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Nation Building
Author(s): Marina Ottaway
Source: Foreign Policy, No. 132 (Sep. - Oct., 2002), pp. 16-18+20+22+24
Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC
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 THINK
ByMarinaOawayN
By Marina
BUILD
ING
Once, nationswere forgedthrough"blood and iron." Today,the
world seeks to build them through conflict resolution,multilat-
eral aid, and free elections. But this more civilizedapproachhas
not yielded many successes.For nation buildingto work, some
harsh compromises are necessary-including military coercion
and the recognitionthat democracyis not always a realisticgoal.
"Nation Building
Not necessarily. Nation building is diffi-
cult, but it need not become a quagmire as long as
the effort has clear goals and sufficient resources.
Compare Somalia and East Timor: The United
States and the United Nations stumbled into
Somalia without a plan. As a result, what began as
a humanitarianmissionto feed people starvedby rival
warlords became a misguided attempt at ad hoc
nation building as U.S. troops sought to capture
SomaliwarlordMohammedFarahAidid. The United
States extricated itself from that quagmire by leav-
ing Somalia to its fate in 1994, and the United
Nations later did the same.
Marina Ottaway is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace and codirector of its Democra-
cy and Rule of Law Project.
16 FOREIGN POLICY
Ottaway
Is a
Quagmire"
In East Timor, by contrast, the international
community followed a plan and was not dragged
into a situation it could not control. Right from the
start, the United Nations sought consensus for
nation building by organizing an unprecedented
plebiscite on independence from Indonesia. Learn-
ing from the mistakes of the Balkans and elsewhere,
peacekeepers (led by Australia) were authorized to
use deadly force against pro-Indonesia militias who
sought to disrupt East Timor's bid for autonomy
through a campaign of violence, looting, and arson.
At the time of this writing, the East Timorese have
democratically elected a new government, which
has hired more than 11,000 civil servants and
retrained former guerillas as soldiers for the coun-
try's nascent defense force. East Timor is still a con-
struction site, but it is not a quagmire.
 "Nation Building Is About
No. Nationhood, or a sense of common identity,
by itself does not guaranteethe viability of a state. In
Haiti, for example, citizens alreadyshare a common
identity, but the state has collapsed nevertheless.
Other states are so deeply divided along ethnic
(Bosnia), religious (Northern Ireland), or clan
(Somalia)lines that forginga common identityis cur-
rently out of the question. The internationalcommu-
nity cannot hope to make Muslims, Croats, and
Serbs in Bosnia forget their differences, nor can it
compel Catholics and Protestants in Northern
Irelandto bridgethe religiousgulf.
Even successfulstates are less homogeneousthan
they claim. Many Europeancountries,such as France
and Spain,grudginglyhave recognizedthe existenceof
regionalcultures.In the UnitedStates,the notion of the
meltingpot has been debunked,particularlyas a new
wave of immigrantsfrom the developing world has
"Nation Building
Absolutely not. Take a look at how the
political map of the world has changed in every cen-
tury since the collapse of the Roman Empire-that
should be proof enough that nation building has
been aroundfor quite a while. Castinga glance at the
19th and 20th centurieswill reveal that the types of
nation building with the most lasting impact on the
modern world are nationalism, colonialism, and
post-World War II reconstruction.
Nationalismgave rise to most Europeancountries
that exist today. The theory was that each nation,
embodyinga sharedcommunityof cultureand blood,
was entitledto its own state. (In reality,though, few
beyondthe intellectualand politicaleliteshareda com-
mon identity.)Thisbrandof nationalismledto the reuni-
ficationof Italyin 1861 andGermanyin 1871 andto the
breakupof Austria-Hungaryin 1918. This processof
nationbuildingwas successfulwheregovernmentswere
relativelycapable, where powerful states decided to
makeroom for new entrants,and wherethe population
of new stateswas not deeplydivided.Germanyhad a
capablegovernmentand succeededso well in forginga
common identitythat the entireworld eventuallypaid
Building a Nation"
shunnedoutrightassimilationby forminga mosaic of
hyphenatedAmericans.And contraryto the mytholo-
gy inheritedfrom 19th-centuryEurope,historicalevi-
dence reveals that the common identity,or sense of
nationhood,that exists in many countriesdid not pre-
cede the state but was forgedby it throughthe imposi-
tion of a commonlanguageand culturein schools.The
