[Senate Hearing 108-481]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-481
BUILDING OPERATION READINESS IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS AGENCIES
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 3, 2004
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio BARBARA BOXER, California
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BILL NELSON, Florida
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire Virginia
JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Staff Director
Antony J. Blinken, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Binnendijk, Hon. Hans, Roosevelt Chair of National Security
Policy, National Defense University, Washington, D.C........... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 18
Dobbins, Hon. James, Director, International Security and Defense
Policy Center, RAND, Washington, D.C........................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Hamre, Hon. John, President and CEO, CSIS, Washington, D.C....... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 11
Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S., Senator from Indiana, Chairman,
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations..................... 1
(iii)
BUILDING OPERATION READINESS IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS AGENCIES
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Wednesday, March 3, 2004
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m. in Room
SH-419, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar,
chairman of the committee, presiding. Present: Senator Lugar.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, U.S., SENATOR FROM
INDIANA
The Chairman. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee is called to order.
Over the past decade the United States has undertaken a
series of post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction
operations that have been critical to United States national
security. In the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the United
States has cobbled together plans, people, and resources with
the Defense Department in the lead.
The efforts of those engaged have been valiant, but these
emergencies have been complex and time sensitive. Our ad hoc
approach has been inadequate to deliver the necessary
capabilities to deal speedily and efficiently with complex
emergencies.
Last week Senator Biden and I introduced Senate Bill 2127,
the Stabilization and Reconstruction Civilian Management Act.
The purpose of this bill is to establish a more robust civilian
capacity to respond quickly and effectively to post-conflict
situations or other complex emergencies.
International crises are inevitable, and in most cases
United States national security interests will be threatened by
sustained instability. The war on terrorism necessitates that
we not leave nations crumbling and ungoverned. Our tolerance
for failed states has been reduced by a global war against
terrorism. We have already seen how terrorists can exploit
nations afflicted by lawlessness and desperate circumstances.
They seek out places to establish training camps, recruit new
members, and tap into a global black market in weapons
technology.
In this international atmosphere, the United States must
have the right structures, personnel, and resources in place
when an emergency occurs. A delay in our response of a few
weeks, or even a few days, can mean the difference between
success and failure. As a nation, we have accepted the
stabilization and reconstruction missions in the Balkans,
Afghanistan, and Iraq, but we need to go a step further and
create structures that can plan and execute strategies to deal
with future emergencies.
While recognizing the critical challenges that our military
has undertaken with skill and with courage, we must acknowledge
that certain non-security missions would have been better
served by a civilian response. Our post-conflict efforts
frequently have had a higher than necessary military profile.
This is not the result of a Pentagon power grab or
institutional fights. Rather, the military has led post-
conflict operations primarily because it is the only agency
capable of mobilizing sufficient personnel and resources for
these tasks. As a consequence, military resources have been
stretched, and deployments of military personnel have been
extended beyond expectations. If we can improve the
capabilities of the civilian agencies, they can take over many
of the non-security missions that have burdened the military.
The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations embarked on a
bipartisan experiment beginning in late 2003, assembling an
impressive array of experts from inside and outside of our
government to provide advice on how best to achieve this goal.
This ``Policy Advisory Group'' held extensive discussions in
which Senators, group members, and invited experts spoke
frankly about their ideas to improve the United States response
to post-conflict reconstruction problems and complex
emergencies. The bill that Senator Biden and I have introduced
draws heavily on those discussions. I believe that we need
structural change, accomplished through legislation, to
guarantee improvements in our capabilities.
Although Senator Biden and I have tried to incorporate into
the bill as many of the insights of the group as possible, we
recognize that not every participant will agree with each
provision in the bill. This is not surprising, given that one
of our goals in constructing the group was to guarantee a
diverse set of perspectives. Nevertheless, there were several
consensus themes that developed from the group's discussion.
They were:
First of all, the civilian foreign affairs agencies should
be better organized for overseas crisis response, and the
Secretary of State should play a lead role in this effort.
Second, there should be improved standing capacity within
the civilian agencies to respond to complex emergencies and to
work in potentially hostile environments.
Third, the agencies must be capable and flexible enough to
provide a robust partner to the military when necessary, or to
lead a crisis response effort when appropriate.
And fourth, the rapid mobilization of resources must be
shared by the civilian agencies and the military. While the
need to ensure security will continue to fall on the shoulders
of the military, the post-conflict demands on the armed
services would be reduced by more effectively tapping civilian
expertise.
During this process, the Bush administration was extremely
helpful. Officials from the State Department, the Defense
Department, the NSC, and USAID attended as guests of the group
and participated in their private capacities. The participation
of these individuals does not constitute an official
endorsement of this bill by their employing agencies, but the
final product was greatly improved by their collective
experience and wisdom.
Our bill urges the President to create a Stabilization and
Reconstruction Coordinating Committee to be chaired by the
National Security Advisor. This coordinating committee would
ensure appropriate interagency planning and execution of
stabilization and reconstruction efforts. The coordinating
committee would have representation from the Department of
State, USAID, and the Departments of Commerce, Justice,
Treasury, Agriculture, Defense, and other agencies as
appropriate.
Our bill would authorize the creation of an office within
the State Department to coordinate the civilian component of
stabilization and reconstruction missions. The Office would be
headed by a coordinator who is appointed by the President and
reports directly to the Secretary of State.
Our bill also would authorize the Secretary of State to
establish a Response Readiness Corps with both active duty and
reserve components available to be called upon at a moment's
notice to respond to emerging international crises. The
reserves would include federal government officials from the
non-foreign affairs agencies who have volunteered to
participate and members recruited from the private sector based
on their applicable skills.
Finally, our bill urges the Foreign Service Institute to
work with the National Defense University and the United States
Army War College to establish a training curriculum for
civilian and military personnel that would enhance their
stabilization and reconstruction skills and improve their
coordination in the field.
Our intent is not to critique past practices, but rather to
improve our stabilization and reconstruction capacity for the
future. We recognize that Senate Bill 2127 does not address
many facets of this issue that fall under the jurisdiction of
the military and the Armed Services Committee. I know that my
colleagues on that committee have many thoughts about these
issues, and they may recommend additional steps.
Today it's our privilege to welcome as witnesses three key
participants in our Policy Advisory Group process. Ambassador
James Dobbins is Director of the International Security and
Defense Policy Center of the RAND Corporation, Dr. John Hamre
is President and CEO of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, and Dr. Hans Binnendijk is the Theodore
Roosevelt Chair and the Director of the Center for Technology
and National Security Policy at the National Defense
University. All three have played leadership roles in research
studies by their organizations on ways to improve United States
capacity in the areas of stabilization and reconstruction.
The inevitable post-conflict stabilization and
reconstruction demands of future crises will require a
formidable capacity to respond to challenges, both military and
diplomatic. It is crucial to our success that the necessary
resources and plans be put in place now.
For this reason, we look forward to the insights of our
witnesses and the opportunity to discuss with them Senate Bill
2127.
I would like to call upon the witnesses in the order that I
introduced them, which would include, first of all, Dr. Dobbins
and Dr. Hamre and then Dr. Binnendijk. You may be assured that
your statements will be published in the record in full. Please
summarize them, if you can, since our intent, however, is to
have as full a comprehension of this subject as we can. Please
do not feel constrained. You might aim for ten minutes or so as
the initial summary before questions, but make certain that you
cover the ground that you believe is important.
Dr. Dobbins.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES DOBBINS, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL
SECURITY & DEFENSE POLICY CENTER, RAND, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ambassador Dobbins. Well, thank you very much, Senator. I'd
like to thank you for several things: first, for having invited
me today to testify on this important subject; second, for
having taking it up and pursued it over an extended period of
time; third, for having formed a Policy Advisory Group, which
was bipartisan in nature and which included representatives of
this administration, previous administrations, and some of us
who have served in both; fourth, for having attended and
actively participated in all of our discussions; and finally,
for having introduced legislation that so closely parallels the
consensus that emerged in those discussions.
My prepared testimony today largely repeats what I and, I
think, many others said in the course of the Policy Advisory
Group. I'm pleased that this can now be made part of the
official record. I won't try to repeat it to you today, since
you've heard it from me, and you've heard it from several
others. But it is strongly supportive of the legislation that
you've introduced.
I submitted this testimony on Friday. Since then the United
States has embarked on yet another major nation-building
mission, which wasn't entirely anticipated and isn't covered in
my testimony, so I thought I might say a word or two about it.
The Chairman. Our hearing was prescient.
Ambassador Dobbins. Yes. And that, of course, is the
American intervention in Haiti, a country with which I became
painfully familiar in the course of the 1990s. I'd like to
address briefly the implications of Haiti for the legislation
and for the steps that you've proposed.
The first question that arises, of course, is why are we
doing this again? Haiti has this familiar, this tragic cycle.
This, I think, is the 35th Haitian president to depart after a
coup, it's the fourth time the United States has intervened in
Haiti in a decade, it's the second time that Aristide has been
driven from office. What did we do wrong the last time?
My own reflection on that is, first of all, that the
preeminent responsibility for Haiti's plight rests with
President Aristide, who repeatedly failed to take advantage of
the many opportunities that he was offered to set Haiti on a
new path. That said, however, I do think that in the mid-90s
the United States set its objectives too narrowly and its time
frame too briefly to accomplish a lasting change in Haiti.
The Clinton administration intervened in Haiti with the
intention of restoring a duly elected president, holding new
elections, inaugurating yet another president, and then
immediately leaving. It achieved those objectives. In many ways
it was a model operation in terms of its benchmarks and stated
mission. But two years was too short a period to fix a society
as deeply broken as Haiti. And, in retrospect, the resources
were quite inadequate as well.
Only a few years later the United States spent 5 to 10
times as much to reconstruct Bosnia and Kosovo as it did Haiti,
a country which is 4 or 5 times larger than either of those and
much, much, much poorer. And today the United States is
providing Iraq economic assistance 100 times greater than it
provided--than Bill Clinton provided Haiti at the absolute peak
of United States interests in the mid-90s. So in retrospect,
not only was the time frame too short, but the resources were
stinted as well.
Turning to the current intervention and looking at it from
the perspective of the legislation that you've offered and the
reforms that are being proposed, one would have to say that in
this case, again unfortunately, there doesn't seem to have been
a great deal of planning done. This appears to be heavily
improvised, and to some degree that may be the result of fast-
moving events.
Nevertheless, it does seem to me that the administration
did have a fairly clear choice over the last month or two, at
least. If its preeminent objective was to avoid having had to
intervene, then the logical consequence would have been a
choice of providing diplomatic and financial support to
Aristide as soon as a armed rebellion had broken out in the
hopes that that would have proved adequate, unpalatable as that
choice would have been in light of Aristide's record.
Alternatively, if the bottom line was that Aristide's
record was such that Haiti could not be governed with him in
charge, then one should have started planning a great deal
earlier for an intervention, since it was fairly clear that if
Aristide were to leave, the circumstances would be such that
only an international intervention could have restored order.
One suspects that instead of making a clear choice between
both of these unpalatable alternatives, the administration
debated them until the last moment when the choice was thrust
upon it over the weekend.
We do also seem to be, again, in danger of doing what we
did in both Afghanistan and Iraq, which is underestimating the
force, the size of the force needed, dribbling in forces too
slowly, not securing a degree of control, and establishing a
stable environment from the beginning. We've seen repeatedly
that whenever a regime topples, a period of chaos and disorder
and a vacuum of power open, and that this vacuum is always
filled by a combination of criminal elements and extremists.
