The Role of Foreign Assistance
in Conflict Prevention

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CONCLUSIONS: Defining a Vision for U.S. National Security Needs and Foreign Policy Framework for the Year 2020 & Creating a Supporting Foreign Assistance Strategy January 23, 2001 This paper reflects the comments and issues raised during the conference on "The Role of Foreign Assistance in Conflict Prevention." Written by: Kate Semerad, Dick McCall, Jane Holl Lute, and Anita Sharma. Introduction In the relatively short time span between the end to the Cold War and the beginning of the new millennium, we have learned much that has challenged our basic assumptions about democracy building and the "magic" of the market place, the foundation upon which a less threatening and more stable world was supposed to have emerged. Little did we know, or expect, that the end of one era of world history would unleash forces heretofore frozen in time for nearly 45 years. These events precipitated the collapse of states such as the former Yugoslavia and led to ethnic, religious, and nationalistic turmoil plaguing many regions of the world. Even the former Soviet Union and southeastern Europe have not been immune to this upheaval. Many of the problems facing the people of these countries and regions, such as disease, illiteracy, grinding poverty, environmental degradation, repression, and corruption stem from weak and oftentimes non-existent institutions. There has been an assumption that the existence of a state's governmental apparatus alone, within clearly defined borders, constitutes a coherent and stable country. We are slowly coming to the realization that it does not. This reality forces us to re-evaluate many of our assumptions and to develop different analytical tools and frameworks to more effectively promote our national security needs globally. One thing is certain, crisis and conflict in many areas of the world will be with us well into the foreseeable future. The challenge will be the degree to which we are able to recognize the need, in collaboration with friends and allies, to organize ourselves more effectively to respond to this reality. A critical tool in responding to this challenge is the foreign assistance program. U.S. Security Needs and Interests in the New Millennium New definition needs to be given to what constitutes U.S. national security and the foreign policy framework within which our fundamental security interests are protected. Interests alone do not define adequately the long-term goals of U.S. foreign policy. Interests can shift as circumstances change and new challenges emerge. On the other hand, there are enduring needs around which American interests have to be woven and articulated. These include: A safe and secure homeland. A dynamic economic engine capable generating new wealth with the requisite trading system. Strong friends and allies. Predictable relations with others. As evidenced by the recent CIA report, Global Trends 2015, future threats to the United States are multiple, varied, and complicated. These include the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, land degradation, severe water shortages, forced migration, and a growing terrorist threat. In reality, the world is changing fundamentally and more rapidly than most of us appreciate, accelerated by globalization that, in itself, may be a double-edged sword as the gap between haves and have-nots widens. This new international environment has major consequences for how the United States defines its economic and security needs. We will continue to rely upon a strong military to respond to actors and nations that threaten U.S. security interests and needs around the globe. However, military-based threats in the traditional sense may be the least of our worries. This proposition has major consequences for how the United States defines its economic and security needs and how it formulates foreign policy. We no longer need, nor can we afford, to anchor U.S. national security and foreign policy solely on the concept of military-based threats and traditional national security interests. Simply stated, the prime imperative is to defend U.S. borders against a much broader range of threats (not just missiles, but such things as terrorists, illegal immigrants, and infectious diseases) while maintaining or increasing the standard of living for all Americans. But this has to be accomplished within the context of an increasingly globalized world. This requires that we develop capable partners in the context of an agenda for engagement across a broad array of sectors and issues. The major source of future threats globally will stem from the increasing lack of capacity of states to deal with the myriad of problems that are potential sources of conflict, instability, and, in some cases, collapse into chaos. Therefore, one of the primary (if not the primary) goals of U.S. foreign policy should be to assist in the building of capable societies and nation-states. These goals should be carried out in partnership with our friends and allies. For the United States to prosper, significant portions of the world must prosper as well. This requires some degree of stability and predictability of behavior globally. It also requires building a consensus on the rules of the game. At the same time, we must recognize that stability does not mean maintaining the status quo. Change is not only good but also oftentimes necessary (as demonstrated by the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic). A Word About Capable Societies and Nation-States In too many areas of the world countries have not undergone the processes fundamental to the creation of a modern nation-state. Many of these states are comprised of diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural communities. Voluntary cooperation among and between diverse elements