Depends on who you ask and when.Definition? Effective or ineffective? Yes or no?
Nationbuilding makes about as much sense as taking charitable efforts to another country before you've fixed that major deficiencies in your own.Nation building efforts were successful in Japan, Germany, Italy, post-war Western Europe, Bosnia, and Kosovo. However, balanced against Vietnam and Iraq, I am not sure if our success outweighs the failures. I'm trying to find out why we were successful in some instances and not others.
In the Iraq example, I think a major problem has been relying almost exclusively on the Defense Department. Nation building begins with military intervention, but the substance of development efforts are political stability and economic prosperity. DoD has no expertise in developing culturally-relevant political institutions or planning economies. It's no wonder our efforts have progressed so poorly.
Back in the 1950s, nation building was a collaborative effort between the U.S. government, NGOs, humanitarian and religious groups, academic institutions, and businesses, as well as the United Nations and other international partners. Recently, however, the U.S. has tried to act unilaterally through DoD-led efforts. I think that greater interagency cooperation, not to mention collaboration with NGOs, business, etc., would greatly enhance the likelihood of successful development in Iraq.
Nation expanding would have served the country better.In some instances, certainly. I strongly resist nation building for humanitarian purposes. From my perspective, every country--the U.S., included--has one moral responsibility: to advance the interests of its own citizens.
That said, sometimes development efforts are necessary in order to advance national security interests. U.S. efforts in Japan and Germany, for example, limited the spread of Soviet communism--at the time, America's most important national security threat. Had the U.S. become completely isolated, it would never have survived the Cold War.
This statement reflects a growing sentiment that U.S.-led development efforts are too dependent on DOD. Kaufman believes that we should invest more in civilian development personnel. Policymakers and senior decision makers appear to share the perspective cited above vis-à-vis balancing military and civilian development personnel.A major challenge to interagency cooperation is the discrepancy between the size of civilian and military staffs. The United States needs more diplomats and development professionals to serve around the world -- especially in Afghanistan, where there are nearly 100,000 U.S. soldiers but barely 1,000 U.S. civilians.