Stabilization and Reconstruction Staffing - RAND Corporation

CHAPTER ONEThe ProblemThe United States . . . tends to staff each new operation as if it wereits first and destined to be its last. Service in such missions hasnever been regarded as career enhancing for American military orForeign Service officers. Whereas the United Nations, despite agenerally dysfunctional personnel system, has gradually built upa cadre of experienced nation-builders, including several retiredsenior U.S. officials, the United States starts each mission more orless from scratch. Whereas the United Nations established a BestPractices unit in its Peacekeeping Department to study and adoptlessons learned in prior operations in 1995, the U.S. Departmentof State created a similar unit only in 2004. 1When President George W. Bush declared the end of major combatoperations in Iraq on May 1, 2003, the U.S. government expected andplanned for a short, caretaker occupation leading to a quick, cleandeparture. During the next six months, the Office of Reconstructionand Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), and then the Coalition ProvisionalAuthority (CPA), came to grips with the fact that, rather thanacting as a short-term, caretaker government, it would have to be thegovernment, design and create an Iraqi governmental structure, recruitgovernment leaders (in the case of the Ministry of Defense, an entire1 James Dobbins, Seth G. Jones, Keith Crane, Andrew Rathmell, Brett Steele, RichardTeltschik, and Anga Timilsina, The UN’s Role in Nation-Building: From the Congo to Iraq,Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MG-304-RC, 2005, p. 247.1