within a state functions reasonably well during good times. However, stress, no matter what the source (i.e. competition for limited resources, environmental degradation, corruption, impunity) can be the match that touches off violent conflict. Constituting processes (those processes which create institutions) at all levels of society, are fundamental to the maintenance of coherence and order during times of stress. For voluntary cooperation to be sustained, it has to be encapsulated within institutions that reflect not only a common set of values, but also a strong sense of national community across the entire population. These, in turn, can transcend the sometimes divisive nature of localism or communalism (i.e., ethnic and/or religious). While all modern nation-states have gone through these constituting processes, the citizens of most countries in the world have not been engaged in processes whereby common values are agreed upon and institutions created that reflect this fundamental societal consensus. The problems of disease, illiteracy, hunger, poverty, corruption, and even terrorism cannot be adequately addressed in a world community where too many countries fail to attain the status of the "capable" nation-state. They remain vacuums that terrorists, narco-traffickers, demagogues, and dictators are more than willing to fill and exploit for their own ends. To more effectively address this challenge, foreign assistance should be used as a tool to promote the creation of capable societies. Developing capable states based on free societies requires building voluntary cooperation, resolving conflict, building democracy, creating free societies, and establishing market economies. Lack of these foundations reflects hard realities and dangers posed by a world where there are too many "incapable" states and too little freedom. Securing National Needs by the Year 2020 U.S. self-interest should drive the process with our friends and allies and foster a vision of the world that sets as our primary objective the creation of free and capable societies. U.S. foreign assistance should become an integral foreign policy tool in this approach. There is a consensus within our own country, which has been articulated quite strongly by the incoming Administration's foreign policy/national security team, that the military option will be used only as the last resort. Hopefully, the military option will not have to be used at all. A focused strategy of helping to create capable states as a first resort should preclude the necessity to use the tool of last resort -- military engagement. Part of the challenge in formulating (and then implementing) a vision for U.S. national security needs and foreign policy framework for the year 2020 is to effectively organize and integrate America's foreign policy/national security apparatus. The U.S. government tends to look at world problems as a discrete and differentiated set of security, political, and assistance issues and sectors. We tend to develop segmented policy and programmatic responses based on narrow, short-term, parochial interests. As a result, there has been a failure on our part to understand the reality and internal dynamics of problems on the ground in devising appropriate country assistance strategies to fit the situation and address root causes of conflict. There is a multiplicity of U.S. government departments, agencies, and offices involved in articulating and implementing U.S. policy abroad. Oftentimes, this promotes confusion and even contradictory policy priorities. Just as the problems of many of the countries in which USAID operates cannot be effectively solved by a set of discrete, isolated activities, neither can the United States project a coherent policy abroad through a series of discrete and differentiated tools with oftentimes differing priorities. We need a strategic vision that recognizes how each of these sets of problems relates to one another. In the aftermath of World War II, the United States took the lead in fashioning the global economic, political, and security institutions that were designed to ensure that there would not be a repeat of the conditions which led to the outbreak of the most devastating conflict endured by the human race. We created new institutions and restructured others both to more effectively manage the global economy and to meet the threats posed by the Cold War. These tools are still with us. We never engaged in a similar process following the Cold War. It is clear that the post Cold War era poses new and far different challenges to U.S. needs and security than the threats of the previous era. The issue is not just defining the new challenges and threats we face in the post Cold War era but developing the policies we need to more effectively address them. The greater challenge is to construct the tools, bureaucratic institutions, and systems that will be necessary to allow us to effectively respond to both current and future threats. We have been bogged down by a process that is preoccupied with individual boxes and the competition for diminishing resources among these boxes. In large measure, it is not a question of resources. It is a question of whether or not we are organized sufficiently to have the appropriate tools with which to deal with the world as it is and will be well into the foreseeable future. Only after we work through a redefinition of policy and how we implement it can we ascertain what is the appropriate level of resources to promote our national security needs over the next 20 years. By supporting the development of capable nations and societies that are more resilient to violent conflict and emerging threats, we reduce the risk of instability and lessen the probability of the use of U.S. military forces as the world's policeman. Financially, we reverse the burgeoning upward trend and continued increasing