Bipartisan Policy Center Urges New U.S. Foreign Policy Approach Towards Fragile States

New Policy Recommendations Propose a Coordinated Strategy Focused on Improving Governance and Security Capabilities

WASHINGTON, May 12, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The recent killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan is a poignant reminder of the national security threat fragile states pose to the United States. This week, the Bipartisan Policy Center's (BPC) National Security Initiative released its new report, A Stitch in Time: Stabilizing Fragile States, recommending ways the U.S. government can provide effective stabilization assistance to fragile states that imperil its strategic interests. The report, co-authored by former Ambassador Paula Dobriansky and Admiral (ret.) Gregory Johnson, examines the shortcomings of current U.S. foreign policy and calls for the U.S. government to make "conceptual, strategic and organizational reforms" to prevent, rather than react to, the urgent threats caused by failed states.

"The U.S. needs an organized and coherent strategy to help stabilize fragile states," said Ambassador Dobriansky. "We can leverage existing tools and funding, but we need a mechanism that brings existing structures and capabilities together into a single, focused effort."

This comprehensive report, the result of a three-year effort, assesses existing U.S. capabilities, bureaucratic structures and in-country instruments that could be created or modified to address the myriad of threats posed by fragile states. Historically, the U.S. has separated military, economic, political and humanitarian assistance and strategies, scattering stabilization efforts. Mindful of the current fiscal challenges facing the nation, the BPC recommends utilizing existing personnel and funds more effectively through improved strategies, interagency cooperation and funding mechanisms.

The report focuses primarily on strategies for coping with weak states that pose the greatest potential threats, including Pakistan, Yemen and Nigeria. Many of the recommendations are the result of lessons learned from U.S. policy changes toward Colombia, initiated a decade ago to reverse that country's decline.  

According to the BPC, the U.S. has four key shortcomings in helping to stabilize fragile states:  1) it lacks a single, cohesive strategy that incorporates national security, development, military and civilian assistance;  2) multiple agencies share overlapping responsibilities and yet don't coordinate their efforts; 3) its funding mechanisms are inflexible, favoring military assistance over critical programs that support reform within fragile states' governing institutions; and 4) it too often lacks the patience for the sort of sustained engagement necessary to stabilize fragile states.    

"In this report, we advocate for a 'stabilization-as-shock-therapy' approach to assisting fragile states," said BPC Foreign Policy Associate Director Blaise Misztal. "Security and good governance go hand-in-hand. We believe that stabilization assistance, when provided smartly and proactively, can stop fragile states from going over the edge. This stabilization strategy is designed to arrest fragile states' backward slide as quickly and effectively as possible."

While the dynamics of state failure are rarely identical across countries, the BPC focused on two areas which it argues are essential to promoting stability: Building Partner Security Capacity (BPSC), providing the proper tools, expertise and institutions so fragile states can control their territories; and Civic Resilience, seeking to rebuild ties between state and society that fray when states fail to address poverty, weak governance, conflict and extremism.

"While military force is sometimes necessary, the project has identified preventive approaches that are less costly and more effective at neutralizing national security threats emanating from failing states," said Admiral Johnson. "Security assistance cannot be our sole concern; creating accountable, responsive and transparent government systems is critical for aiding weak states."

The BPC argues that one of the challenges of engaging fragile states is that their rulers tend to be semi-legitimate, autocratic and disconnected from significant segments of its population. "It's a delicate balance, but one that needs to be addressed, because extremist groups thrive in authority vacuums," added Admiral Johnson.

A copy of the full report can be found at www.bipartisanpolicy.org. For a full list of BPC's Stabilizing Fragile States Project members and staff click here.

Key Report Findings and Recommendations:

Strategic Recommendations

1. Prepare for Sustained Commitment: The U.S. must prepare to be engaged in stabilization missions for the long haul to ensure continued returns on invested time and resources. Too often, U.S. foreign assistance is reactive and short-lived, leaving states to regress to instability.  Flawed metrics must be replaced with established policies, procedures and programs focused on building the capacity of both political and social actors to lay the groundwork for serious and sustained commitments.
2. Develop Delivery Mechanisms: While efforts to build partner security capacity and promote civic resilience already exist within the U.S. foreign assistance apparatus, they are scattered across institutions and agencies. The government must establish mechanisms that match tasks to the appropriate government or non-government agencies, ensure coordination of mission and message and facilitate open communication across and beyond government agencies.

