Why America’s Nation Building Office Failed and What Congress Had to Do With It

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, America has led six nation-building missions. We have done none particularly well. Throughout the 1990’s, but particularly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. government tried to improve the way it ran ‘stabilization and reconstruction’ operations. That effort produced most notably the Office of the Coordinator for Stabilization and Reconstruction (S/CRS) within the State Department. S/CRS was charged with developing plans, coordinating their interagency implementation, and staffing a ‘Civilian Response Corps’ to deploy to countries on short notice. S/CRS largely failed in these efforts. It struggled to establish control over the interagency planning process. It failed to staff its Response Corps. And it was largely excluded from the civilian efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This paper explains why S/CRS failed. Four reasons in particular stand out. The office never had strong backing from the Secretary of State. It was undercut by USAID in its congressional negotiations. It lacked a strong domestic constituency to advocate for it. And it suffered from a general bias against civilian-led foreign policy projects. Without a clear congressional mandate and enough funding, S/CRS could not control either USAID or the regional bureaus. Simply put, the office did not bring much to the table. Finally, the failure of S/CRS suggests that the Defense Department, not State, will run future stabilization and reconstruction efforts. Though the appetite for nation building in the U.S. is low, history suggests that we are not done with these projects.