Three-D Security: Defending America by Helping Others
BY REUBEN E. BRIGETY, II
It isn’t every day that I find myself in northern Kenya visiting a camp with 150,000 Somali refugees, or hearing an American soldier talk about the strategic importance of vaccinating sheep in Djibouti as part of the Global War on Terror. But neither is it every day that, as a George Mason professor, I have the chance to work with some of the most committed public servants of our country helping America to help the world. Yet during 2007, those were just the sorts of experiences I was privileged to have as an International Affairs Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The world is changing rapidly, as is our understanding of what makes America safe. Even as the United States maintains the most powerful military in the world, our government is looking for ways to meet the basic needs of other citizens to strengthen our own security here at home. You might call it humanity as a weapon of war, and USAID is increasingly on the front lines of this campaign.
USAID was founded in 1961, when the Foreign AssistanceAct was signed by President John F. Kennedy. Its principal mission is to help countries with long-term economic and social development. To accomplish this, USAID is divided in multiple bureaus which focus on various aspects of this mandate. There are regional bureaus that focus on all aspects of developmental assistance for particular parts of the world, and specialized bureaus that work on specific topics such as global health or economic growth and trade. USAID implements its foreign assistance programs through some ninety missions associated with American embassies all around the world. In Fiscal Year 2006, USAID spent almost $9 billion to promote economic growth, improve health care, support education, and provide emergency disaster assistance.
Though USAID’s traditional work includes things like developing irrigation systems in Mali or health care systems in Guatemala, its work in support of counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency is growing. The terrorist attacks of September 11th demonstrated the significant threat that failed and fragile states pose to the United States. Al-Qaida, after all, was based in Afghanistan—at the time, one of the most dysfunctional countries in the world. In response, the White House declared in the 2002 National Security Strategy that “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones.” One of the keys to combating violent extremism, therefore, is to help strengthen the capacity of the weakest states to govern themselves and provide services to their citizens in places like northern Mauritania, southern Philippines, and coastal Yemen.
One of the most striking features of America’s post-9/11 foreign policy is the increased involvement of the US military in providing humanitarian assistance to civilians to advance national security objectives. The Defense Department traditionally divides wars into five phases:
• Phase 1 is deterrence
• Phase 2 is movement of forces into a theater of combat
• Phase 3 is major combat operations
• Phase 4 is stabilization and reconstruction, and
• Phase 5 is return to civilian control.
As the military recognizes that the best way to counter extremism is to pre-empt it before it manifests itself through violence, it has added another phase to its conflict continuum: Phase Zero, or pre-conflict. Military operations in a phase zero, or steady state, context are designed to prevent radical elements from spreading to a broader population and becoming violent threats to the United States and its interests. Many of the tools that the military uses in phase zero operations are traditional development activities such as digging wells, building schools, and providing medical care for civilians. Unlike such activities, which are performed during or after wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, phase zero operations are conducted in places where conflict has yet to occur, but where there is a potential threat of violent insurgency. Among these places are military humanitarian activities in northeastern Kenya, Thailand, and Bolivia to name a few. Furthermore, the locations of these sorts of humanitarian activities are chosen not simply for the benefit they may bring to the local population, but also for the strategic value they are likely to bring to American national security objectives.
The military is not doing these projects alone, however. They are a part of a broader strategy, which many have called the Three-D security framework. The three Ds in question are defense, diplomacy, and development, each of which is an instrument of American national power, which can be used to counter threats to the country and advance American interests. While traditional defense activities have included preparing for and waging combat against the militaries of other states, traditional diplomacy has encompassed formal discussions with the governments of sovereign states to advance US interests through bilateral and multilateral negotiations. Furthermore, traditional development activities have encompassed hands-on projects to improve the livelihoods of poor people around the world with a focus on long-term sustainable economic growth. Overtime, the ethos of development work has tended to eschew short-term geopolitical calculations in allocating most foreign assistance funds.
