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ONFLICT 

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AP IN 

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MERICAN 

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TRATEGY 

 

by Roger B. Myerson 

Abstract:  For an effective deterrent against terrorist attacks, military power must be complemented by 

some capability for political reconstruction in failed states that could become bases for global terrorism.  

Democratic state-building has seemed more difficult than imperial conquest because international support 

reduces national leaders' incentives to negotiate broad political coalitions that include local leaders from 

every community.  A capacity to effectively support democratic state-building can be developed by 

applying basic lessons from America's own history of decentralized federal democracy. 

 

A vulnerable gap  

 

In recent decades, America's armed forces have prevailed in virtually every kind of 

military contest into which they have been sent, but in the aftermath of these victories we have 

repeatedly seen frustrations and failures in the subsequent political reconstruction.  From this 

experience, many have concluded that America should simply avoid any future state-building 

missions.  Presidential candidates who proclaim an urgent need for new investments in American 

military power have generally avoided even discussing this critical gap in state-building 

capacity.  But a more prudent conclusion may be that America needs to invest in developing 

better capacity for post-conflict political reconstruction. 

 

It is wishful thinking to plan for conflict only in regions where a suitable government 

already exists and is ready to take power.  Nations do not get to choose what kinds of military 

challenges they will face.  If American ground forces can operate only in countries where a well-

organized friendly government is ready to take power, then adversaries in other parts of the 

world will know that they are beyond America's reach.  Hard experience in recent years has 

shown that areas of ungoverned instability can become sources of global threats. 

 

Some have argued that, if America is attacked by terrorists who are based in an ill-

governed region, the response should be a military retaliation which devastates the terrorists' 

bases but makes no attempt to occupy territory.

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  However, with no attention to post-conflict 

political reconstruction, such a military retaliation could ultimately enable the surviving terrorist 

leaders to consolidate power in the region, winning popular support by posing as stalwart 

defenders against American invasion.  Indeed, a basic motivation for terrorist actions can be to 

provoke such crude military responses that drive people to seek protection from militant leaders. 

                                                 

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 Such a strategy of retaliation without occupation has been advocated by Anna Simons, Joe McGraw, and Duane 

Lauchengco in The Sovereignty Solution (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011).  A crucial gap in their 

argument can be glimpsed on page 132, where they assert that "Americans' hope should be that, in the wake of such 

devastation, those most capable of asserting authority and taking control will quickly rise to the occasion and then 

prevail."  They fail here to consider the fearful possibility that the terrorists who provoked the American attack 

could expect to take power after it. 

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America and its allies now face deadly enemies who believe that they could find greater 

political opportunities in the chaotic aftermath of an American military intervention.  Deterrence 

fails when adversaries think that they would actually benefit from being attacked.  Thus, 

American military power can fail as a deterrent unless it is matched with some capability to bring 

order into failed states when they become bases for global terrorist organizations. 

The possibility of state-building  

 

A defeatist argument that state-building is impossible has served to keep military-

preparedness debates focused on force levels and battlefield weapon systems, which can be more 

profitable for military contractors.  But this argument cannot be right.  The military theorist Carl 

von Clausewitz recognized war as the continuation of political action with other means, and 

successful military missions have indeed achieved political goals throughout history. 

 

Of course, we may have different political goals today.  In past history, wars were 

regularly fought with the political goal of defending or expanding a government's territorial 

domain.  In recent decades, America and its allies have intervened instead with the professed 

goal of supporting the establishment of a sovereign democratic state.  But if armies throughout 

history have been able to impose exploitative foreign rule on conquered populations, it would 

seem that a victorious army today should face less resistance to achieving the more benign goal 

of establishing an independent popularly elected government.  

 

It is right and appropriate that America should maintain this goal of supporting 

independent democratic governments in any future military interventions.  The alternative, 

installing neo-colonial authoritarian regimes in the aftermath of American military interventions, 

would ultimately provoke strong global opposition against America's military superiority.  We 

just need to learn how to do democratic state-building.

