Whither State? The Institutional Politics of American Nation-building Policy
This article discusses the difficulties associated with military-led stability and nationbuilding operations and argues that the United States’ current policy negatively affects defence capabilities, unduly influences how stability operations are prioritized and conducted, limits State Department capacities, and allows the military to be seen as the ‘face’ of American foreign policy. Several options exist for the United States to adequately address this issue to include the working within the established system, a reassignment of leadership responsibilities, or restraining the American tendency to intervene. The United States’ military has proven that it is capable of conducting nation-building operations, but at the cost of global misperception, painful inefficiency, significant risks to United States’ overall defence capabilities, and the issues of civilian control that follow from reliance on warriors in the role of diplomats.
The Country Team: Restructuring America's First Line of Engagement
Expansion of Engagement U.S. Embassies face unprecedented challenges. The kinds of issues that confound governments today--from organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism to nuclear proliferation, human rights, ethnosectarian conflict, global disease, and climate change--no longer fit within diplomacy's traditional categories. (1) Just as nonstate actors everywhere are becoming more powerful, regions of geostrategic importance in the developing world find themselves beset by weak or dysfunctional governments and increasingly perilous socioeconomic situations. While some might reasonably question the categorical quality of the 2002 National Security Strategy's assertion that "America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones," there is still plenty of reason to be concerned about the trends. (2) What does this mean for Embassies? First and foremost, Embassy staffs--our U.S. Country Teams--must continue to engage with allied, partner, and competitor countries, even as the terms of these engagements grow more complex. Indeed, the number of programs operated out of Embassies is expanding. A Country Team in Paris, for example, must partner with local authorities on counterterrorism, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the European Union, as well as country-specific operations such as Afghanistan and Kosovo. The team must also further commercial interests and cooperation within regional and international financial institutions. In Moscow, the Country Team must promote democratic reform efforts while enhancing opportunities for U.S. businesses in a dynamic emerging market, as well as improve nuclear security initiatives and monitor avian flu. It must do this while working on global and regional energy problems as well as traditional diplomacy. In Abuja, Nigeria, the Country Team must monitor and help to deal with instabilities in the Niger Delta, engage in HIV/AIDS relief and economic development programs, and assist in the first civilian transfer of political power. In Bogota, Colombia, the Country Team faces major counternarcotic and counterinsurgency problems as well as regional political problems. All of these tasks must be coordinated and deconflicted, and the Country Team must work with unified purpose. In practice, this often does not happen. This is especially true in the area of stabilization and reconstruction missions, where the wars in Afghanistan and, more acutely, Iraq, revalidate the sacrosanct principle of unity of effort. However, this principle can be applied more broadly. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice notes, "More and more, solutions to the challenges we face lie not in the narrow expertise of one agency acting in one country, but in partnerships among multiple agencies working creatively together to solve common problems across entire regions." (3) Despite some positive steps toward this objective, senior policymakers in and out of office in both the executive and legislative branches lament the continued inability of the United States to integrate all elements of national power. Their frustrations apply not only to the national level, but also to the Country Team, the critical intersection where plans, policies, programs, and personalities all come together. The Country Team builds the American image abroad and implements strategy. Without an effective Country Team, there can be no prospect of success in achieving national security objectives. The question is whether Country Teams are structured properly and resourced sufficiently to be effective. A brief examination of the Country Team's evolution helps dispel some common misconceptions about the answer to this question. Evolution of the Country Team The struggle to gain control over unwieldy interagency activities at the country level is not of recent vintage. (4) As the United States emerged from World War II, it engaged in massive nationbuilding and foreign assistance efforts to reconstruct European states and to counter Soviet influence. …
Germination ecology of Central Asian Stipa spp: differences among species, seed provenances, and the importance of field studies
Stipa-species are wide-spread in Central Asia, but sexual reproduction in the dry steppes is rare. To facilitate conservation and restoration of these important rangelands, we studied germination characteristics of three common Mongolian Stipa-species under field- and lab conditions. Seeds of Stipa krylovii, Stipa gobica and Stipa glareosa were sown at the study site in Southern Mongolia over two consecutive years during which period tests were carried out to ascertain whether competition or herbivory are the main constraints of seedling establishment. In addition, we tested germination and seed viability in the laboratory under two different temperature regimes (20/10°C and 8/4°C), as well as the effect of cold-stratification. The lab experiments also included S. krylovii seeds originating from three climatically different provenances. None of the three Stipa-species seedlings emerged during the first 2 years of the field study. However, after an unusually intense rain event in the third year, 3% of S. krylovii, 0.6% of S. glareosa and 0.1% of S. gobica seeds germinated in the study plots. The factors ‘sowing-year’ and ‘vegetation’ significantly affected seedling emergence, whereas grazing had no effect at all. Under laboratory conditions a high percentage of viable seeds of S. gobica and S. glareosa germinated at both incubation temperatures, and cold-stratification had no effect on germination or viability. Germination of S. krylovii seeds required warmer temperatures and cold-stratification had a positive effect. Such evidence for dormancy was more pronounced in seeds from the moister, northern provenances. Germination of Stipa-species in the field is rare and only possible under exceptionally moist conditions. Conservation should thus concentrate on steppe conservation rather than on restoration. Where artificial reseeding is necessary, differences among species and also among different seed provenances should be taken into account.