November 24, 2002 The Return of America's Postwar Generosity By JAMES DAO WASHINGTON
IN the movie ''The Mouse That Roared,'' a tiny European duchy called Grand Fenwick declares war on the United States - not because it hopes to win, but because it is certain it will lose. ''There isn't a more profitable undertaking for any country than to declare war on the United States and to be defeated,'' proclaims Grand Fenwick's prime minister, played by Peter Sellers. ''Then the Americans pour in food, machinery, clothing, technical aid and a lot of money for the relief of its former enemies.''
Released in 1959, the British film whimsically reflected a time when the concept of nation-building to combat Communism was ingrained in American foreign policy. Within a decade, that view had faded. After Vietnam, many liberals came to see reconstructing nations as imperialistic. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, conservatives came to see it as big-government waste. By the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush derided the use of American soldiers for nation-building. But the idea that rebuilding other nations can be good for America is now taken for granted again, spurred by fears of resurgent anarchy in Afghanistan and a determination to prove that the war on terrorism can improve life in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Critics who contended the United States had fallen short in the last year can sense a change.
Before adjourning last week, Congress passed the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act of 2002, providing $3.3 billion for reconstruction over four years. Republican and Democratic lawmakers had complained the United States was doing too little - dedicating less money than it did in the Balkans in the 1990's - and raised the amount that the White House had asked for in its 2003 budget by several hundred million dollars.
The Pentagon unveiled plans to shift resources from hunting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan toward security and reconstruction. The plans, though modest, surprised many because the military has resisted nation-building operations since the debacle in Somalia in 1994 and has been pushing to trim American peacekeeping forces in the Balkans. Recent polls suggest the public is ready to support such efforts linked to the war on terrorism. Surveys by the Pew Research Center, for example, recently found that 56 percent of Americans support reconstruction programs in Afghanistan. ''Very often the response to American wars has been this American generosity,'' said Walter Russell Mead, the author of ''Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World.''
But American munificence toward nations it vanquishes - the trait the novelist Leonard Wibberley gently ribbed in ''The Mouse that Roared'' - raises a more practical question in Afghanistan: how do you rebuild a nation that has not functioned as a nation for years? ''The goal is not to rebuild something, but to build something new,'' said Barnett R. Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at New York University.
And three things have to happen at once, he said: roads and communications networks have to be built and government has to be able to deliver services, while security is strengthened enough for the work to go forward.TO create a government, the United States is helping to train administrators and teachers. But there is no electoral system, and no tradition of government-provided services. ''Until that whole concept of government as a provider of public good can be invigorated, people will look for help to those who do provide those things - which is the warlords,'' said J. Alexander Thier, an Afghan expert working with the British Department for International Development.
But there is some progress. A road project linking Kabul, the capital, to Kandahar, the largest southern city, began last month. India, Italy, Japan and Saudi Arabia pledged to help finance roads to Pakistan and Iran. The Army Corps of Engineers is considering managing some of the construction in the north. ''The roads are a symbol that Afghanistan is entering a new phase,'' said Andrew S. Natsios, administrator for the United StatesAgency for International Development.
Other bricks are falling into place. The United States and Germany are training a national army and police force, which are essential to making the country safe enough so people can use the new roads.Cellphone service - landlines are almost nonexistent - is now available in Kabul,Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif. Radio towers are popping up. Hundreds of miles of irrigation canals have been restored, 10 million textbooks have been distributed, and more than 100 schools have been reopened since the war ended.But experts say the process is still too slow. Aid has focused too heavily on humanitarian relief instead of reconstruction, they say. And the international peacekeeping force remains limited to Kabul because the United States and other nations won't send additional troops because they say their forces are overextended.
''We've said we have these objectives to stabilize Afghanistan,''Mr. Rubin said. ''Are we putting the resources there to accomplishthose objectives? No.'' THESE problems cause some critics to contend that the Bush administration remains ambivalent about nation-building. Sheldon M. Garon, a professor of Japanese history at Princeton, said that to rebuild Japan after World War II, the United States deployed more than 100,000 soldiers and several thousand civilians in a seven-year occupation. He questions whether that political will now exists. ''Nineteen forty-five was an amazing period,'' he said. ''We thought we could transform societies. Nobody believes that today.'' But John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale, argues that many concerns raised today could have been raised about Japan and Germany in 1945. Even if costs are high, Americans are likely to be willing to pay, he said, if they believe the world will be the safer. Certainly that was the image of America in ''The Mouse That Roared.'' ''You can't expect us to give you a measly million - that's less than we spent in Germany in one city alone,'' an American diplomat tells the prime minister of Grand Fenwick during peace negotiations. ''You may have to take a billion.''
Copyright The New York Times Company
New York Times Forgotten? I don't think so. But it WILL take time. How long did it take in Germany and Japan? And those were pretty "organized" societies beforehand that wanted to regain former stability. Afghanistan does not have that history. It'll be tougher. Is that a reason no to try?
