[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 134 (Friday, September 26, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12037-S12042]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SCHEDULED MARKUP OF THE EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am here this morning to announce that
we will have a markup of the supplemental request presented by the
President, the emergency supplemental request for Iraq, on Tuesday
morning at 10 a.m. I wish to state some of the reasons that I have
scheduled this hearing.
Secretary Rumsfeld appeared before our committee and made several
statements. I want to repeat a few quotes from his statement to our
committee. He said:
Standing between our people and the gathering dangers is
the courage of our men and women in uniform.
[[Page S12038]]
The vast majority of the funds the President has requested
are going to troops who are risking their lives in this
struggle. Of the $87 billion the President requests, $66
billion is to support ongoing military operations, money for
military pay, fuel, transportation, maintenance, weapons,
equipment, lifesaving body armor, ammunition, and other
critical military needs.
Further on he says:
So $66 billion or 75 percent of this request is for troops.
They need it and they need it soon.
Again, continuing on through his statement, he pointed out that:
In less than 5 months virtually all major Iraqi hospitals
and universities have been reopened and hundreds of secondary
schools, a few months ago most often used as weapons caches,
these have been rebuilt and are ready to start the fall
semester; 70,000 Iraqis have been armed and trained in just a
few months and have been contributing to the security and
defense of their country. A new Army is being trained. More
than 40,000 Iraqi troops are conducting joint patrols with
coalition forces. By contrast, it took 14 months to establish
a police force in post-Germany, and 10 years to begin
training a new German Army.
He went on to say:
As security improves, so does commerce. Some 5,000 Iraqi
small businesses opened since the liberation on May 1 and the
Iraqi Central Bank was established and a new currency
announced just two months ago--accomplishments that would
have taken 3 years in postwar Germany.
He mentioned other items. He said that all of this and more has taken
place in less than 5 months. The speed and breadth of what Ambassador
Bremer, GEN Tom Franks, GEN Rick Sanchez, and GEN Abizaid and the
civilian military and civilian teams have accomplished is impressive
and it may be without historical parallel, whether compared to postwar
Japan, Germany, Bosnia, or Kosovo.
I listened with great interest to the Secretary of Defense, and I am
convinced he has made the case for the early consideration of this
supplemental.
Before the Armed Services Committee, my distinguished colleague from
West Virginia, Senator Byrd, asked Ambassador Bremer:
I believe you said you didn't need the money until January.
I believe you said in the Appropriations Committee or in the
Democratic caucus--whichever request it was. Is that a fact?
Ambassador Bremer said:
No, Senator. We need this money right away. I think there
is some confusion. I was asked a specific question which was,
When does the Iraqi government run out of money? And I said
sometime in January. That's not the same as this. We have got
to get these reconstruction programs going right away as
quickly as possible. There is nothing more urgent.
Later, in response to a question by Senator Warner, Ambassador Bremer
said:
Yes, Senator. This is the most important thing that is
accelerated by the supplemental. There are the security parts
where we can speed up the training of the Iraqi army; instead
of taking two years, take one. We can't do that without more
money speeding up particularly the training of the Iraqi
police force which requires almost $2 billion. Each month
that goes by where we don't start those projects is a month
longer where those guys potentially leave our troops with
some of the duties that I have outlined in my statement. The
same is true for the infrastructure. We need to get started
letting contracts that we have to open--that we have to open
bids. It is going to take time. If we can get started to get
those bids started now quickly, we can get the repairs
started quickly.
Chairman Warner asked General Abizaid:
Is there a correlation, in your professional judgement,
General?
The general said:
Sir, there certainly is. The more the Iraqis are policing
and patrolling the security work to defend their own country
the sooner we will be able to draw down our forces and the
sooner we will be able to turn over the country to the
rightful owners, which are the Iraqis.
Chairman Warner asked:
It has a correlation to the tragic death, loss of life and
limb by our forces and our coalition. Am I correct?
General Abizaid said:
Sir, there is a correlation. We should all make sure we
understand as long as American troops are in Iraq there will
be casualties.
I take the position that winning the war on terrorism requires us to
finish our job in Iraq. Very clearly, we are in a different situation
now than we were in World War II. In World War II, after the defeat of
the Nazis, we went to the point of having an occupation force there for
over 4 years. That occupation force had a military government. We have
determined not to establish a military government in Iraq. We want to
move toward having the Iraqis themselves start a new form of government
for themselves. In doing so, we are in a position where the lives of
our soldiers and our military there in Iraq depend upon the speed with
which these people can establish their own government and their own
military.
