IGNATIUS: The lesson from Yemen
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What’s the lesson of this case study of America’s frustrated hopes for stability? I can offer a well-researched answer by analysts at the Rand Corp. Simply put, their conclusion is that the U.S. strategy of security assistance doesn’t seem to work in the frail Arab states that need it most.
These distressing findings appear in a recent report for the Army, titled “Assessing Security Cooperation as a Preventive Tool.” Analyzing data from 107 countries from 1991 to 2008, Rand found that security assistance, a la Yemen, “was not correlated with reduction in fragility in states that were already experiencing extremely high fragility.” Such help “is not sufficient to stave off instability,” because weak states can’t absorb the aid, Rand found. That problem was especially pronounced in the Middle East and Africa.
The best results, the Rand experts noted, came from “non-materiel aid, such as education, law enforcement and counternarcotics.” Rand explained that this finding “supports the general idea that investment in human capital has large payoffs.”
So that’s the painful takeaway from this latest Middle East reversal. Arming weak states such as Yemen doesn’t make them stronger. This is a long war where the best weapons may be books and judges.
http://www.theleafchronicle.com/story/opinion/columnists/2015/01/28/ignatius-lesson-yemen/22436251/
