Military-led Development Efforts

[Bob's World]

Interesting to note that there are those in US AID that are not such a big fan of CERP and its impact on development efforts. Certainly it has disrupted unity of effort in development as an arm of policy.

I'll be attending an AID conference of the role of Development in COIN next week, and it should be interesting. I'm very familiar with how CERP is employed; and am also a fan of US AID, both as an organization and of the type of committed professionals they attract to their ranks. If anyone has any keen insights, concerns, opinions, etc please feel free to pass along for me to consider as I weigh in on this topic.

[davidbfpo]

Maybe worth trawling the website of the UK Institute of Development Studies, at Sussex University:http://www.ids.ac.uk/ Notably the Security & Conflict part.

[Global Scout]

USAID appears to be somewhat effective (for a USG organization) in nations that are not experiencing serious conflict, but I haven't seen much success (despite herculean efforts) in hostile areas like Afghanistan and Iraq. I think the failures in Iraq are due to internal corruption and corruption in the U.S. contracting process (primarily the last administration).

USAID simply lacks capacity to resusitate a corpse, borrowing a phrase from Dayuhan from another post.

There are several studies that indicate that our aid (not just USAID) prolongs problems and stiffles needed structural changes. Is aid really developmental or is it life support for a system/government/organization that needs to die?

I would like to see a list of USAID successes that actually mattered? Was it simply a temporary local job program, or did they do something that actually resulted in continued development?

The same caution I suggested for MBJ, carefully deleniate between development and aid.

[Ken White]

USAID appears to be somewhat effective (for a USG organization) in nations that are not experiencing serious conflict, but I haven't seen much success (despite herculean efforts) in hostile areas like Afghanistan and Iraq.

in Viet Nam, Laos and other places before Clinton and Albright destroyed the agency by rolling it into State. The Aid folks in Nam did not engage in combat but they had no qualms getting right in the middle of it to do their thing.

I saw them operate in half dozen nations and they really were competent. So was the USIA before the same crew fouled them up in one fell swoop in 1998...

[Global Scout]

Yep, and I think over time Madalene will go down as one of our worst Secretary's of State. That move was nothing more than an incompetent power play, and beyond that morale in State was rock bottom before Collin Powell stepped in. I think USAID still has great people, and they seem to be coming into their own again, but it will take to build the skilled capacity they need.

[Dayuhan]

USAID simply lacks capacity to resusitate a corpse, borrowing a phrase from Dayuhan from another post.

Thanks for the credit... but in Afghanistan we didn't even start with a corpse. We tried to create a government from, essentially, nothing. I'm not at all surprised that it's bloody difficult; what surprises me is that anyone expected it to be anything but bloody difficult.

A lot of people from the military side approach the development issue without realizing that this is a challenge at least as difficult as COIN, likely more so. There's been decades of study, hundreds of billions spent, an extensive leterature, tons of controversy... and nobody, anywhere, has any clear answers or reliable recipes.

First, three kinds of aid, not to be confused: relief, reconstruction, development.

Relief is keeping people alive after natural or man made disasters. It's a logistic challenge first and foremost: water, food, toilets, blankets, tents, doctors, medicines. And, please, trucks. I've never met a relief aid manager who ever had enough trucks or fuel. Relief aid is very difficult, but we do it reasonably well, because the goals are clear, immediate, and defined.

Reconstruction is rebuilding what's broken. Again, we're good at this: build a bridge, fix a road, repair an irrigation system... stuff we know how to do.

Development is a totally different animal. After all these years, even in the development community there is no clear definition of what it is, let alone how to get there. At the end of the day what it is and how to get there are different in every environment. There have also been legions of well intentioned "development" projects that have made things worse: the potential for unintended adverse consequences is huge.

[rant]

My own opinion, after observing it for way too many years, is that there's a fundamental dissonance in our approach to development aid. We treat it as a problem of money and expertise, when in reality the primary obstacles to development are political. Fact of life: real development is almost always going to piss someone off, usually someone powerful. Primitive neo-feudal economies don't exist by accident, they exist because somebody finds them very profitable. Local power brokers in underdeveloped areas don't want rural entrepreneurship. They don't want livelihood opportunities, cottage industries, agricultural modernization. They may say they want these things, if it brings foreign money, but behind the scenes they will try to derail any effort that threatens them. They fight these things because to them real development is an existential threat: their power, prosperity, and ability to avoid being hung from a lamp-post depends on personal control of resources and economic opportunities.

The bottom line for me is that in places where the political conditions to support development exist, and where development is already happening, we can support and accelerate it. Pouring money into projects in places where these conditions do not exist may be an admirable salve for the Western conscience, but it doesn't accomplish anything.

