Colin Powell seems unlikely to garner a return invitation should the Bush administration enjoy a second term, nor is it clear that he has any reason to want one. It may be, then, that his most recent organizational innovation, the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, is the product of a regretful backward glance.
In the months before the invasion of Iraq, Powell’s state department put together a massive project to advise the Pentagon and the U.S. occupying administration on how to put Iraq back together after the shooting. The New York Times got a look at the project’s findings as it was being presented to Congress in October of 2003, and noted that the “Future of Iraq Project” report anticipated a great many of the problems encountered by the U.S. since the invasion, and made specific recommendations to address them.
Although the Pentagon claimed to have incorporated the project’s recommendations into its planning, a number of the most important ones were ignored. The project recommended against disbanding the army, which was one of the early major decisions by viceroy Paul Bremer, because it would throw several hundred thousand heavily armed men out of work. It anticipated the looting in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Iraq’s government, and suggested ways to guard against it. And it warned that the Pentagon’s estimates of reconstruction costs, and the amount of oil revenue Iraq could generate to cover those costs, were way too optimistic.
The Pentagon’s first choice for viceroy, Jay Garner, was impressed enough by the report and its midwife, state department veteran Tom Warrick, that he attempted to bring Warrick onto his staff to help implement the recommendations. Warrick’s appointment was blocked by the Pentagon, though, and Garner was unceremoniously dumped from his position soon after he occupied it.
One of the more grotesque ironies of the Pentagon resistance to the project and its recommendations was that defense department officials, whose plans for the administration and development of Iraq were almost entirely polemical, dismissed the state department and the authors of the reports as “impractical” and “academic.”
By the spring of 2003, the Times said, new arrivals to Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority were given a copy of the report on CD as they headed for Iraq, with one official telling the Times that “it’s our Bible out here.”
Too little, too late. Bremer’s administration was chronically understaffed, and most of the staff he did have were not prepared for what they found in Iraq. With the state department largely frozen out of the CPA, and with many of the CPA’s decisions driven by ideology and not reality—essentially the failings the defense department imputed to the state department and the experts it assembled for the “Future of Iraq” working groups—there was never any real opportunity to implement the recommendations on any large scale.
All of which is to say that Powell, crippled though he may be by his determination to work within the limits imposed by his bosses, did what he could beforehand to muffle the blow. A resignation letter might have been considerably more effective, but apparently Powell was, and remains, resigned to his fate.
Which brings us to the new state department unit. The Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization was created to put countries such as Iraq on the road to truth, justice and the American way or, as the state department puts it, “to help stabilize and reconstruct societies in transition from conflict or civil strife so they can reach a sustainable path toward peace, democracy and a market economy.”
Experience over the past decade has demonstrated that ad hoc responses to complex emergencies are not enough. The United States must be prepared to identify and marshal civilian resources rapidly for stabilization and reconstruction. The Reconstruction and Stabilization Office will monitor evolving developments, coordinate preventive and contingency planning, and — when necessary — mobilize a response. The office will work closely with the Department of Defense to ensure strong civil-military cooperation in planning and operations, and will develop and maintain close links with foreign governments, international and regional organizations, and nongovernmental organizations.
In other words, pretty much the opposite of the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq. And as a perhaps final little gesture, Powell named one of the senior Russia desk guys in Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, and a former career USAID administrator, Carlos Pascual, to head the new office. If Bush is elected to a second term and Powell is replaced, one might expect Pascual to be quickly discarded in favor of someone more compatible with the surviving defense department honchos.
Michael Ledeen comes to mind.
Rumsfeld got what he wanted —-a continuing struggle. It is a mistake to think he did the wrong thing. He created the situation he wanted and needed for the future.