I came across an article this past week in the RAND Review for the
summer of 2003. It is a most interesting article about ``The
Inescapable Responsibility of the World's Only Superpower.'' It points
out that, from Germany to Afghanistan, we had a period of training. In
terms of the training for the operations we are facing now in Iraq,
each succeeding effort--what this person calls ``nation building''--was
somewhat better managed than the previous one. This article compares
Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan to Iraq
in terms of the problems we face.
I find it very interesting to note, quoting the article:
Among the recent operations, the United States and its
allies have put 25 times more money and 50 times more troops
on a per capita basis in post-conflict Kosovo than into post-
conflict Afghanistan.
We are already learning how to move forward and establish the new
governments in the countries we are involved with. Afghanistan is a
good example.
If you follow through on what this person is stating, he is taking
the position of the RAND organization:
We at RAND believe that Iraq will require substantial
external funds for humanitarian assistance and budgetary
support. It is highly unlikely that taxes on the Iraqi oil
sector will be adequate to fund the reconstruction of the
Iraqi economy in the near future. Judging by the experience
of Bosnia and Kosovo, territories that have higher per capita
incomes than Iraq, budgetary support will be necessary for
quite some time. To manage immediate operating expenditures,
we suggest that post-conflict authorities in Iraq first
establish a reasonable level of expenditures, then create a
transparent tax system and ask foreign donors to pick up the
difference.
We have a donors' conference scheduled later next month.
The article goes on to say:
Post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction with the
objective of promoting a transition to democracy appear to be
the inescapable responsibility of the world's only
superpower. Therefore, in addition to securing the major
resources that will be needed to carry through the current
operation in Iraq success, the United States ought to make
the smaller long-term investments in its own institutional
capacity to conduct such operations.
I find this article very interesting in terms of the problems we
face. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record at the
end of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
See exhibit 1.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, going back to the statements made before
our committee, as Ambassador Bremer said to us on September 22:
There are some things I would like to point out about this
$87 billion request. No one part of the supplemental is
indispensable and no part is more important than the others.
This is a carefully considered request. This is urgent. The
urgency of military operations is self-evident. The funds for
nonmilitary action in Iraq are equally urgent. Most Iraqis
welcome us as liberators and we glow with the pleasure of
that welcome. Now the reality of foreign troops on the
streets is starting to chafe. Some Iraqis are beginning to
regard us as occupiers and not as liberators. Some of this is
inevitable, but faster progress in reconstruction will help.
Unless this supplemental passes quickly, the Iraqis will face
darkness eight hours daily. The safety of our troops is
indirect but real. The people who ambush our troops are small
in number and do not do so because they have undependable
electricity. However, the population of a few is directly
related to their cooperation in hunting down those who attack
us. Earlier progress gives an edge against terrorists.
As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I take the position that
we should act as quickly as possible on this bill. If we can get it to
third reading before we leave here the next week, the House will act on
the bill while we are gone. We can marry our version of the bill to the
House version of the bill here in the Senate and take it up the first
week we are back after the recess.
[[Page S12039]]
If we do that, we should be able to get this bill to the President and
to the Department of Defense and to Ambassador Bremer's operation by
mid-October at the latest. It is urgent we do that.
We have the option to demonstrate to the world we are not going there
to occupy Iraq. We did not intend to occupy Iraq. As a matter of fact,
under the Iraq Liberation Act enacted in 1998, Congress stated the
policy:
It should be the policy of the United States to support
efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from
power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic
government to replace that regime.
Further, it stated:
It is the sense of the Congress once the Saddam Hussein
regime is removed from power in Iraq, the United States
should support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing
immediate and substantial humanitarian assistance to the
Iraqi people, by providing democracy transition to Iraqi
parties and movements with democratic goals, and by convening
Iraq's foreign creditors to develop a multilateral response
to Iraq's foreign debt incurred by Saddam Hussein's regime.
That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to escape the long
delay of military occupation and carry out our goal of liberation of
the Iraqi people as we decided in 1998.
It is essential we proceed with this markup and get the bill to the
Senate as quickly as possible. It is my hope it would be on the floor
by Tuesday night. I hope the leader will give us the time during the
next week to take this bill, that provides the funds, to third reading
so we can act as an Appropriations Committee in conjunction with our
colleagues from the House on the bill they will produce when we are on
recess.
