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by Roger B. Myerson
Abstract: For an effective deterrent against terrorist attacks, military power must be complemented by
some capability for political reconstruction in failed states that could become bases for global terrorism.
Democratic state-building has seemed more difficult than imperial conquest because international support
reduces national leaders' incentives to negotiate broad political coalitions that include local leaders from
every community. A capacity to effectively support democratic state-building can be developed by
applying basic lessons from America's own history of decentralized federal democracy.
A vulnerable gap
In recent decades, America's armed forces have prevailed in virtually every kind of
military contest into which they have been sent, but in the aftermath of these victories we have
repeatedly seen frustrations and failures in the subsequent political reconstruction. From this
experience, many have concluded that America should simply avoid any future state-building
missions. Presidential candidates who proclaim an urgent need for new investments in American
military power have generally avoided even discussing this critical gap in state-building
capacity. But a more prudent conclusion may be that America needs to invest in developing
better capacity for post-conflict political reconstruction.
It is wishful thinking to plan for conflict only in regions where a suitable government
already exists and is ready to take power. Nations do not get to choose what kinds of military
challenges they will face. If American ground forces can operate only in countries where a well-
organized friendly government is ready to take power, then adversaries in other parts of the
world will know that they are beyond America's reach. Hard experience in recent years has
shown that areas of ungoverned instability can become sources of global threats.
Some have argued that, if America is attacked by terrorists who are based in an ill-
governed region, the response should be a military retaliation which devastates the terrorists'
bases but makes no attempt to occupy territory.
1
However, with no attention to post-conflict
political reconstruction, such a military retaliation could ultimately enable the surviving terrorist
leaders to consolidate power in the region, winning popular support by posing as stalwart
defenders against American invasion. Indeed, a basic motivation for terrorist actions can be to
provoke such crude military responses that drive people to seek protection from militant leaders.
1
Such a strategy of retaliation without occupation has been advocated by Anna Simons, Joe McGraw, and Duane
Lauchengco in The Sovereignty Solution (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011). A crucial gap in their
argument can be glimpsed on page 132, where they assert that "Americans' hope should be that, in the wake of such
devastation, those most capable of asserting authority and taking control will quickly rise to the occasion and then
prevail." They fail here to consider the fearful possibility that the terrorists who provoked the American attack
could expect to take power after it.
2
America and its allies now face deadly enemies who believe that they could find greater
political opportunities in the chaotic aftermath of an American military intervention. Deterrence
fails when adversaries think that they would actually benefit from being attacked. Thus,
American military power can fail as a deterrent unless it is matched with some capability to bring
order into failed states when they become bases for global terrorist organizations.
The possibility of state-building
A defeatist argument that state-building is impossible has served to keep military-
preparedness debates focused on force levels and battlefield weapon systems, which can be more
profitable for military contractors. But this argument cannot be right. The military theorist Carl
von Clausewitz recognized war as the continuation of political action with other means, and
successful military missions have indeed achieved political goals throughout history.
Of course, we may have different political goals today. In past history, wars were
regularly fought with the political goal of defending or expanding a government's territorial
domain. In recent decades, America and its allies have intervened instead with the professed
goal of supporting the establishment of a sovereign democratic state. But if armies throughout
history have been able to impose exploitative foreign rule on conquered populations, it would
seem that a victorious army today should face less resistance to achieving the more benign goal
of establishing an independent popularly elected government.
It is right and appropriate that America should maintain this goal of supporting
independent democratic governments in any future military interventions. The alternative,
installing neo-colonial authoritarian regimes in the aftermath of American military interventions,
would ultimately provoke strong global opposition against America's military superiority. We
just need to learn how to do democratic state-building.
2
To find the key, we must first
understand what can make democratic state-building more difficult than imperial conquest.
Local foundations for a political machine
In a classic study of counterinsurgency, David Galula emphasized that the essential goal
of counterinsurgency warfare is to build a political machine from the population upward, and he
also observed that political machines are generally built on patronage.
3
Successful stabilization
will depend on the new regime developing a political network that distributes power and
2
See also "Standards for state-building interventions" at http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/research/std4sb.pdf
or "Rethinking the fundamentals of state-building" at http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/research/prism2011.pdf
3
David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: theory and practice (Praeger, 1964), pp 69, 136.
3
patronage throughout the nation. As the US Counterinsurgency Field Manual has suggested,
winning "hearts and minds" may actually mean convincing people that they will be well
rewarded and well protected when they serve as local agents in the regime's political network.
4
The effectiveness of a government depends, not on its general popularity, but on its
ability to command the active efforts of supporters and agents who enforce the government's
authority throughout the nation. Against threats from a violent insurgency, the government's
active supporters must be motivated by a confidence that their loyal service can indeed earn them
long-term rewards and protection from the government.
