“[In the decade since 9/11] I think we have learned a lot about limits. But I don’t think the lesson is: We can do nothing to shape better outcomes in the world; we only make things worse. I would say that the American people, far from being interventionist, as they were in the aftermath of 9/11, are now heavily isolationist. How does one find the language that justifies a significant and positive American role in the world? Obama is searching — not so successfully, right now.” — James Traub, A Free-for-All on a Decade of War, From New York Times Magazine, a post-9/11 debate on what has been learned and where our conclusions might take us.
In the days surrounding the tenth anniversary of the September eleventh terrorist attacks, there has been much reflection on the past decade’s so-called ‘9/11 wars’ in Iraq and Afghanistan, while at the same time, the Arab Spring and particularly NATO’s involvement in Libya has sparked a closely related discussion about the effectiveness and appropriateness of military interventions for humanitarian purposes. These questions underpin the way the United States defines its role in the world and extend beyond military actions to include America’s approach to foreign assistance and even international disaster relief.
Since at least the 1990s, there has been a reactive element to U.S. policy on intervention. Fallout from US/UN peacekeeping efforts in Somalia, particularly the Black Hawk Down incident in 1993, may have soured public opinion on intervention, resulting in less appetite to act during the 1994 Rwandan genocide — guilt over which contributed to President Clinton’s decision to send 20,000 U.S. peacekeepers into Bosnia-Herzegovina in November of 1995. While that action is almost universally considered appropriate (at least in hindsight), and was successful in saving many lives, it had the unintended consequence of buoying public enthusiasm for military intervention. In turn, this may have made the case for the invasion of Iraq a little more palatable to the American public in 2003. Although there is no absolute cause and effect relationship between these occurrences, neither is it likely that they are entirely coincidental.
After the great financial and human toll exacted by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the pendulum of U.S. public opinion has again swung toward reluctance to embark on any sort of military adventure. Even before the first bomb was dropped, the Libyan intervention was framed as a limited action with America in a support role — helping it gain at least moderate public support. So far the NATO countries leading the effort (chiefly France and the United Kingdom, with the United States “leading from behind”) have done a fairly good job of keeping to the periphery of the conflict and not compromising indigenous ownership of the movement. Despite some questions about whether the NATO coalition has overstepped the United Nations mandate to protect civilians by supporting the National Transitional Council and arguably pushing for regime change, if continued restraint is demonstrated in the future, the Libyan action may serve as a good example of limited intervention.
In the immediate aftermath of Qaddafi’s fall, the transition is going surprisingly well in Libya. There have been unsettling instances of collective punishment against black Africans and the United States and its NATO allies may be worried about the influence of Islamists, but looting and violence has been minimal, optimism is high, and there is little talk of revenge against Qaddafi loyalists. Yesterday, Libyans in Benghazi greeted French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron like returning heroes — surely gratifying for leaders who are accustomed to a very different reception in much of the Arab world. But the euphoria won’t last forever and the path toward the first new Libyan government in more than forty years will be fraught with difficulties. Western leaders may be tempted to escalate their involvement by tackling structural problems and getting involved in institution-building, but this temptation should largely be resisted.
When and how should the West intervene?
“We cannot stop all war for all time, but we can stop some wars. We cannot save all women and all children, but we can save many of them. We cannot do everything, but we must do what we can.” — President Bill Clinton in November 1995, explaining his decision to send 20,000 U.S. peacekeepers into Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The approach going forward should be one of positive moderation — accepting that America’s potential to enact change in developing countries is limited regardless of the level of commitment to the mission, the strategy employed, and the amount of resources available. The focus should be placed on what can be achieved, rather than what we wish we could achieve. Drawing on their experiences in Afghanistan and Bosnia respectively, Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus have made one of the best cases for limited intervention in their recently published book, Can Intervention Work? “Ought implies can,” is one of Stewart’s favorite sayings — the idea that you don’t have a moral obligation to do what cannot be done. He explains that the international community lacks the “power, knowledge, and legitimacy” to eliminate the root causes of most conflicts, let alone fundamentally reshape the structures and cultural identity of a foreign land.
From Foreign Assistance to Disaster Relief
“It is dangerous hubris to believe we can build other nations. But where our own interests are engaged we can help nations build themselves — and give them time to make a start at it.” — National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, 1996.
Although the U.S. military intervention and subsequent state-building efforts in Afghanistan, and the humanitarian response to last year’s devastating earthquake in Haiti may appear to have little in common — both offer a similar lesson about the dangers of pursuing major development projects without clearly defined, achievable goals. The mistakes made during Haiti’s reconstruction have been widely chronicled, so I won’t rehash them here, but Janet Reitman’s recent article in Rolling Stone magazine, How the World Failed Haiti, provides a comprehensive analysis.
Despite obvious differences, Haiti and Afghanistan do share some similarities. Both are very poor, politically unstable, plagued by corruption, and have small GDPs compared to the amount of foreign aid they receive. They also have complicated histories with the United States and other foreign powers that have led them to be suspicious of outside interference in their affairs. These factors have made development work extremely difficult for the United States and other foreign actors, particularly when they have attempted to enact ambitious, structural changes, with limited input from the local populations.
Much of the recovery work in Haiti has been predicated on the idea of “building back better” — the notion that development efforts could both rebuild Haiti while simultaneously propelling it into a new era of modernity and progress. It is a wonderful thought, but is it attainable? Such a transformation would have been an ambitious undertaking even before the country was decimated by the earthquake of 2010. The development community frequently complains that the Haitian government is hopelessly corrupt, making reconstruction all but impossible, while Haitian politicians counter that foreign NGOs are hindering reconstruction by not cooperating with the government. Convincing the Haitian people and the Haitian government that they would own the reconstruction efforts should have been priority number one for the development community, but more than a year and a half later, it has yet to be achieved. America’s high profile involvement in the Haitian elections has exacerbated this problem. Michel Martelly — backed with $6 million in donations from U.S. funders and the Haitian diaspora — was widely viewed as the American choice for Haiti’s presidency, leading many Haitians to question the legitimacy of the elections.
Conclusions
“So can intervention work? The answer from the last two decades is that where we believe that any price is worth paying, and that failure is not an option, we are likely to fail. Where we tread carefully, and fear the consequences of our mistakes, there is a chance.” — Gerald Knaus, Can Intervention Work?
To be clear, I am not advocating that the West devotes fewer resources to international development. On the contrary, at a time when economic uncertainty has put foreign aid budgets on the chopping block, it is important that we maintain a robust foreign assistance program, both on moral grounds and to further American interests abroad. However, we need to be more aware of the limitations of international development so that our expectations are more realistic, and our efforts more effective.
That is not to say that development agencies and NGOs are incapable of tackling broad projects on a large scale. Efforts to eradicate diseases like malaria are making remarkable progress because they leverage expertise and resources that the development community possesses and the recipients universally want. Projects that seek to overhaul entrenched traditions, institutions, and structures are much more difficult and often provoke resistance from the people that they are supposed to benefit. There is much to admire about the sentiment behind sweeping, ambitious projects, but there is also something to be said for focusing on what we can do, rather than what we wish we could do. It is tempting for outsiders, who may be well versed in things like development theory, democratization, and rule of law, to want to use that knowledge to develop a grand plan for progress and modernization in a foreign land. But no matter how good the vision may be, if it is not driven by the local stakeholders, it has no chance of success.