Nothing is more important than demonstrating to those people in
uniform in Iraq that we mean business. We need this money. There is no
question they need this money.
Because of the requests made during the debate on the last
supplemental, we convinced the administration to submit a 2004 Defense
bill. The 2004 Defense bill did not contain any money for Iraq. That
was in the separate supplemental submitted to us in response to the
request from the Congress to do just that.
For the first time in history the President has requested money in
advance to conduct a war. All Presidents in the past have taken money
from existing Government funds, spent them, and then came to Congress
to replace the funds from which those moneys were taken.
This President submitted a concise request. As a matter of fact, one
Member of the other side of the aisle in the budget markup asked for
$100 billion for the Iraqi defense activities. This President asked for
a total of $66 billion plus $20.3 billion for the activities conducted
under Ambassador Bremer's aegis to hasten the ability of the Iraqi
people to take over their own government, their own security, and their
own future.
If we can act quickly, we can escape a long period of occupation.
Compare the two sections of this bill: $66 billion for defense, $20
billion for the humanitarian and governmental activities. The longer we
keep our troops in Iraq, the more expensive it will become from a
military point of view. The sooner we can help these people establish
their own government, provide their own security, their own army, the
sooner we can bring our people out of Iraq and release these
extraordinary expenses. The President has enabled us to view those
expenses.
The bill we just passed, and the President will soon sign for 2004
for Department of Defense, does not contain money for Iraq. The money
for Iraq is in a separate bill and demonstrates to everyone how
expensive it is to keep an army in Iraq.
Our goal is to get that $20.3 billion as quickly as possible. It is
needed as much as the Defense money. I hope the Senate will work with
us next week as we try to bring this bill to the floor and get it to
third reading before we recess on the 3rd.
Exhibit 1
[From the Rand Review, Summer, 2003]
Nation-Building
(By James Dobbins)
We at the RAND Corporation have compiled what we have found
to be the most important lessons learned by the United States
in its nation-building efforts since World War II. Not all
these hard-won lessons have yet been fully applied to
America's most recent nation-building efforts in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
We define nation-building as ``the use of armed force in
the aftermath of a conflict to underpin an enduring
transition to democracy.'' We have compared the levels of
progress toward this goal among seven historical cases:
Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and
Afghanistan. These are the most important instances in which
American military power has been used in the aftermath of a
conflict to underpin democratization elsewhere around the
world since World War II.
From our review of the historical cases, we at RAND have
derived a number of overarching conclusions:
Many factors--such as prior democratic experience, level of
economic development, and social homogeneity--can influence
the ease or difficulty of nation-building, but the single
most important controllable determinant seems to be the level
of effort, as measured in troops, money, and time.
Multilateral nation-building is more complex and time-
consuming than a unilateral approach. But the multilateral
approach is considerably less expensive for individual
participants.
Multilateral nation-building can produce more thorough
transformations and greater regional reconciliation than can
unilateral efforts.
United of command is as essential in peace operations as it
is in war. This unity of command can be achieved even in
operations with broad multilateral participation when the
major participants share a common vision and tailor the
response of international institutions accordingly.
There appears to be an inverse correlation between the size
of the military stabilization force and the level of
casualties. The higher the proportion of troops relative to
the resident population, the lower the number of casualties
suffered and inflicted. Indeed, most of the post-conflict
operations that were generously manned suffered no casualties
at all.
Neighboring states can exert significance influence, for
good or bad. It is nearly impossible to put together a
fragmented nation if its neighbors try to tear it apart.
Every effort should be made to secure their support.
Accountability for past injustices can be a powerful
component of democratization. Such accountability can be
among the most difficult and controversial aspects of any
nation-building endeavor, however, and therefore should be
attempted only if there is a deep and long-term commitment to
the overall operation.
There is no quick fix for nation-building. None of our
cases was successfully completed in less than seven years.
These lesions are drawn from the ``best practices'' of
nation-building over the past 60 years. We explain the
lessons in greater detail below and then suggest how they
might be applied to future operations and, in particular,
to Iraq. Although the combat phase of the war against Iraq
went very well and the regime collapsed much faster than
many had expected, the United States has been left with
the unenviable task of seeking to build a democratic,
economically vibrant Iraqi nation.
