Srsly, we gotta start talking development

Its Spring Break and what am I doing with my down time? Working on my personal pet projects. I'm from THE spring break destination, Miami, so I don't have a whole lot of motivation to go back for my vacation. Plus, I'm a college student, and I'm too broke to go anywhere for spring break even if I wanted to. On to the blogging it is then!

Last semester, I did a project on poverty and violence, does one cause the other? I answered no, poverty does not cause violence (including terrorism). However, impoverished places provide a feeding ground for the violent. If you are poor, you are not more likely to be a terrorist, but your community is more likely to be plagued by violence because it does not have the structures available to protect it.

This article from Brookings about Weak States does well to note that the strenghtening of states such as Afghanistan and Iraq requires a lot more attention to development than is currently being given or even talked about. Here's my favorite bit highlighting the specific goals that should be kept in mind for strengthening these weak states:

" In its last year, the Bush administration can lay the foundation for a comprehensive strategy to shore up weak states and prevent them from sliding into failure. Important components of such a strategy include:

• Prioritizing poverty alleviation. There is a strong relationship between poverty and state weakness. Poorer countries tend to be weaker ones, in part because they are more vulnerable to conflict. The United States must complement the Millennium Challenge Account's focus on "good performers" with parallel strategies to reduce poverty in the world's most challenging states.

• Targeting performance gaps. The United States should tailor assistance to the specific vulnerabilities of individual states. In failing states, the immediate requirement is to couple increased security with swift economic, political and social progress. In less acutely vulnerable countries, we should target each nation's particular performance gaps.

• Expanding U.S. assistance and leveraging non-aid instruments. The United States should increase overall assistance levels to support a wider cohort of weak states and combine development assistance with democracy support, market access, peacekeeping and security sector reform.

• Strengthening our civilian agencies. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates observed last November, our nation cannot rely on the U.S. military alone to revive fragile and war-torn states. Beyond boots on the ground, we need the wingtips and Birkenstocks of diplomatic and development professionals. Congress should support the administration's request to increase the professional staff at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

• Establishing partnerships. The United States cannot by itself build weak states' capacities. We must join with our allies, international institutions and developing countries to craft and implement effective strategies to address one of this century's most pressing security challenges."

The bit about expanding US assistance and leveraging non-aid instruments I feel is a bit ambiguous. Tying aid to good political behavior can get dangerous, because often times, "good" behavior really means the behavior that best suits the stronger state(s) and not necessarily the people. We can all come up with great examples across the world over the past 50 or 60 years where the US has supported oppressive regimes because they were in our best interest for strategic purposes and economic as well. Pakistan and Iran are my personal favorites.

Do I sound like I know what I'm talking about yet?

A new policy prescription article thingy (yeah, I totally own a dictionary) from the Brookings Institution thinks the US government should create a new department that is specially designed for reconstruction and stabilization that will serve past the reconstruction and stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan. It'll fall somewhere between National Security and the State Department it seems.

I'm usually not in favor of creating new departments or bureaucracies, but this one seems alright, actually reworking a system that will provide me (hopefully) with job security.

What I find really encouraging is tying this notion of national security with peacebuilding. Meaning, we don't send troops into other countries without an actual plan for what they'll do once they've finished and only use international peace keeping forces in a secondary role. Novel concept, I know.

The most interesting idea the article poses in terms of actual peacebuilding is the idea of elections.

"It is incumbent on the international community to guarantee peace and impose law and order in the absence of a widely accepted rule of law. In addition to provision of basic security, there is a “window of necessity” to meet humanitarian needs and give people confidence in the future. Key factors are restarting basic social services, getting kids back to school, and stimulating local jobs that give people an alternative to taking up arms. The process must start to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate (DDR) warring opponents. Some form of political activity must begin, often locally, that will lead to credible governance. Elections, when conducted too soon, can be detrimental, forcing competition among previously warring factions before wounds have healed and potentially entrenching criminals or warlords in political office."

I think in the particular case of Iraq and Afghanistan, there was such pressure to show that the US had properly implemented democracy in these countries, and so the gun was jumped to hold elections. While these elections may have had great examples of participation of the populations, they were nonetheless nothing more than an imitation of a democratic process. I think the US is making huge mistakes in pushing democracy on nations that can't provide security for the process to begin with, at least not in any way beneficial to their people.

Of course there are many other mistakes that have led to the present mess, and one of these days, I'll be able to write a very exact and well informed opinion about it. Until then, we can all enjoy the musings of a student grasping onto bits of information, desperately trying to sound smart.

Oh noes! Its a paradox!

Much of the president's speeches during his tour of the Middle East have involved rallying the Arab states to guard against the threat of Iran. However, according to Shibley Telhami at the Brookings Institution, Iran is indeed a threat to many Arab regimes, but not in the way you think. Although the article looks more at how Arab-Israeli peace making is the key to security rather than countering Iran, I'm going to focus on the disparity between the publics and their governments.

Its safe to say that there are more dictatorships disguised as democracies in the Middle East than there are actual democracies. Each of these regimes sees a common threat in Iran, Islamic fundamentalism. But they are not threatened by in the same way we here in the West are. The Iranian Revolution has been a scary thing for many nation states in the Middle East. Perhaps the only thing scarier than free elections for these governments is the idea of another Islamic revolution happening within their own borders.

The more the autocrats try to hold on to power by supressing the more radical Islamist movements, the stronger those movements become. And in many cases, as with Hamas and Hezbollah, those movements begin to provide the populations with what the government does not: hospitals, education, etc.

A US military presence is required to provide security for the governments, but as Telhami points out, those forces are not there with the mission to protect anything other than American interests. And then we come to a paradox. Military bases in the Middle East protect countries from militants (in theory at least) but the American presence creates a lot of resentment amongst the public and provides fuel for the militants who can say, "Look, Americans are everywhere, they're evil overlords who control everything." So the threat, or perceived threat amongst the people, isn't Iran, it us.

I don't have the answer to that puzzle yet. But I'll let you guys know when I do. In the meantime, add your own thoughts.