Nation-building

I was interested to read this piece in The Atlantic

Following up on a widely read 2003 report on U.S. nation-building efforts, the RAND Corporation has released a study of United Nations peacekeeping missions. It concludes that in many cases the UN is better suited than the United States to lead stability-building operations. The UN has a low cost structure, a high success rate, and, perhaps most important, "the greatest degree of international legitimacy" among possible peacekeepers. It has also done a better job of learning from the past than the United States—which, though it had successful experiences with nation-building in the 1990s (in Bosnia, Kosovo, and to a lesser degree Haiti), failed to apply their lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whereas UN operations are typically led by veterans of earlier missions, the authors argue, the United States "tends to staff each new operation as if it were its first and destined to be its last." And in Iraq, they write, American civil administrators were "late to arrive, of mixed competence, and not available in adequate numbers." The study also faults America for relying on "grandiloquent" rhetoric rather than careful diplomacy to build support for its missions. Of course, UN operations are not without weaknesses; they tend to be undermanned and underfunded, with military personnel of uneven quality, whereas U.S. missions benefit from greater access to donors and funds. In the end the UN may have a better success rate in part because the operations it undertakes are less demanding than those led by the United States. UN missions are limited to countries where no "forced entry" is required, the conflicting parties cooperate with the peacekeepers to some degree, and the number of troops needed is no greater than 20,000. East Timor and Mozambique, in other words—not Iraq. (Also see: The Rand Corporation

This is hardly surprising. The American establishment gives primacy to military force. The UN establishment gives primacy to nation-building. While both may be necessary, to varying degrees, each represents a very different operation. It's not surprising that the UN does nation-building better than the US. The UN gives the task and it has a lot more practice. US nation-building efforts are almost always tied in with military operations. It's those very military operations which necessarily diminish the legitimacy of the nation-building efforts... efforts which are usually given short shrift in planning to the more immediate needs of the military side. Furthermore, the multinational nature of the UN means that no one individual national biases and blinders is allowed to predominate, or at least to go unchallenged. The UN's diversity is its strength.

There are so many valid points made in the article but one in particular stands out: The study also faults America for relying on "grandiloquent" rhetoric rather than careful diplomacy to build support for its missions.

Again, this is because military force (which is seen as 'manly') is given more importance in American society than diplomacy (which is seen as soft).