I don't like the implications of this:
The most creative analysis is a study that Rumsfeld requested last year from the elite Defense Science Board. Released in December and titled "Transition to and from Hostilities," (pdf) the study is a blueprint for changes across the government that would give the United States the nation-building capability it has too often lacked in Iraq.[snip]
At the State Department, there's a new Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization under director Carlos Pascual. It has just 40 people at this stage, but it's beginning to coordinate activities of the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and the Agency for International Development, so that the chaotic mismanagement of the initial Iraq reconstruction effort isn't repeated.
From the report's Executive Summary:
U.S. military expeditions to Afghanistan and Iraq are unlikely to be the last such excursions. America’s armed forces are extremely capable of projecting force and achieving conventional military victory. Yet success in achieving U.S. political goals involves not only military success but also success in the stabilization and reconstruction operations that follow hostilities.
So the Bush Administration wants to set up a Colonial Office? It's anticipating a future need elsewhere? In North Korea or Iran, perhaps?
Posted by Linkmeister at May 19, 2005 04:32 PMI agree, the suggestion that this will happen again is not very comforting. The problem, I think, is that no matter what, you're still going to have to protect these civilian colonizers, and we can't even manage to protect Iraq, much less iraq, Afghanistan and other places.
Posted by: John at May 19, 2005 05:24 PMAfter reading James Wolcott's Linkage, Iran would be my hunch. But why does the State Department suppose it would have any more control over the 'chaos' than it did this time, new Office of Coordinator, etc, notwithstanding? Iraq was Rummy's war and he doesn't play well with others.
After reading about China's current activities (over at Elaine Supkis' blog), it made me realize that these guys at Defense are still very much cold war warriors and they don't seem to be capable of noticing that their main problem just might not be in the Middle East or have much to do with waging war at all. They're not wired to see beyond bombs, war, or (dreams of) military victory.
Posted by: Kate at May 19, 2005 06:08 PMJohn, if somebody in the Clinton Administration had thought this up, I wouldn't have worried. In fact, I'd probably have applauded. The difference is that that group wasn't a pack of freebooters like this crowd is.
Kate, somehow I'd forgotten Abbas' trip to China, although I listen to the 10:00am BBC news (midnight here) and I'm sure it was mentioned. That's an interesting analysis that lady has of the situation, and she could well be right.
Robert Kaplan wrote the cover story in The Atlantic this month (sub. req., unfortunately); he talks about a possible war with China. I get the magazine's print edition, so I'd read it. I pretty much blew off that idea, but the news about the Palestine-China rapprochement might force me to rethink.
Posted by: Linkmeister at May 19, 2005 08:48 PM