From Germany to Afghanistan
The cases of Germany and Japan set a standard for post-
conflict nation-building that has not been matched since.
Both were comprehensive efforts at social, political, and
economic reconstruction. These successes demonstrated that
democracy was transferable, that societies could be
encouraged to transform themselves, and that major
transformations could endure.
For the next 40 years, there were few attempts to replicate
these early successes. During the cold war with the Soviet
Union, America employed its military power to preserve the
status quo, not to alter it; to manage crises, not to resolve
the underlying problems; to overthrow unfriendly regimes and
reinstall friendly ones, not to bring about fundamental
societal change.
After 1989, a policy of global containment of the Soviet
Union no longer impelled the United States to preserve the
status quo. Washington was now free to overlook regional
instability in places like Yugoslavia and Afghanistan as long
as the instability did not directly threaten American
interests. At the same time, though, the United States had
the unprecedented opportunity of using its unrivaled power to
resolve, not just to manage or to contain, international
problems of strategic importance. In addition, the United
States could secure broader international support for such
efforts than ever before.
Throughout the 1990s, each successive post-cold war effort
became wider in scope and more ambitious in intent than its
predecessor had been. In Somalia, the original objective was
purely humanitarian but was subsequently expanded to
democratization. In Haiti, the objective was to reinstall a
president and to conduct elections according to an existing
constitution. In Bosnia, the objective was to create a
multiethnic state out of a former Yugoslav republic. In
Kosovo, the objective was to establish a democratic polity
and market economy virtually from scratch.
From Somalia in 1992 to Kosovo in 1999, each nation-
building effort was somewhat better managed than the previous
one (see table). Somalia was the nadir. Everything
[[Page S12040]]
that could go wrong did. The operation culminated in the
withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1994 after a sharp tactical
setback that had resulted in 18 American deaths in October
1993. This reverse, which became memorialized in the book and
film ``Black Hawk Down,'' was largely the result of an
unnecessarily complicated U.S. and United Nations command
structure that had three distinct forces operating with three
distinct chains of command. Despite its failure, the Somalia
mission taught America crucial lessons for the future. One
was the importance of unity of command in peace operations as
well as in war. Second was the need to scale mission
AMERICA'S HISTORY OF NATION-BUILDING
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Country or International
territory Years Peak U.S. troops cooperation Assessment Lessons learned
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
West Germany.... 1945-1952....... 1.6 million....... Joint project with Very successful. Democracy can be
Britain and Within 10 years transferred.
France, an economically Military forces
eventually NATO. stable democracy can underpin
and NATO member. democratic
transformation.
Japan........... 1945-1952....... 350,000........... None.............. Very successful. Democracy can be
Economically exported to non-
stable democracy Western
and regional societies.
security anchor Unilateral
within a decade. nation-building
can be simpler
(but more
expensive) than
multilateral.
Somalia......... 1992-1994....... 28,000............ United Nations Not successful. Unity of command
(U.N.) Little can be as
humanitarian accomplished essential in
oversight. other than some peace as in
humanitarian aid combat
delivered in operations.
Mogadishu and Nation-building
other cities. objectives need
to be scaled to
available
resources.
Police may need
to be deployed
alongside
military forces.
Haiti........... 1994-1996....... 21,000 (plus 1,000 U.N. help in Not successful. Exit deadlines
international policing. U.S. forces can be
police). restored counterproductiv
democratically e. Need time to
elected build competent
president but administrations
left before and democratic
democratic institutions.
institutions
took hold.
Bosnia.......... 1995-present.... 20,000............ Joint effort by Mixed success. Unity of command
NATO, U.N., and Democratic is required on
Organization for elections within both military
Security and two years, but and civil sides.
Cooperation in government is Nexus between
Europe. constitutionally organized crime
weak. and political
extremism can be
serious
challenge to
enduring
democratic
reforms.
Kosovo.......... 1999-present.... 15,000 (plus 4,600 NATO military Modest success. Broad
international action and U.N. Elections within participation
police). support. 3 years and and extensive
strong economic burden-sharing
growth. But no can be
final resolution compatible with
to Kosovo's unity of command
status. and American
leadership.
Afghanistan..... 2001-present.... 10,000............ Modest Too early to Low initial input
contribution from tell. No longer of money and
U.N. and launch pad for troops yields
nongovernmental global low output of
organizations. terrorism. But security,
little democratization,
democratic and economic
structure and no growth.
real government
authority beyond
Kabul.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
objectives to
available resources in troops, money, and staying power. A
third lesson was the importance of deploying significant
numbers of international police alongside international
military forces to places where the local law enforcement
institutions had disappeared or become illegitimate.
