Yesterday's Washington Post featured a front page article by Bob Woodward with the headline "Key in Afghanistan: Economy, Not Military." The article focused mostly on discussions National Security Adviser James L. Jones has been having with, well, our military on the ground in Afghanistan, and it did not include a single quote from a government official or outside expert focused on economic development. Today's Post featured a front page article by Rajiv Chandrasekaran about the launch of a mission in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, the Marines' biggest operation since their invasion of Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. The activities and fates of our dedicated troops should be top news in a time of war. Their service is invaluable. Sustainable security in Afghanistan and our own national security depend on much more than our military, however. If the key in Afghanistan is the economy and not the military, then the public should be demanding, and key news outlets like the Post should be providing, deeper coverage of U.S. policy and strategy related to economic development.
To his credit, Chandrasekaran did write a lengthy and well-researched June 19th article headlined "U.S. Pursues a New Way To Rebuild in Afghanistan," but most of the story was really about past blunders and how not to support much needed agricultural development. The part about Richard C. Holbrooke's forward-looking plan to revamp reconstruction efforts is a story in and of itself.
Journalists should find no shortage of potential leads on the economic development front of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. For better or worse, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the crucibles of U.S. foreign assistance reform. The high stakes of these different but connected national security challenges may provide the impetus for long-needed changes to our overall aid system. On the other hand, picking the Af-Pak border region as a place to ensure and measure fundamentally more effective assistance may be like picking the middle of the Atlantic as a good place to stay dry. That same spotlight of public and policy attention is less likely to tolerate the risks associated with experimental approaches to development. Additionally, few experts are optimistic about the prospects for large-scale investments that must be executed by a foreign assistance bureaucracy that is politically weak, incoherent, and fragmented to the point at which it is far less effective than it could be in supporting strategic goals.
In keeping with my Washington Post theme, today's edition also ran a story by Ann Scott Tyson about Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's 60-day assessment of the Afghanistan campaign. She notes that McChrystal "has been advised to tell Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and President Obama, 'Here's what I need.'" We should all be reading more stories about how U.S Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, and specifically U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director in Afghanistan, William Frej, have been advised to tell the USAID Administrator, Holbrooke, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and President Obama, "Here's what we need," because hopefully that is what is happening.
The fact that the president has not yet nominated political leadership at the helm of USAID poses yet another set of challenges when trying to execute an approach to national security built on the 3 D's: diplomacy, development and defense. Clinton and her deputy, Jacob Lew, have both consistently made it a point to emphasize global development efforts, and Holbrooke is surely trying to stay on top of reconstruction and development issues in Afghanistan and Pakistan, specifically, but such policy leaders are not focused on development in the same way and to the same extent as the head of USAID (or yet-to-be confirmed policy makers at Treasury and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, for that matter). In the case of Afghanistan policy, there may be a silver lining to this dark cloud in that Acting USAID Administrator Alonzo Fulgham has on-the-ground experience serving as the Agency's Mission Director in Kabul.Beyond More Civilian Personnel
As Chandrasekaran's article on the Marines' operation makes clear, the State Department and USAID are not yet capable of bringing their expertise to bear in Helmand through the deployment of personnel. The issue of human capital constraints among U.S. diplomatic and development professionals is certainly highlighted in non-permissive environments like Helmand, but staffing problems cut across all contexts, not just conflict settings. Certainly State needs more diplomats. USAID needs more development professionals. The Administration seems to be working on those issues through the budget process with Congress and no less than eight former Secretaries of State spoke up just last week to support more robust funding and resources. More technical experts at USAID, for example, could help to reduce that agency's over-reliance on contracting, especially mega-contracts with insufficient monitoring and evaluation.
Ultimately, however, if instability stemming from economic turmoil is the top security concern for our country, and that is what Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair believes, then our government should be looking to solutions that extend beyond beefing up personnel. In the near-term, for example:
- President Obama should quickly name a highly qualified USAID Administrator and enable that person to represent development policy considerations within the National Security Council;
- The Administration should craft a formative interagency National Strategy for Global Development to bring coherence to U.S. global development policies across aid, trade, debt and other areas; and
- The Administration and Congress should work together to clarify the relationship between key development assistance bodies of the government including USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and those in the State Department (eg. the Global AIDS Coordinator) as well as key objectives of U.S. foreign assistance.
Thinking Really Big
Perhaps, after his assessment in Afghanistan, McChrystal will explain that what he really needs in addition to more Afghan security and governance counterparts is enhanced U.S. civilian capabilities to carry out responsive and responsible development programs in partnership with local communities. To get there, he may point out that "[t]he way to institutionalize these capabilities is probably not to recreate or repopulate institutions of the past such as AID.... just adding more people to existing government departments such as Agriculture, Treasury, Commerce, Justice and so on is not a sufficient answer either - even if they were to be more deployable overseas. New institutions are needed for the 21st century, new organizations with a 21st century mind-set." If he did so, he would be quoting a 2007 speech delivered by his boss, Secretary Gates.
As foreign assistance challenges from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Sudan, Palestine, Nigeria, Honduras and more arise in the news, the American public and media must take a close look at relevant policies, strategies and planning processes. We may have a tendency to do so more thoroughly when the military is involved, but whether they are or not, the non-military side of U.S. "smart power" matters at least as much.