Applied Smart Power by a SEAL

[Dayuhan]

The screaming, glaring, invisible-in-plain-sight problem is, development must occur for stability to exist. In my country's case, that means the USG must have a development capacity if we are going to take on development. It doesn't mean DoD has to "do" it. I'm saying that every body should perform its role...and our gaping hole in capacity lies in the coordination of those bodies.

Some might say that stability must exist for development to occur... bit of a chicken and egg thing. Either assumption is, for me, oversimplified. Development doesn't always produce stability, in fact it can produce instability, especially in the short term. Development usually threatens people, typically people who have a stake in the existing order, and those people usually resist. Different people and different groups often have radically different ideas of what "development" is or how it should proceed. Attempts at producing rapid and highly visible "development" through the infusion of massive resources have typically failed to produce much in the way of development or stability. Gradual step by slow step development has a higher probability of getting somewhere, but is rarely visible enough to have much impact on an immediate stability issue.

The central question, to me, is what we are actually trying to achieve in any given case. If we're trying to throw money into a bunch of "development" projects to make people think a bad government is good or persuade people to support a government we like, we might as well keep the cash in pocket and go home, because the probability of success approaches zero.

If DoS has development responsibility, can DoS carry that out in isolation? USG (the parent) has the responsibility to "teach" DoS and DoD to work together, like any siblings. In an effective system - which I don't believe is an impossible dream - DoS and DoD support one another like a well-oiled machine. Okay, maybe that is a dream, but it's not impossible.

I'm not sure that DoS and DoD could produce effective development even working seamlessly together, because even DoS/AID is often pretty clueless on the development side. AID is institutionally biased toward centralized, cash-intensive projects involving contractors, often a very inefficient and highly politicized way to proceed. In a lifetime in the developing world I've met a number of AID people who seemed to have a clue, but I've seen very little lasting positive impact from the agency, especially in cases where HN capacity is minimal. "Development aid" is more often wielded as a lever to influence policy or win concessions than with any real hope of producing development.

The sad truth about this development stuff is that even on the development professional side there is very little clear idea of how to reliably produce "development". Nations do develop, but they generally do it on their own, in their own way. I can't think of a case, offhand, where external intervention has directed and produced meaningful "development".