America applied these lessons to Haiti in the mid-1990s. We
had unity of command throughout the operation. We did not
have parallel American and allied forces. We had a single
force under a single command with a clear hierarchy of
decisionmaking. We deployed a large number of police within
weeks of the military deployment, and the police were armed
with both weapons and arrest authority. Unfortunately, we
were obsessed with exit strategies and exit deadlines in the
wake of the Somalia debacle. So we pulled out of Haiti with
the job at best half done.
The Bosnia experience of the late 1990s, was more
successful. We set an exit deadline but wisely ignored it
when the time came. On the negative side, there was a lack of
coordination between the military stabilization efforts of
NATO and those organizations responsible for civilian
reconstruction. Consequently, the authority for implementing
the civilian reconstruction projects became fragmented among
numerous competing institutions. To complicate the situation
further, the international police who had been deployed were
armed with neither weapons nor arrest authority.
By the time of the Kosovo conflict in 1999, we and our
allies had absorbed most of these lessons. We then made
smarter choices in Kosovo. We achieved unity of command on
both the civil and military sides. As in Bosnia, NATO was
responsible for military operations. On the civil side, we
established a clear hierarchical structure under a United
Nations representative. Leadership was shared effectively
between Europe and the United States. Working together, we
deployed nearly 5,000 well-armed police alongside military
peacekeepers. Although far from perfect, the arrangement was
more successful than it had been in Bosnia.
During his presidential campaign in 2000, George W. Bush
criticized the Clinton administration for this expansive
nation-building agenda. As president, Bush adopted a more
modest set of objectives when faced with a comparable
challenge in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the attempt to
reverse the trend toward ever larger and more ambitious U.S.-
led nation-building operations has proven short-lived. In
Iraq, the United States has taken on a task comparable in its
vast scope to the transformational efforts still under way in
Bosnia and Kosovo and comparable in its enormous scale to the
earlier American occupations of Germany and Japan. Nation-
building, it appears, is the inescapable responsibility of
the world's only superpower.
Quantitative Comparisons of Cases
For each of the seven historical cases of nation-building,
we at RAND compared quantitative data on the ``inputs''
(troops, money, and time) and ``outputs.'' The outputs
included casualties (or lack thereof), democratic elections,
and increases in per capita gross domestic product (GDP).
Troop levels varied widely across the cases. The levels
ranged from 1.6 million U.S. troops in the American sector in
Germany at the end of World War II to 14,000 U.S. and
international troops currently in Afghanistan. Gross numbers,
however, are not the most useful numbers for comparison,
because the size and populations of the nations being built
have been so disparate. We chose instead to compare the
numbers of U.S. and foreign soldiers per thousand inhabitants
in each occupied territory. We then compared the proportional
force levels at specified times after the conflict ended (or
after the U.S. rebuilding efforts began).
Figure 1 shows the number of international troops (or in
the German and Japanese cases, U.S. troops) per thousand
inhabitants in each territory at the outset of the
intervention and at various intervals thereafter. As the data
illustrate, even the proportional force levels vary immensely
across the operations. (The levels vary so tremendously that
they require a logarithmic, or exponential, scale for
manageable illustration.)
Bosnia, Kosovo, and particularly the U.S.-occupied sector
of Germany started with substantial proportions of military
forces, whereas the initial levels in Japan, Somalia, Haiti,
and especially Afghanistan were much more modest. The
levels generally decreased over time. In Germany, the
level then rose again for reasons having to do with the
cold war. Overall, the differences in force levels across
the cases had significant implications for other aspects
of the operations.
Figure 2 compares the amount of foreign economic aid per
capita (in constant 2001 U.S. dollars) provided to six of the
territories during the first two years. Although Germany
received the most aid in raw dollar terms ($12 billion), the
country did not rank high on a per capita basis. Per capita
assistance there ran a little over $200. Kosovo, which ranked
fourth in terms of total assistance, received over $800 per
resident. With the second-highest level of economic
assistance per capita, Kosovo enjoyed the most rapid recovery
in levels of per capita GDP. In contrast, Haiti, which
received much less per capita than Kosovo, has experienced
little growth in per capita GDP.
