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55 over the last twenty years, as militaries have shifted from a core responsibility of preparing for and prevailing in major war to more direct foreign policy engagements and training partners’ militaries, a natural opposition arose. Security scholars and practitioners have been debating the proper use of the armed forces for decades. While some policymakers call for a conservative approach for the use of military power based upon a careful calculation of national interests reminiscent of the Weinberger Doctrine of the 1980s, others seek to apply the military instrument of power to an increasing range of non-warfighting missions such as civil engineering, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief. The debate begins with national strategy, which largely determines how presidents use the military. Because of the timing and character of the Clinton administration (see chapter 2), Clinton’s 1990s “shape-respond-prepare” strategy gave rise to the “superpowers don’t do windows” counterargument. Some identified diplomatic engagement by generals Wesley Clark, Tony Zinni, or Charles Wilhelm in the 1990s or state-building missions in Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo as apostasy for an organization that is supposed to prepare for and win the nation’s wars. The first year of the Bush administration emphasized this— militaries fight wars and do not conduct foreign policies or do peacekeeping. By the last years of the Bush administration, however, things were very different . His two defense secretaries added security assistance as a strategic pillar by institutionalizing stability operations in 2005 and then irregular warfare in 2008. And security assistance had expanded from 49 to 149 countries over eight years. Finally, the military found itself doing state building in several countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan. In spite of the demand for the U.S. military in these areas, resistance to these missions continued throughout the 2000s. 3 Resistance to Military Engagement 56 Chapter 3 Civilian Opposition Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said, “Stabilization and reconstruction is a mission that civilians must lead. But for too long, our civilians have not had the capacity to lead, and investments were not made to prepare them to lead. As a result, over the past 20 years, over the course of 17 significant stabilization and reconstruction missions . . . too much of the effort has been borne by our men and women in uniform.”1 In the case of Africa Command, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have exhibited an institutional reluctance to support the new command because Africa Command is seen by many within these organizations to be infringing on their traditional responsibilities.2 Even after the command stood up in 2008, it still had difficulty filling its billets with nonmilitary personnel or contractors. Other federal departments did not prioritize these positions and minimized their personnel at this military command. Vice President Joe Biden voiced similar concerns that “there has been a [undesirable] migration of functions and authorities from U.S civilian agencies to the Department of Defense. This has led to concern . . . about what’s seen as a creeping militarization . . . of America’s foreign policy.”3 Former Clinton-era assistant secretary of defense for public affairs Kenneth Bacon said, “Our [foreign ] policy is out of whack. It is too dominated by the military and we have too little civilian capacity. The military should not take on what [USAID] does or the State Department.”4 Representative John Tierney (D-Mass), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs said, “I’m not comfortable that the military is the right entity to be leading all the civilian aspects of this [security cooperation in Africa] and I’m not sure it’s fair to put that on the military.”5 Government leaders were nothing short of ambivalent about the changing roles and missions of the U.S. military. But they also did not take any action to replace military personnel with civilian personnel. Policyanalystsalsoreactednegativelytowhatwassometimescastaspostmodern imperialism, a failure in civilian control of the military, or a major problem with the interagency process. A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, headed by former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage and former assistant secretary of defense Joseph Nye, lends insight into this dilemma when it warned that “the Pentagon is the best trained and resourced arm in the federal government and as a result it often fills every void . . . expanding the role of the military [in foreign assistance] makes the weaknesses of the civilian tools a self-fulfilling prophecy...

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