More killing. Less good deeds

[M-A Lagrange]

First we don't identify what the "essential" services really are, because culturally we're terrible listeners. Second, there is something more to be a good government than providing good services.

First of all, we have to stop merging social services and governance. People appointed to social services are appointed for political reasons: yes. They have political agenda: yes. I face that every single day. The worst in that story is that it is the same with neutral bodies as the UN (or even worst) and the international NGOs. Even ICRC and MSF do have political agenda. (I know what I am talking about I did work with MSF).

So let’s not try to build ministries capacities and the rest. This is useless and a big waste of money, energy and good people. Ministries are crap… Let them be crap. Time will tell.
The war is divided into survive, rebuild, normality for civilians. That is the way it is. NOWHERE will you find freedom of speech, democracy and what so ever among post war population.
The survive part: it is the NGO as ICRC, MSF, CARE… that do take care of it. It is the usual open conflict humanitarian assistance.
The rebuild part is where we fail every time as we want to jump from year 0 to XXI century with in few months. Let’s stop fooling our selves we can do it just like that. State building is not a science, it is barely a new born art based on not so well mastered soft sciences.

M-A's point: NGO's (and military), by building wells, schools, medical clinics, actually undermines the governments we intend to support/extend unless there is a downstreaming process for them to rapidly take it over and make it work.

The main problem is coordination actually. That is the implementing/tactical challenge. But the other problem is a strategic/vision/policy one. Even through full spectrum stabilisation operation we have the tendency to over use Rostrow development theory and also to forget Rostrow development theory basic.

The overuse of Rostrow development theory is that we merge political development and economical development. To be clear, liberal economy and regulated trade does not necessary goes with full participative democracy.
I’m not a kindergarden dictator fan! My point is that we want countries as Afghanistan to do the economical and political Jump/taker off at the same time. As far as I know that did not work that way and never did. You first have economical take off leading to strong developed economy then you have democracy being put in place. Look Iran. That is exactly what the regime is facing: total disruption between population expectation due to a not so bad economy and the Mullahs in power.

Where we forget Rostrow is that if he is wrong in melting politics and economy (at least, the vision of linear development is also false), he is right on the take off point. Samir Amin Theory of centre and periphery (with Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi) is the base of oil drop practices.
They pointed out that first you need a centre that takes off and will tract peripheries. The main problem for the centre is to find a way to take off without passing through the mercantile phase which consists in accumulation of richness through pillage of neighbouring countries. What Rwanda did and is doing right now. In fact aid is a substitute for that phase. Basically, money is not a weapon, is a protective mean to reach a level of development without having to spoil another country to rebuild the one you just invaded.

The problem we do face in misplacing money and not coordinating its use is to give too much on governance and too little in development. Also, as we want to have a large cover of all needs, we tend to spend even less that little everywhere.
We should spend more on humanitarian/development with a strong coordination controlled through money/”donor like UN agencies role” rather trying to vaporise a little everywhere.

But this does not change the fact that this cannot come without security. I am not a big fan of security first but security is both a pre requirement and a limit. But security, a political tool, just as development, needs to be use wisely with high moral references so we avoid doing stupid things that will impact the development/humanitarian efforts. (Having high humanitarian moral standards does not forbid you to be political, far from it).

And concerning elections, probably starting by the central state is not the solution. May be we should go for local elections first, building proximity democracy before nation wild democracy. It is easier to teach the game to small scale communities about issues they feel concern about rather than looking to large scale stuff that no one cares about and is by definition corrupted or unlegitimate in the first times.

[Surferbeetle]

...and I appreciate the references.

First of all, we have to stop merging social services and governance.

The war is divided into survive, rebuild, normality for civilians.

The main problem is coordination actually. That is the implementing/tactical challenge. But the other problem is a strategic/vision/policy one. Even through full spectrum stabilisation operation we have the tendency to over use Rostow development theory and also to forget Rostrow development theory basic.

Where we forget Rostow is that if he is wrong in melting politics and economy (at least, the vision of linear development is also false), he is right on the take off point. Samir Amin Theory of centre and periphery (with Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi) is the base of oil drop practices.
They pointed out that first you need a centre that takes off and will tract peripheries. The main problem for the centre is to find a way to take off without passing through the mercantile phase which consists in accumulation of richness through pillage of neighbouring countries. What Rwanda did and is doing right now. In fact aid is a substitute for that phase. Basically, money is not a weapon, is a protective mean to reach a level of development without having to spoil another country to rebuild the one you just invaded.

But this does not change the fact that this cannot come without security. I am not a big fan of security first but security is both a pre requirement and a limit. But security, a political tool, just as development, needs to be use wisely with high moral references so we avoid doing stupid things that will impact the development/humanitarian efforts. (Having high humanitarian moral standards does not forbid you to be political, far from it).

[Steve the Planner]

This article (Afghanistan: A White Elephant Called the Ring Road), rolls up a lot of issues about security, roads, and advertised good deeds.

http://www.indepthnews.net/news/news...3:29:19&key2=1

In it, Matt Nasuti, PRT City Management Adviser, argues that the Ring Road is a mess: Poorly conceived, poorly built, and unsecurable. A boon to the Taliban. Too expensive and unnecessary to Afghans at this point in their development.

Moreover, what we learned about the Appalachian Road building projects- a road goes two ways. Built to spur Appalachian internal development, instead, they were the highway for disinvestment: goods flooding in from outside, people flooding out... unintended consequences.