Germany and Japan both stand out as unequaled success
stories. One of the most important questions is why both
operations fared so well compared with the others. The
easiest answer is that Germany and Japan were already highly
developed and economically advanced societies. This certainly
explains why it was easier to reconstruct their economies
than it was to reconstruct those in the other territories.
But economics is not a sufficient answer to explain the
transition to democracy. The spread of democracy to poor
countries in Latin America, Asia, and parts of Africa
suggests that this form of government is not unique to
advanced industrial economies. Indeed, democracy can take
root in countries where neither Western culture nor
significant economic development exists. Nation-building is
not principally about economic reconstruction, but rather
about political transformation.
Because Germany and Japan were also ethnically homogeneous
societies, some people might argue that homogeneity is the
key to success. We believe that homogeneity helps greatly but
that it is not essential, either. It is true that Somalia,
Haiti, and Afghanistan are divided ethnically,
socioeconomically, or tribally in ways that Germany and Japan
were not. However, the kinds of communal hatred that mark
Somalia, Haiti, and Afghanistan are even more pronounced in
Bosnia and Kosovo, where the process of democratization has
nevertheless made some progress.
What principally distinguishes Germany, Japan, Bosnia, and
Kosovo from Somalia, Haiti, and Afghanistan is not their
levels of Western culture, democratic history, economic
development, or ethnic homogeneity. Rather, the principal
distinction is the level of effort that the United States and
the international community have put into the democratic
transformations. Among the recent operations, the United
States and its allies have put 25 times more money and 50
times more troops on a per capita basis into post-conflict
Kosovo than into post-conflict Afghanistan. These higher
levels of input account in significant measure for the higher
levels of output in terms of democratic institution-building
and economic growth.
[[Page S12041]]
Japan, one of the two undoubted successes, fully meets the
criterion regarding the duration of time devoted to its
transformation. In the first two years, Japan received
considerably less external economic assistance per capita
than did Germany, Bosnia, or Kosovo, indeed less than Haiti
and about the same amount as Afghanistan. Japan's
correspondingly low post-conflict economic growth rates
reflect this fact. Japan's subsequent growth of the 1950s,
spurred by American spending linked to the Korean War, helped
to consolidate public support for the democratic reforms that
had been put in place in the immediate postwar years. As with
the German economic miracle of the 1950s, the experience in
Japan suggests that rising economic prosperity is not so much
a necessary precursor to political reform as a highly
desirable successor and legitimizing factor.
In proportion to its population, Japan also had a smaller
military stabilization force (or, as it was then termed,
occupation force) than did Germany, Bosnia, or Kosovo,
although the force was larger than those in Haiti and
Afghanistan. The ability to secure Japan with a comparatively
small force relates to both the willing collaboration of the
Japanese power structures and the homogeneity of the
population. A third important factor was the unprecedented
scale of Japan's defeat--the devastation and consequent
intimidation wrought by years of total war, culminating in
the fire bombing of its cities and finally two nuclear
attacks. In situations where the conflict has been terminated
less conclusively and destructively (or not terminated at
all), such as Somalia, Afghanistan, and most recently Iraq,
we have seen more difficult post-conflict security
challenges. Indeed, it seems that the more swift and
bloodless the military victory, the more difficult can be the
task of post-conflict stabilization.
The seven historical cases have differed in terms of
duration. The record suggests that although staying long does
not guarantee success, leaving early assures failure. To
date, no effort at enforced democratization has been brought
to a successful conclusion in less than seven years.
unity of command
Throughout the 1990s, the United States wrestled with the
challenge of gaining wider participation in its nation-
building endeavors while also preserving adequate unity of
command. In Somalia and Haiti, the United States experimented
with sequential arrangements in which it initially managed
and funded the operations but then quickly turned
responsibility over to the United Nations. In Bosnia, the
United States succeeded in achieving both broad participation
and unity of command on the military side of the operation
through NATO. But in Bosnia the United States resisted the
logic of achieving a comparable and cohesive arrangement on
the civil side. In Kosovo, the United States achieved broad
participation and unity of command on both the military and
civil sides by working through NATO and the United Nations.
None of these models proved entirely satisfactory. However,
the arrangements in Kosovo seem to have provided the best
amalgam to date of American leadership, European and other
participation, financial burden-sharing, and unity of
command. Every international official in Kosovo works
ultimately for either the NATO commander or the Special
Representative of the U.N. Secretary General. Neither of
these is an American. But by virtue of America's credibility
in the region and America's influence in NATO and on the U.N.
