Word: nationalism
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...Washington's Center for American Progress, it was clear that the agenda had grown more ambitious. There was talk of creating jobs, growing agribusiness, reforming the justice sector, promoting mobile banking, starting a media commission, fighting corruption. Holbrooke never actually used the phrase, but his program sounded suspiciously like nation-building...
...Obama Administration has indeed signed up for nation-building in Afghanistan, it hasn't told the American electorate - an omission that could bring political grief at home and strategic costs in Afghanistan. In his comments on Afghanistan to date, Obama has "never owned up to state-building, never said so," says Ashley Tellis, an Afghanistan expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "He's committed to doing something that the country has not been brought along...
Tellis agrees with Holbrooke's broad approach, but worries that the Administration hasn't adequately forewarned the U.S. public about the costs of nation-building. "It's expensive, time-consuming and requires a national commitment," he says. "Reluctance to own up to this in a transparent way could be the undoing [of the Obama strategy...
...Administration already bogged down in a health-care debate and with its hands full of domestic economic problems persuade Americans that nation-building in Afghanistan is the right thing to do? Tellis believes Obama needs to make the case that U.S. security necessitates it. "Ultimately, it's not about Afghanistan for its own sake, but as an instrument to defeat al-Qaeda, and defend the [American] homeland," he says...
...thing to ask for more time, and quite another to explain how, for instance, creating a mobile-banking network helps the fight against al-Qaeda. The benefits of nation-building programs are often indirect, and hard to measure. (Ultimately, the hope is that access to banking will make farmers less reliant on loans from drug smugglers, and so less likely to grow opium, which helps finance al-Qaeda and the Taliban.) (Read "Is the Taliban Stockpiling Opium...