Lip Service, Public Service and the General Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Latest gossip in DC wonkdom is that Major General (USA ret.)  William Nash is going to be the next head of the State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Stabilization and Reconstruction (S-CRS) .  This is the vital-but budget-starved creation of Senate legislation proposed by Sens.  Lugar and Biden two years ago.  General Nash will supposedly replace Carlos Pascual, who is leaving government for the Brookings Institution after valiantly representing the new office during its start up phase.  He doubtless shares our collective disappointment over Congress' stunning unwillingness to fund the office, made even more gob-stopping by all the lip-service on Capitol Hill about the need to relieve our armed forces and/or develop an exit strategy for Iraq.

The mission of S-CRS  is to lead, coordinate, and institutionalize U.S. Government civilian capacity to prevent or prepare for post-conflict situations, and to help stabilize and reconstruct societies in transition from conflict or civil strife so they can reach a sustainable path toward peace, democracy and a market economy.     This office is small in government terms --but is symbolically huge.  It represents the nexus between Cold War security priorities (military dominance) and post 9/11 security imperatives (prevention and persuasion).  Indeed, its task is to make prevention operational.  This will require a compelling story and the intellectual jujitsu to be able to take the post-conflict experiences of Iraq and translate them into a far thinking strategy of prevention--our only real chance to win the terrorism fight in the long run.

Enter General Nash.

If anyone can kick some booty on Capitol Hill to open some minds about new security priorities (and shake loose some funding in the process) it is General Nash. He has extensive experience in peacekeeping operations,  both as a military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina and as a civilian administrator for the United Nations in Kosovo.   General Nash is presently head of the Conflict Prevention program at the Council on Foreign Relations.    His military background is a perfect left-right combo for Congress:  34 years as a soldier AND sympathetic to the UN.  His life experience will allow him to bypass the rhetoric and generalities about "supporting the troops" that make it easy for a Member to say one thing about the need for peacebuilding capacity but then vote in the opposite direction (like Members who acknowledge that we need a new division of labor in security policy, but then refuse to shift funding to pay for it)  Here's his latest Congressional testimony

Now that more and more Members are on the record about the need to relieve our soldiers, maybe General Nash can turn some of that lip service into real public service and persuade Congress to take a step in the direction that will benefit all of us.

Let's hope that this is one piece of gossip that comes true.