Hitting Bottom in Foggy Bottom

[Steve the Planner]

Sylvan:

Well, that's the $64 Billion issue.

What structure is going to work (and have to be created) for a real and viable Afghanistan?

As a planner, I watch these mounting projects to pave streets, as an example. Anybody in the planning business knows that if you pave a road, you better make sure the sub-base is secure, or you will be re-building it within three years. Even with that, you have to start maintenance right away, do serious crack-filling in five years, and repave every 20 (assuming quality construction and maintenance).

What possible productive purpose could result from paving a road? Short-term road crew work. Lots of contract graft. Lots of action and ego.

How is this thing going to be maintained, and by who?

Among competing priorities that could actually make these people's lives better, was this a wise use of resources?

Without structure and systems (especially a viable economic and revenue system), these types of projects add little to know value. We measure our successes based on western input metrics, but can't understand why there are no eastern outputs.

Afghanistan needs, as a minimum, a very much more complex, realistic, and historically-grounded approach to governance, and not a US Governance Textbook 101 approach. When does that discussion start?

[Ken White]

we had a civilian Agency that did development well and cooperated well with DoD elements -- it was founded to do just that following on to the earlier Marshall Plan, FOA and ICA organizations.

US Aid.

Unfortunately, it got subsumed into State under the Clinton administration and destroyed because it was often too good at what it did and was sucking budget dollars away from State. The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the really rather effective US Information Agency were likewise emasculated at about the same time for pretty much the same reason. Madeleine Albright has a lot to answer for...

The required fix is to reconstitute US Aid and USIA as separate agencies and adequately fund 'em. Realistically, that's unlikely to happen for several reasons -- not least the venality of Congress. So, we're stuck in Neverland.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program...

[Steve the Planner]

Ken:

Right.

Stuart Bowen, Special IG for Iraq, has a great recommendation for a new agency.

Trouble is that these kinds of things take years to get up and running, and more to become effective. Spinning up new (or substantially reconstructed) agencies to solve immediate problems is a non-sequitor.

So, anything that could be immediately available (3-12 mos) must be shaped out of what is at hand.

I look at the RC structure as the pivot. It just takes a commitment from there and above to get underway. Something more serious than "government in a box" (the Happy Meal approach?)... especially as we contemplate areas infinitely more complex than Marjah.

[Sylvan]

Sylvan:

Well, that's the $64 Billion issue.

What structure is going to work (and have to be created) for a real and viable Afghanistan?

As a planner, I watch these mounting projects to pave streets, as an example. Anybody in the planning business knows that if you pave a road, you better make sure the sub-base is secure, or you will be re-building it within three years. Even with that, you have to start maintenance right away, do serious crack-filling in five years, and repave every 20 (assuming quality construction and maintenance).

What possible productive purpose could result from paving a road? Short-term road crew work. Lots of contract graft. Lots of action and ego.

How is this thing going to be maintained, and by who?

Among competing priorities that could actually make these people's lives better, was this a wise use of resources?

Without structure and systems (especially a viable economic and revenue system), these types of projects add little to know value. We measure our successes based on western input metrics, but can't understand why there are no eastern outputs.

Afghanistan needs, as a minimum, a very much more complex, realistic, and historically-grounded approach to governance, and not a US Governance Textbook 101 approach. When does that discussion start?

It starts when diplomacy is tempered by experience outside the embassy set.
AKA, never.
What diplomat is going to tell a senior official, "Oh, btw, your constitution sucks." Especially when it was largely our dumb butts who helped them craft it.

[Ron Humphrey]

Just No-one willing to accept them cause they involve difficult and often painful actions

Like the man said

It starts when diplomacy is tempered by experience outside the embassy set.
AKA, never.
What diplomat is going to tell a senior official, "Oh, btw, your constitution sucks." Especially when it was largely our dumb butts who helped them craft it.

I would---

But then again;probably why guys like me would never get to be a diplomat ; or ever get invited to the cocktail party's