Discussion with Ambdr Carlos Pascual, Coordinator, Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, State Dept.
2:00-3:30 PM, Center for Strategic & International Studies
If we hadn't learned the lesson from Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Haiti and Somalia, certainly Afghanistan and Iraq have taught us that the process of moving from full-blown combat operations to "normalcy" for a country torn by conflict requires what MC MasterChef has called "militarized nation-building": a complex deployment of military and civilian resources. The lack of coordination among US government departments and agencies prior to the Iraq invasion has been a common theme of the stream of post-mortems that continue to appear.
With a complete absence of fanfare, the Bush Admin has charged the State Department with tackling the Gordian knot of jurisdictional confusion and bureaucratic paralysis that has plagued post-conflict activities from planning through execution. A new unit attached at the Secretary level, the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, was apparently created by Powell in early August, though it didn't make it onto the press radar screen until a press release and briefing by State in late September.
As Reuters described the new unit:
Criticized for the failings of Pentagon planning for post-war Iraq, the Bush administration said on Tuesday it had created a small civilian-led planning team to help nations emerge from conflicts and crises.The unit is being headed by Carlos Pascual, an experienced foreign service official whose primary experience in coordinating US government assistance in the field of nation-building has been in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, first at State, then on Clinton's NSC, and more recently as Ambassador to the Ukraine. Pascual is widely respected in the government, and he knows his way around the other national donors and the development community in coordinating financial and technical support.
The State Department's new Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization will search out storms that are brewing, carry out contingency planning and draw on expertise from around the government in an effort to speed up the U.S. response.
While based at the State Department, the group will include the U.S. military, CIA, U.S. Agency for International Development as well as the Treasury and Justice Departments.
Pascual's first public event, other than the initial press briefing at State, will be tomorrow at CSIS. He'll be introduced by former Congressman Lee Hamilton, co-Chair of the 9/11 Commission and Director of the Woodrow Wilson Center.
CSIS has devoted considerable effort to the area of post-conflict reconstruction over the past three years, as part of a collaborative project with the Association of the US Army. The project's initial product was an intellectual framework (pdf) for thinking about the various tasks and functions that need to be addressed in post-conflict transitions. Although appearing in early 2002, the study is well worth revisiting today. It serves as a useful way of organizing how to think about "militarized nation-building," including some of the most thorny problems, such as creating an accountability and reconciliation process for dealing with actions prior to and during the conflict. Although not the comprehensive graduate school course MC MasterChef would like in "Occupation theory" or "Comparative State-building Missions," this short study is certainly a good overview.
Since the initial framework study, CSIS has examined planning and execution in Iraq through a series of reports, beginning with a January 2003 report that offered a number of "dos and don'ts" for winning "a wiser peace" in Iraq. Their publication that has received perhaps the most public attention was released in July of this year. "Capturing Iraqi Voices" (pdf), on Iraqi attitudes about the post-invasion experience and their future prospects, received a great deal of attention from the "glass half-full" proponents even though most of the news in the study was pretty grim. "Progress or Peril: Measuring Iraq's Reconstruction," (pdf) was published this September, and is one of the most thorough and credible assessments of what has and has not been accomplished to date. It contains a number of widely-supported recommendations for future US policy.
For those who want to follow the field of post-conflict transition and reconstruction, CSIS has a daily pdf brief that tracks news, publications, events (mostly in DC) and even jobs.
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