“If there is any nation in the world that needs nation-building right now, it is the U.S.” Senator Webb on Afghanistan: “If there is any nation in the world that needs nation-building right now, it is the U.S.”
Says billions in aid dollars to Afghanistan should be clearly tied to strat
PoliticalNews.me - Jun 09,2011 - Senator Webb on Afghanistan: “If there is any nation in the world that needs nation-building right now, it is the U.S.”
Says billions in aid dollars to Afghanistan should be clearly tied to strategic objectives
June 8, 2011
During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) questioned whether nation-building efforts in Afghanistan were advancing the United States’ primary strategic objective of defeating Al Qaeda, which is “intrinsically mobile.”
“You can pretty well fight international terrorism without remaking an entire societal structure,” said Senator Webb. “The real question is: what is the ultimate objective with all of these ground forces and all of these infrastructure programs in terms of the long-term advantage?”
“If there is any nation in the world that really needs nation-building right now, it is the United States. When we are putting hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure in another country, it should only be done if we can articulate a vital national interest because we quite frankly need to be doing a lot more of that here,” said Senator Webb.
Senator Webb also expressed hope that China “would step up to the mat and be a little more overt in their willingness to participate in these types of solutions” since China clearly benefits from increased stability in the region.
A transcript from the hearing is below:
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing:
The Honorable Ryan C. Crocker, of Washington, to be Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
Senator Jim Webb: Ambassador, you are clearly a national treasure here and we are happy to see you going over into that part of the world.
I think that my major concern is how we define our strategic objectives in Afghanistan and how that matches up with what we are able to actually accomplish in a cost-benefit way. How much do we actually need to achieve in Afghanistan with respect to our national interest? How much do people want to achieve that may be above what we need to--and here we are getting to the area of nation-building? How much can we achieve that? And how much of that actually benefits our strategic objectives? That is what I have been struggling with for more than a year now.
I do not know if you saw the column that Peggy Noonan wrote recently for the Wall Street Journal. She clearly is not a radical; she is one of the bright lights of the Reagan Administration, in which I was very proud to serve. One of the strong comments that she was making was that if there is any nation in the world that really needs nation-building right now, it is the United States of America. When we are putting hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure in another country, it should only be done if we can articulate a vital national interest because we quite frankly need to be doing a lot more of that here.
Could you please articulate for us your view of the strategic
