There's a time limit to how long development advocates can frame their crusade in terms of national security. The reason the national security lens gets any purchase at all is because of fragile states, and fragile states only because of Afghanistan.
If support for war in Afghanistan is deteriorating, how long before the tide shifts back against looking at development as a national security priority? And that narrative in turn becomes subsumed in a neo-realist perspective that frames attempts to stabilize fragile states as filled w/ hubris?
Afghanistan's chief challenge is governance, a sector the military seems more disposed to address than the development community. If State and USAID are unable to seriously address the core problems of fragile states, when this narrow window of opportunity closes Congress will see the additional resources they've invested in State and USAID as wasted. Is that unfair? Perhaps, but that's how it is.
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The data tells a story of Pakistanis that fear their country is going in the wrong direction, but largely for economic reasons. Their perception of religious extremism, the Taliban and Al Qaeda as problems have grown. Support for military operations against the Taliban have grown, but those operations have to be Pakistani operations. They continue to oppose cooperation with the U.S. (Obama provided a slight bump which has since disappeared), and any U.S. operations in Pakistan. A substantial minority still like Osama Bin Ladin (9%).
Those who feel we're in Afghanistan in order to prevent Pakistan from degenerating into chaos should be paying attention to these numbers. They're an important component of an evaluation of how necessary our presence in Afghanistan is to prevent insurgents based there from undermining stability in Pakistan, along with military and economic factors.
Of course the fact remains, there isn't much we can do to effect Pakistan directly. But just because your neighbor's garden hose isn't long enough to reach your burning house, doesn't mean you should start spraying his house down for lack of anything else to do.
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Pincus points out the DOD is hiring contractors to translate the U.S. Army intelligence field manual into an Afghan-friendly version. Isn't this exactly how we're supposed to have learned not to do things? If you're trying to build capacity you have to follow the FUBU principle - "For Us, By Us."
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While Sen. Levin is calling for the rapid expansion of Afghanistan's security forces - to facilitate a more rapid US withdrawal - the Senate Approps committee is cutting the Administration's request (sorry, CQ subscription).
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Why should we care about governance capacity building, and why do our current aid institutions fail so miserably?
Lockhart before the SFRC, 17 Sept 2009.
Back in 2002, during the preparation of Afghanistan’s first post-Bonn budget, Afghanistan required a budget of $500m for the year to be able to pay its 240,000 civil servants (including doctors, teachers, and engineers) their basic salaries of $50 per month and to cover essential running costs. As the Treasury was empty, assistance was required. Unfortunately, donors initially committed only $20 million to the 2002 Afghan budget, meaning that Afghanistan’s leaders could never in the 2002-4 period meet the basic costs of sustaining services. At the same time, $1.7 billion was committed to an aid system to build parallel organizations, which ended up employing most of the same doctors and teachers as drivers, assistants and translators to operate small projects at significant multiples of their former salaries. While some additional funds were later committed to the
World Bank-run Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, this was never enough to sustain basic governance, and the civil service atrophied. Rather than support the essential nation-wide services and programs within a framework of rule of law and policy, donors launched thousands of small, badly-coordinated projects. Billions of dollars were spent through the aid complex, resulting in little tangible change for most Afghan citizens. Their perception of aid projects was most vividly captured for me in a story told to me by villagers in a remote district of Bamiyan, who described their multi-million dollar project going up in smoke.
The prescriptions of the “aid complex” not only by-passed, but actively undermined Afghan capability: for example, it was aid donors forbade any investment in the Afghan budget for education or training over the age of 11, citing the overriding imperative of investing in primary education. Similarly, a $60 million provincial and district governance program designed to restore policing and justice services was turned down in 2002 for funding on the basis that governance was not “poverty-reducing”.
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This is a great example of divorce between the conversation about the crisis in military readiness and the use of Supplementals/Overseas Contingency Operations funding.
ArmyTimes.com
August 16, 2009
Weapons Cuts To Pay For Army Troop Increase
In an Aug. 13 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., President Barack Obama asked that Congress consider amending the 2010 Pentagon budget request by reallocating money from “lower-priority DoD contingency operations’ requirements.” The letter said these items are no longer needed “due to changed circumstances.”...
