Amitai Etzioni, “THE LIMITS OF NATION BUILDING,” Chapter 6 in How Patriotic is the Patriot Act, Routledge, 2004.

One of the great clichés of our time is that one can and should “drain” the swamp in which terrorists breed by both democratizing and developing the economies of countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. An important part of the thesis that the best way to shore up national security—while protecting if not advancing the elements of a free society—is the neo Wilsonian idea of changing the regimes of other countries, nation building in general, and democratization in particular. As I see it, foreign powers can rarely accomplish nation building—however that is defined—and it tends to be costly, not merely in economic resources and political capital, but also in human lives. Hence, for both empirical, social science considerations, and normative ones, foreign powers had best greatly scale back their ambitions and promises. The more these 1 focus whatever resources they are willing and able to commit for the intervention at hand on a modest agenda, the more good they will do for the nation they seek to help and for themselves.

There are many reasons why superpowers and other powers are tempted to promise nation building. They believe in the value of forging nations and helping their development. They are keen to share with others that which they hold dear—domestic peace, the blessing of democratic politics, and the rich fruits of developed economies. They believe in the possibility of human progress and have a weakness for positive thinking, which leads them to hold that such developments can be brought about relatively easily, especially if one is dedicated to espousing them. They also follow a practice common in domestic politics—launching programs with great fanfare, which dazzles the media, the voters, and sometimes the legislature. Often, these same groups do not pay much mind to the complicated details of what can actually be done and achieved. Thus, politicians can promise cake and they do not have to deliver it—for instance, the five-year, $15-billion plan that the United States promised to fight HI V/AIDS globally. And if governments’ feet are held to the fire, they often claim to have made good on their promises by defining down what is considered nation building, democratization, or economic reconstruction. Mission accomplished—by public relations.

In contrast, I advocate a foreign policy that recognizes that one size does not fit all; that unmodified Western ways may well not be suitable for other cultures and societies; that making progress happen via long distances, in other people’s countries, is very taxing; that positive thinking is just that—positive thinking, which cannot deliver the mail, and certainly not move mountains; and above all, that a greatly scaled-hack, restrained agenda ensures credibility, making future achievements somewhat more feasible.

A Three-Legged Definition

Defining nation building should no longer be deferred. Unfortunately, there is no social science or intellectual academy where terminology is clearly defined and its consistent use enforced. The term “nation building” is generally used to describe three different but related tasks: unification of disparate ethnic groups, democratization, and economic reconstruction.

In its original usage, nation building was frequently identified with unifying diverse ethnic groups within a state; that is, community

building: “A major object of nation-building was to weld the disparate elements of the populace into a congruent whole by forging new identities at the national (state) level at the expense of localism and particularistic identities.” Creating a sense of national identity was seen to be important for the formation of the state itself. Nation building means “both the formation and establishment of the new state itself as a political entity and the processes of creating viable degrees of unity, adaptation, achievement, and a sense of national identity among the people.”

Another view of nation building emphasizes improvements in governance. Creating effective governance means implementing the rule of law, battling corruption, installing democracy, and ensuring freedom of the press. Historically, nation building encompassed “an effort to construct a government that may or may not be democratic, but preferably is stable.” Today, nation building often “implies the attempt to create democratic and secure states.” This democratization imperative was particularly stressed during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, both of whom sought the “enlargement” of democracy around the world.

A third view sees economic reconstruction as an important part of nation building. It is suggested that when the economy is improved, a more stable and better functioning state can evolve. Also, economic well-being is associated with democratization. It is best not to equate, as many do, economic reconstruction with economic development. Economic reconstruction assumes that there was a well-functioning economy, but that some catastrophic event, such as a war or civil strife, undermined it and the economy must be put back on its feet. This sense of nation building was particularly employed with regard to the rebuilding of Japan and Germany after World War II. The term “economic development” is best reserved for building a modern economy where none previously existed, a much more demanding task.

Whether one uses the term “nation building” to refer to only one or more of these meanings (many use all three, interchangeably), one should take into account that the reference is to nation, not state building.

