(CNSNews.com) - America's efforts at stabilizing failing regimes and promoting the spread of democracy would improve if an agency were created to help foster a culture of nation-building in the U.S. government itself, according to a leading foreign policy expert. Critics, however, dismiss the idea as unnecessary and an unwanted step towards creating a "colonialism" office.

The office in question was coined the "Department of Everything Else" by Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of the influential "Pentagon's New Map" books.

In an interview with Cybercast News Service , Barnett said that the proposed new department "would cover the process of getting states from failure to functioning, from instability to stability, from disconnectedness to connectedness, from war to peace, and transition them from what I have dubbed globalization's 'non-integrating gap' (where the wild things are) to its 'functioning core.'"

The idea was introduced "because Defense can't do it alone and State can't do it at all," said Barnett. "(We)need someone to cover the middle ground. ... Until we create a bureaucratic center of gravity for that role, we will continue to vastly underperform and thus attract few, if any, allies to future projects. That'll needlessly cost America lives in future interventions, just like it has for years in Iraq before the counter-insurgency strategy was finally allowed to emerge by the Bush administration."

Barnett concluded: "This problem will not be inter-agency'd away. ... It's a big enough task to warrant its own department. Until we show we're serious, no one will take us seriously."

The U.S. government already has an office committed to nearly the same purpose envisioned by Barnett. The State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) was created in August 2004 to provide readily deployable experts from the government and private sector to nations that have recently experienced a conflict.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) wrote the bill that created S/CRS. As his press secretary, Andy Fisher, told Cybercast News Service : "Senator Lugar has been an advocate for beefing-up the U.S. ability to deal with post-conflict construction and stabilization. The record over the last 20 years -- in terms of not only Afghanistan and Iraq, but Bosnia and elsewhere -- shows that we have not been well-prepared as a country for these particular missions in particularly non-military areas."

Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, Fisher could not predict for which situations S/CRS might be used in the future, but he did say it would most likely be in areas where stabilization was needed: meaning rebuilding governmental and societal institutions, as well as physical infrastructure.

Also, while there was no charter delineating under what specific circumstances S/CRS could be used, Fisher said it was possible that the office would work in states where America had not been a player in the preceding conflict.

The premise of the S/CRS, as well as its effectiveness and underlying mission, however, were criticized by the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., in a 2006 report by Andrew Logan, associate director of foreign policy studies. In an interview with Cybercast News Service , Logan said:

"S/CRS is designed to pursue the sort of wooly-headed Wilsonian goals that characterized the Clinton administration's foreign policy," he said. "This cadre of federal government employees is supposed to parachute into places like Port-au-Prince or Freetown and teach the locals how to govern. These places are sovereign countries -- not ours to run. Endorsing the premise underlying the office -- that instability in these strategic backwaters somehow matters to us -- threatens to replicate some portion of the colonial experience in the twentieth century."

Fisher called allegations of returning to colonialism "a silly accusation ...(that) runs counter to the record of U.S. involvement in world affairs over the past couple of decades."

Logan continued: "The office is most certainly in contravention of American interests and our values. It threatens to distract attention from genuine threats and concerns by making all the world's problems our own. ... In a day and age where we do face genuine threats, we should not distract ourselves with this sort of arrogant enterprise."

"The reality is that dealing appropriately with the threat from terrorism would have little to do with stabilization and reconstruction missions," he said. "Pushing forward with this office and the ideas underpinning it would make all the world's troubles our own."

"We have enough genuine problems as it is: the occupation of Iraq, the threat of terrorism, a potential Iranian bomb," said Logan. "The last thing we need to do is distract ourselves by convincing ourselves that the way people live in far-away countries is of direct relevance to our livelihood and well-being."



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