WASHINGTON — While the U.S. is known for its decentralized government and separation of power among its states, American military forces tend to install more centralized governmental systems when overthrowing undemocratic regimes in wartime.
Retired Lt. Col. Conrad Crane, a military historian, recalled attending a conference at Dickinson College a few years ago. There an Afghanistan historian and author made an observation that stuck with Crane.
“The U.S. has the most successful example of federalized government ever devised,” Crane remembered the historian saying. “But when they go into Iraq or Afghanistan, they always want to create a centralized state. A federally decentralized government would have made more sense.”
Crane noted that a less centralized system would have short-changed the Sunnis in Afghanistan, who are oil-poor. Still, he said the historian’s observation had merit.
“It was an interesting spin — our own history and development contrasted with the system we were trying to create,” Crane said. “We seem reluctant to set up governments that look like ours. We go to a parliamentary system.”
Col. Robert Cassidy, a professor at the Naval War College, has served on several operational deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Most recently he served on a yearlong stint in Afghanistan that ended June 2011.
“There was a debate between centralized and decentralized,” Cassidy said of Afghanistan’s government. “Afghanistan wanted decentralized. But the western sponsors insisted that they go with centralized.”
The overly centralized Afghan government imposed its will on peripheral provinces. That catalyzed grievances on the periphery, which in turn contributed to the resurgence of the Taliban, Cassidy said.
“For Afghanistan, there was a perception that, because of years of warlords, they wanted centralized government,” Cassidy said. “If we could have rewound the clock, more balance between the center and periphery would have been better.”
Further rewinding would have shown that from 1880 to 1973 — years the country was largely at peace — Afghanistan’s central government took a more laissez faire approach.
Then, in 1973, King Zahir Shah was overthrown in a coup staged by Daoud Khan, who tried to impose changes that were too rapid for the Afghans, Cassidy said. It served as an impetus for years of tumult and conflict between warlord factions and the Taliban.
“Not a lot of people in the U.S. government knew much about Afghanistan before we went in,” Cassidy said.
U.S. defense policy in Iraq, however, is less excusable, Cassidy said.
“It was so poorly done and with such ignorance at the top in Iraq that I’m not sure what informed their approach, but certainly it was centralized,” said Cassidy, who was in Iraq during America’s first tour. “Nobody understood what they did.”
Crane, chief of historical services and support at the Army Heritage and Education Center, said installing parliamentary systems abroad is a tradition that started long before the turmoil in the Middle East.
“If you look at what we did in Germany and Japan, we set up parliamentary systems in both cases,” Crane said of U.S. foreign policy during World War II. “That came out OK. Korea is more modeled on our system.”
In all three of those examples, the democracies have remained solid, Crane said. But Crane noted that in all three cases, patience was key.
“It’s not one size fits all,” Crane said. “They worked because we had a long-term commitment to make them work. We didn’t just stay for 10 years and leave. It takes a long time for these systems to develop. That just seems to be the reality of these things.”
Cassidy added that patience allows for parliamentary governments to evolve over time.
“It takes a patient and prudent head of state of Afghanistan to give power to provinces and districts,” Cassidy said. “That’s the hope for the future.”
