From a 2005 study on “The Politics of Humanitarian Aid: U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, 1964-1995,” published in The Journal of Politics.  The study looks at how political the decision to grant assistance is, in addition to how politics influences “how much” aid is ultimately given.  But as we know, the media always has a vote.

“A striking finding, however, centers on the powerful impact of a disaster’s media salience, with one New York Times article being worth more disaster aid dollars than 1,500 fatalities.”

In other words, a humanitarian emergency which involves greater loss of life and significantly more human suffering may get the short end of the stick if it lacks advocates who can garner media coverage or journalists willing to go to the center of the storm.  I guess this is why the U.S. ignores the Congo. 

Reporters don’t really like traveling the middle of Africa where conditions suck and where you can get a mosquito bite, despite the fact that millions have died there in the bloodiest intrastate conflict this century and that alone should make it worthy of substantial coverage.  Journalists are much happier reporting on places like Palestine, where they can do a story in the morning and grab a falafel and hit the clubs in Tel Aviv at night, or as they did in the nineties, spending their time in Sarajevo, a short airplane ride to the rest of Europe.  So they go there instead. 



Answer: It depends.

A state is generally considered to be an entity that maintains effective control over its territory and is recognized, formally or informally, by other members of the international community. The citizens of states are expected to have their own government and not be subjected to the laws of any other power or states. This is sovereignty.

Yet as this article in the Economist notes “[a]ny attempt to find a clear definition of a country soon runs into a thicket of exceptions and anomalies.”

Diplomatic recognition is clearly not much guide to real life. In the early years of the cold war most countries recognized the Chinese regime in Taiwan (“Free China”) while the mainland communists (“Red China”) were isolated. Now the absurdity is the other way round. The number of countries with formal diplomatic ties to Taiwan has shriveled to just 23—mostly small, cash-strapped islands. Yet Taiwan is not just a country, but a rather important one. Under mainland-pleasing names such as “Chinese Taipei” it is a member of the Asian Development Bank and the World Trade Organization, and an observer at some OECD panels. It has nearly 100 “trade offices” around the world.

So what makes one country recognize one state but not another? In a word: politics.

Before one state will recognize another, it takes into account a series of domestic & foreign political considerations, such as how it will impact its own internal stability and relationships with other countries. As the article notes, there is “a feeling among many sovereign states that changes of boundary and status set a bad precedent, [thereby making] changes less likely [for new states seeking international recognition].” This is doubly true if you have any nationalist or breakaway ethnic movements in the country.

There is no clear consensus on the definition of statehood. What matters is how much power the government has over internal matters and how other states behave in relation to it. Somalia is considered a state and has as seat at the UN, but lacks the ability to govern its territory. Kosovo and South Ossetia both have somewhat effective (though corrupt) governments, yet their recognition as states remains in dispute. Some (but not all) Western nations recognize Kosovo, while neither Russia nor China do, whereas South Ossetia is recognized only by four nations, one of which is Russia, the hegemon in the region (it's Russian support that allows South Ossetia to remain autonomous from Georgia).

But sovereignty gets even more complicated. The countries of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands have arrangements granting the United States complete authority over their security and defense. The Solomon Islands, meanwhile has police and judiciary forces led by Australia. Yet all three are UN members and considered states when the more proper term might be “protectorates.”

International recognition for states is important. In addition to diplomatic status and protection, it also means recognized control over internal resources by the international community, the ability to print money and perhaps most importantly in the case of poor states, acquire easier access to aid and development assistance from foreign governments and international institutions. Ultimately though, whether or not a country is considered a state or not depends upon what other countries think, a clear case of perception equaling reality.

Here are two interesting resources available for you to further develop your knowledge and skill sets when it comes to post-conflict stabilization and state-building . . .

The first is a joint venture from the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute to develop a manual for those involved in post-conflict stabilization.  The 244 page document  is entitled “Guidelines for Stabilization and Reconstruction,” and is available for download here. 