Gauls were not France'sancestorsuntil history text-
books decidedso.
Thus, the goal of nation buildingshould not be to
imposecommonidentitieson deeplydividedpeoplesbut
to organizestatesthatcanadministertheirterritoriesand
allow peopleto live togetherdespitedifferences.And if
organizingsucha statewithinthe old internationally rec-
ognized bordersdoes not seem possible,the international
community should admit that nation building may
requirethe disintegrationof old statesandthe formation
of new ones.
Is a Recent Idea"
for it. Yugoslavia,by contrast,failedin its efforts,andthe
internationalcommunityis still sortingout the mess.
Colonialpowersformeddozensof new statesas they
conqueredvast swaths of territory,tinkeredwith old
political and leadership structures, and eventually
replacedthem with new countriesand governments.
Most of today's collapsed states, such as Somalia or
Afghanistan,are a productof colonial nation building.
The greaterthe differencebetweenthe precolonialpolit-
icalentitiesandwhatthe colonialpowerstriedto impose,
the higherthe rate of failure.
Thetransformation of WestGermanyandJapaninto
democraticstatesfollowingWorldWarIIis the mostsuc-
cessfulnation-building exerciseeverundertakenfromthe
outside.Unfortunately, thisprocesstook placeundercir-
cumstancesunlikelyto be repeatedelsewhere.Although
defeatedand destroyed,thesecountrieshad strongstate
traditionsand competentgovernmentpersonnel.West
Germanyand Japan were nation-statesin the literal
sense of the term-they were ethnicand culturalcom-
munitiesas well as politicalstates.And they were occu-
pied by the U.S. military,a situation that precluded
choices otherthan the democraticstate.
SEPTEMBER IOCTOBER 2002 17
 Think Again
"Only War Builds
Not quite. The most successfulnations,includ-
ing the United States and the countries of Europe,
were built by war. These countries achieved state-
hood because they developed the administrative
capacity to mobilize resources and to extract the
revenuethey needed to fight wars.
Some countries have been created not by their
own effortsbut by decisionsmadeby the international
community.The Balkansoffer unfortunateexamples
of states cobbled together from pieces of defunct
empires.Many Africancountriesexist becausecolo-
nial powers chose to grant them independence.The
British Empire created most modern states in the
MiddleEastby carvingup the territoryof the defeat-
ed Ottoman Empire. The Palestinian state, if it
becomesa reality,will be anotherexampleof a state
that owes its existence to an internationaldecision.
Such countries have been called quasi states-
entitiesthat exist legallybecausethey are recognized
internationallybut that hardly function as states in
"Nation Building Is
82nd Airborne"
Maybe not, but it's certainly a task for a
strong military force with U.S. participation.
Current White House National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice had a point when she quipped
during the 2000 presidential campaign that the
82nd Airborne has more important tasks than
"escorting kids to kindergarten." But no one
ever said that the primary task of U.S. troops
should be babysitting. If the international com-
munity does not want to give war a chance by
allowing adversaries to fight until someone pre-
vails, then it has to establish control through a
military presence willing to use deadly force.
And if nation building is in the interests of the
United States (as the Bush administration has
reluctantly concluded), then the United States
must participate in imposing that control.
It is not enough just to participatein the initial
effort (in the war fought from the sky), becausewhat
18 FOREIGN POLICY
Nations"
practicebecausethey do not have governmentscapa-
ble of controlling their territory.Some quasi states
succeedin retrofittinga functioningcountryinto the
legalisticshell. The state of Israel,for example, was
formedbecauseof an internationaldecision,andIsrael
immediatelydemonstratedits stayingpower by wag-
ing a successfulwar to defendits existence.Butmany
quasi states fail and then becomecollapsedstates.
Today, war is not an acceptable means of state
building.Instead,nation buildingmust be a consen-
sual, democraticprocess. But such a process is not
effective against adversarieswho are not democrat-
ic, who have weapons, and who are determinedto
use them. The world shouldnot be fooled into think-
ing that it is possibleto buildstateswithout coercion.
If the internationalcommunityis unwillingto allow
states to be rebuilt by wars, it must provide the mil-
itary muscle in the form of a sufficiently strong
peacekeepingforce. Like it or not, militarymight is
a necessarycomponent of state building.
Not a Task for the
