The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2003

10 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 3 Nation Building: A Reality Check Despite claims to eschew nation building, the Bush administration is now “up to its ears,” as an American diplomat in Afghanistan put it, in just that. And the price of failure, espe- cially in Iraq, is high. History tells us that winning the peace is every bit as difficult, if not more, than winning the war. The occupation of postwar Germany and Japan took place in highly favorable circumstances: there was strong domestic and international support for America’s role in nation building; the soldiers were trained and well- prepared for the transition to occupa- tion; and the polity of each nation was relatively homogenous and well-orga- nized. At the time, it was thought that several months would be required at most, yet each occupation lasted seven years, U.S. Institute for Peace Senior Fellow Ray Salvatore Jennings observes in a report issued in May. “The Road Ahead: Lessons in Nation Building from Japan, Germany and Afghanistan for Postwar Iraq” is avail- able online ( www.usip.org ). Jennings compares the German and Japanese occupations with the ongoing U.S. experience in Afghan- istan. He explores the implications of the recent emphasis on updated war- fighting strategies and technologies and the simultaneous downplaying of peacemaking. “In this dissonance between an overdeveloped ability to wage and win war and an anemic facil- ity for winning peace,” says Jennings, “is the potential for a reversal of war gains, a subverting of the country’s long-term security goals, and a deflat- ing of ambitions to reform the norms of international order and recast the U.S. role in the world.” The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has also taken a long, sober look at nation building ( www.ceip.org ). T he result is a pol- icy brief, “Lessons from the Past: The American Record on Nation Building,” by Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper, that helps give context to the Iraq undertaking. America’s overall success rate in democratic nation building is about 26 percent, or 4 out of 15 cases, a finding that is presented usefully in the form of a table. The report zeros in on the factors experience shows to be important for success: “the target nation’s internal characteristics, a convergence of the geopolitical interests of the outside power and the target nation, and a commitment to economic develop- ment in the target nation.” Pulling Rank What country has the least free- dom? Which harbors the biggest bribe-payers? How do nations rank for governance or environmental sus- tainability? The answers can be found at a growing variety of Web sites C YBERNOTES R uling three-and-a-half million Palestinians cannot go on indefinitely. You may not like the word, but what’s happening is occupation. Holding 3.5 mil- lion Palestinians is a bad thing for Israel, for the Palestinians and for the Israeli economy. We have to end this subject without risking our security. — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, May 27, 2003, nytimes.com Site of the Month: Great Books Online www.bartleby.com Now, when you take off on vacation or set out for a new, distant posting, there’s no need to fret about lugging your favorite books and reference works along. All you need is your laptop. There, just a click or two away, Bartleby.com , named the “Best Literary Source of 2002” by Yahoo!Internet Life , offers the full, printable, searchable texts of hundreds of classics, as well as poetry collections and reference works online. Among its interesting and useful content, the site includes the complete Gray’s Anatomy , the Oxford Shakespeare , the King James Bible , and the com- plete 70-volume Harvard Classics and Fiction Shelf . Reference works include world factbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a variety of historical docu- ments including the inaugural addresses of past presidents and William Jennings Bryan’s The World’s Famous Orations. Great for looking up quotes or references, Bartleby.com can be an invaluable resource for speech writing. — Aster Grahn, Editorial Intern