It is not unlike the recent cooperation between the U.S. Army and Marine Corps on Field Manual 3-07: Stability Operations, and before that, Field Manual 3-24: Counterinsurgency Operations, which is much more famous.  Together, these three documents should be considered the key texts when it comes to U.S. government policy as it relates to post-conflict stabilization and stability operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Ambassador John Herbst, who is the State Department’s Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, wrote about the Guidelines in his office’s Winter 2009/2010 newsletter, calling it “doctrine” for “civilian planners and practitioners involved in peacebuilding missions.”

According to Herbst:

[The] manual offers two important contributions: 1) a comprehensive set of shared principles and 2) a shared strategic framework. Both rise directly from the enormous wealth of knowledge and experience that has accrued across the global peacebuilding community over the last two decades. The development of the manual involved intensive vetting and consultation sessions with NATO planners, British stabilizers, UN peacebuilders and other key partners. It also involved a thorough review of hundreds of doctrinal documents produced by the very institutions that have toiled in these difficult environments. [Emphasis mine]

The second resource is a set of courses you can take from USIP that deals directly with post-conflict stabilization.  The only issue is they are all based in Washington, DC.

Below are descriptions of two sample courses being held in June . . .

Peacebuilding Organizations and Institutions

Covers the missions, cultures, operating procedures, and other essential characteristics of key international organizations, regional organizations, government organizations, militaries, and nongovernmental organizations in peace operations and stability operations. Inter-organizational planning, communication, and coordination in hostile environments are also addressed.

Economics and Conflict

Participants explore the analytical links between economic activity and conflict as well as the practical constraints and rewards of using economic instruments of conflict management. Case studies and simulations set in Kosovo, Haiti, and Sudan encourage participants to formulate economic instruments within a strategic framework for economic development in vulnerable and conflict-affected states.

Those who wish to work in post-conflict stabilization often find it difficult to get their foot in the door unless they’re already a U.S. government employee and deployed into one of these areas, or have worked for an NGO in another area and brought in.  Those who already work in this area find there are not many training opportunities and most of what you learn is either on the job or through self-study.

In both cases, by internalizing the above manuals and taking some of these courses, individuals can better position themselves for finding positions and working successfully in conflict and post-conflict environments. 

Eventually, USIP says all the courses will be online.  Three are already up and are available for free.  I’ve taken their online certificate course in conflict analysis and thought it well worth the time.



The Institute for State Effectivness, founded by by Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, (both of whom are listed by Foreign Policy Magazine as one the Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2009), have an informative graphic which proposes that states "must perform ten critical functions in the modern world in order to serve their citizens and fulfill their international obligations."

Here it is:

It seems pretty comprehensive to me.  This is all macro-level stuff.  Notice they don't say how the social contract should be defined or how the government should be organized.  They merely mention tasks.  The trick is getting failed or developing states to the point where they can perform all of the tasks effectively, justly and continually.  That's real question and challenge.  For states at the lowest levels of development, this will probably take decades. 

The only issue I have with is there doesn't seem to be a place for federalism in their model.  Many  responsibilities, such as education and internal security, should devolve to the cities, counties and states, especially in the larger countries.   Too much centralization can lead to ineffective government and instability.  Ultimately it's a question of balance and context.

It’s been exactly one month since I last posted.  When I did, it was from the Israeli city of Zefat, which is known as a center for Jewish mysticism.  I wasn’t there for the Kabbalah though.  I was there because it’s in the middle of the Galilean wine region and I wanted to visit some wineries, including this one called Rimon, which makes an amazing wine made entirely from pomegranates.  You can order a bottle online.

I returned to Iraq about two weeks ago and rather than blogging decided to catch up on work, finish reading a couple books on the run up to the Iraq war, and tried to figure out if I really wanted to do the blogging thing.  It’s been more work than I thought.  And unlike articles or a book, it’s unpaid.

What I do like about blogging is it forces you to think more deeply about the subjects you are covering.  And I believe it will help improve my writing and ability to communicate verbally my thoughts on war, post-conflict stabilization and international development.   So I plan to continue with it, but am thinking just one post a week at most.