A nation is widely understood to be a community invested in a state. It hence entails much more than merely forming a state, say by granting independence to a previous colony. It entails both forming a state and a community where none previously existed, or shoring up one that has not been firmly or properly constructed previously, or whose existence has been undermined, often by war or inner strife.

A state can exist without its citizens having the kind of loyalties that, in political matters, would give precedence to the state when it comes into conflicts with member groups such as tribes or ethnic groups. Such a layering of loyalties is essential if a nation is to stay together and avoid secessions or civil war, without relying merely or mainly on force.

Behind these statements is a bit of social and political theory that should be spelled out, especially the notion that a nation is more than a state, that it has strong elements of community; at least an imagined one. Commitments to the common good and to one another’s community are essential because effective collective decision making often entails imposing on various participants sacrifices for the common good (e.g., to protect the environment for future generations). If these sacrifices are not backed up by shared values and bonds, the key elements of community, they will not be treated as legitimate, and hence will either have to be effected through force, or will not be effectively enforced. (This view contrasts with the notion that the state is largely a place where various interest groups meet, work out deals and contracts, and make exchanges. Therefore, no loyalties or commitments are needed, as self-interest provides the necessary glue.)

My main thesis is that significantly advancing any of the elements of nation building, let alone all three of them, by external powers, is under most circumstances difficult to accomplish, and at best requires a considerable commitment of resources and time. Moreover, assiduously promoting these elements can be counterproductive.

Thus, my claim rests on both a general and a specific observation. The general observation is that deliberate, purposive societal change of any importance is difficult to achieve. For the discussion at hand

(and for many others), it is essential to distinguish deliberate and purposive societal change (sometimes referred to as social engineering), that is, societal changes that policy makers and public authorities seek to bring about (such as the war against drugs, poverty, cancer)—and societal change that occurs naturally, all on its own. (The difference is akin to the difference between a river that is changing its course naturally, which requires no effort, versus building and manning canals and locks to change its course, often at considerable cost.) Social engineering, in contrast to physical, is a very limited art, facing huge obstacles as it aims to change what human and social nature provided. In this sense, it is unnatural. Social engineering also raises numerous moral issues that greatly limit what can be done.

By and large, the record of major deliberate efforts to significantly change societies by public authorities have failed or achieved much less than was sought. All planned societies—including such major societies as the USSR and China—not only failed to achieve their various goals (abolish stratification, religion, the family, and the state), but their command and control systems imploded. The plans of social democracies to reallocate wealth in a significant manner have made limited progress. The Great Society goals in the United States remain largely unaccomplished. Major changes occurred in all these societies, but not as the result of public policies. Often, they reflected the work of spontaneously arising social movements (in the sense that they were neither initiated nor controlled by public authorities or even private corporations, nor were they predicable) who both made changes of their own and pushed the government into making changes. These included, in earlier eras, various religious movements; in the beginning of the 20th century, the progressive movement; and in its latter half, the civil rights, environ mental, and women’s movements, among others.

The reasons why significant, deliberate, purposive societal change is difficult to come by are numerous. To study them would require a major volume. Suffice it to say that they entail changing long-established personal predispositions, habits, and relationships that resist change unless those involved seek to modify them for their own reasons and, above all, motives. Such changes require reengineering deeply in grained moral and social cultures and recasting societal structures, especially power relations and allocations of assets, which are particularly resilient.

The reasons why external powers are particularly hampered in promoting deliberate change are numerous. These include a limited understanding of the local culture and societal formation; an unwillingness to make the sacrifices involved; the opposition generated from the mere presence of outsiders; and faulty theories of societal engineering, especially the belief that change can be readily and quickly introduced at low human and economic costs. As Gary T. Dempsey writes:

Nation building is perhaps the most intrusive form of foreign intervention there is. It is the massive foreign regulation of the policy making of another country. The process usually entails the replacement or, in the case of a country in a state of anarchy, the creation of governmental institutions and a domestic political leadership that are more to the liking of the power or powers con ducting the intervention. Since such profound interference tends to elicit resistance, the nation-building process typically requires a substantial military presence to impose the nation-building plan on the target country.°