counts is what happens on the ground afterward.
Newly formed states need long-term plans that go
beyondthe recentmission statementoutlinedby one
U.S. diplomat:"Wego in, we hunt down terrorists,
and we go out as if we'd neverbeenthere."Evenif the
UnitedStatessucceedsin eliminatingthe last pockets
of the Talibanand al Qaeda in Afghanistan,Ameri-
cans could face another threat in a few years. And
althoughwarringarmiesareno longeractivein Bosnia,
the countrywould splinterapartif internationaltroops
went home.
The United Statesdoes not have to take the cen-
tral role in peacekeepingoperations,but U.S. partic-
ipation is importantbecausethe countryis the most
powerful member of the internationalcommunity.
Otherwise,the UnitedStatessendsthe messagethat it
doesn'tcare what happensnext-and in doing so, it
underminesfragilenew governmentsand encourages
the emergenceof feudingfactions and warlords.
 Think Again
"The International
to Build Nations but
It has neither the will nor the way.
Many of the nation-building methods used in
the past are inconceivable today, but the inter-
national community has yet to find effective
substitutes. For instance, the first step colonial
powers took when engaging in nation building
was "pacification," invariably a bloody under-
taking described by the British writer Rudyard
Kipling as "the savage wars of peace." In
today's gentler world of nation building, such
violent means are fortunately unacceptable.
Instead, peacemakers usually try to mediate
agreements among rival factions, demobilize
combatants, and then reintegrate them in civil-
ian life-a theoretically good idea that rarely
works in practice.
Political will for state reconstruction is also in
short supply nowadays. That's hardly surprising,
given that countries expected to help rebuild
nations are the same ones that until recently were
accused of neoimperialism. SierraLeoneans today
welcome the British peacekeeping force with open
"NGOs Play a Key Role
Yes, but only when a functioning state exists.
Large international nongovernmental organiza-
tions (NGOs), such as Oxfam or CARE,are vital in
distributing humanitarian assistance in collapsed
states. They go into high-risk, lawless regions
where international agencies and bilateral donors
are unwilling to operate. But these organizations
can also become part of the problem. In Somalia,
for instance,protection money paid by internation-
al NGOsto gain safe passage for food and medical
supplies financed the purchaseof weapons by war-
lords and contributedto the escalation of violence.
To operate effectively,internationaland nation-
al NGOs need the stability that only states can
provide. These organizations must also coordi-
nate their activities with states so as not to under-
mine reconstruction efforts. For example, NGOs
20 FOREIGN POLICY
CommunityKnows How
Lacks Political Will"
arms and even wax nostalgic about the old days of
British rule. But they revolted against Britishcolo-
nialismin the 1950s, and not so long ago, they con-
demned it as the root cause of all their problems.
Should we be surprised that the British are, at
best, ambivalent about their role?
And even when the international community
demonstratesthe will to undertakenation building,
it's not always able to figure out who should shoul-
der the burden. The internationalcommunity is an
unwieldy entity with no single center and lots of
contradictions. It comprises the major world pow-
ers, with the United States as the dominant agent
in some situations and as a reluctant participantin
others. In Afghanistan, for instance, the United
States wants to have complete control over war
operations but refuses to have anything to do with
peacekeeping. Meanwhile, the multilateral organ-
ization that by its mandate should play the domi-
nant role in peacekeeping and state reconstruc-
tion-the United Nations-is the weakest and most
divided of all.
in Nation Building"
can play an essential role in administering health-
care in countries where the government has little
outreach, but they can also create havoc if they
insist on operating independently of the central
government and of each other. That's what hap-
pened in Mozambique during the 1980s, when
NGOs diverted funds from the public sector and
fragmented the national health system.
In Afghanistan right now there is considerable
tension between the central government(which has
little capacityto deliverhumanitarianreliefand serv-
ices but feels that it should coordinatethe effort)and
internationalNGOs (whichhave greatercapacityand
experience).For the time being, NGOs are the most
effectivechannelfor deliveringaid, but if government
institutionsare not allowed to take more long-term
responsibility,nation buildingwill fail.
 Think Again

