Rebuilding Infrastructure vs Building Institutions
Charles W. King
The enormous cost and dubious return on funds provided for reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted another round of resistance to further ‘Nation Building’ by the United States. Previous resistance to nation building peaked after the NATO peacekeeping missions in the Balkans in the 1990’s and after the Vietnam War in the 1970’s. Many Americans are not aware of the massive efforts made to support the Republic of Vietnamese. The United States spent $1.5 billion on state building projects between 1954 and 1960. American contractors built not only military bases in South Vietnam, but massive infrastructure projects including harbors, airports, and highway networks. After the war the US government was reluctant to engage not only in the manner of warfare experienced in Vietnam, but also investments of the scale it had made in the South Vietnamese state.
The failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan contrast starkly with the unbridled successes of American rebuilding efforts in Western Europe and Japan after World War Two. In both Europe and Asia the US was able to turn devastated countries into strong allies and vibrant markets in just a few years. The fact that reconstruction efforts in West Germany and Japan were during peace time rather than in the midst of a conflict is an important factor, but it is not the only factor. In Germany and Japan the US was rebuilding the infrastructure of existing states. In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan the US was building, not rebuilding, infrastructure for a new state. Germany and Japan already possessed strong state institutions. Where they had been turned towards war, now these institutions were being turned to collective defense and the free market. The existence of these institutions meant what Germany and Japan needed was institutional reform and to rebuild their broken infrastructure. This taught American policy-makers in the decades since an incorrect lesson, that rebuilding broken roads and power grids was enough to create a strong state.
It is institutions not infrastructure that facilitated Germany and Japan’s transition from fascist aggressors to keystones of the post-war liberal order. The inability of infrastructure investment to create strong institutions in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan should not be a surprise to policy-makers. It is essential to recognize what construction projects in states without strong institutions can and cannot accomplish. The question for policy-makers in cases such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States has a vested interest in establishing stable states, is how to create institutions that will endure and be effective.
Further Reading
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, (New York, NY: Vintage, 1996).
Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998).
James A. Baker III, and Lee H. Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2006).
James M. Carter, Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954-1968. (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press: 2008).