You might expect the secretary of Defense to engage this crucial subject seriously. There have been several careful studies on nation-building efforts, most recently an excellent study by the Rand Corporation. But Rumsfeld refers to none of them, basing his views on a handful of misleading factoids and anecdotes. The heart of the article is a rehash of a speech Rumsfeld gave in February in which he argued that the U.N. has encouraged places like East Timor and Kosovo to become politically and economically dependent on it.
As proof of this, Rumsfeld points out that “four years after the war, the United Nations still runs Kosovo by executive fiat, issues postage stamps, passports and driver’s licenses.” This is shockingly ill-informed. Rumsfeld must know that the U.N. still issues postage stamps and passports in Kosovo because the United States and Europe have not yet decided whether the place is a province of Yugoslavia or an independent country. If local authorities were to issue passports, that would settle things on the ground. It is not U.N. bureaucracy that has kept Kosovo in limbo, but a political dilemma that Washington has not resolved.
Rumsfeld’s other criticism is that these international administrations have produced distortions in the economy. In East Timor, he notes, international workers are paid 200 times the average local wage. In Kosovo, a driver to aid officials makes 10 times the salary of a university professor and the U.N. pays its local staff between four and 10 times the salary of doctors and nurses.
Rumsfeld should get out more. Were he to travel most anywhere in Asia or Africa, he would notice that people who work for Western corporations or nonprofits make vastly more money than locals. This is because of the enormous difference in wages between the West and the developing world, and because Western firms pay their employees abroad on a Western scale. Rumsfeld’s problem, it would seem, is not with international organizations, but with global capitalism.
One can see this phenomenon vividly in one country these days–Iraq. A senior international administrator–that is, a high-ranking civilian in the Coalition Provisional Authority or a one-star American general–makes around $10,000 a month, including housing allowances. The Pentagon estimates that doctors in Iraq made $20 a month last year. To be fair, local wages have risen now, but a university professor in Baghdad today makes at most $200 to $300 a month. In other words, a Coalition official is probably earning 50 times the salary of a local professor. Iraq makes Kosovo and East Timor look like Swedish-style egalitarian societies.
Rumsfeld is right to warn of the danger of a heavy hand creating dependency. But there is actually much greater danger of a light hand. Turning weak institutions over too quickly to locals would return the country to traditional structures of authority that are often feudal and corrupt. In Afghanistan, for example, Rumsfeld’s light touch has resulted in the return of warlord rule, a dangerously weak central government and the resurgence of the Taliban. By Rumsfeld’s logic, America’s light rule and quick exit from Haiti in the 1990s should have created a vibrant democracy, while its almost decade long, heavy-handed occupations of Germany and Japan should have produced deformed societies. In fact, the opposite happened.
The United States might well succeed in Iraq but only because it is not following Rumsfeld’s rhetoric. If it were worried about creating a dependent society, it would not be pouring $20 billion into the country in one year–which equals half of the Iraqi GDP. This is almost twice the total spending on Kosovo over four years. Nor is Paul Bremer giving Iraqis the authority to spend that money without tight supervision. Were the United States to empower local Iraqis in the next few months, the result will be a sham democracy and a petro-state.
If the Coalition can stay the course and lay the ground for a slow and orderly transition, Iraq will be a better place for it. But I will make a bet with Mr. Rumsfeld. When America does leave Iraq, and the administration proclaims it a case study in effective nation-building, American officials posted there will still be earning much more than local professors.