The longer the criminal elements and extremists are
unchallenged in occupying that terrain, the more difficult it
is to regain that terrain and establish a stable and secure
environment. Indeed, we have not yet done so in either
Afghanistan or in Iraq.
On the other hand, it's difficult not to be sympathetic to
the administration's difficulties in mobilizing the resources
and the attention necessary to do something as difficult as we
are embarked on in Haiti, given the degree to which we are
overextended in Afghanistan and in Iraq. There is, I think, a
real question as to whether even the world's only super power
is capable of assuming responsibilities for nation-building on
this order.
In the Clinton administration there was an implicit one-at-
a-time rule, an understanding that while the resources for some
of these may not have been overwhelming, the amount of time and
attention it demanded from policymakers precluded doing more
than one of them well at a time. And so the Clinton
administration did not go into Haiti until it got out of
Somalia, it did not go into Bosnia until it got out of Haiti,
and it did not go into Kosovo until it had stabilized Bosnia
and begun drawing down its forces. This forced some difficult
choices. It chose not to go into Rwanda because it was on its
way to Haiti, and it knew it couldn't do both at the same time.
Now, in retrospect that might have not have been the best
set of priority and, indeed, President Clinton later suggested
that he would have done it differently had he had the chance to
do it over again. But at least it did represent a setting of
priorities and a conscious knowledge of one's limitations.
In this case, it is my hope that we don't, by taking on so
many missions and doing none of them well, discredit the whole
process and concept of nation-building because we have
demonstrated that when we concentrate enough attention, enough
men, money, and manpower and time on it, we are capable of
doing it well. But we need to be careful regarding the number
of missions we take on at any one time.
I certainly do think that if the provisions of your
legislation had applied in the current circumstances, we would,
at a minimum, be in a better state regarding plans for the
Haiti operation. We would have had an office in the State
Department that would have, at least for the last month or two,
have concentrated on developing contingency plans, on looking
at the levels of manpower, money that would be required, and on
having in place the civil components of an effort to rebuild
the police force, to rebuild the justice system, and some of
the other programmatic aspects which will have to be part of
this effort in Haiti.
Let me just conclude, again, Senator, by strongly endorsing
the legislation and expressing appreciation for everything that
you have done to advance it.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Dobbins follows:]
Prepared Statement of James Dobbins
I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the committee for having
invited me here today, for having taken up the subject of post-conflict
stabilization and reconstruction, for having organized the Policy
Advisory Group on which I was privileged to serve, and having submitted
the legislation on that subject which we are here today to discuss. All
of us who served on the Policy Advisory Committee are particularly
appreciative of the time and effort you and Senator Biden devoted
leading and participating in our discussions. It is particularly
satisfying to see the results of those discussions reflected so
accurately in legislation you have submitted.\1\
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\1\ The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony are
the author's alone and should not be interpreted as representing those
of RAND or any of the sponsors of its research. This product is part of
the RAND Corporation testimony series. RAND testimonies record
testimony presented by RAND associates to federal, state, or local
legislative committees; government-appointed commissions and panels;
and private review and oversight bodies. The RAND Corporation is a
nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and
effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and
private sectors around the world. RAND's publications do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
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After more than a decade of intense American involvement in nation-
building it is right that Congress and the Administration should be
giving thought to how our nation can perform these unavoidable and
important tasks more effectively? The participation in this Policy
Advisory Group of senior representatives from the White House, State
and Defense, of Congressional leaders from both parties, and of former
officials from this and previous Administrations provided unusual,
perhaps unique breadth of experience to our discussions on this topic.
I believe that the results of those discussions, and the high degree of
consensus they revealed are well embodied in the legislation you have
submitted.
In our discussions we were able to draw upon the results of work
done on postconflict stabilization and reconstruction by several of our
nations leading research institutions, to include CSIS, the U.S.
Institute for Peace, the National Defense University and my own home,
the RAND Corporation. What is striking in this work, as in our
discussions, is the degree of consensus to be found on the essentials--
that nation-building in some form will remain an inescapable
responsibility of the international community and its most powerful
member, that we have conducted these missions successfully in the past
and are capable of doing so more effectively in the future, that our
most recent efforts have not drawn fully upon the experience gained,
often at some cost, over the past decade, and that better performance
requires both that improved bureaucratic structures for planning and
execution, and sustained investment in the capacity to conduct
stabilization and reconstruction missions. Finally, there was uniform
agreement that the successful conduct of these missions requires a
broadly based response from our government, in particular from both the
Departments of State and Defense, and this responsibility cannot be
delegated to a single agency.
In its own recently published history of American role on nation-
building over the past sixty years RAND concluded that:
In its early months, the U.S.-led stabilization and
reconstruction of Iraq has not gone as smoothly as might have
been expected, given the abundant, recent, and relevant U.S.
experience highlighted in this study. This is, after all, the
sixth major nation-building enterprise the United States has
mounted in 12 years and the fifth such in a Muslim nation. In
many of the previous cases, the United States and its allies
have faced similar challenges immediately after an
intervention. Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Afghanistan also
experienced the rapid and utter collapse of central state
authority. In each of these instances, local police, courts,
penal services, and militaries were destroyed, disrupted,
disbanded, or discredited and were consequently unavailable to
fill the postconflict security gap. In Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo,
and Afghanistan, extremist elements emerged to fill the
resultant vacuum of power. In most cases, organized crime
quickly became a major challenge to the occupying authority. In
Bosnia and Kosovo, the external stabilization forces ultimately
proved adequate to surmount these security challenges; in
Somalia and Afghanistan, they did not or have not yet.
Over the past decade, the United States has made major
investments in the combat efficiency of its forces. The return
on investment has been evident in the dramatic improvement in
war fighting demonstrated from Desert Storm to the Kosovo air
campaign to Operation Iraqi Freedom. There has been no
comparable increase in the capacity of U.S. armed forces or of
U.S. civilian agencies to conduct post combat stabilization and
reconstruction operations. Throughout the 1990s, the management
of each major mission showed some limited advance over its
predecessor, but in the current decade, even this modestly
improved learning curve has not been sustained.
The reason for this lack of investment is not hard to find. Nation-
building has been a controversial mission over the past decade. The
intensity of our domestic debate has inhibited agencies from making the
investments that would be needed to do these tasks better.
Institutional resistance in departments of State and Defense, neither
of which regards nation-building among their core missions, has also
been an obstacle. As a result, successive administrations have treated
each new mission as if it were the first and, more importantly, as if
it were the last. Each time we have sent out new people to face old
problems, and seen them make old mistakes. Each time we have dissipated
accumulated expertise after an operation has been concluded, failing to
the study the lessons and integrate the results in our doctrine,
training and future planning, or to retain and make use of the
experienced personnel in ways that ensure their availability for the
next mission when it arrives.
If agencies are to make the investments necessary to improve their
capacity to conduct postconflict reconstruction and stabilization
missions, they will need, first of all, a clear sense of their future
responsibilities. In the 1990s, in the aftermath of the Somali debacle,
the U.S. militaries role in nation-building was excessively
circumscribed. The State Department was sometimes called upon to manage
tasks better left to the Defense Department--training the Bosnian and
Croatian armies for instance. More recently we moved to the opposite
extreme, with the Department of Defense assuming responsibilities for a
wide range of essentially civil tasks.
The draft legislation we are discussing today represents only a
beginning at addressing this problem, but it is an important start.
Both State and Defense need to improve their skills and increase their
institutional capacity to conduct stabilization and reconstruction
missions. But the U.S. military, at least, already has in place
mechanisms to study prior campaigns, including nation-building
campaigns, to draw appropriate lessons and to integrate these in
ongoing doctrine and planning. Nothing comparable yet exists on the
civil side of our government.
This legislation is designed to provide State greater authorities
and resources to carry out its responsibilities for postconflict
stabilization and reconstruction. But in the long run agencies will
sustain investment only in capabilities that they know will be used.
The next step therefore, is to design an enduring division of labor
between State and Defense for the management of stabilization and
reconstruction missions, a division that both Departments buy into,
that both the Congress and the Administration support, and that both
Republicans and Democrats will be content to work within, no matter
which controls the White House or the Capitol. Just as the Goldwater/
Nichols Act and preceding legislation provides the institutional
framework through which America goes to war, so, in my judgment, should
a similarly enduring arrangement should be established for the conduct
of postconflict reconstruction and stabilization missions.
This legislation will encourage and assist the Department of State
to build up a cadre of people with the special skills, interests and
commitment needed for such missions.
Nation-building always requires a broad array of U.S. agencies to
work together continuously in unfamiliar circumstances, both in
Washington and on the ground. Nation-building diplomacy is always
multilateral, not only in Washington, New York and Brussels, but also
in the field, where the absence of any functioning host government
means even the simplest tasks have to be coordinated locally among a
wide range of state and non-state actors. These actors include not just
representatives of other U.S. agencies and other governments, but also
a myriad of NGO's and an even wider array of local leaders and would be
leaders. These latter must be dealt with individually because the
instrumentalities for dealing with them collectively have
disintegrated.
Even low-level officers working in a failed or occupied state deal
on a daily basis with more agencies, more governments and more local
leaders than many Ambassadors Encounter over months in more settled
circumstances.
Nation-building also requires the early mastery of both policy and
program management. These two types of responsibility do not come
together in most Foreign Service careers until one reaches the Deputy
Chief of Mission level. Nation-building missions routinely require even
relatively junior officers to both administer programs and set policy
priorities, often while having to deal with the press and local
notables and negotiate with other governments. These responsibilities
must be carried out on the basis of limited instructions and inadequate
communications with Washington.
The scale of programs also normally exceeds those managed by even
our largest embassies. In the late 90s aid to both Bosnia and Kosovo
was, for instance, larger than for all the rest of Europe combined.
This year aid to Iraq will be larger than that for the rest of the
world combined.
Finally, nation-building takes place in the most dangerous,
devastated and generally unpleasant places on earth.
Traditional diplomacy and crises response tend to appeal to
different personality types. State-to-state diplomacy calls for calm
judgment, reflection, patience, attention to nuance, and carefully
crafted prose and disciplined service within a well understood
hierarchy. Failed state diplomacy calls for self-confidence,
enterprise, initiative, calculated risk taking and an ability to work
comfortably in highly unstructured environments.
We face here the familiar prototypes of the cowboy and the farmer.
They can be friends, but it doesn't come naturally. At the moment we
have a Foreign Service of farmers, in which cowboys are regarded with
suspicion. The State Department's task, which this legislation will
help them tackle, will be to create an environment in which both types
find a home and rewarding careers.
The Chairman: Well, thank you very much, Ambassador
Dobbins.
Dr. Hamre.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN HAMRE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CSIS,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dr. Hamre. Mr. Chairman, first, my sincere thanks for
permitting me to participate in both this hearing and in the
process that you and Senator Biden established. It is so
gratifying to see the kind of leadership that you've provided
to this.
May I indulge the Chair just to let me introduce my
colleague who is with me, Bathsheba Crocker, who is really the
author of this testimony and the architect of so much of our
work. I'm grateful that you would recognize her for her
contribution.
The Chairman. An active participant in our advisory group.
