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With regards to the militarization of the Unites States executive branch I blame the Department of State. State has been an utter failure in their core competen

With regards to the militarization of the Unites States executive branch I blame the Department of State. State has been an utter failure in their core competency of nation building for the past 30 years. Ethiopia and the Baltics in the '90s, Iraq and Afghanistan in the '00s are examples of State basically abdicating their role to the DoD. The DoD has been the only major department with the budget, the expert personnel, the logistics, and the organizational will to tackle what should be civilian nation building exercises. It's a poor plan to put a 21 year old marine in charge of securing and rebuilding a village. An armies job is to "go places, kill people, and break their stuff." But for the last few decades the choice for the US has been to send our DoD personnel, or noone. Because we've increasingly leaned on the DoD for these actions that's bled over to other organizations. A prime example there is the transfer of absurd materials to LEO under the LESO and Excess Property Programs. See also the budget of DHS/ICE/CBP which simply exploded in the last decade by following the militarization path. If we want to stop the militarization of our society we need to fix our civilian agencies and stop relying on the martial.

jm74 12y ago
That's a good point for a good discussion of exactly this issue there's an interesting TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_...
nl 12y ago
Ethiopia and the Baltics in the '90s I suspect you may mean the Balkans? And the Balkans have actually been a pretty successful outcome. In Afghanistan and especially Iraq the State department was not allowed to do their job. See [1] where: Secretary of State [Colin] Powell recently wrote to Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld, urging that State oversee humanitarian assistance, an outcome that would help internationalize the effort. The United Nations and others, like the European Union, have experiences in the past relating to state-building. On the other hand, there are other elements in the administration, notably in the Department of Defense, which are beginning to try to invent a blueprint and map out the capacities in order to have the United States undertake this task alone. As you note, the DoD took over this role. But it wasn't because of lack of interest of State. [1] http://www.cfr.org/iraq/council-expert-says-state-department-pentagon-odds-over-postwar-iraq-policy-asserts/p5776 http://www.cfr.org/iraq/council-expert-says-state-department...

jm74 12y ago

That's a good point for a good discussion of exactly this issue there's an interesting TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_...

nl 12y ago

Ethiopia and the Baltics in the '90s I suspect you may mean the Balkans? And the Balkans have actually been a pretty successful outcome. In Afghanistan and especially Iraq the State department was not allowed to do their job. See [1] where: Secretary of State [Colin] Powell recently wrote to Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld, urging that State oversee humanitarian assistance, an outcome that would help internationalize the effort. The United Nations and others, like the European Union, have experiences in the past relating to state-building. On the other hand, there are other elements in the administration, notably in the Department of Defense, which are beginning to try to invent a blueprint and map out the capacities in order to have the United States undertake this task alone. As you note, the DoD took over this role. But it wasn't because of lack of interest of State. [1] http://www.cfr.org/iraq/council-expert-says-state-department-pentagon-odds-over-postwar-iraq-policy-asserts/p5776 http://www.cfr.org/iraq/council-expert-says-state-department...