2

  To find the key, we must first 

understand what can make democratic state-building more difficult than imperial conquest. 

Local foundations for a political machine  

 

In a classic study of counterinsurgency, David Galula emphasized that the essential goal 

of counterinsurgency warfare is to build a political machine from the population upward, and he 

also observed that political machines are generally built on patronage.

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  Successful stabilization 

will depend on the new regime developing a political network that distributes power and 

                                                 

2

 See also "Standards for state-building interventions" at http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/research/std4sb.pdf 

or "Rethinking the fundamentals of state-building" at http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/research/prism2011.pdf 

3

 David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: theory and practice (Praeger, 1964), pp 69, 136. 

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patronage throughout the nation.  As the US Counterinsurgency Field Manual has suggested, 

winning "hearts and minds" may actually mean convincing people that they will be well 

rewarded and well protected when they serve as local agents in the regime's political network.

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The effectiveness of a government depends, not on its general popularity, but on its 

ability to command the active efforts of supporters and agents who enforce the government's 

authority throughout the nation.  Against threats from a violent insurgency, the government's 

active supporters must be motivated by a confidence that their loyal service can indeed earn them 

long-term rewards and protection from the government. 

 

If a community were occupied by an army that planned to impose permanent imperial 

rule, then its officers could offer promises of long-term rewards and protection to any local 

leader who served the new regime.  But in a mission of democratic state-building, a popularly 

elected government is expected to take sovereign power from the occupying army, and so its 

officers cannot make any long-term promises to local supporters.  Such promises can be made 

only by leaders of the new government. 

 

Thus, if a state-building intervention is to establish a government that can stand on its 

own, its political leaders must develop networks of supporters that are wide and strong enough to 

defend the regime against those who would take power from it.  If there are communities where 

the regime lacks any local supporters, then these communities can become a fertile ground for 

insurgents to begin building a rival system of power with encouragement from disaffected local 

leaders. 

 

The hard work of negotiating with local activists to build an inclusive national political 

network can be expensive and tedious for a national leader.  If foreign military support could 

enable a national leader to retain power without making so many promises to recruit supporters 

in remote communities, the leader might prefer to do so.  Thus, foreign support can perversely 

encourage a national leader to keep the benefits of power narrowly concentrated in a smaller 

circle of supporters, neglecting remote areas, and such narrowness of support can perpetuate the 

regime's need for foreign counterinsurgency support.  This is the paradox which can make 

democratic state-building more difficult than imperial conquest. 

Encouraging a broad constitutional distribution of power  

 

Once we understand the problem, we can begin to search for a solution.  Foreign support 

                                                 

4

 U.S. Army & Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual FM 3-24 (UChicago Press, 2007), Appendix A-26. 

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may increase national leaders' desire to concentrate power more narrowly around themselves, but 

the distribution of power in a democracy can be regulated by constitutional rules.  In particular, 

constitutional provisions that devolve a substantial share of power to locally elected officials of 

municipal and provincial governments can help to ensure that every part of the country has some 

popular local leaders who have a real stake of power in the regime. 

 

Thus, a state-building mission can have a greater chance of success if it encourages a 

federal distribution of power across national and local levels of government, so that the new 

regime will indeed be a political machine with roots in every community.  Too often in recent 

state-building interventions, however, American policy-makers have instead focused only on 

supporting and developing the capabilities of the national government from the top down.

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In 2002, America supported the creation of a centralized presidential government in 

Afghanistan, a country which had a long tradition of decentralizing substantial power to 

traditional tribal leaders.  In subsequent years, Americans paid a heavy price to support the 

regime.  When power became concentrated in the capital, there were many rural districts where 

nobody felt any personal political stake in the government, and so its authority could be 

maintained only with support from foreign forces.  In an account of the struggle for one district 

in Afghanistan, Carter Malkasian described a successful counterinsurgency strategy in which the 

essential key was to offer some real authority to selected local leaders.