Security council, the United States has been able to maintain
a satisfactory leadership role while fielding only 16 percent
of the peacekeeping troops and paying only 16 percent of the
reconstruction costs.
The efficacy of the Bosnia and Kosovo models has depended
on the ability of the United States and its principal allies
to attain a common vision of the objectives and then to
coordinate the relevant institutions--principally NATO,
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
the European Union, and the United Nations--to meet the
objectives. These two models offer a viable fusion of
burden-sharing and unity of command.
In Afghanistan, in contrast, the United States opted for
parallel arrangements on the military side and even greater
divergence on the civil side. An international force--with no
U.S. participation--operates in the capital of Kabul, while a
national and mostly U.S. force operates everywhere else. The
United Nations has responsibility for promoting political
transformation, while individual donors coordinate economic
reconstruction--or, more often, fail to do so.
The arrangement in Afghanistan is a marginal improvement
over that in Somalia, because the separate U.S. and
international forces are at least not operating in the same
physical space. But the arrangement represents a clear
regression from what we achieved in Haiti, Bosnia, or, in
particular, Kosovo. It is therefore not surprising that the
overall results achieved to date in Afghanistan are better
than in Somalia, not yet better than in Haiti, and not as
good as in Bosnia or Kosovo. The operation in Afghanistan,
though, is a good deal less expensive than those in Bosnia or
Kosovo.
Applying the Lessons to Iraq
The challenges facing the United States in Iraq today are
formidable. Still, it is possible to draw valuable lessons
from America's previous experiences with nation-building.
There are four main lessons to be learned for Iraq.
The first lesson is that democratic nation-building can
work given sufficient inputs of resources. These inputs,
however, can be very high. Regarding military forces, Figure
3 takes the numbers of troops used in the previous cases of
nation-building and projects, for each, a proportionally
equivalent force for the Iraqi population over the next
decade. For example, if Kosovo levels of troop commitments
were deployed to Iraq, the number would be some 500,000 U.S.
and coalition troops through 2005. (There are roughly 150,000
coalition troops stationed in Iraq today.) To provide troop
coverage at Bosnia levels, the requisite troop figures would
be 460,000 initially, falling to 258,000 by 2005 and 145,000
by 2008.
In addition to military forces, it is often important to
deploy a significant number of international civil police. To
achieve a level comparable to the nearly 5,000 police
deployed in Kosovo, Iraq would need an infusion of 53,000
international civil police officers through 2005 (in addition
to the forces represented in Figure 3).
It is too early to predict with accuracy the required
levels of foreign aid, but we can draw comparisons with the
previous historical cases. Figure 4 takes the amount of
foreign aid provided in six of the seven previous cases of
nation-building and projects proportionally equivalent
figures for the Iraqi population over the next two years. If
Bosnia levels of foreign aid per capita were provided to
Iraq, the country would require some $36 billion in aid from
now through 2005. Conversely, aid at the same level as
Afghanistan would total $1 billion over the next two
years.
We at RAND believe that Iraq will require substantial
external funds for humanitarian assistance and budgetary
support. It is highly unlikely that taxes on the Iraqi oil
sector will be adequate to fund the reconstruction of the
Iraqi economy in the near future. Judging by the experiences
of Bosnia and Kosovo, territories that have higher per capita
incomes than Iraq, budgetary support will be necessary for
quite some time. To manage immediate operating expenditures,
we suggest that the post-conflict authorities in Iraq first
establish a reasonable level of expenditures, then create a
transparent tax system, and ask foreign donors to pick up the
difference until the nation gets on its feet. We believe that
this will be the most efficacious avenue to economic
recovery.
At the same time, we suspect that Iraq will not receive the
same per capita levels of foreign troops, police, or economic
aid as did either Bosnia or Kosovo. Figures of 500,000 troops
or $36 billion in aid are beyond the capacity of even the
world's only superpower to generate or sustain. Even half
those levels will require the United States to broaden
participation in Iraq's post-conflict stabilization and
reconstruction well beyond the comparatively narrow coalition
that fought the war, thereby mounting a broader international
effort on the Balkan models. According to the lessons
learned, the ultimate consequences for Iraq of a failure to
generate adequate international manpower and money are likely
to be lower levels of security, higher casualties sustained
and inflicted, lower economic growth rates, and slower, less
thoroughgoing political transformation.