Western attempts to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into shining, prosperous democracies provide painful lessons in the grave limitations that even superpowers and their allies face when they engage in such large- scale social engineering. The focus on the formal features of democracy, such as elections and constitution writing, hardly conceals the fact that many of the foundations for anything that would even resemble a democratic form of government are missing in these nations. One needs only to be reminded that elections were also carried out in the USSR and in Saddam’s Iraq and that now they take place in nations such as North Korea and Iran. Moreover, the USSR had one of the most liberal constitutions ever written. Many nations in South America copied the

American Constitution but were under the rule of one military junta or another for generations.

I turn next to show that this general observation applies with specific force to nation building by outsiders.

Historical Anti-Precedents: Nation Building—Breaking Away

Nation building has been successful on a large scale in earlier generations by working against and breaking away from superpower and external nations, rather than being guided by them or under their tutelage. The well-known period of wars of national liberation took place when scores of ethnic groups rebelled against colonial powers and gained their independence, often after prolonged bloodshed. Most nations that now make up Latin America, Africa, large segments of Asia, and the Balkans were formed in this way.

In other cases, nations were cobbled together from fragments, but again only after prolonged wars that gave voice to a fledgling community, rather than this voice being engendered by an external power. These famously include the formation of Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Chile, and the United States.

Moreover, in many of those cases where external powers did fashion a state they assumed would be a nation, the result was severe tensions among the ethnic groups that were combined into these “nations”—for instance, Burundi, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and Rwanda. They were often held together only under the thumb of a tyrant and following much bloodshed. In other cases, these artificial constructions did not hold together, India and Yugoslavia, for instance.

In short, if by nation building one means cobbling together various fragments to make one community, then most nations were built in opposition to external powers rather than by them. And to the extent that these powers fashioned new states, they were born in blood, bathed in it, and rarely matured to be a nation, as the term is commonly understood.

Furthermore, such efforts have become more difficult in this age of mass political awareness and heightened antagonism to foreign power, as the USSR and the United States discovered in Afghanistan and the United States in Iraq, among many other examples.

The Limits of Democratization

The record of exporting democracy is not much better. A study conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that out of the eighteen forced regime changes to which American ground troops were committed, only five resulted in sustained democratic rule. These countries include Germany, Japan, and Italy, in which conditions prevailed that are lacking elsewhere. The reasons for the exceptional success in these countries are explored below. Two other countries, listed as democratized, actually have yet to earn this title: Panama and Grenada.

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan used the phrase “defining deviancy down” to describe the practice of considering items of behavior as legitimate and legal that used to be considered deviant and illegal. One side effect of this practice is that public authorities can vastly improve the measurements of their achievements—without doing anything new or additional. Thus, crime statistics plunge—when whole categories of crimes are no longer viewed as illegal acts. A similar dam aging tendency can he observed with regard to democracies. When it turns out that it is very difficult to export or even domestically construct a democratic polity under many conditions, various public policy makers keep the triumphant march of democracy going by declaring “done” for scores of nations that, at best, have only some democratic features. Elections are especially used for these sleight-of-hand democratizations, leading to what Max Boot, among others, has referred to as “one person, one vote, one time.” Others try to deal with this catch, by referring to “electoral democracies” to hint that they might not be regular nor full-fledged ones, but this hint escapes many As a result, what normative power the title of “democracy” entails is lost when one can get it doing so little. Cynicism is fostered when countries labeled democratic are corrupt to the core, do not have a free press nor the rule of law, or only one political party, or a military that can veto whatever the legislature rules are labeled democratic. A democracy does not have to meet all the criteria, and there are differences in the political systems among those considered democracies, but defining the term down so far is neither good political science nor sound public policy Max Boot termed South Africa a “flourishing democracy.” President Flu Jintao of China stated that China must “ensure that people can exercise democratic elections,” yet his government does not tolerate a free press or an opposition party.’ William S afire called Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban a “creeping democracy” citing as an example the presence of “newly liberated women.” ‘ This is a surprising observation because numerous other reports suggest that women’s status has barely changed. Afghanistan’s court went ballistic when a woman sang on TV and the New York Times reported that young women set themselves on fire to escape the harsh realities of life in Afghanistan.’