"Nation Building Should Be Limited to

Important
Strategically States"

Only if anyone can determine importance can suddenly become crucial.

which ones they are. "No sane person opposes
nation-buildingin placesthat count,"writescon-
servativecolumnistCharlesKrauthammer. "The
debate is about nation-buildingin places that
don't." But this type of reasoning eventually
forced the United States to fight a war in
Afghanistan,a country deemed so unimportant
after the Soviets departed that it was left to
become a battlegroundfor warlordsand a safe
haven for al Qaeda. In 1994, the United States
abandoned strategically insignificant Somalia,
too, only to start worryingafter September11,
2001, whetherthat countryhad also been infil-
tratedby terroristnetworks.
For most countries,strategicsignificanceis a
variable, not a constant. Certainly,some coun-
tries, such as China, are always significant.But
even countries that appear of marginal or no
Afghanistanis not the only example.In the days
of the Cold War,countriesor regions suddenly
becameprominentwhen they were befriendedby
the SovietUnion. "SALT," thenNational Security
Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinskideclaredin 1980,
"wasburiedin the sandsof the Ogaden"-referring
to the cooling of U.S.-Sovietrelationswhen the
countries were dragged in to support opposite
sides in a war betweenEthiopiaand Somalia.A
few years later, the Reagan administrationsent
peoplescramblingfor small-scalemapsof Lebanon
by declaringthatSoukel-Gharb,an obscurecross-
roads town, was vital to U.S. security.
Thelessonbynow shouldbe clear:No countryis
thatit canneverbecomeimportant.
so insignificant So,
by allmeans,let us focusoureffortsonlyon strategi-
callyimportantcountries,as long as we can predict
whichonestheyare.(Goodluck.)

"The Goal of Nation Building Is a

Democratic State"
Let us not indulge in fantasy. It the civil service, and establishing a central bank-
is politicallycorrectto equatestatereconstruction thus creating all the institutions deemed necessary
with democracybuilding.Indeed,the internation- to run a modern state.
al communityhasa one-size-fits-all modelfor dem- This model is enormously expensive, requir-
ocratic reconstruction,so that plans devisedfor ing majorcommitmentsof money and personnelon
Afghanistanbeara disturbingresemblance to those the part of the international community. As a
designed for the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo result, this approach has only been implemented
(DRC). This model a
usuallyenvisages negotiated seriously in the case of Bosnia, the only country
settlement to the conflict and the holding of a where the international community has made an
nationalconferenceof majordomesticgroups(the open-ended commitment of money and power to
loya jirga in Afghanistan and the Inter-Congolese see the job through to the end. Six years into the
Dialogue in the DRC) to reach an agreementon the process, progress is excruciatingly slow and not
structureof the politicalsystem,followedby elec- even a glimmer of light is waiting at the end of the
tions.In additionto thesecoreactivities,the model tunnel. But elsewhere in the world, including
callsfor subsidiarybutcrucialundertakings, begin- Afghanistan, the international community pre-
ning with the demobilizationof former combatants scribes this model without providing the resources.
and the developmentof a new nationalarmy,then The most obvious missing resource in Afghanistan
extending to reforming the judiciary,restructuring is a robust international peacekeeping force.