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  But with no 

constitutionally protected autonomy for local governments, such locally negotiated political 

settlements could be nullified by manipulation in the capital, and hard-won gains were lost. 

 

In Iraq, the counterinsurgency successes in the Sunni-majority provinces after 2006 

depended on local leaders' expectations of achieving some share of power in locally elected 

provincial governments.  But after America disengaged from Iraq's provincial politics, there was 

a breakdown of federal power-sharing in the Sunni provinces.  Then, as constitutional 

alternatives failed them, local leaders were left feeling that they could only use an alliance with 

murderous fanatics in ISIS to counter the national government in Baghdad; thus the way was 

opened for ISIS's advance into Iraq in 2014.  The international response to this invasion was 

                                                 

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 Policies of building state power from the top down have sometimes been justified by concerns that local politics 

could be dominated by small unrepresentative cliques or warlords, but this risk can be countered by the participation 

of national political parties in local democracy.  From the first organizational meetings, local elections should 

involve representatives from two or more parties that have made a commitment to democracy.  Local political 

bosses should know that, if they lose popular support, they could face serious challengers who are supported by a 

rival national party.  With such national political safeguards, local democracy can provide an antidote to warlordism. 

6

 Carter Malkasian, War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 2013), p. 178. 

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delayed by an understanding that foreign support for the national government in Iraq could 

reduce its incentive to offer essential political assurances to local Sunni leaders.  A more timely 

and effective response could have been provided if, as a condition for assistance to the national 

government in Baghdad, America and its allies had insisted on their right to offer some 

proportional assistance also to the legitimately elected provincial governments in Al-Anbar and 

Ninawa provinces.  A long-term international promise to support democratic local leadership in 

Iraq's Sunni provinces, as an integral part of continuing international assistance for constitutional 

government in Iraq, could do more against ISIS than any campaign of aerial bombardment. 

 

Somaliland, since its separation from Somalia in 1991, offers an example of successful 

state-building that contrasts starkly with the repeated failures of internationally sponsored state-

building in Somalia.

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  The state in Somaliland was established by a series of negotiations among 

local leaders from every part of the country, without international support.  In these negotiations, 

the participants' status as local leaders always depended on their maintaining broad popular 

approval in their respective communities.  But in Somalia, once a leader became part of the 

internationally sponsored state-building process, he could expect external recognition and 

subsidies that reduced or eliminated his need for broad popular backing.  Such leaders in Somalia 

then built weak states that could not govern without foreign support.  The contrast between 

Somalia and Somaliland shows that international sponsors of state-building can do more harm 

than good when they support leaders whose positions do not depend on some form of local 

political recognition.  But local accountability might not be through formal elections.  Although 

the Somalilanders ultimately chose to introduce popular elections for positions of local authority 

in their constitutional system of government, the foundations of their state were initially 

organized by leaders whose positions depended on traditional clan institutions.  

A civilian mission  

 

Post-conflict political reconstruction does not utilize expensive weapons systems, and so 

it may not be a profitable priority for many defense contractors.  But it requires some investment 

in staffing units that would be ready to go anywhere in the world, to form provincial 

reconstruction teams that could support the organization of effective local governments against 

threats of violent insurgency.  The Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations in the State 

Department could be a natural institutional home for these units, as their members would need 

                                                 

7

 See Mark Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland (London: Progressio, 2008), and Mary Harper, Getting Somalia 

Wrong? (London: Zed Books, 2012). 

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the kind of deep analytical understanding of politics and government that is regularly demanded 

in diplomacy.  But they would also need a broad mix of financial, managerial, and linguistic 

skills, along with basic military training to operate in an area of conflict.