The difficulties that the United States and its allies experienced in democratizing Afghanistan and Iraq are but the most recent examples in a long list of failures, which include Bosnia, Cambodia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Kosovo, Somalia, and South Vietnam. U.S. nation building attempts in Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba all took more than 10 years—Panama’s engagement lasted 33 years; today none of these countries can be considered a successful democracy.’ As Thomas Carothers put it, “the idea that there’s a small democracy inside every society waiting to be released just isn’t true.”

There is no agreement as to what makes a democracy, although there are extensive and strong studies of the subject by such scholars as Graham Allison,’ Archie Brown, Thomas Carothers, Robert A. Dahl, and Adeed Dawisha and Karen Dawisha. In addition, there is the extensive work and the publications of the National Endowment for Democracy, headed by Carl Gershman, which include an entire journal devoted to the subject at hand.

Some scholars insist that each situation is unique and that only by immersing oneself in the particular history and culture of the country can one establish what must be done. By contrast, I agree with those scholars who suggest that a general theory of democracy formation is possible. As part of this approach, it seems beneficial to draw up a checklist of the factors that go into making a democracy. The list is best divided into facilitating factors and constituting factors. The first list gives the conditions that ease or hinder the formation of democracy. (They can also be referred to as the democratic infrastructure.) The listed factors are not all or even each “prerequisites,” because substitutes might be found, but their presence clearly improves the probability that a democracy will be formed and sustained. The second list informs us as to what the needed building blocks are. Both lists can be used to indicate how ready a country is to be democratized and what, particularly, is missing.

Two methodological comments are called for at this juncture. The lists here provided are far from exhaustive and are merely provided as a first approximation. And one should keep in mind that there is an interaction effect among the various factors: namely, if one factor is available, it cases the formation of the others; but if one factor is maximized while all the others are grossly neglected, then these other factors are likely to retard democratization. More or less even development is superior to a tilted one.

Drawing on the works already cited, a few others, and my own observations, here are the two tentative lists. (All variables should be read as if preceded with the statement, “the more, the better,” without concern that excessive levels could be reached, because these do not occur.)

Facilitating Factors

Facilitating factors include:

• Law and order, pacification

• Literacy, general education, civic education

• Economic development, separation of economic power from political power, leveling of economic differences

• A sizable, developed middle class

• The rule of law, independent judgments, respect for law enforcement authorities

• Civil society, voluntary associations, communities

Constituting Factors

Constituting factors include:

• Political leaders and parties have unencumbered ability to compete for support and votes

• The determination of criteria regarding eligibility for public office

• The assurance of free and fair elections

• Formulation of a constitutional order and process that ensures power-sharing as such as separation of power, essential for check and balance among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches

• A low level of corruption (high level of transparency)

• Protection of minority rights

• Freedom of association

• Freedom of expression

• Freedom of the press

• The enumeration of rights people have with respect to the government

To reiterate, these lists are but a preliminary attempt to outline the factors needed to form a sustainable democracy. They assist one another. Above all, they highlight how difficult it is to form a democracy where many of the factors are in short supply. Even a cursory examination of most of them suffices to note that developing them will be difficult, slow, costly, and, above all, next to impossible for outsiders to achieve. Cultivating respect for law where little exists, making a middle class, greatly reducing corruption where it is rampant, are all difficult tasks.

Economic “Reconstruction”: From the Stone Age?

Arguably, economic reconstruction—if one means reconstruction rather than new development—may be the easiest (not easy) task for the three nation-building processes to achieve. If the country at issue had a relatively developed economy, was industrialized, had laws protecting private property; a solid banking system, a trained labor force, and so on—and if these were disrupted due to war or for some other reason—then these can be jump-started again with relative ease. The reasons are that self-interest will make people reopen their shops once they are free to do so, which in turn will create demand for products, and so on, all with relatively little planning or intervention. Outsiders can help in shoring up the infrastructure if it is damaged, provide credit, and help restore law and order, but need do little more. in short, the less that real economic development is involved—in the sense of creating the needed elements—and the more that mere reconstruction takes place, the more successful nation building will be.

