The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building

Research Summary

q       The U.S. occupation of Iraq was marked by a series of challenging and unanticipated challenges and responses both within and outside Iraq, that the government could not foresee.

q       Though the U.S. initially assumed that Iraq’s reconstruction would be largely self-financing, the government faced the compelling need to initiate the largest bilateral U.S. aid program in history.

q       Taking the lead in a comprehensive reconstruction effort, the U.S. Department of Defense plunged into nation building, guided by its earlier experience with Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.

q       With changing circumstances around the globe, the western governments and the U.N. are increasingly accepting that nation building has become an inescapable responsibility. However, in case of Iraq, the U.S. has taken on the largest and most difficult nation building challenges.

q       Though each nation to be rebuilt is unique, the study says that the nation builder has only a limited range of instruments to rely, which are same with different operations.

q       The study is centered on the main components from which nearly all nation-building missions are formed, including soldiers, police officers, civil administrators, and experts in political reform and economic development.

q       At length, the study analyses how such contingents are best recruited and organized, how much of each will be required, how long they will be needed, and how they have been best employed in prior operations.

q       The most important aspect of the study is the description of sizing or costing in each of the sections showing the procedures of estimating and working out costing in each of the associated tasks.

q       Though the study does not intend to suggest that nation building can be reduced to a few simple formulas, it is bent upon proving that matching aspirations to resources is essential to success.

q       On the whole, the study is a doctrine for conducting effective nation building operations drawing from national, international, and nongovernmental sources of expertise and capacity in each of these fields to assist the aspiring nation builder.

Read the full report

Back to Islamic / Arab Research Reports