This book describes the common pitfalls of U.S. military interventions in efforts at stabilization, which supports post-conflict societies by establishing stable governance, rule of law, a safe and secure environment, economic development and social well-being for all members of the population. These efforts are often unsuccessful and can even cause harm when mission teams do not understand both the populations with whom they are engaging and policymakers. The book recommends prioritizing a relational approach to stabilization with a professional and well-resourced Civil Affairs and strategic intelligence approach to engagements over the current preference for transactional, often lethal operations.
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Yes, you can access Strategic Intelligence and Civil Affairs to Understand Legitimacy and Insurgency by Diane E. Chido in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Military Policy. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Understanding the sources of legitimacy within a state will enable those engaging in stabilization activities (Stabilizers) to identify what sort of alternative governance structures are likely to arise when the state does not have the trust of the population and how and whether to counter, coopt, or cooperate with them. Foreknowledge and situational understanding are likely to go a long way to reduce this tendency toward false promises, thus increasing the Stabilizer’s and the sovereign’s legitimacy before and after action and thus its likelihood of establishing long-term stability.
The US Government (USG) and international development organizations tend to treat stable governance as a key component of stability and a defense against complex challenges to universal democratic institution building. As illustrated in Fig. 1.1 from the Guiding Principles of Stabilization and Reconstruction, a publication generally considered the stabilization “bible,” this Strategic Framework emphasizes stable governance as the “ability of the people to share, access, or compete for power through nonviolent political processes and to enjoy the collective benefits and services of the state.”1
Fig. 1.1
Strategic framework for stabilization and reconstruction
This definition assumes two critical aspects of governance:
1.
Competition for power must be nonviolent and conducted through established political processes
2.
Services and other benefits are provided by the state to the assumed general satisfaction of the populace.
These highlighted aspects suggest a bias toward formal, state-based institutions at the expense of other, possibly competing forms of legitimacy, such as those arising in areas where the state’s influence fails to reach. This state-based perspective limits the US and its partners to apply (overtly) its instruments of power in support of or in opposition to state structures only. This approach has positive and negative aspects, particularly in fragile or vulnerable states, whose populations are ambivalent about their government’s ability or desire to provide basic public goods. In extreme cases, when the state has perpetrated violence against its own citizens, such as in the ongoing civil war in South Sudan, an approach focused on the state and its institutions is unlikely to result in lasting stability.
Those involved in the stabilization business, particularly when the US is the lead Stabilizer, often conflate stable governance with good governance and assume that stable governance, despite its form or quality, is preferable to instability. A United Nations University article from 2012 attempting to define this nebulous term determined that good governance “lacks parsimony, differentiation, coherence and theoretical utility.”2 The Guiding Principles support stable governance, defining it as “the mechanism through which the basic human needs of the population are largely met, respect for minority rights is assured, conflicts are managed peacefully through inclusive political processes, and competition for power occurs nonviolently.”3 National security experts often use the obvious example of North Korea as a state that appears to be stable, but no one believes its form of governance to be good, by any internationally accepted measure.
On the one hand, the US has a robust toolkit intended to reinforce governance through a myriad of mechanisms ranging from diplomacy to military intervention to financial and technical support via numerous government and nongovernmental agencies around the world. On the other hand, its bias toward formal, state-based structures can cause it to miss opportunities to clearly identify and, thereby, effectively shore up vulnerabilities in governance from the people’s perspective, through which governance most importantly manifests itself as good or bad. This perspective should be the international actor’s focus when considering pressures affecting the state.
In the case of stabilization activities, when a host nation invites entities of the US government to shore up vulnerabilities to stable governance in pre- or post-conflict circumstances, establishing and maintaining government legitimacy is the primary objective under which all other activities fall.4 With this almost total focus on the host nation and international actors’ objectives, the Guiding Principles recommend that Stabilizers, “Modify or use informal systems in combination with formal mechanisms to ensure adherence to international human rights standards while maximizing access and public trust in the system.”5 This only validates alternative governance when it suits the sensibilities of international standards, not local concerns or perspectives.
The Guiding Principles section on “Stable Governance” does suggest that Stabilizers “engage local leaders, civil society groups, and the general population through consultative or co-administrative mechanisms to ensure legitimacy of transitional governing structures,”6 but the next sentence suggests “creating a political advisory council comprising host nation leaders,” implying all members should be recognized by the host nation. Essentially, governance that the host nation government has not approved, nor aligned with, is illegitimate according to these standards for reconstruction and stabilization, which fail to acknowledge that identifying and understanding alternative governance structures is essential to the long-term success of any stabilization process.
Legitimacy and Insurgency
Legitimacy is the glue that holds any society together, whether it is as large and complex as a country or international institution like the European Union (EU) or as small and simple as a local Rotary Club. Legitimacy is a neutral concept only having a positive connotation to those who believe they possess it. The key for any governing entity to achieve or maintain legitimacy is trust, which a governing authority of any kind establishes by providing essential services. Such entities can range from a faith-based group, to a criminal gang, to a terrorist network.
The 2018 Stabilization Assistance Review (SAR), developed jointly by the US Departments of Defense (DoD), State (DoS), and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) stated, “Stabilization is most likely to be successful where there is basic security on the ground.”7 The SAR further emphasized the need for security and overall stabilization assistance and coordination with local actors to establish and maintain trust. At the most basic level, security allows establishment of predictability, which may be the very essence of this nebulous concept of “stability.” After decades of civil war in Afghanistan, many people initially supported the Taliban, appreciating the “pattern of predictability, order and consistency,” it provided.8 This was also the case at first with the Islamic State, where Mosul residents told German journalist Jurgen Todenhofer that under Iraq’s Shiite government they suffered from the chaos and initially thought they were better off under the Islamic State. Todenhofer noted, “instead of anarchy they have now law and order.”9
Predictability may look nothing like stable governance as typically described, but it is, perhaps, the most basic human security need. Beyond Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs,10 which places physiological needs at the bottom of the pyramid and safety at the next lowest level, human security is more about the collective psychological needs of a given population. As David Kilcullen has noted, “Predictability is the basis for secure dispute resolution and thus for social stability.”11 Therefore, predictability may be a good start as an essential element of stability but remains within the realm of transactional legitimacy. As CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria opined while reporting on Todenhofer’s research, “While there is an allure to security in the abstract, no one likes living under a brutal theocracy.”12
The concept of “stable governance” requires the governing structure in question to provide a specific basket of goods and services as prioritized by the governed population, which tends to be highly dynamic. Figure 1.2 illustrates this elusive quality of legitimacy and its place in moving a society from stable to good governance, as it defines “good” for itself. Figure 1.2 also illustrates the need for a social structure to evolve from a transactional relationship between the governing and governed to a relational one or from basic predictability to reciprocity in which both support one another.
Fig. 1.2
Conceptualized governance hierarchy (Graphic produced by the author)
A legitimate relationship exists when a state and a people give and receive from each other sustainable predictability that enables economic growth and other conditions that allow a society to flourish at all levels. Sustainability in this arrangement depends upon the time and resources the...
