Ounces of Prevention
I did an item this morning on David Sanger’s report that Barack Obama and his team are envisioning a substantial shift of resources in order to “create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states”. If you’re interested in the subject, that sounds a lot like what the Center for American Progress proposed in a recent paper on “The Price of Prevention: Getting Ahead of Global Crises” which is part of a whole series of reports on the subject of “Sustainable Security.”
As just a brief illustration of part of what the prevention concept is about, here’s a chart from the report showing our fitful attention to Pakistan:
The point is that if we had at some point along the way committed to actually trying to help Pakistan become a prosperous, stable, state whose military plays an appropriate role in society we wouldn’t need to have the kind of post-crisis spikes we’ve seen. Rather than responding to crises as they develop, we can and should be trying to help people and states in a long-term way so as to prevent problems from arising.
Now one criticism I’ve heard of this approach that I have some sympathy for is that if we invest too much in building stabilization and reconstruction capabilities, that might actually wind up feeding the sense of hubris that sometimes leads American foreign policy astray. In other words, if we respond to Iraq by planning better for the next Iraq rather than resolving to avoid getting into a new Iraq, we’ll wind up in a new Iraq. I have mixed feelings about this criticism, but I don’t think it can be dismissed out of hand. And that’s why I would feel a lot better about accomplishing this sort of thing by shifting resources out of the existing Pentagon budget rather than with new funds. No matter what you do on the national security side, there are going to be worries about military-industrial complexes or the existence of supply inducing demand for interventions. But if you hold the total volume of resources constant, it’s still possible to make the judgment that at the margin we need less response and more prevention, less military stuff and more civilian stuff, less investment in weapons and more investment in people, etc. Of course going down that route is also more politically challenging. But the payoff for the country and the world would be very real.
29 Responses to “Ounces of Prevention”
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December 1st, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I’m not sure foreign aid really helps in general, especially in Pakistan where most of the dollars go back to the military industrial complex.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Well sizing down appropriations for weapons systems in place of personnel does break the military industrial complex. The profits to be had from managing payroll are pretty slim comparatively. And body armor and supplies do cost a lot less than advanced fighters, even if they are grotesquely overpriced themselves.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Having an expanded diplomatic corps might have helped in Iraq, but only indirectly; the primary concern was security, and that can only be accomplished by having superior military power combined with good counter-insurgency doctrine. It certainly won’t help in areas like the latest Congo spat.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
A lot of foreign aid is basically a subsidy for American companies (i.e. agricultural aid must be spent on buying John Deere tractors or importing corn from Nebraska rather than supporting local markets, aid gets routed through DC-based beltway bandit firms that charge millions on staff and overhead, etc.) and that’s Congress’ fault. Also there are the inevitable problems of DC institutions being oblivious to the facts on the ground overseas (The White Man’s Burden by Bill Easterly did a real good job of diagnosing a lot of these problems). If we build up a level of consistent and massive foreign aid funding the risk is that it will become another institution existing for its own sake and not being very effective. Plus we look craven and self-interested; it’s not like people in Afghanistan don’t know that Chemonics is getting over $500K for each American they have working over there. There are ways out of this but Obama’s people are going to have to be real creative in order to figure it out.
OTOH tying foreign aid to policy is a ridiculous idea because policy changes all the time. Two problems arise: first, because priorities change every time someone elects someone we don’t like or Congress changes parties or whatever, it becomes impossible to administer anything in a consistent manner and aid programs become an incoherent, ineffective mess. Second, we look craven. If we have a school-building program in a country and we shut it down because that country has a new leader that we don’t like, the message we send is that we’re not interested in education as a human right but as a tool of rewarding our friends and punishing our enemies.
So Matt’s right in that consistently funding stuff in Pakistan would be better than this hot/cold dynamic we see. But we would need to make sure we’re not just throwing money at problems but actually structuring stuff so it works and goes where it’s needed.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:53 pm
“…preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states”
Nation building again? Isn’t this nonsense what got us sidetracked from the original (and limited) reason for going into Afghanistan – capturing Bin Laden?
This is just the plutocracy’s ego again – thinking that we can somehow make the world in our own image. Haven’t we wasted enough of that project already?
December 1st, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Interesting. Can MattY ask his handlers if this scheme is the CNSF? And, can he find out why this wasn’t on BHO’s site?
December 1st, 2008 at 3:48 pm
That’s a more reasonable expectation (although it doesn’t exactly do much to help the current “low”-level conflicts like in Congo), but how exactly could it be applied?
That’s good, but keep in mind that
A)It’s not as if we’re going into this with a long-term plan, or even the hint of one, and
B)What are these guys going to do that groups like the IMF, World Bank, and so forth haven’t tried already? Plans and such for nation-building (which is what it is) have been floating around and tried for years.
December 1st, 2008 at 4:58 pm
“The point is that if we had at some point along the way committed to actually trying to help Pakistan become a prosperous, stable, state whose military plays an appropriate role in society we wouldn’t need to have the kind of post-crisis spikes we’ve seen.”
Well, yeah, sure, if money could turn Pakistan into Switzerland. But, where is the evidence that we can actually nation-build Pakistan, of all places, into the Finland of South Asia?
December 1st, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Re: Well, yeah, sure, if money could turn Pakistan into Switzerland. But, where is the evidence that we can actually nation-build Pakistan, of all places, into the Finland of South Asia?
Mr. Sailer is quite right.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:29 am
He’s talked a lot about restoring America’s reputation in the world, and the article hints that he’s going to try preventing conflicts by using the State Department as a nation-building tool. That’s not exactly long-term planning – it’s just a nice-sounding guideline.
Hardly. I’m asking what they propose in terms of grand plans and nation-building that will be different than what organizations like the IMF, World Bank, and so forth have been proposing for 40 years. There’s no shortage of plans on how to have the Third World develop, so what makes Obama’s effort so special?
As for a “U.S. Brand”, I think it’s important to point out that the US has a major edge in terms of voting power in many of these organizations, particularly the IMF. That’s not directly under US control, but it’s close.
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