First, a bit of explanation. Most Americans think that foreign policy is made in Washington by the White House, Congress, and the executive branch. This is only partly the case. In practice, many regional problems tend to get addressed by the powerful "unit combatant commanders" (formerly and still coloquially known as the CinCs) or not at all, because they're the ones with the resources and the on-the-ground knowledge.
Did you know that Southern Command, which administers Latin America and basically runs the drug war, has more staff resources (about 1,100 people) devoted to the region than the State Department, Treasury, Commerece, Agriculture, the Pentagon's Joint Staff, and the OSD combined? With little guidance or oversight from Washington, the combatant commanders are often are forced to resort to freelancing.
They do a good job filling in the gaps where they can, but at the end of the day they have a natural bias toward military-to-miltary relationships at a time when America ought to also be expanding links with and building the capacity of civilian governments. At the same time, civilians back in Washington--and the press that covers them--often don't have a clue what's really going on in the world.
A book all thinking Americans (and especially liberals) should read is Dana Priest of the Washington Post's The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military. It's a fascinating, balanced, in-depth look at the people and organizations who really run American foreign policy: the CinCs, special operating forces, and the military generally. The following passage on U.S. efforts to train the Nigerian army illuminates the problem quite succinctly, I think:
And yet, Congress is undoubtedly making the problem worse by cutting back on democracy promotion funding, while spending billions and billions on new submarines and Air Force jets that have nothing to do with fighting terrorism. It's also worth noting that Central Command is the only regional command that does not list democracy promotion as one of its core goals. When that changes, we'll know the Bush Adminstration is serious about fighting the war on terrorism with every tool in America's arsenal.
Operation Focus Relief said a lot about the times. For decades, the federal government and Washington's inside-the-Beltway brain trust had poured money into studying the Third World and Africa. Even so, no one had gotten very good at mapping out, and then executing, long-term strategies to solve Africa's massive problems. Funds and programs came and went with each new administration and each new majority in Congress. As a result, sixty U.S. soldiers might walk through hip-deep bushy fields with a battalion of underfed Nigerian soldiers, showing them how to conduct an ambush, but no cadre of U.S. economists flew there to train officials in the country's economic ministry. No legion of agronomists camped out in the middle of nowhere to help improve farming techniques. Battalions of teachers did not deploy to repair the educational system. The Peace Corps was marginalized and outdated.
Using the American military to address global problems had become almost a reflex in Washington. But even the best U.S. troops could deal only with the symptoms, not the causes, of incipient problems. Military programs did little to help political systems move from dictatorship to democracy, or economies from government control to the free market.
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