Iraq prompts U.S. Army rethink on nation-building

By Andrew Gray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Stung by failures in Iraq, the U.S. Army says it is getting serious about nation-building, overcoming reluctance in its own ranks and reflecting a big change in Bush administration policy.

Army officers prefer the term stability operations to nation-building, which became politically sensitive, but they mean much the same -- helping provide basic services and build institutions to stabilize a foreign state, often after war.

The Army has traditionally seen major combat as its main mission and was wary of the stability and peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo undertaken on the orders of the Clinton administration in the 1990s.

"The word was 'we don't do nation-building,'" Gen. George Casey, the Army's chief of staff, recalled from his time in Bosnia in the mid-1990s.

"That was so ingrained in the force," Casey said, that the Army would not let a senior U.S. diplomat, the deputy head of international peace efforts, sleep on its compound.

"We've come a long way from there with what we're doing in Baghdad," said Casey, formerly the top commander in Iraq.

U.S. forces are involved in a huge range of nation-building tasks in Iraq -- training the army and police, building roads, schools and clinics and strengthening local governments.

WAR FORCED RETHINK

It is not just the Army that has changed its outlook.

"I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building," George W. Bush said in October 2000 as he ran for president. "I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war."

But when U.S. forces failed to stabilize Iraq after easily toppling Saddam Hussein, Bush's administration decided it had to take stability operations much more seriously.

The Pentagon issued a directive in late 2005 declaring "stability operations are a core U.S. military mission."

Military officers would like more civilians -- from police officers to economists and agricultural experts -- involved in nation-building but many have concluded that will not happen any time soon and they will have to fill the gaps.

"If nobody else is there, at the end of the day, we've got to be prepared to take on some of those roles and responsibilities," said Col. Simon Wolsey, a British officer attached to U.S. Army headquarters.

Wolsey heads a unit trying push stability operations into every corner of the force. He says the Army is embracing "a radical departure from previous doctrine," and a new field manual reinforces the importance of stability operations.