current problem.  Nor does it imply that an exercise in tying UN reforms to the amount of American funding would improve the situation significantly.

There is, however, a very important reason for the US to keep money flowing to the UN.  The reason allows for the creation of more effective and appropriate means of measuring success--and consistency with larger US national interests and policy goals.  It might even allow for saving money over in the Pentagon budget.

The evaluation of what the UN can do better than the US acting alone or in partnership with a limited number of associated states must start with a ground truth.  This is simply that there is a vast gulf between fighting wars and building nations.

When the US under both George W. Bush and the current administration failed to make the necessary distinction in the Afghan context, the result has been, if not failure, then an incomplete success at best.  As a well presented piece in RCP underscores, the American military services exist to fight wars--not build nations or states.  On the other hand the UN along with relevant regional entities is perfectly situated to engage in the long duration mission of trying to build a functioning nation and, ultimately, nation-state from the rubble of a failed state or a tribal agglutination which never quite reached nation status.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Army and Marine Corps have spent entirely too much time, energy, and money on providing governance to the locals.  Rather than concentrating with total intensity on the mission of defeating the enemy, a task which requires some limited excursions into the sphere of governmental services, the ground combat forces have been tasked with addressing the full ambit of governance needs and aspirations until the indigenous regime has been able to take over.

The diversion of effort along with the inevitable frustrations when the foreigners could not provide all that the locals might wish for have crippled the war fighting effort severely.  From the moment the very first American boot hit the ground in Afghanistan (or Iraq) the tasks of governing, of providing essential services other than physical security, should have devolved on some agency other than the US military.  Whether this agency should have been part of the US State Department acting solo or the US acting in tandem with a coalition is open to debate.  What is not open to debate is the requirement for an entity outside the Pentagon to undertake the manifold tasks of nation-building.

The Republicans would be very well advised to stop and think about just how the UN could participate or even take the lead in the nation-building tasks of today and into the future.  That the endless chore of building or rebuilding states will be with us for a long time to come is as evident as the headlines from Libya or the Ivory Coast or Yemen.

There is an ironic symmetry in the idea of the UN being the lead agency in global nation-building missions.  It is rather like placing an impossible task in front of an entity which can do very little, if anything, well or quickly.  But, the record of attempts at building nations by outside actors hints at the probability of a bungling, slow moving, and contradiction riddled agency such as the UN being more successful at the task than would be a fast acting, take-charge-and-move-out model of efficiency.

Military forces are intended to move fast, strike hard, to kill people and break things with minimum losses to themselves.  The UN and other international agencies along with NGOs are infinitely better suited to the long term and often futile jobs such as trying to build a functioning nation-state from unpromising materials.  It would be in the best interests of the US--and the Republicans--to understand this and provide the necessary support to the UN and others.

In a similar calculus, the use of money in bi-lateral aid with the intent of keeping a nation-state viable is a lot cheaper in both treasure and lives than waiting for implosion and its consequences.  It is also far preferable to spend foreign aid dollars in the effort to keep a moderate Muslim state intact and developing than it is to wait for the advocates of violent political Islam to make their play for power.  To update an ancient cliche: A few millions of bucks worth of prevention is far better than billions of bucks of cure.

This orientation--prevention of instability or hostility by promoting development in a moderate political context--implies that at least some of the more chest-thumping Republicans would be very well advised to rethink the emphasis on foreign military aid as opposed to money spent on civilian projects.  It is hard to see where any military aid expended since the end of the Cold War has furthered American interests and accomplished meaningful policy goals.

The same may be said of some of the very big ticket items in the category of development assistance.  All too often the US aid dollars have gone to glitzy projects much beloved of the recipient regime's elite but of no utility to the average citizen.  At the same time major benefits may have accrued to American businesses but few have gone to the local hoi polloi.

This dreary but all too accurate picture implies that the best use of American foreign aid money is to be found either in regional development efforts or in small scale but carefully targeted projects which can be sustained by the locals and will directly and obviously benefit the same locals.  This sort of project is never big ticket and lacks glitz and glamor.  It does have the upside of actually advancing the overarching American interest in stability and evolution in the recipient society and its polity.

Stable and predictable evolution in an economy, a society, and its polity means the probability of either state failure or the takeover of the state by an extreme ideology is minimal to nonexistent.  That, in turn, means wars which will remain unfought, interventions that will be forever unnecessary, and exercises in nation-rebuilding which will never occur.  Whether undertaken bi-laterally or through a regional organization or even by the UN, this approach would mean that over the long-term, the US saves money and accomplishes interest based policy goals.

And, that, bucko, is far better than the Nancy Reagan alternative--"Just say no," currently espoused by the House Republicans.  It is also far better than the Obama administration's approach of, "Shut up and give over the money."