22 FOREIGN POLICY
 Think Again

The issue here is not simply political will. The
resourcesare just not available. Considerthe list of
current nation-building projects: Bosnia, Kosovo,
Afghanistan, SierraLeone, the DRC,and Burundi.
Plus, Somalia is again on the international radar
screen. If an agreementis reached, nation-building
efforts will begin in Sudan. And should the Bush
administrationsucceedin dislodgingIraqiPresident
Saddam Hussein, the reconstruction of Iraq might
be forthcoming. Meanwhile, the international
community has yet to cough up the nearly $400
million it pledged to fund the budget of the nascent
Afghanistan government.
Consequently,the internationalcommunity has
to set more modest goals for nation building and
then tailor those goals to each country's reality.
Unpleasantcompromisesare inevitable.If the inter-
national community is not going to disarm
Afghanistan's warlords, it will have to deal with
them in other ways because they will not just dis-
appear on their own. It has to make at least some
of them less dangerous and disruptive by using
aid to co-opt them into the government. If nations
do not want to occupy Somalia and impose state
structures on warring clans, they should consider
helpingthe regionalgovernmentsthat have emerged
to fill the void, beginningwith Somaliland.In some
cases, such as in the DRC,the international com-
munity should eitheracceptthe disintegrationof the
countryor allow nondemocraticleadersto use force
to put the state back together.These are all unpalat-
able choices. But those who believe that the inter-
national community knows how to turn collapsed
states into democraciesshould think again. [ID

Want to Know More?

Robert D. Kaplan'sThe ComingAnarchy:Shatteringthe Dream of the Post Cold War (New York:
Vintage,2001) providesa somewhatapocalypticview of what a futurewithout nation buildingmay
hold and should convinceeven skepticsthat the internationalcommunitycannot avoid the task. For
dismal views of state disintegrationin Africa,see KarlMaier'sThis House Has Fallen: Midnight in
Nigeria (New York:PublicAffairs,2000) and Michela Wrong'sIn the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz:Liv-
ing on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo (New York:HarperCollinsPublishers,2001).

Max Boot puts modern-daypeacekeepingin historicalcontext by chroniclingthe United States'

200-year historyof undeclared,smallwars abroadin The Savage Warsof Peace:Small Warsand the
Rise ofAmerican Power (New York:BasicBooks, 2002). Imagesof nation buildingas a quagmireare
largelyinfluencedby accountsof Somalia,such as MichaelMaren'sTheRoad to Hell: TheRavaging
Effectsof ForeignAid and InternationalCharity(New York:FreePress,1997). For a detailedview
of the challengeof nation building,the reportsof the InternationalCrisisGroup's(ICG)Balkanspro-
gram,availableon its Website, are unparalleled.In "TrueBeliever"(FOREIGN POLICY,March/April
2001), GarethEvans,ICG'spresidentand formerAustralianforeignminister,offershis views on when
the internationalcommunityshould intervenein civil conflicts.Go to the United Nations Transition-
al Administrationin East Timor Web site for an accountof nation buildingin East Timor.

On the role of war in nation building,see The Formationof National States in WesternEurope
(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress,1975), editedby CharlesTilly.RobertJackson'sQuasi-states:
Sovereignty,InternationalRelations and the ThirdWorld(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,
1990) is the best account of the problemsof states establishedby internationalfiat. On the role that
nongovernmentalorganizationsplay in nation building, see Joseph Hanlon's Mozambique: Who
Calls the Shots?(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress,1991). MarinaOttaway and Anatol Lieven
offer a skeptical perspective on the future of a democratic state in Afghanistan in "Rebuilding
Afghanistan:FantasyversusReality"(Washington: CarnegieEndowmentfor International Peace,2002).

& For links to relevant Web sites, access to the FP Archive, and a comprehensive index of relat-
ed FOREIGN POLICY articles, go to www.foreignpolicy.com.

24 FOREIGN POLICY