How should the components of nation-building missions be organised and employed effectively? This guidebook from the RAND Corporation is based on historical research and best practice lessons from 16 case studies. International military interventions have proved to be the most reliable means of preventing societies emerging from civil war from then slipping back into conflict. Despite some notable setbacks, the overall impact of heightened international activism has been beneficial. Practitioners need to look more closely at previous experiences, learning from them, and then applying lessons into practice.
Nation-building, as it is commonly referred to in the United States, involves the use of armed force as part of a broader effort to promote political and economic reforms. Economic development and political reform are both important instruments for transformation, but need to be pursued as part of a broader framework. Public security and humanitarian assistance are the first-order priorities.
The ultimate objective of a nation-building mission is to transform a society emerging from conflict into one at peace. Public security is the first responsibility of intervening authorities. Key to establishing a modicum of security in the first place is obtaining support from the civilian population. The UN provides the most suitable institutional framework for most nation-building missions.
- Attempts to rebuild the judiciary and prison systems after the reform of the police are counter-productive – police without a judicial service are compelled to carry out punishment themselves or let people go.
- If war-crime tribunals are employed as an alternative to intervention rather than as an adjunct, they principally serve as a means of assuaging the international community’s conscience.
- Failure to establish a modicum of public security makes it impossible for humanitarian agencies to deliver aid and assistance.
- Empowering local officials before the national government has been reconstituted can feed sectarian conflict.
- Representative institutions based on universal suffrage usually offer the only viable basis for reconstituting state authority in a manner acceptable to most of the population.
- Security is an essential precondition for productive investment – money spent on infrastructure and development will be wasted if people, goods and services remain insecure.
If peace is to be created, security is key. Only when a modicum of security has been restored do prospects for democracy and sustained economic growth brighten. Mismatches between inputs – personnel and money – and desired outcomes – social transformation – are the most common cause of nation-building efforts’ failure.
- Judicial reform and police reform should run in parallel.
- Tribunals and lustration should only be employed when intervening authorities are equipped to enforce the outcome. Employed in other circumstances they may increase polarisation and a resumption of violence.
- It is best if the military and humanitarian organisations concentrate on their respective primary tasks – maintaining security or delivering assistance.
- Intervening authorities need to choose partners carefully with a view to creating a government and distribution of power that will be sustainable when external authorities leave.
- Success in nation-building will depend more on ‘co-option’ than on the exclusion of potential ‘spoilers’.
- The quality of policies adopted by intervening authorities and the host government will be as important as the monetary volume of assistance in determining the latter’s utility.