Dr. Hamre. Yes, sir. And I thank you for that.
Sir, let me, if I may. I come to this as a defense guy. And
let me say why I believe your work is so crucial. There are two
dimensions to America's power: America's power is both a power
of intimidation and a power of inspiration. We've really
perfected the powers of intimidation. I mean, no one can stand
up to us in the world now.
Unfortunately, our powers of inspiration have atrophied,
and our sweeping idealism and rhetoric for democracy and
opportunity is undermined when we have inept application in the
field. Unfortunately, the inept application of these very
inspiring projects now drag down and diminish our powers of
intimidation, to be candid.
I think we are at a very crucial point where it's in our
interest, and I speak now from the perspective of the defense
community. We have to have more competency in our sister
agencies in the government so that their part of this
integrated process makes the whole.
It is not a substitute to have the mightiest military in
the world and then do so poorly in a post-conflict environment.
Matter of fact, it really hurts us. So it is in our interests--
speaking as a defense guy--it's in our interests to do what we
can to improve this in every way we can.
Let me also say that I consider your legislation to be a
budget bill. If you could take one week off of the time we're
going to be in Iraq, we're spending a billion dollars a week.
If you save us just one week of that, we've saved money with
this legislation. And I have no doubt we're going to save
months if we had in place the sort of planning infrastructure
that lets us do a much better job at the outset. So one of the
best things that your colleagues can do to help save
expenditures in the future is to give these kinds of
capabilities so that as a competent government we can save the
resources that otherwise we're having to devote to the Defense
Department.
Sir, I strongly support your legislation. I think it is the
essential building point for competencies that we have to have
in the government. You've struck the right balance, in my view,
between having to push an executive branch that doesn't like
being pushed and giving them the flexibility to do it well when
they are asked to do it. And this is a very hard thing. And
I've been both on the receiving end and pushing end, you know,
of this sort of thing before, and I commend you for really a
very skillful mixing of the two.
The administration, the executive branch, I would have been
in their shoes three years ago and I would have said exactly
the same, I don't like it, but I have to do it. And it's an
outside pressure. This is what our democracy is all about. Our
constitutional form of democracy with an independent branch of
the people speaking through the Congress is asking, We have got
to fix it. You've done the right thing by striking that
balance.
I know that there are those that would like to go much
further and mandate things and there are those that don't like
it going as far as it is. But you've done, I think, a superb
job of finding the right mix.
It's--frankly, the success is really going to rest on the
follow through and the oversight that you bring to it after
this is implemented. And may I encourage you to bring other
committees of the Congress into this process.
You need to have parallel efforts underway for the Commerce
Department, the Agriculture Department, the Treasury
Department, the Defense Department, and they're other
departments here that have to be brought along. And that really
can be done through your agency here in the Congress. And if
you can inspire your colleagues in those committees to start
putting the same kind of attention to this that you have given,
it would do an enormous good.
Sir, building on the foundation that you've created with
this legislation, there are, I think, a couple of steps we need
to take further. I don't want this, in any sense, to diminish
the importance of what you've put before us. We have to have
this as a starting point.
I think that two things that are very clear and especially
from the tragedy yesterday in Iraq, we do not have the capacity
to provide intelligence that's necessary to support these
operations, and we've got to reassess how we're approaching the
intelligence support for post-conflict operations.
Second, we still do not have the right formula for
policing. Now, the Defense Department understandably looks on a
security challenge in the traditional military form, and so
they are pursuing the post-Saddam loyalists that most closely
match the historical threat profile that the Defense Department
plans for. But the Defense Department does not plan for dealing
with broad-scale criminality, they do not plan for dealing with
organized crime.
One of the things that we now see around the world is that
transnational organized crime has become the logistics backbone
for terrorists. We have got to tackle this, and our current
response, too much, I believe, in the Department is to approach
our presence in a dangerous environment from a forced
protection posture, to minimize our casualties. That is keeping
us from getting an integrated picture on the security problem
that we face when we move into a place like Iraq or move into
Bosnia, or, I hate to say, now into Haiti. We have got to get a
much more integrated security perspective than you can get if
you do it alone from the Defense Department.
At some point in time the Defense Department, the State
Department, the other elements, the intelligence community has
to get together to get a truly seamless approach to security.
We haven't done that yet. It's something that you can't do from
this committee alone; I understand that. This is something that
you have to do with your colleagues on Armed Services and have
to do with your colleagues on Intelligence. But it is
indispensable for the next step.
As I said, this doesn't diminish in any way the crucial
nature of this important first step you're taking to get the
competency inside the State Department and the coordination
structure inside the NSC. Nothing is more important than
getting that done. Please make that your first priority, and
then let us help you with the follow-on steps.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hamre follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. John J. Hamre
Mr. Chairman, I am honored to have the opportunity to address this
distinguished committee today on such an important and timely subject.
I fully support your efforts to identify and address the key gaps in
U.S. civilian post-conflict capacities that are inhibiting fulfillment
of our ongoing objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan and that will
continue to plague future efforts.
Mr. Chairman, you, Senator Biden, and this entire committee deserve
particular credit for your efforts to bring national attention to these
issues, and the Iraq case in particular, beginning with your early
hearings in August of 2002 and a continuing series of hearings since
then. Your decision to convene a Policy Advisory Group to tackle the
tough issues surrounding how to better set up the civilian side of the
U.S. government to handle future post-conflict cases, the important
legislation you introduced last week, and this hearing today are
testament to the seriousness with which you are approaching the
challenges the United States faces in improving our civilian capacities
to approach future post-conflict cases. This committee's attention has
been critical to the increased attention these issues are now getting,
inside the U.S. government, among our friends and allies, and in the
eyes of the U.S. public.
POST CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION: AN ENDURING TASK
Since the successful examples of the reconstruction of Germany and
Japan after World War II, the United States has under-invested in the
civilian capabilities needed to partner with its military forces to
achieve overall success in complex operations. At the same time, the
United States has also failed to adequately train, equip, or mandate
its military forces for the difficult post-conflict security tasks that
those forces are so often asked to carry out.
The United States will spend over $200 billion on the military and
civilian post-war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq alone. Both places
have served to remind us that post-conflict reconstruction operations
are an inherent part of modern warfare. Our military forces can win the
combat phase of wars decisively, but military operations themselves are
rarely, if ever, sufficient to achieving the U.S.'s overall strategic
objectives. To decisively win the peace, we need an immediate and
sharper focus on developing and institutionalizing the civilian and
military capabilities the United States requires for complex
operations.
The facts speak for themselves: in nearly every operation from
Somalia to Iraq, a lack of rapidly deployable civilian capabilities has
left military forces performing tasks for which they do not have a
comparative advantage and has extended the duration of their
deployments. Our success rate has been less than impressive: one need
look no further than the recent events in Haiti to understand that,
despite a well-intentioned intervention, serious resources, and tens of
thousands of U.S. ``boots on the ground,'' without the requisite
civilian capabilities to follow-through in the post-conflict phase and
the political will to stay the course, countries can easily revert to
failing or failed state status. Afghanistan is posing a similar risk,
and Iraq could as well.
In the fall of 2001, in response to growing recognition of the gaps
in the U.S. government's ability to respond to the challenges of post-
conflict reconstruction, General Gordon Sullivan (USA, Ret.), president
of the Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA), and I formed the Post-
Conflict Reconstruction (PCR) Project, initially as a collaboration
between AUSA and the Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS). Together, our two institutions assembled a high-level,
bipartisan Commission on Post-Conflict Reconstruction, comprised of 27
former U.S. government officials, current members of Congress, experts
in the field, and representatives of nongovernmental organizations and
the private sector. (A list of Commission members appears at the end of
the Commission's report, Play to Win, which is submitted as an
attachment to this testimony.)
The Commission issued its final report--Play to Win--in January
2003, laying out 17 recommendations detailing how the United States
should reconfigure its agencies, personnel, and funding mechanisms to
improve response measures in post-conflict reconstruction
situations.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Play to Win is submitted as an attachment to this testimony,
and is available at http://www.csis.org/isp/pcr/playtowin.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The PCR Project at CSIS is pursuing the implementation of the
Commission's recommendations through extensive interaction with the
U.S. government and Congress, including many of you on this committee
and your staffs, and public outreach and education. At the same time,
CSIS is undertaking a major project that looks at necessary reforms not
addressed in the landmark Goldwater-Nichols legislation. CSIS' Beyond
Goldwater-Nichols Project is developing recommendations, including a
chapter on improving U.S. interagency and coalition operations in
complex contingency situations.
As you are aware, Mr. Chairman, on the basis of our work, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Ambassador L. Paul Bremer requested that
CSIS lead a team of experts to Iraq to perform the first independent
assessment of reconstruction efforts there. We had the honor to brief
this committee on our findings and recommendations upon our return from
Iraq.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Our trip report, Iraq's Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Field
Review and Recommendations, is submitted as an attachment to this
testimony, and is available at http://www.csis.org/isp/pcr/
IraqTrip.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW CAPACITY URGENTLY NEEDED IN CIVILIAN AGENCIES
This body of work only reaffirms the importance of this committee's
goals, in convening a Policy Advisory Group, holding this hearing
today, and the legislation Senator Lugar introduced last week. The
Stabilization and Reconstruction Civilian Management Act of 2004 (S.
2127) (SARCMA), if enacted, would significantly change the capacities
and authorities available to the civilian U.S. government agencies that
carry out post-conflict operations.
Had this legislation been law before the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, those agencies would have been far better positioned to address
the post-conflict challenges in both places.
Our work over the past several years has highlighted in particular
four challenging and recurring issues the U.S. government has faced in
post-conflict operations:
The need for enhanced strategy and planning capacities;
The need for experienced and robustly authorized civilian
leadership of the overall reconstruction effort;
The need for sufficient, flexible, and immediate standby
funding; and
The need to achieve public safety in the aftermath of war.
Your legislation would make several meaningful changes with regard
to the first three issues, although further thinking is required, as I
lay out below. The public safety question is in part beyond the scope
of this committee's jurisdiction--at least in so far as it involves the
U.S. military and Department of Defense--but it must be addressed in
order for the U.S. to truly improve its postwar efforts.
Let me briefly address some of the important advances in this
legislation.
Strategy and Planning. The SARCMA recognizes the need to
formalize the National Security Council's (NSC) role in
integrating and coordinating strategy and planning efforts,
through the establishment of an NSC directorate responsible for
post-conflict operations. It suggests the creation of a new
Directorate of Stabilization and Reconstruction Activities
within the NSC that would oversee the development of
interagency contingency plans and procedures. The creation of a
standing interagency committee, as suggested in the
legislation, would also address the need for greater
interagency coordination in terms of planning and execution of
stabilization and reconstruction activities. This is a critical
provision and essential if we are to make progress.
Both Play to Win and our Beyond Goldwater-Nichols work also
emphasize the necessity of clarifying the NSC's role in
integrating and coordinating strategy and planning efforts. The
interagency disputes over post-war Iraq--and the failure of the
NSC early on to ensure appropriate coordination of planning and
operations--have had lasting impact on the effectiveness of the
Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA) efforts.
Funding. The SARCMA makes several very important advances in
the area of funding, by authorizing, upon a presidential
determination, the provision of assistance to respond to
crises, and the use of draw-down, account transfer, and waiver
authorities that would otherwise be restricted under the
Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The SARCMA also recognizes the
need for a flexible, replenishing emergency account to provide
assistance for stabilization and reconstruction activities.