One final note: I decided while in Tel Aviv to accept an offer to attend Duke University for a Master’s in International Development.  I’m doing the M.A. in part because the grad degree is the new bachelor’s, and because I need one to get where I eventually want to be professionally, which is help make government policy and hold leadership positions related to international development and national security.  After 4.5 years in Iraq and over 7.5 years living abroad, I’m also looking for a break and a chance to relax in the States for an extended time period.  I think Durham, North Carolina, which is where Duke is, will be a great place to live.  I’m looking forward to spending two years there, and then moving on to DC where I hope to settle permanently.

So this blog will survive, and I suspect when classes start, will probably focus more on the state-building (international development) side of things more than anything else.  It may go dark for a while during certain periods when I go on vacation again or am overloaded with school work, but I hope to keep it going at least until I graduate. 

Then we’ll see what happens.



I haven't blogged since the 8th because I'm currently on vacation traveling through Jordan and Israel.  So far I've spent a couple nights in Wadi Rum riding horses with the Beduoin, toured Petra, visited a Turkish bath in Amman, and mudded up and floated in the Dead Sea.  Right now I'm in Israel, having just finished an all day wine tour in Galilee and will then head to Jerusalem for a few days siteseeing and then it's off to Tel Aviv.  I'll begin posting again when I return to Iraq in about two weeks. 

Recently the Special Inspector General for Iraq (SIGIR), Stuart Bowen, testified before the Commission on Wartime Contracting on the need for a new “U.S. Office of Contingency Operations” to oversee future American efforts at post-conflict stabilization and nation-building (really state-building, but that’s another post).

Bowen, who since 2004 has investigated and exposed much of the corruption and incompetence in the Iraq reconstruction effort, argues the new office is necessary to prevent poor coordination and planning among U.S. government agencies, two problems which have been a distinguishing feature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The main reason the new office is needed, he says, is that there is no one U.S. government agency charged with responsibility for stabilization and reconstruction efforts and “there is no central point of planning and management," which has "bred the problems of poor coordination and weak integration we’ve encountered” in Iraq.

But as Spencer Ackerman notes, neither the Departments of State nor Defense support the proposal . . .

“In formal responses appended to the USOCO paper, two senior administration officials praise Bowen’s effort and endorse his diagnosis that civilian and military efforts in stabilization and reconstruction missions suffer from an ad hoc planning and implementation structure, saying he “correctly identifies under-funding [and] lack of capacities” within State and the U.S. Agency for International Development as a key weakness. But both reject USOCO as a solution. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy writes that the problem is “one of capacity and not of structure” and observes that congressional support for a restructuring “in today’s fiscally constrained environment seems unlikely.”

 

Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew, presenting State’s lengthy formal response to USOCO, pledges to Bowen that the USOCO proposal will receive “full consideration” from an ongoing State Department and USAID comprehensive review of development and diplomacy known as the QDDR. But he says Bowen’s fix is “problematic on several fronts,” and that USOCO would take too much policymaking responsibility away from the Secretary of State and the department’s regional bureaus.” 

Bowen has publicly stated the he will try and sell the idea to Congress, but considering the two agencies primarily charged with the post-conflict stabilization missions are not on board with the proposal and will actively fight against, it means the chances of it coming to fruition are unlikely.

I’m a big fan of Bowen for his work uncovering corruption in Iraq and I’m glad he’s stuck around since first being appointed in 2004, but I’m against the new proposal for a couple reasons. 

First, the main cause of the screw ups in the initial post-war period had to do with political choices made at the highest levels of government, primarily the decision to not start planning for the post-war period until just a few months before the war began.  What made it worse was the planning was based on a series of false assumptions that were tailored not to the situation at hand, but on a politically expedient notion that the war would be easy (a view that made it easier to sell to Congress and the public), so ergo, not much planning would need to be done.  The problem in this case wasn’t the lack of a special office to do planning and coordination, but the lack of sound strategic decision-making by a bunch of incompetent senior government officials.  These officials were also blinded by ideology and a desire to remake Iraq into some democratic redoubt which resulted in them ignoring the complex realities on the ground that didn’t fit into their magical thinking and ended up resulting in needless deaths and lost resources.

