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Grading the stabilization review

I spent some quality time yesterday and today at an interagency unveiling of the  US government’s Stabilization Assistance Review (SAR), which has produced “a framework for maximizing the effectiveness of US government efforts to stabilize conflict-affected areas.” As I’ve lived through at least four incarnations of US government efforts to recast its approach in conflict zones, I approach this one with a skeptical edge.

First, the good news: the SAR recognizes up front and explicitly that stabilization is an inherently political enterprise. That’s good, because it’s true. The now official objective is “to create conditions where locally legitimate authorities and systems can peaceably manage conflict and prevent a resurgence of violence.” Nothing apolitical about that. Politics is primary, in particular in situations where people have recently been killing each other over the distribution of power. Any move you make, or don’t, has political implications.

The SAR also recognizes that you can put too much money into conflicted environments. This is convenient, since the Trump Administration isn’t going to want to spend much on stabilization, but it too is true. The US government wasted colossal amounts of money in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it flowed rapidly into the pockets of local power brokers and from there to foreign banks, real estate, and other mostly unproductive investments (at least from the perspective of the conflict country in question). The emphasis in the SAR on small projects and building up local capacity is particularly welcome, as is the emphasis on establishing security first. Without it, nothing good can happen.

Beyond this, the SAR reads as if it is walking on egg shells. We need, it says, to “set realistic, analytically-backed political goals” (duh), but then shies away from defining any. It is especially allergic to the “d” (democracy) word. Instead there is a quick cameo appearance of a political objective in a reference to USAID, which is said to define legitimate societal and governing institutions as “inclusive, responsive and accountable to all groups, including minority and marginalized populations.” And how do the Defense and State Department definitions differ, or are they just too chicken to speak out?

That is not just a rhetorical question. The SAR was the brainchild of H.R. McMaster, who has been through enough wars to know that conflict doesn’t end when the guns are silenced. He is gone. John Bolton couldn’t care less. I detected no National Security Council presence whatsoever at the symposium, on the program or in the audience (apologies in advance to any NSC people who were there). In fact, none of the agency principals (Defense, State and AID) spoke, though all were invited. Representation barely rose above the level of deputy assistant secretary, which is the top level populated mainly by professionals.

This makes sense, as the Trump Administration not only wants to limit foreign affairs expenditure, especially for State and AID, but the President (like all his predecessors since 1989) has also eschewed “nation-building.” The SAR is a pretty transparent effort to sneak an important element of that benighted enterprise past the powers that be. It even notes the inevitability of a follow-on effort at peacebuilding and proposes civilian-led stabilization teams for rapid deployment, an updated version of the defunct Civilian Response Corps and Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

The good news is that Congress said to be sympathetic to the SAR. The Hill is also preparing the way for marginally better funding for State and AID, with both Rs and Ds supporting. But no one has broken the bad news to the President: success in killing terrorists in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere will be Pyrrhic, unless someone steps up to the need to create those “conditions where locally legitimate authorities and systems can peaceably manage conflict and prevent a resurgence of violence.” The alternative is a return of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, one of their many affiliates, or a dictatorship that will come close to their brutality.

So the SAR gets an A for effort, a B+ for content, and an incomplete on likelihood of implementation. That incomplete is a gift.