[/rant]

To get back on topic, my advice to a military commander with a bit of money and a desire to start development would be... don't. Focus on relief and reconstruction, where goals are clear and accomplishments evident.

Trying to go into "development" is a good way to make temporary friends and permanent enemies.

If it's really, truly, needed, I'd say try to bring in another organization with development expertise, and try to keep their efforts distinct from your effort to provide security. That way when they #@%$ up, less of it flies in your direction. If the security situation is too bad for a development organization to be in the field, it's probably too bad for any meaningful development work as well.

[Global Scout]

First, three kinds of aid, not to be confused: relief, reconstruction, development.

This is helpful for me, and your points about the first two being somewhat clear cut and short term objective focused help me shape my thoughts on this topic, and your points on development merit more discussion.

We treat it as a problem of money and expertise, when in reality the primary obstacles to development are political. Fact of life: real development is almost always going to piss someone off, usually someone powerful.

Since we're all being politically correct (factual versus idealistic), I think development would be better partnered with something that looks more like like political operatons than COIN. Before any serious attempt at providing assistance for development, we promote (for example, through political advice to grass roots movements) a political revolution of sorts that sets the conditions for development efforts to work. I'm not necessarily talking about having an underground make bad politicians disappear, as that would go awry very quickly (a true pandora's box), but rather use tools like twitter to create movements to discredit and pressure the status quo leaders to change their behavior or risk undesirable consequences. Also find means to separate the bad politicians from their sources of power (money, security forces, etc.). Obviously rough thoughts, but if you look at what happened in Poland with the Solidarity movement that removed the old system (at least enough of it) to allow economic development to flurish, there may be opportunities in the world to do similiar activities (not so much in Afghanistan or Iraq).

[Dayuhan]

Since we're all being politically correct (factual versus idealistic), I think development would be better partnered with something that looks more like like political operatons than COIN. Before any serious attempt at providing assistance for development, we promote (for example, through political advice to grass roots movements) a political revolution of sorts that sets the conditions for development efforts to work. I'm not necessarily talking about having an underground make bad politicians disappear, as that would go awry very quickly (a true pandora's box), but rather use tools like twitter to create movements to discredit and pressure the status quo leaders to change their behavior or risk undesirable consequences. Also find means to separate the bad politicians from their sources of power (money, security forces, etc.). Obviously rough thoughts, but if you look at what happened in Poland with the Solidarity movement that removed the old system (at least enough of it) to allow economic development to flurish, there may be opportunities in the world to do similiar activities (not so much in Afghanistan or Iraq).

Possible... but I think we tread on very thin ice when we try to promote political change in other countries. When we're caught at it (as we will be) we can actually discredit the very movements we hope to support: many despots are eager to paint reform movements with the "agents of western imperialism" brush.

We cannot create these movements, and we are likely to step on our dicks if we try. Where they exist we may be able to help them, but we have to be very very careful and very very subtle... and it's usually best if we keep our distance. We do need to make sure we're not helping the other side, or actively assisting them to suppress reform movements, that's utterly counter-productive, even when the reform movements are not necessarily on our side.

In short... we should not support despots against their own population. We should, to the extent that we can and through multilateral pressure if possible, discourage them from violent repression of reform movements. We should (and must) accept that opposition to reform is likely to come less from central government than from regional power brokers, and that central governments are often unable to control regional power brokers... especially in nominal democracies, where regional power brokers control votes.

Taking it to the other extreme and jumping into the fight on the side of reform movements... sounds good, but I have doubts. Can get very messy and generate all kinds of unintended consequences.

If we're looking at political reform as a tool for military leaders in stability ops, I'd say don't expect much. It's a process, it has to be locally initiated and locally led, it takes a long, long time, and its a process that we cannot direct or control without destroying it. It happens, it's vital, and we need to work with it... but it's not a tool that we can pull out of our kit and apply to our purposes.

[Rex Brynen]

First, three kinds of aid, not to be confused: relief, reconstruction, development.

Although—and I'm sure you recognize this—the dividing lines between these are far from clear, and in many cases don't exist at all.

The challenge with relief is to provide it in a way that addresses immediate humanitarian need without creating structural dependencies (reshaping human geographies through refugee camps, depressing local agricultural production through food aid, etc) or aggravates existing tensions (looting and taxing of relief supplies by combatants). Reconstruction almost always involves the sort of political and social challenges you discuss under the heading of development.

As for development, I absolutely agree. However, credit where credit is due—there are a lot of folks in the development community (although certainly not all) who recognize that politics permeates everything, and unless you have a very good sense of the stakeholder dynamics (and some genuine local buy-in) you're not going to go anywhere.

[Dayuhan]

Although—and I'm sure you recognize this—the dividing lines between these are far from clear, and in many cases don't exist at all.