Importantly, it would also provide much-needed flexibility in
terms of contracting and procurement procedures that often
delay the start of important reconstruction work by civilian
agencies. (On February 25, 2004, Frederick D. Barton, Senior
Advisor and Co-Director of CSIS's PCR Project, and former
director of the Office of Transition Initiatives at USAID,
testified before the Subcommittee on International Economic
Policy, Export and Trade Promotion of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee on USAID's contracting and procurement
procedures. Mr. Barton's testimony is included as an attachment
to this statement.)
As highlighted in Play to Win, current U.S. funding mechanisms
for post-conflict operations lack needed coherence, speed,
balance among accounts, flexibility, and effective mechanisms
for contracting and procurement. This means, in practice, and
as we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, that the President
does not have the ability to bring the full force of wide-
ranging U.S. capabilities to bear on these situations in a
timely manner. This constrains our ability to ensure that
programs--such as disarmament, demobilization, and
reintegration (DDR), deploying emergency justice teams, quick
start projects to jumpstart basic services and economies, and
support for national constituting processes and civil
administration needs--are started quickly, to avoid longer term
repercussions. At the same time, post-conflict operations
continue to be funded through supplemental budget requests,
outside the regular budgeting process.
Operational Infrastructure. Your bill would also address the
shortcomings that result from the lack of standing capacity
within the State Department to coordinate and oversee the
civilian side of stabilization and reconstruction activities.
The bill would mandate the Secretary of State to establish an
Office of International Stabilization and Reconstruction,
headed by a high-level coordinator, with wide-ranging functions
related to tracking, planning for, coordinating, and overseeing
implementation of activities in crisis situations. Our PCR and
Beyond Goldwater-Nichols Projects have highlighted this need.
President Bush's decision to give such responsibility to the
Department of Defense in Iraq reflects the reality that without
a well-staffed and resourced office in the State Department,
with appropriately high-level authority and access to
principals in the Department, other agencies, and the White
House, the President will not be able to rely on the State
Department to carry out the essential tasks in countries
emerging from conflict or undergoing civil strife.
Obviously, this Office would require decision-making authority
and high-level access, the ability to marshal resources,
including personnel, and other necessary special authorities,
as discussed below. Your committee would play an essential role
in by following up through oversight hearings to insure the
Office is properly empowered.
Your bill would also respond to another need our work has
identified: the creation of civilian rapid response capacity,
sorely lacking under the current set-up of our civilian
agencies. The SARCMA would establish a robust response
readiness force of civilians--both inside and outside the
federal government--who would be readily available for
deployment to conflict and post-conflict zones. The bill allows
for important and needed changes in the State Department's
personnel system in order to effectuate and reward the
commitment and dedication of Department personnel to take part
in such operations.
Training and Education. Finally, the bill would make
important advances in the area of stabilization and
reconstruction training and education. CSIS' extensive efforts
to look at current gaps in U.S. capacities have also recognized
the need to establish a U.S. training center for complex
contingency operations. Thus Play to Win called for the
establishment of such a center for training for post-conflict
operations. Our Beyond Goldwater-Nichols Project has similarly
highlighted the need for a training center for interagency and
coalition operations.
The SARCMA's call for the amendment of the Foreign Service Act of
1980 to include a stabilization and reconstruction curriculum
for use in Foreign Service Institute, National Defense
University, and Army War College programs would be a crucial
step toward institutionalizing the civilian and military
capabilities the U.S. needs to succeed in these situations. We
second the committee's recognition of the important work of the
U.S. Institute of Peace in the area of training, and look
forward to working with the committee and others to help define
the training and education needs in this area.
Mr. Chairman, the Stabilization and Reconstruction Civilian
Management Act of 2004 would break more ground than any efforts thus
far to address some of the fundamental issues that constrain the
ability of U.S. civilian agencies to respond adequately to
stabilization and reconstruction tasks, and that have led to the U.S.
military being over-stretched to meet global needs. The SARCMA is
crucial if we are to succeed in these efforts in the future, and will
provide the institutional base upon which those efforts must be built.
ADDITIONAL STEPS NEEDED BEYOND SARCMA
As the committee moves forward with this legislation, and looks to
build beyond it, there are several important areas that deserve further
consideration, and I will address some of those areas briefly.
First, the United States lacks adequate civilian strategic
planning capacities and mechanisms. The U.S. government needs
to enshrine a comprehensive interagency strategy and planning
process, including presidential guidance that establishes
standard operating procedures for the planning of complex
operations. Had such a process and guidance been in place
before the Iraq war, we would not have seen the ad hoc, under-
developed, and duplicative efforts at planning that have
plagued the U.S. postwar operations in Iraq.
In recognition of this strategic planning gap, the PCR
Project at CSIS has issued two action strategies (relating to
Iraq and Sudan) laying out recommendations of priorities for
the U.S. government and the international community in
preparing for postwar operations. A Wiser Peace: An Action
Strategy for a Post-Conflict Iraq was released in January 2003,
and To Guarantee the Peace: An Action Strategy for a Post-
Conflict Sudan was released in January 2004.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Both reports are submitted as attachments to this statement,
and can be found, respectively, at http://www.csis.org/isp/
wiserpeace.pdf and http://www.csis.org/isp/pcr/0401_sudan.pdf.
Although the SARCMA recognizes the need for more coordinated
contingency planning, and for centralized oversight in the NSC,
this and future administrations should ensure that appropriate
guidance is in place to organize the cross-agency planning and
operational efforts in complex contingencies. Such guidance was
promulgated in 1997 as Presidential Decision Directive 56 on
Managing Complex Contingency Operations (PDD-56), but President
Bush has not yet signed the draft National Security
Presidential Directive (NSPD-XX) on complex contingencies that
would have provided similar strategy and planning guidance for
executive agencies responsible for efforts in Afghanistan and
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iraq.
Congress should also work with the President to ensure that
the Secretaries of all agencies likely to be involved in
complex operations abroad have the necessary authorities and
resources to establish their own planning offices that could
lead the development of agency plans and participate in the
interagency planning process. Such offices do not currently
exist in the civilian agencies where they would be most needed,
namely State, Treasury, Justice, and Commerce. May I suggest
that this committee formally contact the leadership of the
other authorization committees to encourage them to make this
an oversight priority this year.
Second, as the public safety vacuum in Iraq aptly
demonstrates, the United States lacks qualified civilian police
that are available for short-notice deployments in postconflict
environments. (The international community more broadly also
has a shortage of readily available civilian police for such
cases.) In the absence of viable local police forces in many of
these environments, our inability to rapidly field civilian
police requires U.S. military forces to take on tasks for which
they have not necessarily been trained or adequately mandated.
Moreover, the U.S. government's legal authority to train
indigenous police forces is constrained.
The Congress and the President should work together to
create a standing civilian police reserve force, to round out
the civilian personnel needs in conflict and post-conflict
zones. The Congress should also consider replacing section 660
of the Foreign Assistance Act with new legislative authority
that would provide clearer and more robust authority for the
United States to train indigenous police forces in conflict,
post-conflict, or civil strife-ridden zones.
The Senate at some point needs to address the dire need to
establish security units that could execute the specific
security tasks inherent in post-conflict environments.
Competing proposals have already been set forth, from the idea
of creating standing units within the U.S. army that would
perform stabilization operations (as suggested in a recent
National Defense University report) to having NATO structure,
train, and equip multinational units to carry out such tasks
(as suggested in Play to Win). Although addressing this need is
beyond the scope of this committee's jurisdiction, I believe it
is worth the committee's time to recognize this gap in U.S.
(and international) capacity. Unless the United States places
more focus and attention on this issue, our future post-
conflict operations will continue to be undermined by our
inability to fill the security vacuums that so often define
these environments.
Third, responding to crises such as Iraq and Afghanistan
dwarfs all other State Department activities, yet it is not
clear whether the Coordinator of the new Office of
International Stabilization and Reconstruction would have the
requisite authorities and resources to respond adequately to
similar challenges in the future. At a minimum, it should be
clear that the Coordinator will have oversight and management
responsibility over the new emergency fund, and any other State
Department resources that may be tapped into for a particular
operation. The Coordinator's authorities over personnel and
resources of other agencies involved in responding to any
crisis also need clarification. Further consideration should be
devoted to the question whether a new State Department bureau,
Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
position, White House office with expanded budget authorities,
or a new stabilization and reconstruction agency would more
fully address the lagging civilian leadership needs.
Further, the President should be encouraged to designate one
senior official to be in charge of and accountable for
integrating U.S. civilian interagency operations on the ground
in any country in which the U.S. is providing stabilization and
reconstruction assistance.
Fourth, although it is crucial that the committee address
the problems inherent in the architecture and practices of the
State Department, the capacities and role of the international
community must also be enhanced if these efforts are to be
ultimately successful. Just as the U.S. military should not be
the sole or even principal participant in reconstruction
efforts, neither should the United States shoulder a
disproportionate burden in these endeavors, whether by design
or due to our international partners' lack of needed
capacities. The President should strive to ensure that the
United States works with its partners to more fully integrate
the political, military, economic, humanitarian, and other
dimensions of complex contingency operations. This will mean
everything from sharing information (as envisioned in the
SARCMA) to conducting joint planning and training exercises to
committing needed resources to strengthen capacities at the
United Nations, among NATO countries, and elsewhere.
Finally, and crucially, although perhaps beyond the scope of
this bill, I cannot over-stress the importance of creating
``jointness'' between the military and civilian sides of any
complex operation in which the U.S. is engaged. It is
imperative that the military and civilian leadership in the
field during any such operation are linked together, through
co-location and other means, and that there is one designated
point of contact back in Washington to whom they can both
report, from whom they can take direction, and who can bring
problems and needs directly to the attention of a responsible
decision-maker. This type of joint-ness should be established
long before any crisis situation arises, through enhanced
peacetime opportunities for civilian operators and planners to
work with military counterparts, joint training opportunities,
and by encouraging military and civilian personnel to spend
time working at each others' agencies in Washington. (These
same ideas should also be encouraged with respect to working
with counterparts from various countries.)
CONCLUSION
Mr. Chairman, I have been honored to serve on the Policy Advisory
Group you established to identify and discuss stabilization and
reconstruction activities, and to testify before you today. It is my
sincere belief that if you continue to work with Executive agency
policymakers to implement the important changes outlined the
Stabilization and Reconstruction Civilian Management Act of 2004, the
United States will be better prepared to handle future needs in
conflict, post-conflict, or civil strife-ridden areas around the world.
CSIS will remain engaged on these crucial issues. We look forward
to continued interaction with this committee on these pressing
questions, which will impact the U.S.'s ability to protect itself,
promote its interests and values, enhance its international standing,
and improve the lot of people around the globe. We stand ready to
engage with you in whichever ways will be most helpful to your
important work.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Hamre.
Dr. Binnendijk.
STATEMENT OF HON. HANS BINNENDIJK, ROOSEVELT CHAIR OF NATIONAL
SECURITY POLICY, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Dr. Binnendijk. Chairman, it's a pleasure to be here,
again, with you today. And let me join my colleagues in
commending you and Senator Biden and the committee not just for
the legislation that you introduced, but also, again, for the
process that led to it.
