Nation Building

[Taylor]

Definition? Effective or ineffective? Yes or no?

 

[Major Miner II]

Definition? Effective or ineffective? Yes or no?

Depends on who you ask and when.

Campaigning GW Bush? Ineffective and a waste of American time, resources and lives.

President GW Bush? Perfectly fine as long as he gots to kill himself a Saddam to avenge his daddy.

 

[Taylor]

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.

 

[Major Miner II]

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.

Nationbuilding makes about as much sense as taking charitable efforts to another country before you've fixed that major deficiencies in your own.

It's nothing more than self-serving grandstanding and proves that you really don't give a rat's ass about the people who make up your society.

 

[Taylor]

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.

 

[Major Miner II]

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.

Nation expanding would have served the country better.

Did you just read a book or something or watch a History Channel special and feel the need to express your new found "knowledge"?

 

[Taylor]

I've been researching the topic for the past couple weeks. In 2003, RAND stated that the U.S. has been involved in one new nation building effort every two years since the end of the Cold War. Because nation building is a drain on U.S. resources and seems to be pretty unpopular, I am trying to figure how why we are doing it so often--why we are still doing it.

 

[hen]

Romans were asking the same thing a while back.

 

[Taylor]

It's a good point--but would you call their efforts nation building? Seems like expansionism. With nation building, the goal is to institute political and economic reforms, stabilize the country, and then leave. The Romans simply added the new territory to their empire.

Senator Kaufman (D-Del) just published a good op-ed in Foreign Affairs on this subject. He begins by agreeing with SECDEF Gates' assessment that failed states are "the main security challenge of our time." In the article, Kaufman observes:

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.

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.

My question is, if a consensus exists, why isn’t this imbalance being addressed? What is the best way to address this issue? Altering resource allocation? Who's running this showboat, anyway?

Article is here: Send in the Civilians.

 

[hen]

I skimmed your post.

There were no less nation builiding than the resource hungry USA. Romans would argue they brought plumbing, hot baths, straight roads, trade links and work in the fields or in the legion. It's essentially the same except the Romans plundered Gaia less.

 

[Orgional Farimir]

The reason we were able to re build Germany, Japan, Italy, Western Europe, and so, but not Vietnam or Iraq is because of the different styles of fighting in the war.

Pre Vietnam war it was auctually OK for our armed forces to do their job and kill the enemy. Now there is a medal for NOT shooting your weapon. War is dirty, deadly, nasty, and extremly ugly, but it is necessary.

If you want to be able to re build a nation after the war you HAVE to go in a level it first. Try to kill the least amount of innocents as possible, but know that it WILL happen. Then instead of withdrawing all of the troops from the conquered area leave troops there so the bad guy can NOT come back in.

What would of happened in WWII if we decided to remove all of our troops from Quadalcanal after we took it from Japan.