Certainly true. There are many devils in many details, and the distinctions are often not clear... the transition from relief to reconstruction and development is particularly challenging and particularly complex.

I do think, though, that from the point of view of an amateur development practitioner, such as a military officer with CERP funds at hand, the distinctions form a framework for beginning to understand the challenges.

One thing that often creates problems, particularly with action-oriented foreigners with little time in an area and a problem-solving mentality, is the tendency to arrive at quick diagnoses and quick prescriptions. This can have exceedingly disruptive and sometimes disastrous consequences. I can't count the number of times I've seen a basically competent (and usually Western) outsider walk into a new environment, look around in a full circle, and declare that it makes no sense for everyone to be doing something this way when it could be done that way, which is so much better. I also can't count the number of times I've reminded people that if the way things are working doesn't make any sense to you it doesn't mean the people involved are stupid or irrational... it means there's probably something in the picture you don't know about.

Of course nobody listens, but I repeat it anyway, at every opportunity...

Reconstruction almost always involves the sort of political and social challenges you discuss under the heading of development.

Also true... but fixing something that was there before and was destroyed has less inherent disruptive potential than trying to introduce something new. It can of course be argued (and has been) that disruption is at times desirable... but that road can lead to a lot of places, some of them very complicated indeed.

credit where credit is due—there are a lot of folks in the development community (although certainly not all) who recognize that politics permeates everything, and unless you have a very good sense of the stakeholder dynamics (and some genuine local buy-in) you're not going to go anywhere.

Very true... and very often folks in the development community end up taking directions their judgment tells them to avoid. That happens for a lot of reasons, not least the reality that agendas in the aid industry are often set by donors and funders, not by practitioners or intended beneficiaries.

A very good sense of the stakeholder dynamics is very useful... but that can be many years in coming and a practitioner forced by circumstance to work in an unfamiliar environment often has to do without it. Coming from the perspective of the guy who went native, I think sometimes the rank novice to an area has an advantage over the guy with a mere 2-3 years in. At least the rank novice knows he's ignorant. The guy with only 2-3 years is still ignorant but thinks he's not... that's when it gets really dangerous!

Genuine local buy-in is also good, but it's often hard to know when it's genuine, and it is wise to remember this (again assuming the pose of the old man on the mountaintop, preaching to the sky):

When the local buy-in comes quick and easy and seems ever so genuine, and when the locals buying in tell you exactly what you most want to hear... beware, for you are probably being worked.

[Bob's World]

What I see that far too many see development (military or USAID or NGO led) in a community and also capacity building with security forces as an end unto themselves. As in, if I develop enough, the insurgency will end. If I build enough capacity, the insurgency will end. This misses some nuances that are critical for achieving effectiveness with such engagement, as both of these activities, if executed well, but in the wrong way can actually make the insurgency worse.

Better to see development (and capacity building) as Ways, and I think it is fine for the military to be the Means for the engagement, but again, the critical point is in the 5Ws and H of the execution.

I believe that the best way to look at such engagement is as a vehicle or perhaps an excuse, or what we called in our UW training back in the Q-course, one cover for action.

This raises the question of, if development and capacity building are primarily my cover story for being in a community, or working with a security force, what is my primary reason for being there, and how do I go about moving that reason forward in the course of my engagement?

For development, what one is trying to do is mend the damaged relationship between a populace and its government. A neutral third party bringing the two together over the excuse of some development project to help move the healing process forward in addressing the condition of insurgency that exists in that community. Sometimes it is getting the government officials out of their offices and out to meet their constituency; always it should be shaped so that the selection of the projects and the provision of the engagement reinforces the roles and authorities of local and higher level leaders. (Too often we are worried about getting credit for what we do, or show up with our own ideas of what needs to be done, or either purposely or inadvertently insult, embarrass, or dis-empower the leaders of the very relationship one is seeking to heal).

Same with capacity building. Conventional forces given a mission to go teach BRM and tactical movement techniques see the measure of success being to build mirror image skills to their own in this unit. They focus on the training itself, and see the engagement as a failure if the skills are not developed, and will crush any relationship building in their disdainful, judgmental attitudes when the unit fails to meet the standards they see as "success." Our Regulars do this when the train with our own RC units as well, BTW. What they fail to grasp far too often, is that the real purpose of the engagement is to build this relationship, not some particular skills. Then, once a relationship is established, to subtly shape perspectives as to how this unit goes about engaging and interacting with its own populace as they go about their business of countering an insurgency. (This has paid tremendous benefits in the Southern Philippines, a primarily SOF effort, that has made visible, positive, differences in the relationship between the largely Muslim populace and the largely Christian security forces over the past 8 years).

Just a couple of thoughts. Focus on the right thing for best effects.