The Three-D paradigm assumes that each of these instruments of national power can contribute to US national security by developing synergies among their comparative strengths, bolstering their particular weaknesses, and altering their traditional focuses to fit the demands of the modern world. For example, long-term economic development for poor countries cannot be sustained unless it takes place in an environment that is secure from violence and warfare. Traditional defense activities can contribute to economic development by training the militaries of poor states to better defend themselves from hostile neighbors and to treat their citizens with respect. Likewise, conventional combat operations are not enough to achieve national objectives if the civilian population remains unable to govern itself or return to normal economic activity, as in Iraq. Thus, without traditional development assistance, a military might find itself winning the war but losing the peace. Finally, diplomacy is increasingly important in speaking not simply with governments, but also communicating directly with the citizens of other states or with non-state actors who are often the keys to fomenting violence or promoting stability in countries around the world.
Since 9/11, the US government has begun to respond to these new realities and changed the ways it conducts its foreign affairs in both peace and war (though, as noted above, that distinction is becoming increasingly blurry). The State Department has initiated a “transformational diplomacy” agenda in which it encourages its diplomats to move from established posts in the capitals of developed countries and into smaller cities in developing countries to spread the message of American democracy. The Defense Department is becoming more engaged in humanitarian activities in war zones like Iraq and in peaceful places like Tanzania. USAID has adjusted its programming to focus on developmental solutions for counterinsurgency operations as well as embedding development officers with interagency teams in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Of all of the Three-D activities around the world, none is perhaps as revolutionary as the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). Based at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, CJTF-HOA was established by a US Marine Corps task force in 2002 to catch any terrorists who might be fleeing Afghanistan en route to the Red Sea and beyond.
Over time, that mission changed to performing various humanitarian projects in a dozen countries in East Africa. Military engineers dig wells in remote regions to provide water to local residents where there might be an extremist threat. Civil affairs soldiers work with local school officials to construct and support schools to teach reading, writing and arithmetic instead of virulent ideologies. Military doctors and veterinarians provide medical care to families and their livestock to develop good will with local communities and improve the image of the United States in general, and the US military in particular. Military personnel work closely with USAID and State Department personnel in each country to coordinate their activities and ensure that the comparative strengths of each of the Three-Ds are brought to bear.
In the three weeks that I spent in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti in June 2007, I was able to see many of these projects first-hand. In the Djiboutian town of Tadjoura, for example, US Navy Seabees had built dormitories for some sixty students so that equal numbers of boys and girls could leave their home villages and attend secondary school knowing that they had a safe place to live while they studied. While American military teams built the dormitories, USAID education specialists worked with local school officials to provide school supplies and develop the curriculum. The US Embassy in Djibouti worked closely with the Ministry of Education to determine the government’s educational needs and jointly assess how the US government might most constructively cooperate with the government of Djibouti.
By improving access to education, each of the elements of the US government improve the lives of ordinary Djiboutians, counter extremism, strengthen relations with a strategically located country in the Gulf of Aden, and improve situational awareness in remote areas which traditionally have little American presence. For all its promise, the Three-D paradigm is not without its problems. For one thing, the budget and personnel of the Defense Department dwarf those of the State Department and USAID. The Pentagon’s annual budget (excluding funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) is about twenty times the combined budget of the State Department and USAID. The entire Foreign Service Officer corps of USAID is less than 1,000 people, which is smaller than a single Army infantry brigade and fifteen times smaller than what it was at the height of the Vietnam War. If the United States is to enact a true Three-D strategy to counter extremism at the grass roots level worldwide, it will have to invest heavily in improving the civilian components of its national security apparatus.
Second, there are national tensions among the missions of the Three-D pillars, which will perpetually threaten their synergistic cooperation. The short-term time horizon of the Defense Department in identifying and countering threats will always be inconsistent with the long-term view that is needed to sustain economic development assistance over many years as the key to sustained stability.
Finally, there are philosophical objections among many in the civilian humanitarian and development community to the use of civilian assistance as a strategic tool. When uniformed soldiers dig wells or build school, the local population may assume that civilian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that perform similar work are in fact working for the military. NGO officials argue that this pseudo-association presents a real security challenge for their personnel in the field. Furthermore, any humanitarian assistance, which focuses first on security interests rather than on the needs of the population is inherently political and ultimately threatens the well-being of the beneficiaries.
The success of the Three-D experiment is still an open question. After all, how do you know if you are winning a humanitarian war? Students of international affairs and strategic studies should carefully watch these developments as they have the potential to fundamentally change our understanding of warfare, and the tools needed to “win” it.
Reuben E. Brigety, II (rbrigety@gmu.edu) is assistant professor of government and politics in the department of Public and International Affairs (http://pia.gmu.edu).
