Nation-Building is Dead. Long Live Nation-Building! November 10, 2021
The return of the Taliban after the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan led to a torrent of post-mortems. But they often missed an important lesson: that nation-building can be enormously beneficial for the post-conflict countries and for the rest of us – if only we could figure out how to do it.
On July 8, 2021, President Joe Biden
stated plainly,
the United States had "achieved [our] objectives. …We did not go to
Afghanistan to nation-build. …How many thousands more of America’s daughters and sons are
you willing to risk? …Would you send your own son or daughter?"
In the early 2000s,
Biden was a supporter of nation-building – post-conflict reconstruction by an
outside force. But his views on Afghanistan evolved
over time. He was joined by his national security advisor, Jake
Sullivan, and many scholars
and practitioners. The sense was that an enormously difficult
task was made impossible
by unforced errors. The President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, literally wrote the book on Fixing Failed States. National
leaders, he concluded, need to work with their own citizens and with
international actors. But optimism and a plan were not sufficient for Ghani or
Afghanistan.
Nation-Building
is dead
Failures of
nation-building in Iraq after 2003 were documented by NATO insiders in Baghdad and the provinces, journalists, and government personnel from the State
Department, Congress, and the Pentagon. Analyses from Afghanistan by diplomats, journalists, and the military identified a similar depth and breadth of problems. Meanwhile, any
modest success in 1990s nation-building cases like Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti remained
partial and tenuous at best.
If learning was essential, it was too often lacking. Both postwar Germany and Japan and the long list of later cases were rejected as useful models. Some think-tank reports
from the early 2000s offered long, detailed how-to lists and in-country experts offered their advice – advice still being offered more than fifteen years later. One democracy scholar judged it "remarkable…how little institutional learning there has been over
time."
Failure
matters
The August 2021 chaos
and violence at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul highlighted the broader
difficulties in nation-building. Since 2001, millions of Afghans and Iraqis
fled their homes; hundreds of thousands were killed. The U.S. withdrawal
upended the lives of countless Afghans who had been committed for twenty years
to rebuilding their country. Like ISIS and Iranian-backed militias that emerged
in Iraq, the failure in Afghanistan allowed the return of the Taliban. Nearly
two million U.S. troops served in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 14,000 U.S. service members and contractors were killed, in addition
to US and NATO allies, aid workers, and journalists – and untold numbers of
local civilians, military, and police.
Beyond the human toll
are geopolitical effects. China now has an opportunity to sweep Afghanistan into
its Belt and Road Initiative, for example, while allies and foes alike ask
whether the Biden Administration has adopted its own "America First"
foreign policy.
If not
nation-building, then what?
Overthrowing Saddam Hussein and the
Taliban and pursuing al Qaeda were not intended primarily for the benefit of Iraqis
and Afghans. But George W. Bush, Barack Obama,
and Joe Biden
– like Henry Stimson after World War II – all recognized that the political,
economic, and social efforts that followed regime change were to improve the
lives of the locals and to improve the U.S. and global security.
The successes of Japan and [West]
Germany after World War II remain the gold standard of nation-building. Germany
and Japan were powerful, literate, industrialized, bureaucratic states that
wreaked havoc in the first half of the 20th century before they were
crushed in war. Which – and whose – postwar efforts were most essential can be debated.
But within two generations, both were peaceful, prosperous, democratic Western
allies.
Iraq had a chance
By 2003, Iraq was rattled from decades
of violence, ethnic and secular divisions, a ravaged economy, and difficult
neighbors. But it was a developed country in need of a new system of
government. It had oil reserves and millennia of civilization to build upon. However
difficult, risky, or unlikely, some kind of post-Saddam success story was never
impossible.
Debating whether nation-building was
the right choice, and criticism of the many mistakes, are entirely fair. But if
over the course of a couple of generations Iraq could have developed into a
peaceful, prosperous, democracy integrated into the community of like states,
it would have been enormously good not only for the U.S. and others but for
the people of Iraq most of all.
Afghanistan was
not Iraq
Afghanistan was not a modern-but-broken
state. It was one of the least developed countries in the world. Efforts were
often construction, not reconstruction. Toppling
the Taliban government, degrading al Qaeda, and capturing Osama bin Laden were
reasonable goals. The rapid, wholesale transformation of Afghanistan was a
different question.
And yet for many years, Americans,
allies, and Afghans worked to do just that in politics, media, education, women's
rights, environmental issues, and more. To journalist
and Afghan veteran Nolan Peterson, "By giving the Afghans a taste of
democracy for 20 years, we have sown the expectation of freedom in their
minds."
Long live Nation-Building
Successful nation-building benefits
the host country and the foreign powers that are trying to reshape that
country. People born in occupied Japan and [West] Germany grew up in countries
that were generally peaceful, democratic, and improving. They raised their own children
in countries that were becoming rich, democratic, and global powers. Their neighbors
benefitted from these transformations as well.
Failed states, civil wars, and regime
change – maybe environmental disasters from climate change – will require the
international community to provide emergency relief and then decide what
happens next. Should that help come from Russia or China in their own
interests? Or in what we used to call "Western" interests – a path
promoting peace, prosperity, democracy, and global integration?
Since the end of the Cold War, we have
not discovered "laws" of nation-building, though we keep trying to learn. We have not determined or mustered
the right kinds of political will and skill from the foreign powers or from the
host countries. It can't be just luck – Germany and Japan were real cases that
made historic transitions. Countries like Timor-Leste and Namibia, in UN-led nation-building efforts, have made real
progress.
But without the ability to help a shattered country rebuild, we miss very important humanitarian, democratic, and security tools. Peaceful, prosperous, and democratic is good for any postwar country – and for the rest of us.
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Orion Policy Institute (OPI) is an independent, non-profit, tax-exempt think tank focusing on a broad range of issues at the local, national, and global levels. OPI does not take institutional policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions represented herein should be understood to be solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of OPI.
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