In contrast, in a country like Afghanistan, where next to none of the elements needed for a modern economy are in place, reference to “reconstruction” is obfuscating. And promising economic development is both self-deluding and misleading to others. There is a very large literature on economic development, and it would be foolhardy to speak about these complex and much-studied processes in a few lines. Hence, just a few observations only on the topic at hand: the ability of external powers to engineer large-scale social change.

Countries that developed over a hundred years or so did draw a great deal on others. For instance, the U.S. industrialization during the 19th century greatly benefited from the importation of a labor force, capital, ideas, and technologies from Europe. But these inputs were sucked in, due to internal dynamics, and not shipped to the United States as part of any plan or of the foreign policy of a nation seeking to develop the United States or to help it do so. The same holds for the four Asian tigers—South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—considered the most successful cases of economic development. The same must be said about China and India. In contrast, the beneficiaries of development assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and from other countries, have been much less able to develop, especially

African and Arabic countries, even when they had great wealth of their own due to oil exports.

The Elements of Economic Reconstruction

What does economic reconstruction require? To answer that, I will draw on a previously published study in which I examined the seven “needs” that were satisfied when the American economy was first developed (roughly 1830 to 1930); showed the ill effects that followed when six of the seven factors involved in satisfying these needs were allowed to deteriorate (from 1950 to 1980); and examined what needed to be done- and a great deal was done—to reconstruct the American economy. Like the elements of democracy, the factors of economic development support each other and rushing one while neglecting the others has a deleterious effect.

• Expeditious transportation of resources and goods

• Effective communication of knowledge and signals

• Secure supplies of power

• Prepared and available human capital (the mobilization and preparation of labor)

• A high level of innovative capacity

• Supportive legal and financial institutions

• The accumulation of capital and capital goods

I suggest that a study of successful reconstruction efforts- as that of Germany and Japan after World War IT—would show that many of the needed elements were in place. Although their economies had deteriorated, they could be relatively readily resupplied and reactivated. In contrast, when one uses the same list to examine the conditions of a country like Afghanistan, it becomes readily evident that economic reconstruction is not possible because most of the needed elements were never in place or only in a very rudimentary amount. Moreover, importing them en masse is not practical. Even in those exceptional conditions in which large-scale economic reconstruction was successful, it took much longer and cost much more than is now commonly implied. Thus, the notion that if the United States simply provided a new Marshall Plan to aid weak economies and countries, they would develop (and democratize on the side), repeated like a mantra, has little validity.

Cultural and Psychological Predispositions: A Shared and Demanding Factor

There is a set of sociological factors that can ease—or severely hinder— all three forms of nation building: unification (pacification included), democratization, and economic reconstruction. The reason this set is often not listed (although it is included in several, more informal, treatments) is because those who invoke it arc sometimes considered prejudiced, at the least politically incorrect, or because those who adhere to rationalist schools of social science, according to which self-interest and rational calculating dominate, are blind to this set of factors. The notion that cultural and psychological factors are at work constitutes prejudice only if one assumes that there are some inherent genetic factors that make it impossible for some race or people to become democratic or developed, as some have written about the Arabs (known as Arab exceptionalism). One commonly given reason is that Arabs have a sense of being victims, tend to blame others for their condition, and demand that those others act, rather than place those demands on themselves.

I am merely drawing on the insights of a sociological giant in suggesting that some cultures—which in turn are embedded in personalities- make economic and political development much more difficult than others and are especially resistant to change. To avoid any misunderstanding, I do not agree with those who hold that Arabs are congenitally unable to develop a liberal democracy; merely that their culture (actually one might better say cultures) will have a much longer and more difficult time doing so than several other cultures. I agree with those who remind us that at one point or another it was said that Japan could not be made democratic or that Catholicism could not be made compatible with a liberal democratic regime. But it takes time and effort. After all, the British and the Americans did not develop democracies overnight under the tutelage of a foreign power. And the conditions in Arab countries are even less favorable for such development than in other Muslim countries.