My testimony will be based primarily on a report that was
produced by the National Defense University called Transforming
for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations. And I would
just stress that I'm here in my personal capacity.
The September 11th tragedy really did reinforce the fact
that conditions in otherwise obscure places can directly affect
the security of our homeland. In our study we looked at about a
dozen cases in which U.S. forces might plausibly be deployed in
the future in these kinds of stabilization and reconstruction
operations. And ironically we did not look at Haiti. But the
point is that there are plenty of potential needs out there,
and we cannot continue to deal with them on ad hoc bases. We
need to set up permanent procedures and institutions to deal
with them.
Another key point in our study is that a gap has been
created. We call it the ``stabilization and reconstruction''
gap. This is a gap between our high intensity conflict, that
period of the operations and nation-building. And this gap has
been created in large measure because we have been so
successful in fighting the high-intensity war.
We win quickly with few troops in theater. It's not a war
of attrition. Very often parts of the enemy regime are still in
place, but we don't have the troops there to deal with the new
missions, and so a gap has been created.
And the thrust of our study really looked more on the
military side to try to make suggestions on how the military
needs to gain these new capabilities and reorganize for them.
And so I would just stress John Hamre's comment that as this
committee goes forward it's vitally important that other
committees also look at this. And the Defense Department also
needs to enhance its capabilities and reorganize to meet these
missions.
In order to deal with this stabilization and reconstruction
gap, we need both military and civilian capabilities. The
military can do an awful lot, especially on the stabilization
side. They're not as well equipped on the reconstruction side.
What is needed is economic skills, developmental skills, legal,
law enforcement, judicial, linguistic, cultural, political, and
diplomatic skills. These are the skills that reside primarily
on the civilian side of the House, in the State Department, in
USAID, in other domestic agencies. The problem is that the
domestic agencies and the State Department are not organized
well for this purpose, and they, incidently, also have very
strong ties to the NGOs, to the international organizations
that are critical for the success of this mission.
What is needed and what your legislation provides is taking
those skills that exist, expanding on them, and reorganizing
them and focusing them. With that, civilians can become in
these kinds of operations what the military calls ``force
multipliers''; that is, they can have capability well beyond
the individuals who are there. And some of the provisions in
the bill, for example, the contingency fund, will allow these
individuals to become force multipliers.
It is very important, I believe, that the State Department
play a greater leadership role in these missions. It will allow
greater post-conflict planning in the pre-conflict stage
together with the military, and it also puts in place
capabilities during this transition period, during this gap
period, so that when it comes time for the nation building
phase of these operations, we will have people and programs in
place already, and that's key to accelerating the nation-
building part of this. And as John Hamre said, ``That saves
money.''
There are a number of recommendations in our study, which
are available in my testimony. I'll just hit a couple of the
highlights.
We do recommend a significant new capability in the
military, the creation of two joint commands for these
purposes.
We recommend changes in professional military education
very much in line with provisions in your bill.
We recommend changes in the interagency process, also very
much in line with those in your bill. The creation, for
example, of a National Interagency Contingency Coordinating
Group.
Let me perhaps make some comments on the specific sections
in your bill. I know you have a markup tomorrow, and perhaps
making a few specific comments on the provisions of the bill
might help.
Section 4 is, to me, very important. This is the section
that creates a directorate at the National Security Council and
creates a standing committee, an interagency committee, to deal
with these kinds of contingencies. This creates what the
military would call ``unity of effort.'' This is quite
important for the success of these operations. The problem is
that as you approach a crisis in a war there is a tendency to
centralize activity in one department, and we need, therefore,
a very strong coordinator, and that is what your bill provides,
to make sure that the entire interagency is orchestrated.
A suggestion for your markup would be to strengthen that
provision. It may be difficult to make it mandatory. It's
currently a sense of the Senate, but strengthening that in some
way would be useful.
Similarly, Section 4 talks about the importance of the
international community in these operations. We need our allies
today more than ever before, but NATO is not organized for
stabilization and reconstruction operations. And you could
consider adding a provision in Section 4 which would suggest to
NATO that it should create a stabilization and reconstruction
capability, which could be military and civilian and add that
to Section 4 of your bill.
Section 5 I considered to be very important. It is the
waiver and contingency fund. I see this as kind of a first-aid
kit. As you indicated in your opening statement, what you do in
the first hours and days of these operations is crucial. You
need that first-aid kit. You need to have these fundings and
the waiver so that when a State Department or AID officer is on
the scene, they have something to exercise. They can be the
force multiplier.
But I would suggested--here I really reflect on this in my
old capacity as being the legislative director of this
committee--you might want to take a look at the waiver. It is
quite open-ended, and you might want to think about some way to
limit that, perhaps a dollar ceiling or some other way to deal
with it.
Section 6 creates the new State Department Office, which, I
think, again, is crucial. It creates a focal point for activity
on the civilian side. I would urge that the various authorities
in your bill be exercised so that this office is populated not
just with civilians or State Department officials but with an
interagency group including the military.
We might strengthen this particular provision by adding a
new subsection which says,--this is under the functions
section--which says that this office would ``support and
oversee the operations of the Response Readiness Corps and the
Reserve Corps when they are deployed.'' That would keep a
continuing tie between this office and the overseas operations.
These civilian operations need to be both rapidly
deployable and in depth, and Section 7 of your bill does both.
It creates a rapidly deployable corps and it creates a reserve
which gives you that in-depth strength. It also includes a
series of incentives, which I think are critically important to
get individuals to sign up for the corps or for the reserve.
These are going to be dangerous missions, and I would suggest
the committee could even be bolder there in terms of creating
incentives for individuals to join: additional danger pay,
recruitment bonuses; for example, time towards retirement, if
they're government officials, you could double the time. If
they're deployed for a year, they could get two years' credit
for retirement, for example.
Section 8 deals with training and education, and, again, I
think this is crucial if this is to be successful. I would note
that we have a small foundation at the National Defense
University for this kind of an operation, that we have a
program underway there that does teach interagency contingency,
complex contingency operations. We do this, as the legislation
suggests, in cooperation with the Foreign Service Institute and
the Army War College. And so, there is a place where you can
build. I would just note that this does have to be properly
funded, and as I look at your bill, I believe it is.
So let me just end where I started by thanking you for the
opportunity to testify and commending you for your effort on
this.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Binnendijk follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hans Binnendijk
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to testify this morning in support of S.
2127, the Stabilization and Reconstruction Civilian Management Act of
2004. My comments are based primarily on a study entitled Transforming
for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations prepared by the Center
for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense
University, as well as my own experience in government. A copy of this
study has been made available to the committee.
REQUIREMENTS FOR A NEW CIVILIAN STABILIZATION AND RECONSTRUCTION
CAPABILITY
The September 11 tragedy reinforces the fact that conditions in
otherwise obscure places can directly affect the security of our
homeland. Our study considers at least a dozen places where U.S.
military forces might plausibly be deployed on stabilization and
reconstruction missions. To avoid over-stretch, we will need to choose
any intervention very carefully. But if a decision to get involved is
taken, we must be able to put the full weight of all of America's
national security assets behind the effort. History shows that the
level of sustained effort is a major if not deciding factor in
determining the success of these operations.
The American ability to win wars quickly with relatively few troops
in the combat zone has created some unintended consequences that
require creative solutions. Enemy regimes tend to collapse quickly
under our transformed military's pressure without the more traditional
war of attrition being fought. As we have seen in both Afghanistan and
Iraq, remnants of the old regime can survive amidst the post-conflict
anarchy. We may have inadequate forces in theater to deal with this
challenging development.
Nation building cannot succeed without stabilizing this situation.
Early progress is vital to long-term success; early mistakes are
magnified. A ``stabilization and reconstruction'' gap has opened
between the high intensity warfare phase of these operations where the
military dominates and the nation-building phase where civilian
agencies dominate. The gap must be closed if America is to win both the
war and the peace.
It will take a mix of military and civilian skills to close this
``stabilization and reconstruction'' gap. The military can use infantry
and military police to bring some order to society, and it can use its
civil affairs, engineer, and medical units to provide immediate
humanitarian relief. The Army rightly is developing more of these
assets at the expense of some traditional skills like air defense and
artillery. But as our study points out, more needs to be done to
prepare the military for these future tasks. This is an effort that
should be carried out in parallel with what the Foreign Relations
Committee is proposing.
There are a number of skills that are insufficient in the military
but are necessary for success. They include economic, developmental,
legal, law enforcement, judicial, linguistic, cultural, political and
diplomatic skills. They include ties to international humanitarian
organizations, non-governmental organizations and large private sector
construction contractors. These skills and ties exist in the civilian
agencies, at the State Department, at USAID, and at several other
agencies, but not in adequate numbers. And most importantly, they are
not organized for this purpose and not quickly deployable to troubled
regions. Properly organized and deployed, civilian agencies can be what
the military calls ``force multipliers,'' that is they can have impact
well beyond their numbers. The military recognizes that it needs these
civilian skills during stabilization, reconstruction and nation
building operations, and every military officer that I have talked to
about the committee's initiative applauds it.
The State Department needs to develop these deployable capabilities
so that it can participate fully in the entire process and maximize its
leadership role. Post-conflict planning needs to take place in
cooperation with war planning, and this will require a much higher
degree of collaboration between State, Defense and other elements of
the interagency process. The State Department is the logical agency to
lead post-conflict activities in the field, but to do so effectively it
must bring needed capabilities to the table early in the process. And
deploying State Department assets early in the stabilization and
reconstruction phase will allow it to smooth the transition to the
final longer-term nation building effort.
RECOMMENDATION IN THE NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY STUDY
While the National Defense University's study focused primarily on
military requirements, it does cover several issues included in S.
2127. Our study recommends:
Developing new strategic concepts for ``post-conflict''
operations.
Creating two new joint stabilization and reconstruction
military commands (at about the division level), one in the
active component and one in the reserve component.
Rebalancing the existing total military force to create new
skills in this area, especially in the Active Component.
Modifying professional military education to focus more on
new missions.
Harnessing technologies that enhance stabilization and
reconstruction capabilities.
Strengthening interagency mechanisms by creating a National
Interagency Contingency Coordinating Group that would prepare
for and plan such missions.
Organizing a standing interagency team that could deploy to
the field promptly with skills needed to prepare for nation-
building.
Creating a State Department led reserve civilian crisis
management corps that could be called up to supplement the
standing interagency team and accelerate the transfer of
command from the military to civilians.
Encouraging NATO to create similar structures, such as a
NATO Stabilization and Reconstruction Force.
COMMENTS ON PROVISIONS OF S. 2127
The Stabilization and Reconstruction Civilian Management Act of
2004 is a bold piece of legislation, but boldness is needed in light of
the new nature of conflict and the uncertain strategic environment that
we face. I fully support the bill as introduced. I do have some
comments on the need for specific provisions of the bill and have some
modest suggestions for improvements.
The sense of the Congress provision in Section 4 that suggests
establishment of a new directorate at the National Security Council and
a new standing committee to oversee policy will help with what the
military calls ``unity of effort.'' This provision is needed. Plans for
war and peace must be coordinated throughout government. As a nation
moves towards war, however, there is a natural tendency to centralize
these functions in one department, undermining unity of effort. The NSC
should not be operational, but it needs to be a strong coordinator to
maximize all agency contributions and set common policy directions. The
committee might consider mandating these provisions rather than
limiting them to ``sense of the Senate.''
