Why the World Needs Nation Building
Much maligned efforts to make lives better is all we’ve got to show for 20 years in Afghanistan.
America’s two-decade-long Afghanistan adventure has ended in tragedy and failure, but we should not turn away from a debate about the justification for the human sacrifice and the hundreds of billions of US dollars thrown at Afghanistan. Because our stated reasons for our long involvement were deeply disingenuous.
Resetting our relationship with the world badly needs doing. But we can’t figure out how we use the military, how we deal with terrorist threats, and how we avert the rise of dictators and disempower them without owning up to what we were — and were not — doing.
Propping up governments or strengthening community?
I am no expert on Afghanistan or the military. It’s the controversial idea of “nation building” that sticks in my craw. We use the military to prop up a supposedly friendly government, and at least give lip service to inducing democratic rule. We also end up attempting to nurture civil society, which includes the rule of law, free enterprise, and rebuilding other institutions. In Afghanistan it was especially concerned with expanding educational opportunity and empowerment for women.
I know something about this rhetorical vagary because it involves nominally the same efforts America supposedly applies to strengthen its own communities that are “vulnerable,” “underserved,” “traditionally overlooked” — you choose the euphemism for poor.
There are many people in America who break their backs daily in the quest to improve the physical conditions, the housing, justice, health, education, and economic mobility in poor communities. Most of them operate in local non-profits or under-invested government agencies. These efforts are scattershot when they exist at all, poorly coordinated and connected to no broader strategy at the local, state and especially federal level.
So we have poor communities where sidewalks are impassable, where parks are neglected or non-existent, where the justice system is broken (all of it — police, courts, jails, prisons, probation), where primary-care doctors are scarce as is healthy food, where jobs are few (or demand punishing commutes), and job training scarcer.
Since we don’t make comprehensive, effective commitments to American communities most in need, how could we have had the arrogance to think we could fix Afghanistan?
Stop deciding nation’s destinies for them
Though nation-building has been supported, when convenient, by both sides of the political aisle, we are told by our president and many pundits that we don’t do nation building anymore. We are more humble now. Our only objective in devoting such enormous resources for so long was to prevent terrorists from planning attacks on America from Afghan soil, say defenders of the forever wars.
Claptrap. We allow countries to decide their own destiny — except when we need to send our armed forces to enforce our interests, retaliate for injustices done to us and expiate our grief (in the case of 9/11) regardless of what Afghanis, or Iraqis, or whomever think their interests are.
In theory America’s massive military presence was intended keep the country’s warring factions apart, and banish terrorists. But as the intervention dragged on, our sense of justice required the military to make a safe space for the country to strengthen itself into some semblance of a functional state. But the civic framework and infrastructure for making Afghanistan work did not exist — and so America backed into a program of nation building that touched many aspects of Afghan lives — for good and ill.
America is ambivalent about nation building so we don’t like to admit we do it. Which means it proceeds without clear objectives, without a mandate from ordinary Afghans, nor a strategy. There wasn’t oversight and dispassionate evaluation of what worked and what did not.
Military intervention failed; nation building did some good
As the Taliban swept into power over the last few weeks and tightened its grip on the country, the pundit horde lamented the the potential end of the schools built, the girls educated, the tentative rebuilding of institutions. What was this if not nation building? At least some of the oceans of cash thrown at Afghanistan did some good.
The US was ostensibly helping to rebuilding the military, but that mighty effort has long been a wellspring of corruption, and now has been revealed to have been an utter failure. Corruption and inattention to the full range of civil-society needs prevented the development of a state capable of standing on its own.
Critics fault Biden’s precipitous withdrawal as destroying a status quo that was affordable, some said, and could have lasted indefinitely. Really? Affordable to us, maybe, and serving our interests, maybe. Did anyone ask Afghans ask how affordable our intervention was for them? When we pretend our objective was only stopping terror attacks on US soil, did no one see security measures that tolerated immense corruption, a flourishing drug trade, and otherwise undermined civil-society development was a recipe for failure?
Accountability, please
A reset is needed; we’ve got to lose the mindset that our interests trump those of host countries. The role of targeted civilian aid — dare I call it nation-building aid? — is too undervalued; it is never mentioned by officials except when a bland assurance is needed on the order of this, drawn from a New York Times Op Ed: “Helping Afghans create a stable, open society could also be the best way to further our own national security objectives.” Were we or were we not doing that? What nation building was done and what worked? Can we have some accountability, please?
There is every reason to attempt to help Afghanistan shore up its progress to the extent we can. We can do more around the world: A massive commitment to vaccinating the globe could be a good beginning. Such actions are nation-building even if given some less stigmatizing name. I’m not sure we have the capacity to do so, however, given what a poor job we do in helping strengthening struggling Americans communities.
Yes, humility should be the order of the day, at home and abroad. If we did a better job of making needed resources available to communities at home according to needs people are pretty good at describing, maybe we’ll learn how to make effective contributions abroad.
Our help should not leave people running as fast as they can to stay in place, which is too often all that America’s “safety net” spending accomplishes, by design. Nation building and community building should actually advance security, wealth-building, and well being.
Tap into activists who know how to fix things
We need to take a comprehensive view of how communities can use aid to thrive on their own by setting goals they seek and measuring progress. We should be tapping into the wisdom of activists across America who are trying to fix communities. America has seen huge reductions in crime over recent decades. We should learn the lessons of that extraordinary accomplishment to halt the most recent wave of gun violence.
Neither the military nor police alone can alone set the table for success. I’ve been especially impressed by those dedicated to reducing gun violence, keeping people out of gangs and out of jail, people who can teach others how to de-escalate violence and practice restorative justice. A lot of these people know what to fix because they did the crimes and did the time, and now want to help people avoid what happened to them.
Such expertise might be welcome in Afghanistan right now.