budgetary expenditure for massive humanitarian, reconstruction, and rehabilitation efforts. At the same time, the United States needs to create a global agenda of engagement, based on our own economic and political self-interest, to support the development of capable states that prioritizes the use of foreign assistance programs and tools as part of an integrated foreign policy framework. The private sector is, among other things, an important source of data collection and analysis. This is true for both the for-profit and the not-for-profit community. In an era of globalization, the private sector has as much of a stake as any sector of our society in understanding the world, if for no other reason than the need for expanding markets and secure investment climates. In addition to retooling and redesigning government's role, we need to more effectively engage the private sector. The Role of Foreign Assistance in Security U.S. National Needs Some have argued that good development is by definition conflict prevention. For example, using the public health model analogy, not all health interventions are preventive in nature. There is a difference between curative health care interventions and preventative care. There is considerable validity in using the analogy. As we have repeatedly found, the cure (cleaning up the messes from complex emergencies) is always more painful, and more costly, than prevention would have been. If there is consensus regarding the fundamental goals of U.S. national security policy, including the acceptance of the notion that for the U.S. to prosper significant portions of the world must prosper as well, then foreign assistance has a definite role to play. This objective can best be achieved by adopting a proactive foreign policy strategy that focuses on building capable societies and preventing violent, organized conflict. Adopting such a strategy would also pay major dividends since it is a lot cheaper to engage at the pre-conflict stage than in cleaning up post-conflict messes. The central question is, what is the best way to construct a doctrine of conflict prevention? Since every human situation is different, the U.S. government needs to develop a robust diagnostic capability to understand what are the potential root causes, as well as the drivers and inhibitors, of violent conflict. The focus must be both country and regional specific. USAID has begun to institutionalize such a process. Once such an analysis is completed, means have to be developed which empower people to begin developing their own solutions. For each country, a comprehensive strategy should be developed that identifies people and programs best suited for promoting dynamic, sustainable stability over the long term. Those programs that best address short-term operational prevention need to be supported and complemented by parallel initiatives in the longer-term structural prevention arena. This means that neither framework can be developed in isolation. The State Department, NSC, USAID, and the other foreign policy/national security agencies need to develop a common vision and synchronize policy development and implementation. Given the complexity of the challenge, the U.S. government, let alone USAID, cannot do it all. Strategies need to be developed that weave a fabric of interlocking networks and tap the expertise of all stakeholders, including our friends and allies, multilateral institutions, non-governmental organizations and, most importantly, civil society and other indigenous organizations within partner countries themselves. Our foreign assistance program must be designed to set an agenda of engagement with the American public, private foundations, voluntary and non-governmental partners, and recipient country partners. A set of more symmetric economic, political, and security relationships needs to be nurtured with developing countries that is based on U.S. self-interests, global needs, and better defined requirements for the creation of free societies and capable states. USAID, because of its field mission based programs, has the capacity to act as a facilitator in working with others to create the space for this constituting processes to take place. Finally, there are tools and institutions already available which need to be integrated more fully into conflict prevention/management efforts. As evidenced in presentations made at the earlier June 2000 USAID Workshop on Conflict Prevention, USAID is undertaking a broad range of specific activities, programs, and strategies in partnership with others to help prevent and mitigate the root causes of conflict. The list is growing in Africa, including countries such as Guinea and Zimbabwe, and regionally in a new cross-border program in Ethiopia's southern tier involving Somalia and Kenya. These nascent efforts are usually cross-sectoral in approach, using a variety of programs and interventions, while tapping U.S. expertise and institutions. These include the Synthetic Environments for National Security Estimates (SENSE) operated jointly by the Institute for Defense Analysis and the U.S. Institute for Peace and the War Torn Societies Project International (WSPI), a hybrid U.N./Swiss NGO whose operations have been financed by both bilateral and multilateral donors. In order to make these efforts equal to the task at hand, the United States requires first a vision and second a strategy for long-term engagement in building the basis for voluntary cooperation that will help prevent deadly conflict in the post Cold War era. A new vision and strategy are required to deal effectively with a changed world, both in terms of defining U.S. security needs and as part of an integrated foreign policy framework in which the U.S. foreign assistance program plays a direct supporting role as part of that engagement process.

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