Section 4 also highlights the importance of the international
community in post-conflict operations. The core of this international
support on the military side must be NATO, but NATO is not organized to
deal quickly and routinely with these missions. As the United States
builds these new capabilities, NATO must too. An additional subsection
highlighting this would be useful.
Section 5 provides a broad waiver and special contingency funding.
This is generally required to give deployed civilians the ability to
have an immediate impact. An analogy is a first aid kit to provide
emergency treatment without which the patient might die. The committee
might want to consider, however, whether the waiver authority is too
broad. It appears open-ended, and the committee might want to limit it
in some way, for example with a dollar ceiling.
Section 6 creates a new State Department Office of International
Stabilization and Reconstruction that will become the focal point for
civilian operations overseas. This office indeed belongs at State,
rather than at USAID, because these operations take place in the
context of political crisis and State's leadership in the overall
political context is crucial. This Office should be populated with
civilian and military personnel from all interested agencies, and the
exchange programs and detail authorities included in the bill will
support that requirement. A suggestion to strengthen this section
further is to add a new subsection 3(F) under ``functions'' which would
make it clear that this Office would ``support and oversee the
operations of the Response Readiness Corps/Reserve when its members are
deployed.''
Civilian operations in these missions need to be rapidly deployable
and they need depth. Section 7 of the bill does both. The Response
Readiness Corps is to be rapidly deployable and the Response Readiness
Reserve will provide the depth. The incentives provided for those who
join these groups are useful, but given the potential physical danger
inherent in these jobs, the committee might consider even bolder
incentives. For example, recruitment bonuses might be paid, additional
danger pay could be provided, and time towards retirement could be
doubled during the deployment.
Section 8 provides for vital training and education for the members
of the Response Readiness Corps/Reserve. As the bill suggests, the
foundation for this already resides at the National Defense University,
in conjunction with the Foreign Service Institute and the Army War
College. The expansion of this educational effort appears to be
properly funded. My only suggestion here is that civilians should
participate in this special curriculum together with military officers,
perhaps in equal proportions.
Mr. Chairman, let me end by commending you and the committee for
the process that led to this legislation and for inviting me to
participate. I believe the legislation that you have produced will be
vital to America's ability to better deal with failed states and post-
conflict situations.
The Chairman. Well, I thank each one of you. Let me, first
of all, indicate that my colleague Senator Biden is equally
interested in this. This has been a bipartisan effort that has
shared broad support in our committee, and we appreciate that.
The staffs on both sides of the aisle have worked with you and
with others on crafting language.
I appreciate, Hans, your thoughts both as former director
of this legislative effort on one side of the table and
likewise your distinguished work presently at the University in
trying to draw attention in the section-by-section analysis to
things we might be thinking of. I think those are good
suggestions.
Dr. Hamre, I was struck by your thought that we have a
military that does intimidate by the very effectiveness and
comprehensive way in which we're able to employ it. This is an
important thought. In some ways we may be diminishing the
effectiveness of the military, the intimidation process. Others
looking at all of this may say fair enough, we take this strike
and we lose, but after that the war goes on.
In other words, we might wonder whether Saddam Hussein or
anyone else in Iraq was devious enough to think ahead and
decide that it's apparent that their forces were not going to
be able to match the American or the allied forces, but at the
same time they anticipated that in the chaos that ensued, the
Americans and others may get tired of all this, having won a
military victory, while the support for that business erodes
and as a matter of fact the country becomes virtually
ungovernable, and by the time everybody has abandoned the
affair, they may be back.
I would say that I was enjoying the visit that I had in
Baghdad in June of last year. There was a feeling that some
Iraqis were not rushing to participate in neighborhood councils
or to take their roles in the civilian government, as people in
testimony before our committee before the war had rather
naively anticipated they would. Leaving aside the crowd dancing
in the street, it was thought that perhaps the normal middle
class might have come forward. They did not come forward very
fast. In large part there was a feeling of keep your head down
because this war isn't over. Yet from the U.S. standpoint the
war was decisively done.
The fact is that we're talking about the realities of what
occurs in this world today when we have such awesome
intimidating power. Maybe others are going to make provisions.
The Haiti thing is obviously very different. But Iraq was a
full-scale war. It shows the intimidating power and then the
limitations of that war if we do not have something else that
follows through.
Having said that, it seems to me that we still have a
daunting set of prospects here. I think our legislation, in a
modest way, makes suggestions to whomever is the President of
the United States or whomever has the Cabinet roles or is in
the NSC at the time. Somebody's going to have to fill in the
blanks, is going to have to bring vigor to this process and to
the recruitment of civilians who may be in some sort of ready-
reserve, with particular skills, to encourage them to come
forward. That is a daunting prospect, although not impossible.
We have a lot of talent in America.
As to the question of organizing all this, I would just say
that there are some parallels with Nunn-Lugar. You have all
been very supportive of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat
Reduction Act. At the beginning of this we start out with
almost a blank sheet. There's $400 million authorized and
finally appropriated, but for the moment no one knows exactly
what to do. So Sam Nunn and I take a trip and bring along some
administration people, much like the advisory group that we've
just been through, and we go to Russia and Ukraine. People
begin to think about this.
The problem then was not unlike our situation now. The
Russian officials that came to Sam Nunn and to me and to some
of you were saying, in essence, that the Cold War is over. At
the same time, you've spent $6 trillion containing our nuclear
weapons in so-called ``mutually assured destruction'' or
however you want to describe the deterrent effect. We've got to
tell you things are different. Things may be loosening up. The
army may not be reliable at certain points, in terms of
guarding what we have. Or, as a matter of fact, some people
might want to appropriate some of these weapons in an anarchic
status in various parts of our country. That's different. Here
you have a constructed thing for 50 years in which everybody
deters successfully and mercifully. This is a different ball
game, and it should be our emphasis.
Fortunately we got together with Russians who shared in
cooperative threat reduction. We expressed fears that
proliferation was a real threat, and we discussed security
problems of these sorts.
This is different from Iraq, different from Haiti, but the
problem is still the transition after the Cold War. We have to
set up for the next one.
It appears to me that all of you have made the comment in
your papers, and some in your testimony today, that, in dealing
with terrorists and the lack of nation-state situations, we
really do have to improvise a whole lot more. The very people
whom we're looking for, we don't always see. The threats are
hard to perceive, and they are multinational.
This is going to require ingenuity, which we have in
abundance as Americans. We hope that we are bright and skillful
enough to handle this, but we're not really set up for this. As
a result, the President in his speech to the National Defense
University the other day tried to hit head on again the
proliferation danger, including all of the things that have
come out of the closet with the A.Q. Khan papers, and with the
revelations of the Libyans and others. For 20 years all kinds
of transactions were occurring. We may have been none the
wiser. It's now interesting to fill in some of the blanks.
Several countries were dealing back and forth, sometimes
successfully, and as we know now with the Libyans. Perhaps
after all is said and done, maybe their warhead wouldn't fit
their missile. It's not easy to do these things.
It's chilling to think that you have a missile and a
warhead that didn't fit, and so we maybe lucked out, as opposed
to a situation in which we really were on top of the
proliferation all the way through, and in which we had some
idea who was dealing with whom in this thing.
I mention all of this because it gets back to the necessity
of thinking about failed states that may have failed because,
as was the case in Iraq, we effectively eliminated the
controlling regime. It may occur in the case of Haiti for all
sorts of reasons. People may be thinking, now why there? In the
Balkans, there was a huge number of reasons why things might or
might not have gone well. And who knows where else.
The problem with terrorism is, wherever there's a failed
state, sort of a burn-out situation, there is also the
possibility for the building of an al Qaeda camp, or for others
to do mischief. While no one is responsible, no calling card
for deterrence makes this imperative.
You pointed out, I think, Ambassador Dobbins, or perhaps it
was you, Secretary Hamre, that in the Clinton days the thought
of doing one at a time meant that we would not be over-
extended. A lot of people shared that point of view. Here on
the Hill, as a matter of fact, people were constantly on the
President's case wondering why we were still there. How were we
going to build down as rapidly as possible? This was quite
apart from what other problems he might have.
If I'm correct, and I am sketching a situation in which
there could be several failed states all at the same time, we
can't pick and choose. The terrorists don't really allow that
prospect, because they've picked up wherever the failure
occurred. Many Americans listening to this conversation will
say, well, why us? Isn't somebody else interested in all this?
Maybe?
The response that you've mentioned, Dr. Binnendijk, of NATO
of trying to think through this with other partners, is very
important. At the Munich Conference that some of us just
attended, you get back to the fact that even though our NATO
allies may have armed somewhere between a million and a half to
two million people, barely 55,000 might be available for so-
called expeditionary missions. That is, we must work outside of
the countries that the military has configured to defend those
states, and not to go to Afghanistan, which is presently a
mission taken on quite separately from Iraq or anywhere else.
So we are it. This is our situation.
Let me just ask this question. Do any of you have an idea,
if you were an American citizen listening to this, how many
people may be involved in these forces, these reserves of
civilians who have special skills, or people in the State
Department, the Agriculture Department, the Commerce
Department? All of these people have to be integrated into some
sort of whole government if we are to try to help bring
wholeness to this situation. We're authorizing somebody to
think about this, and, in fact, we are asking the President to
appoint someone at NSC to coordinate, and so forth. Do you have
any conception of how many people ought to be signed up? What
kind of rosters ideally should we have in these areas?
Ambassador Dobbins. Well, let me start. I think that if you
leave--first of all, if you're starting with the State
Department and the number of State Department professionals
that ought to be skilled in and available for these kinds of
tasks. And if you put Iraq aside and look at the number who
have actually been assigned over the last 12 years or so in
Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and now Haiti
again, I think the number in your bill is about right.
In other words, an additional staffing of, I think it was
250 if I remember correctly, would give the State Department
the additional cadre it needs to staff these missions. But
that's only obviously part of it. So I think the number in your
bill is a good number, if you assume Iraq is an exception, that
Iraq is not the rule. Because if you need the staff on the
level of Iraq, you probably have to double or triple that
number to get an appropriate number.
Now, another category, which is very numerous or
potentially quite numerous, is police. The U.S. normally
deploys police as part of an international operation. It's
reasonable to assume that the United States should be able to
deploy about 20 percent of any global operation. Just given the
size of our GDP and importance in the world, 20 percent is a
reasonable share. And the European Union has set a goal for
itself and actually begun to meet that goal of having 5,000
police deployable at any one time. They have a reserve of 5,000
police they can deploy. And the European Union already has two
police operations underway in which they are deploying police
in the Balkans in two different operations.
It does seem to me that the European Union's target would
be a reasonable target for the United States, that we, too,
should be able to deploy 5,000 police as a supplement to our
military. We're about the same size as the EU, we have about
the same size budget. That would seem to me to be a reasonable
number.
I haven't given thought to numbers that might be from other
agencies, from Justice, from Treasury. I suspect they're a good
deal smaller. I think those would be the two principal civilian
components, the State Department professionals who staff and
coordinate the efforts abroad and provide programmatic
management. And probably including AID in that number as a
subcomponent of State. I don't mean to neglect it. It may be
the most numerous in some cases. And then the police.