Max Weber showed that some cultures are less disposed to capitalism- and other features of modernization- others. Specifically, Catholics, Muslims, and Confucians are less so disposed than Protestants. Culture in this context does not mean art, music, or artifacts, but social and moral values. It is expressed in personality predispositions, especially to save much and work hard, essential for building up a modern economy. What Weber showed for economic development holds for the other elements of nation building. Various scholars have referred to the cultural and psychological factors in different ways.

As I see it- someone who grew up in the Middle East—the most important value and trait in this respect is self-restraint. It is what allows a person to work hard rather than laze around; save rather than spend; follow rules rather than follow his own whims; refrain from acting violently against those who are different or with whom he disagrees. Self-restraint is not inborn. It is introduced into people who grow up in some cultures (e.g., Britain and Japan), and not in many others. It, by itself, does not guarantee that the nations involved will be unified, democratic, or developed. But it is an important facilitating factor, often downplayed by those who believe, or want to believe, in quickie nation building. Some critics may say that it is Americans who are hedonistic, lascivious, and prone to self-indulgence. However, the foundations for the polity and wealth America now enjoys were laid during the days when Americans worked hard and spent little, and were far from sexually permissive. Even today, Americans have fewer vacation days and holidays than most Europeans and are less permissive.

To the extent that the importance of culture is recognized, it is all too often assumed that one can change cultures quite readily, via communications (Voice of America, the State Department’s new “HI magazine,” etc.), in what might be called a Madison Avenue approach: change attitudes, values, and habits by sending messages, undertaking educational efforts, developing leadership training, and encouraging cultural exchanges. An example of this approach, which would be humorous if the consequences were not so saddening, is the work of Charlotte Beers, a former public diplomacy chief at the State Department. Under Beers, the State Department developed commercials, websites, and speakers programs to “reconnect the world’s billion Muslims with the United States the way McDonald’s highlights its billion customers served.” According to Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “ results were disastrous.” Yet, some people would argue that Beers did not go far enough, “that blitzing Arab and Muslim countries with Britney Spears videos and Arabic-language sitcoms will earn Washington millions of new Muslim sympathizers.””

The Madison Avenue approach works only when very large amounts of money are spent to shift people from one product to another when there are next to no differences between them (e.g., two brands of toothpaste) and there is an inclination to use the product in the first place. However, when these methods are applied to changing attitudes about matters as different as condom use and the United Nations, they are less successful. Changing a culture is many hundreds of times more difficult.

Germany and Japan: Exceptions that Prove the Rule

The successful reconstruction and democratization of Germany and Japan after World War II rested on many conditions that are unlikely to be reproduced elsewhere. First of all, they had to be defeated in a war, and then occupied. The occupation lasted longer than many assume. For Japan, occupation lasted nearly seven years; and for Germany, while the occupation lasted four years, full control over foreign relations and trade, industrial production, and military security was not turned over to the Germans until 1955, ten years after the occupation.

Also, many facilitating factors were in much better condition than they are in most other countries in which nation building is attempted. There was no danger that these countries would break up due to a civil war among ethnic groups, as is the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance. No effort had to be expended on unity building. On the contrary, strong national unity was a major reason change could be introduced with relative ease. Other favorable factors included a high level of education, a high income per capita, a sizeable middle class, competent government personnel, and a low level of corruption. Others cite “technical and financial expertise, relatively highly institutionalized political parties, skilled and visionary politicians, well-educated populations, [ strong national identifications.” And there was a strong culture of self-restraint.

Political elements were also more favorable in these two countries. After World War II, Germany and Japan were completely defeated powers whose leaders no longer held sway. The United States had a security interest in these countries, in particular because it was trying to hold off the advance of Communism.

Not only were the conditions in the targeted countries different, but conditions in the United States were different at that time as well. As John W. Dower has argued about the difference between the American occupation of Japan and that of Iraq in 2003, “We do not have the moral legitimacy we had then, nor do we have the other thing that was present when we occupied Japan—the vision of the American public that we would engage in serious and genuinely democratic nation building and that we would do this in the context of an international order.”