Another problem is that the office won’t solve the issue of interagency friction.  Having spent over four years in Iraq, with that time split almost evenly between roles with State and Defense, I can tell you that employees seconded to interagency organizations (like Provincial Reconstruction Teams) will have allegiance first to the organization and leadership that evaluates, pays and promotes them.  That means working against the interagency team's objectives if they are not in the interest of that person’s organization.  I’ve seen it happen.  A special office that draws on personnel from various departments won’t be able to do combat this problem unless it can create disincentives for failing to play nicely, such as the ability to write negative performance reports or dock pay.  But this is a power home agencies are never going to give up. 

The solution to problems of planning and coordination in future missions are quite simple:  begin planning and coordinating for them early.  Planning for the post-war occupation of Germany was several years in the making before Hitler killed himself and the country surrendered.  Personnel and resources were specifically prepared for that eventuality and a special School of Military Government was even established.  This meant that once the combat phase of the war was over both military and civilian officials were ready to move in and successfully help rebuild, de-Nazify, and democratize the country.  

Yanked from Shlok.

Once upon a time the CIA helped fund and edit the script for the brilliant film Animal Farm, which was released during the height of the Cold War and helped turn generations of school children against communist dictatorships.  This was helped along by the fact the movie was generally shown in schools as part of the curriculum, after which a class discussion on its allegorical nature was held.  The CIA is out of the film business now (I think), but the movie is a useful example of how art can help influence the public, one way or the other.

For those who haven't seen Animal Farm (the classic 1954 version), you can watch the entire thing on YouTube by clicking here.



Last week I wrote about the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Cyber ShockWave project that imagined a situation in which a foreign country or criminal syndicate attacked critical U.S. infrastructure through the internet.  The event, which was filmed on CNN, is now available on YouTube . . .

For a synopsis of what went down, you can read this Washington Post article.  Long story short: the U.S. is not capable of preventing such an attack and senior government leaders haven’t thought through how to adequately respond to one.

On a similar note, James Fallows in the March issue of The Atlantic pens an article on the Chinese cyber threat.  Fallows is one of the best writers around when it comes to issues of national security and his articles in the run up to the Iraq war and its aftermath constitute some of the sharpest and most prescient commentary available on the subject.  He even wrote the introduction to John Robb’s groundbreaking book Brave New War.  Robb is the seminal thinker whose concept of systempunkt foresees the use of cyber war as strategy in which attacks against infrastructure and financial systems create cascading effects that potentially lead to the destabilization of society.  I did a post on it here.  It’s likely the designers of the exercise drew on Robb’s work in developing the Cyber ShockWave scenario. 

Fallows argues the Chinese military recognizes that at its current stage of development it can’t go toe to toe with the U.S. military and that the Chinese government is more concerned about creating jobs and keeping its economy growing than it is in preparing for or getting involved in a conventional fight with the United States.  What the Chinese are preparing for, however, are ways to fight asymmetrically via the internet, and in addition to attacking infrastructure and collapsing financial networks, Fallows envisions a doomsday scenario in which hackers can erase all the knowledge and information stored on U.S. based servers and databases.  If this occurs, it’s difficult to imagine how we recover.  Fallows doesn’t provide any answers.  But John Robb does.   



This clip about bumbling jihadis in the new movie The Four Lions is hilarious . . .

It comes via J. Michael Waller whose Political Warfare blog has a great series of posts on how comedy can be used to help defeat radical extremist movements.  Osama Bin Laden has previously stated that he isn't afraid of dying but that he's afraid of being humiliated.  According to Waller, one way to make his worst fears come true is by making fun of him and those wishing to mirror his actions.  

"Ridicule," says Waller, "strips the terrorist of his power.  If we stop being afraid, we turn the icons of fear into objects of contempt."