The Chairman. Yes, for instance, if the EU had 5,000 and we
usually do 20 percent, so we have 5,000, maybe this means
25,000 people. That requires, obviously, coordination on our
part as to how we get to our 5,000. As you say, there might be
some other agencies. There might be some international
diplomacy to make sure that the EU is on board and wants to do
nation-building wherever it needs to be done. And then the
other 60 percent is still to be filled in.
There are others in the Caribbean now. Secretary Powell
indicates that there may be Caribbean nations that would
provide some policing in Haiti, for example. We may determine,
through our experience in the Caribbean, who might be policing
in the Middle East. Or is this more regionally based? We need
to identify who pays for the transportation, and maybe for a
lot of other things, a problem which is not insoluble.
I'm just taking the benefit of your collective wisdom today
to try to obtain a little more understanding because these
questions will be raised by other Senators, by the press, and
by others.
A police force is implied. We're going to be a part of
that. We think the EU has been thinking about that in a
concerted, constructive way, which they have. Under Lord
Robertson, NATO and others, have gone out of area and said they
are prepared to play a role. They're doing so in many nations,
including Afghanistan, for example. At least we have the
benefit of that bridge having been crossed.
Still, let's say that there are specialists, people who are
in this country, and who, in their normal days, are bankers or
economists or people involved in agriculture or so forth. How
do we identify, through the State Department, or through NSC,
or whatever the appropriate recruitment is, people who are
prepared to do national service in this very extraordinary way
of nation-building and resolving failed states? How do we find
people who might welcome this challenge? We might be calling
upon then, hopefully not frequently. Yet given the number of
instances in recent history, more often than we might like,
they may be called.
And yet I think that we have all seen in Iraq remarkable
work by young American servicemen, whom I personally saw out in
the neighborhood, or in police training, or in various duties.
They certainly have never run for city council or the school
board or what have you back home, but at the same time they are
using their native skills to try to organize people in the
field in what is a failed state, literally, with crumbling
institutions. I would just say that we need to think through
this. We had to improvise because these soldiers were the
people on the ground. They did a good job in some cases, but
obviously they could not bring the expertise to state craft as
could other Americans, or maybe nationals of other nations, if
we're more inclusive in this effort.
I wonder if we've touched upon this a little bit in the
legislation and in the discussions. Would you please amplify
your own thoughts as to how we get to that point, where we've
got a pretty good roster, and we can ring somebody up and tell
them that we've got a mission for them today that's really
important. You need to take a flight there and help out.
Dr. Binnendijk. If I could make two points, first on
question of allies and then on the question of numbers.
With regard to our allies, I agree that NATO does have a
problem with deployable troops. But here is an area where in
many ways our European allies are better at it than we are.
They have long-term experience, many of these countries,
certainly the British and the French, but also in the last
decade in the Balkans and elsewhere, now in Afghanistan. The
Germans, the Italians, the Dutch all are developing
capabilities in this area, so I would not underestimate the
contribution that they can make.
With regard to the numbers. I agree with Jim that the
active duty element of this, 250 is the number in the bill. I
think that is about right. What is key here is not so much that
number, but what capabilities they have and whether they really
do become force multipliers, and that depends very much on the
contingency funding, on the other authorities and capabilities
that they bring. So I would say that that number is about
right.
When you get to the last question of the reserve force, how
large should that be? I think the notion has been about 500.
That may be small. I think this will be essentially a list of
people who are trained part time. An analogy might be a civil
affairs unit in the military. I think you're going to find many
of these people, not just in the federal government, but at the
state and local level, and they will not be like the military
where you can call them up and force them to go. There will be
a voluntary element to this, so you're going to have to create
very strong incentives. So I would anticipate that you're going
to have to come up with a longer list, in addition to the
police issue.
The Chairman. Yes, because we've already identified maybe
5,000 policemen from somewhere in America.
Yes, Dr. Hamre.
Dr. Hamre. Senator, we're a nation of volunteers. I really
don't think it's going to be hard to find quantity of people.
What we have not done very well is organize that.
The Chairman. Yes.
Dr. Hamre. What we really need is the capacity to organize
and to view it as a very constructive thing from the standpoint
of the federal government. Unfortunately, you know, government
employees tend to be a little paternalistic about, you know,
summer help and whether they are up to the task. We have
programs in the federal government; they aren't terribly
robust.
FEMA has a good program where they routinely keep track of
people. They are mobilizable executives. But you need to keep
them trained, there needs to be expectations of their
involvement in doing it, and you really have to manage this as
a real intentional effort. It's not a question of getting--
you'll get the people; it's amazing the number of things that
Americans are willing to stand up and do. But it needs to be
organized, and I think that's missing.
This is going to be the key question: Can you find the
right spirit and attitude inside the foreign security policy
establishment that sees outsiders as constructive augmentees to
their activity? Frankly, it's a bit of an attitude challenge, I
think, but that will be the biggest thing to work.
May I say just a word----
The Chairman. Yes.
Dr. Hamre [continuing].----on the policing?
We're dealing here with a very central problem. The reason
we use the military all the time is because it's the only part
of the federal government that can mobilize and be
qualitatively different tomorrow. We don't buy excess cops, you
know, and just keep them in reserve units. We buy every cop we
can afford and put them out on the beat. Because of that when
we have emergencies, people work overtime or we borrow them
from a nearby jurisdiction. We just don't have excess capacity.
I haven't thought this through adequately, but it seems to
me that there is a need for the federal government to provide
augmentation capacities for local police authorities for
Homeland Security. They can't train adequately because they're
taking time off from being on the beat to go off and do
training for Homeland Security exercise, and so then there
isn't the sustainable power.
Maybe there's a possibility of putting together a program
that both provides federal support to state and local police
authorities that is useful on the Homeland Security front and
also becomes your augmentation that you could use for
international emergencies. Again, I have not thought about it
adequately, but I think we need to be creative in this area,
and I would certainly be pleased to work with you and the
committee in any way as you think your way through it.
The Chairman. I thank you for that thought today because
that's going to be the purpose of our hearing. This is a tease
from all of us, with some additional increments about this
situation.
I think that your point about the attitude adjustment is
critically important because sometimes all of us going about
our official work believe that we are the persons that are
supposed to do that work. Suddenly we're talking about people
who are doing other things in life, but who have lots of
talents. How do we integrate those talents together with the
professionals and the people who come to work every day at the
State Department or the Defense Department or so forth? It's a
very, very important situation.
We're all seeing that the war against terrorism is
something different. Nation-building is different. We weren't
intending to get into this. As Mr. Dobbins pointed out, it was
a conscious effort after Somalia not to get into any place
else. We were sort of dragged, kicking and screaming, into
this. Now we see the failed states situation. If we don't, at
our peril, we're going to see people organize out, using these
places to attack us, as they did on 9/11.
Let me just ask about Haiti, because Ambassador Dobbins
brought that as a topic that we had not anticipated, even when
the hearing was set. Here you are, and we're on this threshold
here.
Some of the press accounts of Haiti make these points: The
year in which we last restored President Aristide, we got him
back into power again. In the ensuing days, weeks, and months,
Aristide understandably was opposed to retaining the army as it
was in Haiti. As for the policing, there was a feeling that
these were people who had been disloyal or would not be very
loyal to him, so they were effectively discharged.
The dilemma is that filling the vacuum there never quite
occurred. As you pointed out, Ambassador, we were there for a
while, but on the other hand, we felt we'd achieved what we
wanted to do and left. As we come through this, I don't want to
minimize all the particulars because they are important.
Let's say that some of the old army people who were
discharged were still very unhappy about Aristide, or perhaps
other police-types decided to cause some trouble. These were
described by press accounts in the last two or three weeks as
being maybe 200 in number, maybe 300 people. This is in the
whole country. They approached whoever is policing a small town
in Haiti and said to these folks, ``You know, if you think
about it, it'd be just as well if you get lost. You just sort
of move away from whatever your duties are because we really
don't want to take you on, but we're fully capable of making
life miserable.''
So these police decide that they, for the time being, will
just not do their policing. It's not a question of clashes here
and there. People just sort of disappear from the work.
As a matter of fact, some of the people who were employed,
apparently by President Aristide, were commercially-employed
people. There are security agencies in this country and
elsewhere that provide security. A good number are now employed
by businesses in Iraq. The businesses employ security agencies
to help them in what seems to be a very insecure situation, not
very well policed.
Without making any judgment about the reliability of all
these people, the fact is that at the end of the day, in Haiti,
it does not appear there are very many reliable people in the
policing area, whether they are in the small towns and they
disappeared, or whether they are the old types who are against
Aristide, or whether that are the people whom Aristide hired,
and who might not have proved very reliable.
I would just say, for the sake of argument, that when
Secretary Powell called me on Sunday morning, after he'd been
working on this problem for seven and a half hours, he pointed
out that President Aristide very much wanted his help, that is,
the help of Secretary Powell. He wanted safety. He wanted a
plane. He wanted a destination. There are a lot of postmortems
about all this, but nevertheless the reason that he wanted
these things was that the security that he felt that he had
from the people whom he had employed apparently was very
unreliable, to the point that it might not exist fairly
shortly. So the policing thing is really of the essence here.
Many have said: Okay. Let's say that's right. Here we go
into Haiti, again. Try to stabilize with the Marines, with
other nations offering help, with the Europeans, with the
Caribbean nations, suggesting they might do some policing
temporarily. yet the training from scratch of a security
situation for the nation of Haiti is a daunting task.
This may be something beyond the type of thing we're
talking about in the stabilization force in our bill. In
reflecting on Haiti, I simply see a pretty wide-open question
as to how you begin to approach this, and whether we are
prepared now. I wonder whether we're of a mind to stay the
course and to take on that responsibility.
If we don't, you're back to the situation of ten years ago,
and some government that is sort of on their own again, and
sort of looking over their shoulder, wondering if is there
somebody who is going to protect them if a few hundred people
come along?
Do you have any thoughts as to how our legislation is
applicable to that kind of situation, as opposed to Iraq, which
we've said is sort of one-of-a-kind? The Haiti situation might
be more common, as time goes on, in various places that have
never really had very strong security or humane police, and so
forth.
Ambassador, do you have some thoughts about that?
Ambassador Dobbins. Well, what happened in the mid-90s is
that Aristide abolished the army, which had been both
incompetent and abusive, and we built up a new police force.
And for a while it was a, by Haitian standards, quite competent
and quite untainted force, probably the best institution in
Haiti, briefly. It was a force of about 5,000 men who had been
newly recruited, newly trained. Over time it became a seasoned
and reasonably professional force.
The Chairman. You were in government at that time, and you
saw all of this going on?
Ambassador Dobbins. Right. The problem is that we didn't
put comparable efforts into building up the judicial or----
The Chairman. I see.
Ambassador Dobbins [continuing].----corrections system, and
so you had a reasonably competent police force that had no
place to try criminals and no place to hold them, so it was
left with the dilemma when it caught criminals that it either
had to punish them extrajudicially or let them go. Either of
which, you know, inevitably corrupts a police force no matter
how honest it might begin. The police force in Haiti gradually
descended to the level of Haitian institutions as a whole.
The reason that Aristide was left bereft of support was
first and foremost his own mistakes and misbehavior. I don't
want to understate that. But it was also that he lacked
resources to deliver on his election promises, and increasingly
he lacked resources even to maintain the weak and effective
institutions of the state. As the result of which he became
even more dependent than he might have wished on informal
sources of power. Because the formal sources of power had
ceased to be available, and they ceased to be available because
we and every other country in the world had cut off all
assistance to Haiti after 2000.