Both occupations also cost more than is commonly assumed. Further, the commitment level of the United States to reconstruction after World War II was significantly greater than the foreign aid commitment the United States makes today In 1948, the first year of the Marshall Plan, the aid to the 16 European countries under the Marshall Plan totaled 13 percent of the entire U.S. budget, without even counting money spent in Japan and all of the costs of occupying Germany. In comparison, the Unites States today spends less than one percent of its budget on foreign aid. (Although the United States has pledged billions of dollars to Iraq, most of the funds are dedicated to bolstering security and not to reconstruction.

When all is said and done, suggestions that a Marshall Plan would work for a typical African or Arab country are simply a historical.

A Restrained Approach

One may argue that the viewpoint here presented is exceedingly pessimistic—indeed outright discouraging. On the contrary, I believe that there are several good reasons to support many forms of foreign aid to countries in need of it, most of which are humanitarian. Thus, helping nations fight malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV is a good thing, even if it will not significantly contribute to nation building in any sense of the term, and not even stem the pandemic. Vaccinating and feeding children and providing them with elementary schooling is good in itself hut should not be dressed up as something else. And surely pacification— preventing genocides of the kind that occurred in Rwanda, halting ethnic cleansing like that in Kosovo, and stopping civil wars, as in Liberia— are fully worthy causes, even if they do not result in nation building.

As far as nation building by external powers is concerned, a much more restrained approach is called for: an approach that in an optimistic moment greatly narrows the scope of factors it tackles. As Robert Kaplan suggested, still at least a bit optimistically, “We shouldn’t try to fix a whole society; rather, we should identify a few key elements in it, and fix them.” It follows that the first criterion by which a restrained policy is to be measured is the scope of its ambition. Does it seek to advance on all three fronts, or limit itself largely to one? And on that front, does it recognize that progress is slow, takes the form of a crab-like walk of at least one step backward for every two forward, and requires a large commitment of resources for long periods of time? Does it recognize that there will be no glory down the road—the new nation (if successfully formed) will not appreciate the help given nor necessarily be an ally of the external power that heavily invested in its construction? The more narrow the goal, the greater the commitment, the lower the expectations, the more likely—I do not say it is “likely”—that the approach will make some progress.

Second, a restrained approach entails initially working with whomever is in power (as the old regime implodes or is decapitated), rather than starting with dethroning them. This is in sharp contrast to the hyper ambitious approach, which assumes that one can undo the warlords, the tribal chiefs, the ethnic leaders, and the religious authorities and replace them with national leaders, often selected and appointed by the external power, and “neutral” professionals and civil servants (one of the first goals of the U.S. occupation of Iraq after May in 2003). In the process, one hopes to shift from tribalism and favoritism to a rule of law that deals with all citizens in the same manner, to move from corruption to transparency, to switch from dealing with contraband, drugs, and guns to serving local and global markets in consumer goods and services. This is, for instance, what the United States tried to do in Afghanistan when it promoted and supported Hamid Karzai as the national head of government and largely refused to deal with the warlords after the war was over, which they largely had helped to win. This is what Britain is trying to do in Bosnia, which is in effect in trusteeship under British rule. This is what the United States and its allies are trying to do in Kosovo. Progress in all these places is hampered by going against the sociological grain, rather than using the lay of the land to change the country gradually.

To put it less metaphorically, over-ambitious societal engineering seeks to overcome prevailing social forces and long-established societal structures and traditions and construct new ones. It tries in vein to quickly undo and then remake deeply ingrained cultural and psychological predispositions, strong emotional ties, and often religious beliefs, as well as powerful reward allocations by tribal chiefs or warlords. A restrained approach would start by dealing with whoever is in power. This is what worked in Germany, where many of the Na’ officials were initially allowed to stay in place because there were few others to run the country— in contrast to the initial attempts to remove all Baath officials, high and low, down to the cop on the beat, in Iraq.