Policy Recommendations

1. Create a Permanent Corps of U. S Government Stabilization Advisors: To help nations enable and sustain security force activities, including law enforcement, the U.S. government should hire permanent, long-term advisors, who can be deployed to various countries as needed, rather than hired for one-off missions.  
2. Expand Police Training Capacity: The U.S. should expand U.S. capacity to train foreign police forces for the short and long-term. Ground-level policing is essential to civic tranquility. USAID should establish a corps of American civilian police who perform training and mentoring in short stints of less than a year abroad. Another separate force would be created for long-term deployments. The U.S. should commit $1 billion dollars in funding per year to develop a large force of deployable police trainers.
3. Make Building Partner Security Capacity a Core Mission of the Department of Defense: To build foreign military capacity, the U.S. Department of Defense should create a permanent military advisory and training corps and expand its International Military Education and Training Program.
4. Improve Government Capacity: Because extremist groups thrive in authority vacuums, the U.S. must help establish anti-corruption measures at both the national and local levels. Stabilization assistance must extend beyond a nation's central government to local governments, councils and organizations, giving them competent and effective voices in decision-making about community needs and basic services.
5. Expand Opportunities: To counter the disenfranchisement of large sectors of society, the U.S. should help build programs that rapidly extend opportunities, to groups such as women and the poor. By helping to make basic education accessible and by spurring job growth through quick-impact projects such as building and funding schools and training teachers, the U.S. can have immediate impacts in preempting civic unrest.  
6. Promote Democratic Governance: The U.S. should support strengthening states' rule of law by establishing short-term legal redress systems, helping to build law-enforcing institutions in-country and working with local leaders to institute these functions into a formal framework with state oversight.  
7. Amplify Mainstream Voices: To challenge extremism and ensure citizen investment in the political process, both U.S. government agencies and NGOs should seek to build partnerships with existing mainstream groups and organizations. Training political, party and civil society leaders and offering technical assistance to local media will help to cultivate future U.S. allies.
8. Isolate Extremists: The U.S. should identify "soft" supporters of extremist groups and understand the grievances that motivate them. Encouraging prison rehabilitation and reeducation, as well as economic assistance programs for ex-convicts and ex-combatants, will help prevent individuals from becoming prime targets for radicalization.

Institutional Recommendations

1. Create a Fragile State Designation System: The President should establish a policy process through the National Security Council (NSC) for designating fragile states a critical national security priority and designing and implementing a central stabilization policy. The National Intelligence Council (NIC) should be in charge of aggregating and analyzing the sources of fragile state monitoring and then report states that become fragile to the National Security Advisor. The NSC will then decide to advance the country in question to the attention of the President for designation. The impetus of a Presidential designation should spur and sustain meaningful action.
2. Consolidate Rule of Law Assistance into USAID: To remedy the U.S. government's current fractured and ineffective approach toward fragile states, the U.S. must reorganize its rule of law assistance under a single streamlined agency with comprehensive responsibility: USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance. This action would help to coordinate U.S. policy and to ensure that BPSC efforts are implemented effectively.
3. Create New Country-Level Interagency Structures: At the country level, the USAID director should designate a "Rule of Law Attache" to function as the central clearinghouse and support to the nation's governance structure. This attaché would be the liaison between Washington, DC and the host nation and coordinate on-the-ground interagency programs among USAID, the State Department, DOD and the Department of Justice. Each embassy should house a Stabilization Development Team.
4. Align Geographic and Policy Structures: The State Department Regional Bureaus, USAID Geographic Bureaus and the DOD's Unified Combatant Commands (COCOM) must be aligned and better coordinated. This will generate a more cohesive and effective holistic government approach to foreign security assistance.
5. Consolidate Stabilization Funding into Single, Flexible Accounts:  Current U.S. funding for fragile states is fragmented and complex. The U.S. can streamline the process by creating a joint account to pool resources for BPSC that is spent in accordance with a plan drawn up jointly by State, USAID and DOD. Congress should allow the Fragile State Stabilization Committee determine how funds are spent. This flexibility and funding authority would allow both Congress and the President to better oversee ensuing programs.

About the Bipartisan Policy Center:

In 2007, former U.S. Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole, and George Mitchell formed the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) to develop and promote solutions that can attract the public support and political momentum to achieve real progress. Currently, the BPC focuses on issues including health care, energy, national and homeland security, transportation and economic policy. For more information, please visit our website: http://www.bipartisanpolicy.org/. 

SOURCE Bipartisan Policy Center