But the words would appear to be a clear reference to the administration giving higher priority to the war in Afghanistan than the war in Iraq, and the positive official assessments of the development of Iraqi security forces. That development is key to maintaining the security of U.S. troops as they withdraw — an effort expected to accelerate following the January 2010 elections in Iraq.
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Many point to the U.S. ambassador's Chief of Mission authority as a natural place to rest interagency coordination. A recent Lockheed Martin analysis of AFRICOM's roles and missions lays out more baldly than usual the reach and limits of CoM authority.
Acknowledge Chief of Mission authority (Ambassador as President’s representative) to grant entry to government personnel based on diplomatic considerations. Also, follow National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 38, which gives the Chief of Mission control of the size, composition, and mandate of overseas full-time mission staffing for all U.S. Government agencies.
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According to Larua Rozen at FP's The Cable, Gen. Jones appears to be completing the NSC's assertion of bureaucratic power, expanding NSC's mandate to chair not only the NSC's Principals Committee and Deputies Committee, but the Interagency Policy Committees as well. It'll be interesting to see if this is as decisive as expected without the President's explicit mandate in a PPD. It's not an accident that it was left out in the first place.
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In case you haven’t seen it yet, President Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive – 1, “Organization of the National Security Council System.” Thanks to ArmsControlWonk for the link.
I've a few points to make about how this ties in to the Karen DeYoung article from a couple weeks back in which Gen. Jones laid claim to controling the NSC process. His remarks seem to be reflected in this document, but there are caveats. My analysis below.
Note that the NSA is designated as chair of NSC/Principals Committee meetings is empowered to determine NSC meeting agendas “at direction of President and in consultation with other members of the NSC.”
The NSA can also call for an NSC/PC meeting “in consultation . . .” - but the directive doesn’t limit the NSA’s ability to call meetings to “at the direction of the President.”
Also, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, who was the NSA equivalent for the Homeland Security Council, may now chair the NSC/PC meetings on homeland security at the discretion of the NSA. Clearly even if the HSC hasn’t been formerly disbanded it’s being informally appended to the NSC. PSD-1 seems to be a not toward due process - and probably a way to avoid a dust up from folks looking to score cheap political points ("Homeland security is being deprioritized! Oh my!")
The NSC/Deputies Committee (chaired by Deputy NSA) seems to have an added focus on oversight of execution of policy
This directive seems to empower the NSA and his staff, but below the Deputy NSA the powers of the chair of an Interagency Policy Committee are not laid out. That will create a space for continued bureaucratic entrepreneurship from the departments and agencies. The ground rules for the NSC/IPC will likely be determined as part of their mandate, established by future NSC/PC/DC meetings. That means the bureaucratic balance of power at the IPC level is still undetermined.
And of course when the above bureaucratic constructs run into the actual political capital of the players involved, the only thing that will hold it intact is the will of the President.
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This graphic shows the discrepancy between State and DOD regional organizations that the NSA, Gen. James Jones, said he was going to resolve (We'll see). Generally I like State’s org, but it's important to understand that the logic of these structures are driven by State and DOD's fundamentally different way of engaging the world. Not just defense vs. diplomacy. It's DOD's regional approach vs. States fundamentally bilateral view of the world.
For instance South Asia though DOD made a deliberate decision not to put Pakistan and India in the same command, the to better facilitate relations between the COCOMs and the leaders of those countries. Since the Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia isn’t really the US face for Pakistan or India, it isn’t a problem for the current bilateral State model. If State were to really empower a regional authority, issues like Pakistan/India would have to be carefully thought out.
The defense/diplomacy divide also matters, the mission sets. To some degree AFRICOM makes sense for the DOD as it's currently structured. The State Department's model would make addressing transnational threats in the region more difficult, like the AQIM. AQIM is most active in Algeria, but also have rudimentary training camps in Mali. Conversely it's important to the State Department needs to account for the important relations between North African states and the Middle East proper (Morocco was key in the Israel-Egypt rapprochement) .
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