Dropping the Pretense of Rebuilding Iraq

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Washington has now ceased to pretend that it is in any way interested
in rebuilding Iraq or "getting the water turned on," and liberal
wonks have approved of dropping the silly pretense:

<blockquote>The New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/22/opinion/22dobbins.html>
September 22, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Safety First
By JAMES DOBBINS

Last week, the Bush administration announced plans to change how it
will spend nearly 20 percent of the $18.4 billion in approved aid for
Iraq. The money will be shifted from rebuilding infrastructure to
security, from capital improvements to employment generation, and
from physical construction to social engineering projects. If these
priorities had been adopted sooner, the situation in Iraq would
probably be better than it is today.

Administration officials have explained that deteriorating security
requires increased efforts to train and equip Iraqi police and
military forces, and makes the protection of large construction
projects difficult. They have also expressed the need for programs to
get young Iraqi men off the streets and employed.

And indeed, America's plans to focus aid on modernizing Iraq's
electric grid, sewage systems and communications infrastructure at
American taxpayers' expense have been an aberration -- out of keeping
with recent American nation-building experience in places like
Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo and with post-World War II strategies for
democratizing Germany and Japan.

The object of nation-building is to return power to a competent,
responsible and representative local government as soon as possible.

In a country like Iraq where the governmental structure has
collapsed, the first priority is to establish public security. Second
is to begin rebuilding the local structures for governance. Third is
to create an environment in which basic commerce can occur -- where
people can buy and sell goods and services and get paid in a stable
currency. Fourth is to promote political reforms, stimulate the
growth of civil society, build political parties and a free press,
prepare for elections and organize representative government. Fifth,
and last, is improving roads, bridges, electricity, water, telephones
and the rest.

This last category of spending normally comes last because such
projects take a long time to complete and the payoff on investment is
very slow. These projects are also very expensive, far more than
other objectives. And unlike investments in other sectors,
reconstruction projects are ultimately profitable and can normally
pay for themselves. That is why money for large-scale construction
projects routinely comes from loans financed through the World Bank
or regional development banks, not from grants by donor governments.

In preparing for the occupation of Iraq, the administration chose to
transfer responsibility for Iraqi reconstruction from the State
Department and the Agency for International Development to the
Defense Department and the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

The Defense Department brought a perspective to the tasks of
nation-building that reflected its own experiences in building
military bases and procuring weapons systems, which led it to largely
ignore recent and historical experiences with nation-building.
Instead, the Pentagon focused more on hardware than software, on
improving infrastructure rather than social structures. It also
relied more on large American military contractors than on Iraqi
contractors and smaller nonprofit groups specializing in political
transformation.

Giving first priority to improving electricity and sewage services,
and second priority to political parties and elections was
inconsistent with precedents set like Bosnia, Kosovo and even
Afghanistan. Critical of earlier efforts in the Balkans, in
particular, and frustrated with the slow progress being made in
Afghanistan, the Bush administration used as its model the very
successful American occupations and transformations of Germany and
Japan, and upon the Marshall Plan in Europe.

But administration officials fundamentally misread the lessons of
nation-building at the end of World War II. In Germany and Japan, the
United States had put in place political reforms that today remain
the underpinnings of democracy in both countries, before it provided
substantial economic aid, beyond basic humanitarian assistance.

The Marshall Plan did not start in Germany until 1948, and Japan
never received any Marshall Plan assistance. Germany's economic
takeoff came only after its democratic reforms had been carried out,
and Japan's early prosperity derived from local American procurement
connected with the Korean War beginning in the early 1950's. In both,
political transformation preceded economic transformation. Democracy
preceded prosperity.

The administration's plan to shift aid from large construction
projects to security, employment and social reform is welcome, not
simply because it deals with the deteriorating security situation,
but because it better helps the nation become secure and democratic.
A secure and democratic Iraq will have no difficulty persuading
others to help it rebuild.

James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense
Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, was special envoy for the
Clinton and Bush administrations on reconstruction efforts in
Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo and Somalia.</blockquote>
--
Yoshie

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