Increasingly, significant numbers of personnel are deployed in field missions either to serve as police officers or to assist in reforming national police capacity. Reforming and building a police system -in this article termed 'policebuilding' -is exceedingly difficult, demanding the condensing of diverse training skills in a very short period and fast-forwarding the development of skills that are ideally built up over generations. This article examines the Australian initiative of 2004 that broke with the makeshift pattern of international police reform by forming an International Police Deployment Group (IDG). It assesses the deployment to the Solomon Islands in order to draw out lessons for future instances in which IDG officers may be called upon. The IDG appears to offer an apt structure, depth of planning, continuity of staffing and steadiness of resourcing that past missions have lacked. Yet, while relative calm and basic levels of law and order have been restored to the Solomon Islands, transferring authority and successfully supporting local police reform has proven to be more difficult.
One of the most striking trends in U.S. foreign aid policy is the surging role of the Department of Defense (DoD). The Pentagon now accounts for over 20 percent of U.S. official development assistance (ODA). DoD has also expanded its provision of non-ODA assistance, including training and equipping of foreign military forces in fragile states. These trends raise concerns that U.S. foreign and development policies may become subordinated to a narrow, short-term security agenda at the expense of broader, longer-term diplomatic goals and institution-building efforts in the developing world. We find that the overwhelming bulk of ODA provided directly by DoD goes to Iraq and Afghanistan, which are violent environments that require the military to take a lead role through instruments like Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and the use of Commanders' Emergency Response Program (CERP) funds. This funding surge is in principle temporary and likely to disappear when the U.S. involvement in both wars ends. But beyond these two conflicts, DoD has expanded (or proposes to expand) its operations in the developing world to include a number of activities that might be more appropriately undertaken by the State Department, USAID and other civilian actors. These initiatives include: the use of "Section 1206" authorities to train and equip foreign security forces; the establishment of the new Combatant Command for Africa (AFRICOM); and the administration's proposed Building Global Partnerships (BGP) Act, which would expand DoD's assistance authorities.We attribute the Pentagon's growing aid role to three factors: the Bush administration's strategic focus on the "global war on terror"; the vacuum left by civilian agencies, which struggle to deploy adequate numbers of personnel and to deliver assistance in insecure environments; and chronic under-investment by the United States in non-military instruments of state-building. We believe that DoD's growing aid role beyond our two theaters of war carries potentially significant risks, by threatening to displace or overshadow broader U.S. foreign policy and development objectives in target countries and exacerbating the longstanding imbalance between the military and civilian components of the U.S. approach to state-building.
While the international community has in the last several years appreciated the close links between conflict and natural resource exploitation, current efforts to transform war economies in postconflict peacebuilding fall short of the goal. This article charts the pervasive effects of war economies-and specifically lootable resources such as diamonds and timber-in post-conflict contexts, as well as the inclusion of natural resources in the language and implementation of United Nations mission mandates in countries where economic predation has played an important role. This preliminary mapping exercise of Cambodia, Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia highlights certain innovations in the UN's approach, yet demonstrates that post-conflict war economies continue to jeopardise expensive and well-intentioned reconstruction activities like disarmament, demobilisation and reconstruction programmes, transitional justice and security sector reform.
The Bush administration has increasingly acknowledged that weak and failing states represent the core of today's global development challenge. It has also recognized that such states are potential threats to international peace and security. But despite the rhetoric, it has yet to formulate a coherent strategy around fragile states or commit adequate resources towards engaging them. Excluding funding for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and HIV/AIDS, the administration's FY07 budget request proposes to spend just $1.1 billion in direct bilateral assistance to fragile states-little more than a dollar per person per year. In this new working paper, CGD research fellow Stewart Patrick and program associate Kaysie Brown urge U.S. policymakers to consider increasing aid to fragile states and to think creatively about how and when to engage these troubled countries. The authors also call for the policy community to integrate non-aid instruments into a more coherent government strategy. To put its money where its mouth is, the U.S. should treat aid to weak and failing states as a form of venture capital, with high risk but potentially high rewards. The Center for Global Development is an independent think tank that works to reduce global poverty and inequality through rigorous research and active engagement with the policy community. This Working Paper was made possible in part by funding from the Australian Agency for International Development, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Use and dissemination of this Working Paper is encouraged, however reproduced copies may not be used for commercial purposes. Further usage is permitted under the terms of the Creative Commons License. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and should not be attributed to the directors or funders of the Center for Global Development.
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