Nation Building versus Nation Rebuilding, part 3

Last week, I wrote two posts on the differences between nation building and nation rebuilding. Toward the end of the second, I said this:

I think that a large portion of the problem here is not that we don't have the capability to do enough, but that we have not organized our capabilities in a way that would ease this type of process. As things currently stand, military-based nation building efforts are the worst way to provide comprehensive, broad-based improvements in war torn nations - except for pretty much all the others that have been tried. The military really does have some significant advantages in such situaitons - a broad variety of capacities (engineering, medical, logistic, etc) to use in rebuilding efforts, the ability to provide at least some security and counter-insurgency assistance, the ability to provide a wide range of training, etc. The problem is in the way that these capabilities are organized more than anything else, I think. More on that later.

In the comments, Yakov said this in response:

Why have we "not organized our capabilities in a way that would ease this type of process?" I think this is exactly what the insurgents end up interfering with, even if we tried to organize our military for it. The military is the bull in the pottery barn, and if we pull it back to the point where it does no harm, it isn't in a position to help or protect the menders. Those who seek to worry the bull do not meet it head-on, they encourage it to range into disadvantageous terrain where it can be attacked.

I think the reason we have not "organized our capabilities in a way that would ease this type of process" is that the reward structures in place are not designed to promote it. Lots of people are making lots of money off of this war, and politically, it has been very good for its proponents. As it starts looking more and more like a losing proposition, the money and resources will start to dry up, rather than be diverted into wiser and more helpful ideas. This war wasn't arranged by altruists.

With travel and family obligations, I haven't had much of a chance to respond to that until now.

Let's start with the basics - the current organization of the military as opposed to the type of organization that would be better for facilitating reconstruction efforts.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the military is presently organized with winning wars as the primary goal. That's the traditional purpose of any military, after all, and it's what we've mostly planned on using our own military for throughout the entire history of our country. A military that's built around the primary goal of conventional arms combat tends to have a certain structure to it. The core of the force is made up of combat arms troops - infantry, artillery, armor, etc - with other kinds of units - transport and logistics, combat engineers, medical units - attached as necessary to support the combat force. That works well for fighting wars, but it makes things a bit awkward when it comes to supporting reconstruction efforts.

When a choice is made to use the military to support nation building efforts, there are basically two choices available. A conventional force can be deployed, or selected support units can be pulled and sent. Neither is optimal. If a conventional force is deployed, a large portion of the force will represent people who are going to basically be untrained labor for the purposes of the rebuilding itself. The combat arms guys are very well trained for what they do, but a tank driver's training doesn't apply quite as well when it comes to restoring a water supply. On the other hand, deploying selected support units also creates problems. First of all, if the support units are being sent to someplace where there is a security risk, then having at least some combat arms types available for protection isn't all bad. Second, if you are pulling the support units from different combat units, you may be throwing people together who haven't been training together. That's not a huge problem, of course, but neither is it optimal. Finally, pulling the support units leaves the combat arms folks who have been left behind without their own support, which means that should a military emergency develop, they won't be in a good position to go fight - and that is a real concern, too.

What would be optimal for nation building/reconstruction efforts, I think, would be having a few military units available that are planned out and optimized with that as their primary purpose. Such a unit would have a much higher ratio of "support" to "combat" troops, and, more importantly, would train with that mission as their primary focus. More specifically, they would train on the tasks needed to repair a badly-damaged country and they would train up on the skills needed to train the people in that country to pick up the work. There's actually some precedent for this in the US Army - in some ways, this would be similar to what Special Forces A-Teams were designed to do, but on a larger scale and with a little more of a civilian focus.

In cold, hard terms, I think that doing something like that would be in our best interests. The military might not be intended to be a nation building force, but they've been asked to do just that over and over again during the last few decades. Having a small number of units that are devoted to that task would be a more efficient solution in terms of costs and time.

As far as whether or not it would be a good thing overall, I think it clearly would be. The US military might not be a very well-loved institution, but there is nobody else on the planet capable of bringing a large number of well-trained and well-equipped people to bear on a problem in a short period of time. There are, of course, plenty of NGOs in the world who do great work, and any nation-building/reconstruction efforts should involve them as well, but the military can put together a well-integrated effort that includes its own security forces and logistics chain in a matter of a few hours, and sustain it for years if necessary. That's nothing to sneeze at.