The decision to cut off assistance to Haiti after 2000 was
entirely justified and equally unwise, in my judgment. And it
just shows that sometimes you have to make difficult choices
with unpalatable outcomes at either end. This time I hope that
we will take the current police force and build it back up.
Many of the people who left it are probably available to come
back, and some of the leadership that we managed to install
probably can be recruited again. But it is important that we
put an equal effort into the judiciary and correction systems
so that the police force can be supported by the other elements
of a rule of law process.
In terms of the legislation and what the additional
capabilities that are provided would allow, I think it would,
first of all, obviously allow some rapid funding for this in
the short term, while the administration considered what type
of supplemental it might require for the contingency so that
you could get started right away.
The second is, I think that we--the U.S. government--having
had a decade of experience in building police forces, are
probably more or less adequately staffed to build police
forces, but not adequately staffed to build judiciaries or
corrections institutes. And so some of the 250 people and some
of the reserve people that would be recruited under this and
made available would be people, I think, in those areas.
The Chairman. I think that's a very important contribution
to this testimony. Certainly it is an insight that I have not
heard expressed so forcefully: that it was not just simply the
police business, but the police, that, as you say, may have
fallen into corruption, in order to enforce the thing, the
police had to either kill the suspect or release the suspect.
So it's an impossible predicament, even if you have good police
training. That needs to be a part of our understanding of this.
We've discussed the police aspect of it, but then as we get
into nation-building, the institution building, some other
parts of the body politic become critical too. This, then,
leads skeptics to say, there you go again; you're going to be
around for a long while.
This is a complex business, when you talk about building
institutions. And yet with nation-building it's sort of hard to
avoid that subject. A lot of institutions are pretty important,
if there is, in fact, to be much of a nation-state, as opposed
to a hiatus, and then failure again, and some lapse back into
this.
Doctor Hamre, do you have a thought about this?
Dr. Hamre. I agree very much with Jim's analysis of Haiti.
I'd visited the police training academy down there in the mid-
90s, and I agree very much with his analysis.
We had, to the extent that we were able in Haiti to do
either work on the judicial system or on the penal system, it
was done on an ad hoc basis through individuals, civil affairs
officers who tried on the side to do it. It was not a sustained
effort. It needs to be, and I think that should be an important
omen of your bill.
Dr. Binnendijk. Sir, I know that you confront arguments all
the time that we shouldn't do nation-building. But it seems to
me that September 11th demonstrated one clear thing, that we
can't tolerate incompetent or irresponsible nation-states.
The Chairman. Yes.
Dr. Binnendijk. We can't tolerate it anymore. It is now an
immediate national security risk us, if it exists. So like it
or not, we're in the difficult process to fix that, and it
seems to be we can't do it by ourselves. It'd be foolish to do
it by ourselves. We need allies to help us do that. So I think
it's all connected to a much larger picture. I think you're
seen that. You've been in the forefront of this for years.
But I think we have to answer those who have legitimately
asked why should we be doing this all the time. We can't avoid
it now. It's in our interest. We have to do this, and we have
to find partners and allies to help us do it.
The Chairman. You offered another good argument that I
think Senators and the public can understand, and that is that
the whole networking, as you've described it, of transnational
crime is a background for terrorism. These people, who are not
necessarily nationalists but are involved in their own self-
betterment through these dubious means, are part of the way
money comes to the terrorists, if they are not terrorists
themselves in perpetrating their crimes. That's something other
than state-to-state relationships. There is this whole murky
background of people involved, and it is a strange combination
of communication and transportation networks, whether we're
talking about how al Qaeda is funded or anybody else. We're
finding that it's a tough struggle as a country.
I have been in hearings, some behind closed doors, some in
front of the doors, in which it's very hard for our Treasury,
and our immigration services, and our military and our
intelligence and so forth, for all of them to cooperate, share
files, and so forth. And for good reason. We're interested in
civil liberties of Americans, the invasion of privacy of
innocent people. As you become more adept at all this data
mining, some of these issues rise to the floor, as they should.
There are institutional barriers in which people have said,
this is our province; and I've been here for 30 years, by
golly, and I know how to do it. So we're back to that problem.
With this crime and with the terrorist networks and so
forth, as you've said, we can't afford to leave these vacuums
of authority where these people take advantage of the fact that
the police aren't very good, or are corrupt, or there isn't a
judicial system, or there are not the other deterrents that
these societies generally have to stop these things.
Now, you know, we must discuss how we illustrate this in
ways that all of us as legislators and the public as a whole
have to support. But I think this is the pattern that we're
looking at here, in trying to authorize the State Department to
be a nucleus leadership and then recognizing, as all of you
pointed out, that there were many other agencies, and that
there are many other committees of this Senate that have
jurisdiction. Our own diplomacy, with all of our colleagues and
all the hang-ups that we have, staffs of committees and so
forth, have to be looked at too. We have to help reorganize
ourselves as a government for the kind of things that we face
that are not as categorical, perhaps, as in the past.
Let me just ask, just to pluck one of these off. What would
be the importance of having an Agriculture or a Commerce
Department component? What sort of people might be recruited in
this reserve, or should we look for people? Should we go to
Iowa State or Purdue or some place like that and ask if people
are prepared to serve their country from time to time? Or,
likewise, should we go to the banking community or the
investment community or--I'm just brainstorming again.
How do we identify these people? How do we identify our
program to begin with, if these are not only welcome, but
necessary? Do they have to be components of a successful state?
Do any of you have any thoughts about that?
Dr. Hamre. Well, sir, from the time when I was over in
Iraq, you walk down to the palace or the CPA headquarters and
there's a sign, you know, the Agriculture Ministry, you know,
or the Irrigation Ministry. I mean, we needed to find people
across the board who had expertise, you know, in these skills.
The Chairman. Yes.
Dr. Hamre. And so I don't think this is hard for us to do.
I mean, all of us live in a world of networks. We are
constantly bringing people. I'm in a think tank. I've got
hundreds of people that we're reaching across. I could find you
20 agricultural experts within a day. So we know how we can do
that.
You want to give a reliable structure where they know they
can plug in. I mean, most of the experts come in, but they
don't know how to plug into a larger picture and into an
integrated plan. That's why your legislation is important.
That's why you have to have this planning cadre that gives you
strategic plan and organizational skills, a standing
capability. You can't make that up on the fly. We've been
making it up on the fly.
You're going to find lots of people in this country that
are perfectly happy to cooperate and participate, if they know
how they can plug in and their efforts can be coordinated in a
meaningful way. You are going to need people from Agriculture,
you're going to need people from Commerce.
Banking people. Right now we're having to set up a banking
system in Iraq. You've got to have that expertise. That's not
resident inside the federal government.
So, sir, across the board we need that, but at its core we
need the planning, the strategic planning cadre that you plan
to create in your bill.
The Chairman. When you issued the Hamre Report, I can't
recall whether you got into that aspect after you surveyed
Iraq. As to the recruitment of these people, would you please
report back some of your thoughts and language there?
Dr. Hamre. Sir, we put special emphasis on the need to get
a consistent effort to pool resources inside the federal
government. We weren't doing very well at that. And we still,
frankly, are challenged. I don't believe that Ambassador Bremer
has had more than 60 or 65 percent of his strength that he was
authorized to have.
The Chairman. Yes.
Dr. Hamre. I mean, it's inconceivable to me. This is the
largest demonstration of America's might or weakness, you know,
by how well we do this, and to let him not be staffed has been
just unacceptable.
The Chairman. And he may very well conclude his service and
still be only at two-thirds strength.
Dr. Hamre. That's exactly right.
The Chairman. But then on July 1 or, as he's pointed out to
me and others, maybe by June 1, the group of people that are
going to be in our mission, in our embassy, has to have been
found. According to press accounts, a lot of people are
volunteering for this service. Maybe this is the largest
embassy effort we have ever had anywhere in the world. I'm
wondering whether all the disciplines that we're discussing
will be represented there. I'm not privy to who all is part of
this business, and maybe it would be appropriate for us to try
to find out through a hearing. This may still be nation-
building and one of a kind, but it's very important that it
succeed.
Yes, Dr. Binnendijk.
Dr. Binnendijk. As the process continues and you get into
the nation-building phase, the Agency for the National
Development does have close ties with many of these sectors. I
think the problem is more the immediate post-war period. It's
kind of the problem that Jay Garner faced in the immediate
post-war period as he tried to pull together his team. There
was not much depth there. And so what you need is not--I mean,
the capabilities a year later, you can draw them. What you
really need is sort of the couple of months or even weeks right
at the end of the high-intensity conflict period or the
collapse of the failed state.
The Chairman. There are different phases of this, in other
words, yes.
Dr. Binnendijk. Yes. And so what I'm trying to stress is
the importance and the immediacy of the first phase where at
least with Jay Garner's experience, as I watched it, those
capabilities were very thin.
The Chairman. Yes, the day after.
Dr. Binnendijk. Yes. And so the day after you need to have
these capabilities to draw on very quickly. Agriculture, across
the board, they're not there.
The Chairman. And police certainly.
Dr. Binnendijk. Yes.
Ambassador Dobbins. I think it's important to recognize,
however, that what we're looking for are people who have skills
in governance. What they need to do is know how to run a
government program. In the first instance, they need to know
how to run an American government program, how to implement
policy within an American government framework; and
secondarily, they need to know how to help the host government
run its own program.
So if you're looking for people with agriculture, you're
not looking for people who know how to run a farm, you're
looking for people who know how to run an agricultural support
program, who know how to get seeds to farmers. They don't have
to know what you do with them when you get them there, but they
have to know how to run a program. Similarly, in the banking
area you need to know people who know how to run a central bank
and how to create a bureaucracy that can regulate a banking
system. Someone else can go find people who know how to run a
bank.
And so you are looking for a rather precise class of people
because these are not skills that they can learn after they
come on board. So you're going to be recruiting largely within
people who have had federal government experience or perhaps to
some degree state government experience in administering
programs and in teaching others how to administer programs.
That's what you're looking for.
Additionally, except in extraordinary circumstances like
Iraq, most assistance is actually delivered through contracts.
In other words, AID contracts with an NGO or a for-profit
company, and they actually provide the advice or assistance to
the Ministry of X. And that system facilitates recruiting. I
mean, those contractors then go out and recruit the people, and
they're making a profit. And they do it, and it works quite
well. What you need are people who can administer that
contract, who can make sure that the contractor is living up to
his commitments, is doing the best job possible.
So those are the skills you're looking for. It's a rather
precise set of skills, which does span all of the functional
areas we've talked about, but from the perspective I've
suggested.
The Chairman. Do any of you have any concluding thoughts?
I've raised the questions that I had.
Dr. Hamre. Just to say thank you.
The Chairman. If not, we will look forward to your
continuing support and consultation on this effort. We very
much appreciate your coming today, and your forthcoming
answers, as well as your creative suggestions.\1\
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\1\ The National Council on Disability submitted its report
``Foreign Policy and Disability: Legislative Strategies and Civil
Rights Protections To Ensure Inclusion of People with
Disabilities,''for inclusion in the hearing record. A copy of that
report will be maintained in the committee's permanent files.
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Having said this, the hearing is adjourned.
Ambassador Dobbins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Binnendijk. Thank you, sir.
[Whereupon, at 11:01 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]