If a community were occupied by an army that planned to impose permanent imperial
rule, then its officers could offer promises of long-term rewards and protection to any local
leader who served the new regime. But in a mission of democratic state-building, a popularly
elected government is expected to take sovereign power from the occupying army, and so its
officers cannot make any long-term promises to local supporters. Such promises can be made
only by leaders of the new government.
Thus, if a state-building intervention is to establish a government that can stand on its
own, its political leaders must develop networks of supporters that are wide and strong enough to
defend the regime against those who would take power from it. If there are communities where
the regime lacks any local supporters, then these communities can become a fertile ground for
insurgents to begin building a rival system of power with encouragement from disaffected local
leaders.
The hard work of negotiating with local activists to build an inclusive national political
network can be expensive and tedious for a national leader. If foreign military support could
enable a national leader to retain power without making so many promises to recruit supporters
in remote communities, the leader might prefer to do so. Thus, foreign support can perversely
encourage a national leader to keep the benefits of power narrowly concentrated in a smaller
circle of supporters, neglecting remote areas, and such narrowness of support can perpetuate the
regime's need for foreign counterinsurgency support. This is the paradox which can make
democratic state-building more difficult than imperial conquest.
Encouraging a broad constitutional distribution of power
Once we understand the problem, we can begin to search for a solution. Foreign support
4
U.S. Army & Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual FM 3-24 (UChicago Press, 2007), Appendix A-26.
4
may increase national leaders' desire to concentrate power more narrowly around themselves, but
the distribution of power in a democracy can be regulated by constitutional rules. In particular,
constitutional provisions that devolve a substantial share of power to locally elected officials of
municipal and provincial governments can help to ensure that every part of the country has some
popular local leaders who have a real stake of power in the regime.
Thus, a state-building mission can have a greater chance of success if it encourages a
federal distribution of power across national and local levels of government, so that the new
regime will indeed be a political machine with roots in every community. Too often in recent
state-building interventions, however, American policy-makers have instead focused only on
supporting and developing the capabilities of the national government from the top down.
5
In 2002, America supported the creation of a centralized presidential government in
Afghanistan, a country which had a long tradition of decentralizing substantial power to
traditional tribal leaders. In subsequent years, Americans paid a heavy price to support the
regime. When power became concentrated in the capital, there were many rural districts where
nobody felt any personal political stake in the government, and so its authority could be
maintained only with support from foreign forces. In an account of the struggle for one district
in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian described a successful counterinsurgency strategy in which the
essential key was to offer some real authority to selected local leaders.
6
But with no
constitutionally protected autonomy for local governments, such locally negotiated political
settlements could be nullified by manipulation in the capital, and hard-won gains were lost.
In Iraq, the counterinsurgency successes in the Sunni-majority provinces after 2006
depended on local leaders' expectations of achieving some share of power in locally elected
provincial governments. But after America disengaged from Iraq's provincial politics, there was
a breakdown of federal power-sharing in the Sunni provinces. Then, as constitutional
alternatives failed them, local leaders were left feeling that they could only use an alliance with
murderous fanatics in ISIS to counter the national government in Baghdad; thus the way was
opened for ISIS's advance into Iraq in 2014. The international response to this invasion was
5
Policies of building state power from the top down have sometimes been justified by concerns that local politics
could be dominated by small unrepresentative cliques or warlords, but this risk can be countered by the participation
of national political parties in local democracy. From the first organizational meetings, local elections should
involve representatives from two or more parties that have made a commitment to democracy. Local political
bosses should know that, if they lose popular support, they could face serious challengers who are supported by a
rival national party. With such national political safeguards, local democracy can provide an antidote to warlordism.
6
Carter Malkasian, War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2013), p. 178.
5
delayed by an understanding that foreign support for the national government in Iraq could
reduce its incentive to offer essential political assurances to local Sunni leaders. A more timely
and effective response could have been provided if, as a condition for assistance to the national
government in Baghdad, America and its allies had insisted on their right to offer some
proportional assistance also to the legitimately elected provincial governments in Al-Anbar and
Ninawa provinces. A long-term international promise to support democratic local leadership in
Iraq's Sunni provinces, as an integral part of continuing international assistance for constitutional
government in Iraq, could do more against ISIS than any campaign of aerial bombardment.
Somaliland, since its separation from Somalia in 1991, offers an example of successful
state-building that contrasts starkly with the repeated failures of internationally sponsored state-
building in Somalia.
7
The state in Somaliland was established by a series of negotiations among
local leaders from every part of the country, without international support. In these negotiations,
the participants' status as local leaders always depended on their maintaining broad popular
approval in their respective communities. But in Somalia, once a leader became part of the
internationally sponsored state-building process, he could expect external recognition and
subsidies that reduced or eliminated his need for broad popular backing. Such leaders in Somalia
then built weak states that could not govern without foreign support. The contrast between
Somalia and Somaliland shows that international sponsors of state-building can do more harm
than good when they support leaders whose positions do not depend on some form of local
political recognition. But local accountability might not be through formal elections. Although
the Somalilanders ultimately chose to introduce popular elections for positions of local authority
in their constitutional system of government, the foundations of their state were initially
organized by leaders whose positions depended on traditional clan institutions.
