Support not only financial but also military

Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Timor-Leste, Sudan post-cold war was marked by the increasing humanitarian, military, peace under UN flag operations or other actors with the aim the reconstruction of nations or consolidation, or even building, States in the low countries in the world. What Americans refer today the concept of "nation building".

According to the think tank Rand, there was an attempt to almost every two years for the reconstruction of States over the past 20 years. Each attempt, each country is of course very different cases. Advanced motivation, humanitarian relief after a disaster to the overthrow of a regime suspected, rightly, sometimes wrongly, to pose a threat to international security, are far removed from each other.

But this activity is a common point: it costs in the budgets of the major powers. Can be maintained at this rate in crisis If the budget of the United Nations peace-keeping operations amounted to approximately some 8 billion per year, expenses of wars and Iraq reconstruction efforts and in Afghanistan exceed since 2001 more than 1,000 billion dollars incurred by the United States only.

What is high to very mixed results and the duration of attempts at recovery of States. Somalia is one of the examples of the lack of success of these operations. In early may, Islamist rebels have captured a hideout for pirates, the port of Harardere. What may appear secondary to the great manoeuvres in the Middle East and Central Asia or in other countries in Africa. But the major powers fear that countries in the Horn of Africa to become an African of the Afghanistan under the Taliban version if the Transitional Government is not able to impose himself.

Since 1991 fourteen attempts to establish a Government functioning in Mogadishu have failed, including one led by President Clinton. Operation "Restore hope" is often considered the first intervention on behalf of the right of humanitarian intervention.

In Afghanistan, nine years after the American military intervention, the institutions - police, army, justice - are able to operate without external support. While American troops and with them most of the foreign forces are preparing for the year next to initiate a withdrawal, "some, said a Western diplomat, think that after we left the Taliban are back 15 days after."

Iraq the Iraqi army on this head shape better than the Afghan regular army, but the situation is not stabilized. This, seven years after the beginning of the invasion the US and Britain of this country.

For the major powers, the reconstruction of States is yet not a new thing. The US had already participated at the beginning of the 20th century, after the Spanish-American war of 1898, to the creation of institutions in Cuba. Close the Germany and the Japan in the aftermath of the second world war are in the eyes of the Americans the two great achievements of "nation building" ever undertaken.

But in the first case, it was to replace the former colonial power. In the last two cases, it was more likely to restore State, driving course bureaucracies, but who had survived to Nazism, the military regime and the war. And this was not intended to create institutions as might be the case in Somalia, Afghanistan, or even in Iraq, after the decision of President Bush to dissolve the army, backbone of the institutional life of the country.

Another example, the reconstruction of a country like Haiti is one of the major questions. The earthquake of January 12, as pointed out recently the Haitian Ambassador to France Fritzner Gaspard before a parterre of entrepreneurs gathered in Paris at the Medef, has shattered all the efforts of previous years. And the island must ensure to its reconstruction and the Refoundation of a State with external support. Support not only financial but also military. Because for the moment the security always depends on the mission of the United Nations stabilization in Haiti (Minustah), strong in addition 7,000 soldiers, 2,000 police over 2,000 civil.

Haiti has certainly been victim of a natural phenomenon, but this is not the sole cause of his difficulties. They are also the weakness of his State. As elsewhere, their resolution through the creation of institutions capable of ensuring order and public services. The objective is to move from a culture of reaction to crises, conflicts and natural disasters in the prevention to make it a pillar of the international system, as envisaged in 1945 the founders of the United Nations. But it is far, far, away from these principles. And the crisis, which forced the great powers to deal with rising unemployment and a certain nationalism, might make this objective even more complicated.