The next step entails hammering out deals and agreements to gain the support of the various warlords or chieftains or mullahs for select new national efforts, such as building a connecting road or forming the first units of an integrated national army. Gradually, and often slowly, as commercial classes increase, middle and professional classes expand; and as national institutions are able to dispense resources and rewards, the social forces that support nation building will be enhanced, and the power of the warlords and their ilk can be scaled back. In addition, the more the external power allows local people to work things out among themselves, even if the emerging patterns are not exactly the way things are done in their home country or do not fit a master plan, the more likely the new regimes are to develop. Foreign powers would do best if they limited themselves to setting some broad “do’s and don’ts,” but otherwise let “nature” take its course. Details differ from place to place, but the experience in Iraq, from 2003—2004, illustrates the thesis here advanced. In Iraq, the United States, under the Coalition Provisional Authority headed by L. Paul Bremer III, has tried to “do it all.” Not merely were American troops and their few allies training the police, forming a new army, patrolling cities to prevent looting and other crimes, ensuring that the various ethnic groups did not fight each other, and sorting things out among Kurds and Turkmen and Arabs in the North, but U.S. soldiers were also selecting new “professional” judges and civil servants, ensuring that no Baaths were among them, taking sides in fights among various mullahs, firing a media minister for censoring a local press, trying to jump-start the economy by providing jobs, renovating schools, drawing up final exams for medical students, supervising the construction of a women’s shelter, and making deliveries to nursing homes—among many other things.

It might be said that the purpose of all these activities was not to remake and run the Iraqi society but to gain goodwill. The United States has long accepted the notion that if you seek to win a war against local guerillas, you have to win over the support of the civilian population. There is some merit in the policy (referred to in Latin America as “Accion Civica”). However, it too can be readily oversold. Iraqis, for instance, are a very patriotic people. They have a long and bitter memory

of foreign occupations and caused tens of thousands of casualties to the British when they took over governing Iraq after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Providing a few goods and services here and there, even learning to speak a bit of Arabic and gaining some understanding of the local culture—as the Special Forces are trying to do—will not lead Iraqis to accept a government run by a foreign power. Moreover, the scope of the social engineering attempts in Iraq and elsewhere clearly show that much more nation building is being attempted than gaining goodwill. Hence, although there is nothing in the restrained policy to oppose generating goodwill, the notion that it will win over the population at large is unrealistic and, above all, it should not he used to justi±3 an over-ambitions agenda of societal change.

A restrained approach sets priorities: it focuses first and primarily on pacification (to avoid inter ethnic armed conflict) and security (of the American and allied forces) and prevention of support to groups such as Al Qaeda, and of course the production and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, but initially little more. Developing domestic police forces that are professional rather than political or corrupt—say, by Jordanian standards or even of those of New York City 50 years ago, rather than, say, London’s standards today—comes next. All the rest follows gradually, in line with the needs and policies worked out by and with the changing local leaders. If in Iraq this would have meant that a religious regime would have been established in southern Iraq, it would have been left to the Iraqi people who opposed the regime to struggle with it, the way the majority now does with such a regime in Iran. If it would have meant that Baath members would have initially run the civil services, as long as these did not undermine the security of the American forces and allies, it would have been left to the Iraqi people to oppose them or replace them. Gradually, as commerce was restored, thousands of Iraqis who lived in the West repatriated, as the fear of the decommissioned Saddam secret police waned, the demand for various development measures would increase. But these would be driven largely by Iraqis and they would be the address for all things that would not work. The result might well look, for the first years at least, like some kind of mixture between Lebanon and Egypt, maybe like Jordan, at best like Putin’s Russia but it would be distinctly better—for all concerned— than the U.S. fate in Vietnam, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Less is more.

More generally, advocates of nation building would greatly benefit from following the Serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” Greatly curtailing foreign ambitions and promises will lead to much greater credibility of these drives and those who make them; will provide stronger domestic support for such efforts among the taxpayers and donors who have to foot the bills; and will pay off by focusing more resources on the few facets that re relatively easy to change rather than tackling numerous facets with little discernible effect.