A civilian mission
Post-conflict political reconstruction does not utilize expensive weapons systems, and so
it may not be a profitable priority for many defense contractors. But it requires some investment
in staffing units that would be ready to go anywhere in the world, to form provincial
reconstruction teams that could support the organization of effective local governments against
threats of violent insurgency. The Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations in the State
Department could be a natural institutional home for these units, as their members would need
7
See Mark Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland (London: Progressio, 2008), and Mary Harper, Getting Somalia
Wrong? (London: Zed Books, 2012).
6
the kind of deep analytical understanding of politics and government that is regularly demanded
in diplomacy. But they would also need a broad mix of financial, managerial, and linguistic
skills, along with basic military training to operate in an area of conflict.
8
There are at least two reasons for suggesting that support for post-conflict reconstruction
should be the responsibility of civilian agencies, even though its vital mission would be
complementary to the military. First, the armed forces need to focus on maintaining their ability
to prevail over any adversary in any battlefield, and asking them to also prepare for political
missions would be a distraction from their core military function. Second, an agent whose job is
to support political reconstruction must become proficient at recognizing dysfunctional political
systems and intervening to repair them. For the sake of America's civilian-led political system, it
would be better to separate such a job from control of the world's most powerful weaponry.
In the United States government, USAID also maintains a capability to support local
public goods and services in poor countries, but its effectiveness depends on recipient
governments being confident that they can invite USAID's assistance without fearing that its
staff could become agents for political change. The mission of post-conflict reconstruction
mission is explicitly one of encouraging political change in the recipient country, and so it would
probably be incompatible with the mission of USAID.
9
Deterrence based on America's true strength
The history of America's own political development clearly demonstrates our basic point
that strong democratic governments are built on a balanced distribution of power between
national and local leaders.
10
For over a century before America's first national presidential
election in 1788, elected governments at the municipal and provincial levels exercised
substantial local powers within the British Empire. In the Revolution from 1776, Americans
instituted an interim constitution (the Articles of Confederation) in which power was principally
distributed to the thirteen locally elected provincial assemblies. This decentralization of power
admittedly created difficulties for financing the revolutionary war effort, but decentralization
also gave the American Revolution a broadly distributed political strength that was essential to
its ultimate success. In 1776, every community had at least one respected leader
− its local
8
See Carter Malkasian and Gerald Meyerle, Provincial Reconstruction Teams (Strategic Studies Institute, US Army
War College, 2009), http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB911.pdf
9
A reconfiguration of USAID's mission is suggested by Max Boot and Michael Miklaucic, "Reconfiguring USAID
for State-Building," Council on Foreign Relations Policy Memorandum #57 (2016), at http://cfr.org/USAID_memo
10
See "Strength of American federal democracy" at http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/research/amerfed.pdf
7
assembly representative
− who had a substantial vested interest in defending the new regime.
It is sometimes argued that America's efforts at state-building have suffered from a naive
assumption that foreigners would welcome democracy like Americans. But we may suggest
instead that the actual problem was a failure to recognize that people everywhere may be like
Americans in having local political issues that are as vital to them as their national politics. It
might be helpful for Americans to imagine what might happen if, after some terrible disaster, a
foreign army helped to re-establish order in America but then centralized all power in a national
presidential government, without bothering to restore any of America's autonomous state and
municipal governments. Such disregard of local politics in state-building, even with benign
intent, would surely incite local insurgencies in disaffected regions throughout the country.
The suggestion here that America should develop strategies and capabilities for state-
building is not an argument for Americans to intervene wherever people might wish to have a
more democratic government. We have argued only that America's preparedness for military
missions must include some capacity for post-conflict political reconstruction. People may argue
for investments in military capabilities without intending that these capabilities should actually
be used, except in situations that everyone should hope to avoid. Preparations for conflict should
always be aimed at deterring conflict and thereby avoiding it, if at all possible.
But deterrence of threats requires a credible ability to intervene with force if necessary,
wherever the threats may be, and military planners need to worry about all aspects of a potential
intervention. Victory in battle accomplishes nothing if it only creates a zone of destruction and
alienation in which the enemy can find even greater political opportunities. So if post-conflict
political reconstruction has been the weak part of America's strategic capabilities, then there is
compelling reason for America to invest first in strengthening this capability. By learning the
lessons from recent interventions, as well as from America's own history, American military and
diplomatic units can develop a capacity to effectively support democratic political
reconstruction. The result would be a stronger America and a better world.
Roger Myerson is the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and
a winner of the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. See http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/
The current version of this paper is available at http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/postgap.pdf
This version: Sept 1, 2016.
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