While mockery won't solve the problem of terrorism, which is essentially blowback resulting from specific U.S. government actions abroad and can only be solved through a smarter foreign policy and less meddling in the affairs of other nations, it can be used to draw support away from extremist organizations seeking support from the masses. 

Satire has a long and established history of being used to subvert the beliefs of those who it is directed against.  If we hope to influence the minds and wills (hearts don't mean anything . . . so what if someone likes you if they're not willing to do anything to support you) of the populations who provide the sources of support for violent extremists, we'd be much better off churning out more films like The Four Lions. 

The always informative Eeben Barlow on the difference between parastatal and privatized military companies.

Volunteering in Haiti for Spring Break might not be the great idea you think it is.

Peacebuilding versus Al-Qaeda.

There was a coup in Niger.  Even so, the Center for Global Development argues against withdrawing development assistance (the U.S. suspended all non-humanitarian aid programs).  

Kings of War have a useful rundown on the militarization of foreign policy while Dan Gerstle over at War and Peace covers a UN report criticizing the militarization of aid in Afghanistan.

Prism, the journal of the National Defense University’s Center for Complex Operations (read post-conflict stabilization and state-building), releases its second issue (you can download the first one here).

Reach 364 (a U.S. Air Force officer studying Arabic in Amman and with a smarter head on his shoulders than your average flyboy) writes a good post over at his Building Peace blog on cross-cultural learning and the dangers of overconfidence when working in foreign countries. 

U.S. troop presence dropped below 100K in Iraq this week and thoughts on the drama in Iraq’s upcoming parliamentary elections.

Tough times for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (unlike USAID, they focus on middle-income countries). 

The World Bank’s Conflict and Development blog has a set of online video interviews with leaders from conflict-affected countries about overcoming conflict, building institutions, confidence building, and the role of the international community can play in addressing these issues.  You view them here and here.

Why disaster response will always be insufficient.

A great piece by Joshua Foust on why the media can’t get it right in Afghanistan.

Saundra over at Good Intentions are Not Enough explains the importance of needs assessments before designing/initiating any assistance programs.

USAID and the U.S. military’s SOUTHCOM team up to help with Haiti’s long-term reconstruction.

Finally, some cool pictures of goats.  (Hat tip to Chris Blattman).

For those who don’t know him, Chris Blattman is a Professor at Yale and a blogger who works on development issues (he’s also a consultant at the World Bank and UN Peace Fund).

He’s got advice for you on everything from getting a job in development and the consequences of child soldiering to the great debates surrounding the role of evaluations in international development.

I mention him because I’ve just discovered he’s teaching a course right now on “African Poverty and Western Aid” that is partially open to the general public.  He won’t be grading your papers and you won’t be sitting around with him and the other students discussing the subject matter, but you will learn a thing or two, especially if you’re like me and didn’t discover you wanted to work in post-conflict stabilization and international development until later in life.   

If you’re real hardcore you can probably set up some sort of study group with colleagues or interested friends.  That will offer the chance to further discuss the readings and you can even do the papers and then have each other read and evaluate them.   

There’s also available an already completed course on The Political Economy of Civil Wars and Terrorism that he taught last fall and which should be of greater interest to those studying post-conflict stabilization and COIN in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.



My very first post here at D3 discussed this 60 minutes piece on the ability of foreign governments or non-state actors such as terrorists, hackers or parasitical criminal syndicates to use the web to engage in systempunkt, the tactic of destroying key infrastructure or communication nodes (usually centralized to capitalize on economies of scale) in order to create larger societal disruptions. 

Taking off line the power plants supporting a large city, for instance, has a cascading effect that impacts downstream government and business functions creating turmoil in the provision of essential public services and the economy, not to mention destabilizing the lives of individuals and their families. 

Without power, the water supply available to densely populated urban areas will eventually shut off and supermarkets relying on complex internet software and just-in-time inventory delivery may soon end up empty.  Sure, such items can be trucked in, but in such quantities so as to satisfy demand?  Without street lighting at night and degraded police force capabilities, criminals are more likely to come out and wreak havoc.  The list of negative possibilities is endless and the result may be a breakdown in law and order or mass population movement outside the affected area.