8

 

 

There are at least two reasons for suggesting that support for post-conflict reconstruction 

should be the responsibility of civilian agencies, even though its vital mission would be 

complementary to the military.  First, the armed forces need to focus on maintaining their ability 

to prevail over any adversary in any battlefield, and asking them to also prepare for political 

missions would be a distraction from their core military function.  Second, an agent whose job is 

to support political reconstruction must become proficient at recognizing dysfunctional political 

systems and intervening to repair them.  For the sake of America's civilian-led political system, it 

would be better to separate such a job from control of the world's most powerful weaponry. 

 

In the United States government, USAID also maintains a capability to support local 

public goods and services in poor countries, but its effectiveness depends on recipient 

governments being confident that they can invite USAID's assistance without fearing that its 

staff could become agents for political change.  The mission of post-conflict reconstruction 

mission is explicitly one of encouraging political change in the recipient country, and so it would 

probably be incompatible with the mission of USAID.

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Deterrence based on America's true strength  

 

The history of America's own political development clearly demonstrates our basic point 

that strong democratic governments are built on a balanced distribution of power between 

national and local leaders.

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  For over a century before America's first national presidential 

election in 1788, elected governments at the municipal and provincial levels exercised 

substantial local powers within the British Empire.  In the Revolution from 1776, Americans 

instituted an interim constitution (the Articles of Confederation) in which power was principally 

distributed to the thirteen locally elected provincial assemblies.  This decentralization of power 

admittedly created difficulties for financing the revolutionary war effort, but decentralization 

also gave the American Revolution a broadly distributed political strength that was essential to 

its ultimate success.  In 1776, every community had at least one respected leader 

− its local 

                                                 

8

 See Carter Malkasian and Gerald Meyerle, Provincial Reconstruction Teams (Strategic Studies Institute, US Army 

War College, 2009), http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB911.pdf 

9

 A reconfiguration of USAID's mission is suggested by Max Boot and Michael Miklaucic, "Reconfiguring USAID 

for State-Building," Council on Foreign Relations Policy Memorandum #57 (2016), at http://cfr.org/USAID_memo 

10

 See "Strength of American federal democracy" at http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/research/amerfed.pdf 

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assembly representative 

− who had a substantial vested interest in defending the new regime. 

 

It is sometimes argued that America's efforts at state-building have suffered from a naive 

assumption that foreigners would welcome democracy like Americans.  But we may suggest 

instead that the actual problem was a failure to recognize that people everywhere may be like 

Americans in having local political issues that are as vital to them as their national politics.  It 

might be helpful for Americans to imagine what might happen if, after some terrible disaster, a 

foreign army helped to re-establish order in America but then centralized all power in a national 

presidential government, without bothering to restore any of America's autonomous state and 

municipal governments.  Such disregard of local politics in state-building, even with benign 

intent, would surely incite local insurgencies in disaffected regions throughout the country. 

 

The suggestion here that America should develop strategies and capabilities for state-

building is not an argument for Americans to intervene wherever people might wish to have a 

more democratic government.  We have argued only that America's preparedness for military 

missions must include some capacity for post-conflict political reconstruction.  People may argue 

for investments in military capabilities without intending that these capabilities should actually 

be used, except in situations that everyone should hope to avoid.  Preparations for conflict should 

always be aimed at deterring conflict and thereby avoiding it, if at all possible. 

 

But deterrence of threats requires a credible ability to intervene with force if necessary, 

wherever the threats may be, and military planners need to worry about all aspects of a potential 

intervention.  Victory in battle accomplishes nothing if it only creates a zone of destruction and 

alienation in which the enemy can find even greater political opportunities.  So if post-conflict 

political reconstruction has been the weak part of America's strategic capabilities, then there is 

compelling reason for America to invest first in strengthening this capability.  By learning the 

lessons from recent interventions, as well as from America's own history, American military and 

diplomatic units can develop a capacity to effectively support democratic political 

reconstruction.  The result would be a stronger America and a better world. 

Roger Myerson is the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and 

a winner of the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.  See  http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/ 

The current version of this paper is available at  http://home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/postgap.pdf 

This version: Sept 1, 2016.