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Nation Building: A Necessity of Victory

© Carey Goodman

"We will not engage in nation building in Afghanistan". - US President George W. Bush (October 2001)

Although the US has demonstrated masterful leadership in coalition building in its "war against terrorism", some issues of what happens when the current campaign ends must be considered. One of these issues is the prospect of "nation building" or installing a government to replace the Taleban. The US pledges that it will not engage in any form of "nation building", but at some critical juncture, it must engage in nation building. Installing a friendly and stable government in a vanquished state is simply one of the inevitable costs of war and one of the rewards of victory. Recent US foreign policy debacles have resulted from pledges to avoid nation building. Although these disasters are not the work of the Bush team, they are useful examples of what not to do when declaring victory.

The most obvious example is Somalia. During the Cold War Somalia was important to US strategic interests. Several changes of government caused changes to Somali alliances. Before the Mengistu regime ousted Ethiopian Emperor Haili Salasi, Somalia was a staunch Soviet ally. After Mengistu seized power, Somalia joined the Western allies and was armed and subsidized by the US. In a global war, Somalia would be a bulwark against Mengistu and his Marxist brethren who dreamed of communists conquering all of Africa and dismantling imperial legacies. When the Cold War ended and Mengistu ceased to be a serious threat, Somalia was cast aside as a strategically irrelevant state.

Drought plagued Somalia during the 1980s. Famine and the rise of warlords destroyed centralized authority. Thugs and trained killers ruled the streets of the Somali capital Mogadishu. Rival groups of teenagers known euphemistically as "technicals" armed with machine guns and driving stolen trucks did daily battle against each other. These "technicals" were the armies of the feuding warlords. He who controlled the ports and the airports controlled the country. No infrastructure or governmental authority existed beyond the brutal chaos imposed by the ruthless "technicals".

While the "technicals" had the freedom of the streets, famine ravaged the rural districts. No infrastructure meant no transport system to distribute the small amounts of food that were produced. By late 1992 the only way to establish order was to deploy US and UN "peace keepers" to the region. Their mission would be purely humanitarian; distributing food and supplies would be the start and the end of it. But soon after the deployment, "mission creep" (a situation in which the mission objectives change without the personnel who complete the mission having the proper tools to finish the job) evolved. Although Somali "technicals" and other irregulars threatened and killed US and UN forces, the official policy remained that this was a humanitarian mission. Despite pledges that US military operatives would be withdrawn by January 1993, the deployed forces remained in Somalia until withdrawal was complete in March 1994.