[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23424-23429]
[From the U.S. 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

[[Page 23425]]

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.
       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.


[[Page 23426]]


  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. 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.
       Unity 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 lessons 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,

[[Page 23427]]

     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 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    objectives to
                                                                             authority beyond   available
                                                                             Kabul.             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

[[Page 23428]]

     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.
       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.

[[Page 23429]]

       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.
       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.

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