Foggy
The debate is misplaced.
State is all about reporting, and message in very challenging and precise circumstances. It needs collegiality and rule-following. Careful control of lines of operation. Bureaucracy and procedure is paramount.
The debate is whether an organization with that mindset and structure can, in fact, organize itself to accomplish reconstruction.
As an American, I am grateful for the contributions that foreign service officers make to go out all over the world (and routinely to some pretty nasty places) to do what they are trained and focused on doing.
Having said that, stability and reconstruction has been an abysmal failure, and they have not, to date, found any will or strategy to rise to the challenge.
I do construction, reconstruction, conflict stuff in the states. It is a messy challenging and hard-nosed affair that requires people taking a risk, and pushing for change. When I was recruited for Iraq, it was for those skills, and my orders were to go into that broken system and expressly challenge it. Nothing about winning friends and influencing people.
Of the dozen or so Senior civilian reconstruction advisers that went into Iraq in December 2007, most (like me) self-selected to be outside of State, either with MNC-I/MNDs where the juice and action was, or with the applicable ministries or UN. Some broke free to EPRTs. Few that stayed in the State PRTs accomplished much.
The inherent conflict with our work assured that, in Afghanistan, our types would not be welcome at that party. So, the big lesson learned by State? Don't change. If you bring in outsiders, and especially experts, make sure they are very tangential.
The alternative strategy of reflagging former military like Hoh collapses when, once inside, they see how dysfunctional it is. So, they are out,too.
What do you think that "Whole of Government" thing is about---just stable federal employees with careers on the line, and ever-rotating SCRS three and six month assignments.
In my field, planning, it is a function done before and outside of line operations (but with interaction to it) in order to guide and direct line operations. Despite that, even in Iraq, I was deployed as a line function, but none are deployed in Afghanistan. If planning isn't going on "before" a line deployment, how can you expect the deployment to accomplish much?
Having said that, the reality is that I was only able to function effectively in Iraq because there was something to plan with and around, Iraq being a very different level of development. Moreover, the resources to make me effective were huge (movement, security, intel/mapping, contacts, engineering/construction support, computers/software). I was begging borrowing and stealing GIS and engineering assets at all turns (mostly military). How, in Afghanistan, were none of these resources exist in such depth, could I effectively function at a district level where there are no pre-existing resources or systems?
A senior reconstruction engineer sitting in a tent with no adequate support, systems, or resources is just an extra and dysfunctional burden. They would need to be "flying squads" to connect resources to line units and not line deployed.
How to cut the Gordian knot?
A recent strategy page comment from March 25:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htu.../20100325.aspx
PRTs have had problems with bureaucratic roadblocks created by different Department of Defense, State Department and USAID agendas. The State Department, when told to send people to work with PRTs, responded by providing very junior folks, with little experience in anything. The Department of Defense has people there to provide security and is, technically, not involved in nation building. But the troops can take over in an emergency, because they are, after all, in charge of security. But in active areas like Iraq and Afghanistan, the military is really running the show. Combat needs come first, and everything else, including nation building, is support. When it comes to nation building, the Department of Defense wants power, but not responsibility. Same thing with the State Department, and neither Defense or State wants to take orders from USAID.
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