Here, according to the article, the road has been a boon to the Taliban (graft, security fees, free movement of insurgents, fixing our forces to defend it, etc..., and threatens to inundate the local economies with influx of cheap foreign goods.

Sure would be good to think these things through---ahead of time.

I always shudder when I see Loius Berger attached to the planning and implementation of anything.

[Steve the Planner]

New SSI release:

GUIDE TO REBUILDING PUBLIC SECTOR SERVICES
IN STABILITY OPERATIONS:
A ROLE FOR THE MILITARY

Best work I have seen to date on the subject.

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute...mary.cfm?q=945

Most pubs on this subject, including one released this week by the Institute for Peace, are full of slogans and inter-agency politics.

The SSI Guide is a practical, how-to-guide that burrows deeply and effectively in the restoration of public services for military/post-conflict purposes. Great work.

It's not about good deeds, but about making things work again in close cooperation with local national, provincial and municipal staff and systems.


Steve

Steve

[slapout9]

This article (Afghanistan: A White Elephant Called the Ring Road), rolls up a lot of issues about security, roads, and advertised good deeds.

http://www.indepthnews.net/news/news...3:29:19&key2=1

In it, Matt Nasuti, PRT City Management Adviser, argues that the Ring Road is a mess: Poorly conceived, poorly built, and unsecurable. A boon to the Taliban. Too expensive and unnecessary to Afghans at this point in their development.

Moreover, what we learned about the Appalachian Road building projects- a road goes two ways. Built to spur Appalachian internal development, instead, they were the highway for disinvestment: goods flooding in from outside, people flooding out... unintended consequences.

Here, according to the article, the road has been a boon to the Taliban (graft, security fees, free movement of insurgents, fixing our forces to defend it, etc..., and threatens to inundate the local economies with influx of cheap foreign goods.

Sure would be good to think these things through---ahead of time.

I always shudder when I see Loius Berger attached to the planning and implementation of anything.

STP, we talked about that on another thread and that is why I said linking the System togather should be one of the LAST things you do with an unstable system.

[MattC86]

I followed and thought about this thread a lot this summer, and I kept coming back to a fundamental problem with "hearts and minds" - not the pejorative use of the term, but what Uboat earlier described as convincing the population (1) our victory - and thus them helping us - is in their best interests, and (2) we are going to win. This sentiment, first articulated as I heard it by David Kilcullen, is underwritten essentially by rational man theory. People choose from different sets of choices on the basis of what will maximize their utility (serve their interests). Straightforward enough, and it underpins most of classical microeconomics.

Now, as far as sociologists or anthropologists are concerned, I have no idea what the current state of theory is in that realm, but a lot of economics has moved beyond rational man theory, or at least moved into explaining why it fails. Behavioral economics, one of the more recent developments in economics, is in large part devoted to explaining the disparity (albeit still mathematically) between the choices actors make and the choices they SHOULD make. I'm sure MarcT could better explain heuristics and anomalies but these disparities pervade every level of human decision-making, whether it is a person spending his money wisely or the Joint Chiefs assessing U.S. strategy. Obviously, not all choices made by actors are going to actually maximize their utility.

Moreover, our calculations of preferred outcome, especially when viewing this across cultures, are often wrong. Heuristics - experienced based learning - really plays into this. At a micro level, one can see plenty of instances of people refusing the prescribed treatments for the "accidental guerrilla" syndrome, in terms of winning hearts and minds, whether for religious reasons, pashtunwali, or something even less tangible.

Even if we correctly gauge the outcome the people will support, we may make the wrong choice on how to get there. Many commentators have suggested that it was not the staunch commitment of the Bush administration to continuing the mission in Iraq that drove Sunni reversal; but the 2006 elections and the realization that the U.S. may not long stay in Iraq, and that if that withdrawal occurred, the Sunnis were going to be crushed by the Shiite blocs. This unintentional hint of a pending change swayed the perception of interest and optimal outcome.

Of course, "hearts and minds" and rational man theory doesn't have to hold true for everyone, but the implication is that it does have to apply to a majority to work. And I've heard more than a couple economists chuckle about COIN theory banking on what is an in-part discarded model of how people act. . .

Matt

[Ken White]

Of course, "hearts and minds" and rational man theory doesn't have to hold true for everyone, but the implication is that it does have to apply to a majority to work. And I've heard more than a couple economists chuckle about COIN theory banking on what is an in-part discarded model of how people act. . .

A model that never really passed the common sense test at that...

All of us constantly make choices that are not 'in our interest.' Just look at federal elections...

Serious comment. Both parts.

[Steve the Planner]

The purpose of a well-devised planning process is to identify and consider the major consequences (including unintentional ones).

When we end up being the great decider with little input, our decisions, not surprisingly, tend to miss the mark, or spawn significant unconsidered unintended consequences. That's how you get all the waste.

Actually, at MND-North in 2008, the Div Eng (and the whole div staff) had, in effect, stood up the last Diyala govt, and brought with them a lot of built-in knowledge from multiple tours. This cut down on a lot of waste, and led them to ask the right questions, including of local folks.

But it often put them in conflict with the brigade battlespace owner who was trying to build, build, build.

The new SSI guide really gets to the point of how to do it by using the early Basrah example where the military did, in fact, do a pretty good job.

Some really good lessons to learn.

Steve