The groundbreaking work on systempunkt (a riff off the Blitzkrieg concept of schwerpunkt) was done by theorist John Robb whose blog Global Guerillas and book Brave New War are the key texts when discussing these issues.

So why do I mention them?

Because today the Bipartisan Policy Center is conducting an exercise called Cyber ShockWave that is essentially a war game for the sort of scenario described above.  The event will convene former senior government officials playing the role of cabinet members as a massive cyber attack occurs against critical infrastructure in the United States.  

According to the BPC,

“The participants, whose mission is to advise the president and mount a response to the attack, will not know the scenario in advance. They will react to the threat in real time, as intelligence and news reports drive the simulation, shedding light on how the difficult split-second decisions must be made to respond to an unfolding and often unseen threat.”

To make it as realistic as possible, a production company has built a duplicate of the White House Situation Room and used professional scriptwriters to help security experts design the exercise.  CNN is filming it for broadcast later in the week and once the war game is finished participants will engage in an after action review open to questions from the media and public.  I’m looking forward to seeing the results.

However, my guess is that if a massive cyber attack on American infrastructure occurs, the government response will largely be ineffective.  Bureaucratic inertia, failure to plan or resource on a large scale, and good ole incompetence will make the official action more or less meaningless for everyone but the very few (especially in the short-term).  What will matter are how individuals prepare themselves and their attitude in adjusting to the new reality until systems come back online.  Yet there is one thing the government and individuals can do to minimize the impact of such widespread disruptions, and it isn’t building a more complex firewall. 

In short, it’s about building resilient communities able to weather the shocks that will likely in occur in the new world we’re living in.  One model is transition towns.

More on community resiliency is available here.



The other Super Bowl.

The ultimate development essay question:  “Is Africa to development was Mars is to NASA?” And is there a fifth poverty trap for Africa?  (Paul Collier in The Bottom Billion counts four).

Transparency International releases a practical guide for combating corruption in humanitarian relief and reconstruction.

Executive Outcomes founder Eeben Barlow challenges the prevailing wisdom on COIN and provides some useful info on the development of conflict in an African context. 

Meanwhile, Tom Ricks starts a series on COIN Metrics that he cribs from a paper by David Kilcullen.

BTW, the Russians had some kick-ass COIN All-stars too.

The State Department readies for a larger role in Iraq. 

Great non-profits need a better rating system, according to Full Contact Philanthropy.

Using General McChrystal’s own words, Harvard professor and Foreign Policy magazine blogger Stephen Walt suggests we shouldn't believe anything he says in regards to Afghanistan. 

In Mesopotamia, Musings on Iraq reports that a slim majority of Iraqis are optimistic about the future and that U.S. media coverage is way down and “almost out.”

Glenn Greenwald pens an excellent piece on the true scope of our wrongdoing when it comes to the Iraq War.

Want up to $250K for your individual community service project or favorite non-profit?  Via Pulling for the Underdog, we learn that Pepsi’s “Refresh Everything” initiative is giving out up to $1.3 million a month for US-based individuals and community groups interested in positive change.  It’s been called a “pathbreaking” corporate social responsibility initiative.  (Click here for an insider’s view on how it works).

Online courses on designing and funding sustainable development projects.

Owen Barder discusses aid, income and “Dutch Disease.”

Myth and realities regarding Chinese aid to Africa.

Haiti, anarchy, and the collapse of societies.

Daniel Gerstle over at Change.org’s War and Peace blog on how disaster preparedness and peace-building can save money and lives over the long-run.

A review by the Kings of War on John Mackinlay’s book The Insurgent Archipelago.

The mad scientists at DARPA move beyond planet hacking and into making the earth transparent.

The gents over at On Violence discuss what U.S. Army physical fitness training has to do with losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Finally, Joseph Collins on civil-military relations (my comments here).