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The UN's Role in Nation Building: From the Congo to Iraq
The UN's Role in Nation-Building: From the Congo to Iraq
by James Dobbins, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Bret Steele, Keith Crane (Editor)
This is the second part (the first being America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq) of a look at the way the United States and the United Nations conduct nation building operations. It's a fascinating subject, but written in an academic format which ensures no one will read it. But since an unread book is the saddest thing imaginable, I read it so you don't have to.
In conservative circles it's become a trite truism to assert that the UN can do peacekeeping but not peacemaking. Certainly the UN has had its share of rocky operations over the last few decades, but Dobbins points out several successful (within some pretty narrow parameters) UN peacemaking operations including the Congo, Eastern Slavonia and East Timor.
Beyond that, Dobbins examines nine UN operations and relates the lessons learned from them. In other words, nation building isn't some unknown territory. We have decades of experience to draw upon and we know what works and what doesn't. In fact, Dobbins distilled this two-volume study into the pedantically titled, Beginner's Guide to Nation Building. How's that for a poke in the eye?
So Dobbins' survey of UN-led nation building operations reveals some successes, but it also points out that they are far more cost-effective than US-led operations,
This is not to suggest that the United Nations could perform the U.S. mission in Iraq more cheaply, or perform it at all, but simply to underline that there are 18 other places where the United States will probably not have to intervene because UN troops are doing so at a tiny fraction of the cost of U.S. operations elsewhere.
Come to think of it, we only paid about 20% of the cost of the first Gulf War. Chump change, right? Somebody remind me why didn't we deal with Iraq as part of a UN operation this time around.
The take-away for me was that there's no excuse for the fiasco in Iraq. At the time of the invasion there was decades of experience to draw upon. For some reason, the Bush administration threw it all out the window and now they're shrugging off the problems saying, "Who knew?" Well, it turns out that a whole lot of people knew (including Dick Cheney, apparently) and they were ignored.
James Dobbins' take-away is a little more high-minded,
Assuming adequate consensus among Security Council members on the purpose for any intervention, the United Nations provides the most suitable institutional framework for most nation building missions, one with a comparatively low cost structure, a comparatively high success rate and the greatest degree of international legitimacy.
Other possible options are likely to be either more expensive, e.g., U.S., European Union or NATO-led coalitions, or less capable, e.g., the African Union, the Organization of American States, or ASEAN. The more expensive options are best suited to missions that require forced entry or employ more than 20,000 men, which so far has been the effective upper limit for UN operations. The less capable options are suited to missions where there is a regional but not a global consensus for action, or where the United States simply does not care enough to foot 25 percent of the bill.
This is one of those books that make you comfortable knowing it's out there, even if no one outside the government reads it. But woe be to those within the government who don't read it -- they should know better. This is exactly the kind of boring-but-important book we pay them to study.