The second lesson for Iraq is that short departure
deadlines are incompatible with nation-building. The United
States will succeed only if it makes a long-term commitment
to establishing strong democratic institutions and does not
beat a hasty retreat tied to artificial deadlines. Moreover,
setting premature dates for early national elections can be
counterproductive.
Third, important hindrances to nation-building include both
internal fragmentation (along political, ethnic, or sectarian
lines) and a lack of external support from neighboring
states. Germany and Japan had homogeneous societies. Bosnia
and Kosovo had neighbors that, following the democratic
transitions in Croatia and Serbia, collaborated with the
international community. Iraq could combine the worst of both
worlds, lacking both internal cohesion and regional support.
The United States should consider putting a consultative
mechanism in place, on the model of the Peace Implementation
Council in the Balkans or the ``Two Plus Six'' group that
involved Afghanistan's six neighbors plus Russia and the
United States, as a means of consulting with the neighboring
countries of Iraq.
Fourth, building a democracy, a strong economy, and long-
term legitimacy depends in each case on striking the balance
between international burden-sharing and unity of command. As
noted above, the United States is unlikely to be able to
generate adequate levels of troops, money, or endurance as
long as it relies principally upon the limited coalition with
which if fought the war. On the other hand, engaging a
broader coalition, to include major countries that will
expect to secure influence commensurate with their
contributions, will require either new institutional
arrangements or the extension of existing ones, such as NATO.
In its early months, the American-led stabilization and
reconstruction of Iraq have not gone as smoothly as might be
expected, given abundant, recent, and relevant American
experience. This is, after all, the sixth major nation-
building enterprise the United States has mounted in eleven
years, and the fifth in a Muslim nation or province.
[[Page S12042]]
Many of the initial difficulties in Iraq have been
encountered elsewhere. Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, and
Afghanistan also experienced the rapid and utter collapse of
their prior regimes. In each of those instances, the local
police, courts, penal services, and militaries were
destroyed, disrupted, disbanded, and/or discredited. They
were consequently unavailable to fill the post-conflict
security gap. In Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan,
extremist elements emerged to fill the resultant vacuum of
power. In all five cases, organized crime quickly developed
into a major challenge to the occupying authority.
In Bosnia and Kosovo, the external stabilization forces
ultimately proved adequate to surmount these challenges. In
Somalia and Afghanistan, they did not or have not yet,
respectively.
Throughout the 1990s, the management of each major
stabilization and reconstruction mission represented a
marginal advance over its predecessor, but in the past
several years this modestly positive learning curve has not
been sustained. The Afghan mission cannot yet be deemed more
successful than the one in Haiti. It is certainly too early
to evaluate the success of the Iraqi nation-building mission,
but its first few months do not raise it above those in
Bosnia and Kosovo at a similar stage.
Over the past decade, the United States has made major
investments in the combat efficiency of its forces. The
return on investment has been evident in the dramatic
improvements demonstrated from one campaign to the next, from
Desert Storm to the Kosovo air campaign to Operation Iraqi
Freedom. But there has been no comparable increase in the
capacity of U.S. armed forces, or of U.S. civilian agencies
for that matter, to conduct post-combat stabilization and
reconstruction operations.
Nation-building has been a controversial mission over the
past decade, and the extent of this controversy has
undoubtedly curtailed the investments needed to do these
tasks better. So has institutional resistance in both the
state and defense departments, neither of which regards
nation-building among its core missions. As a result,
successive administrations tend to treat each new such
mission as if it were the first and, more importantly, the
last.
This expectation is unlikely to be realized any time soon.
In the 1990s, the Clinton administration conducted a major
nation-building intervention, on the average, every two
years. The current administration, despite a strong
disinclination to engage American armed forces in these
activities, has launched two major such enterprises in a
period of eighteen months.
Post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction with the
objective of promoting a transition to democracy appear to be
the inescapable responsibility of the world's only
superpower. Therefore, in addition to securing the major
resources that will be needed to carry through the current
operation in Iraq to success, the United States ought to make
the smaller long-term investments in its own institutional
capacity to conduct such operations. In this way, the ongoing
improvements in combat performance of American forces could
be matched by improvements in the post-conflict performance
of our government as a whole.
Mr. STEVENS. I yield the floor.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________