The Shaky State Of Nation-Building

• The nature of international mandates. If international problem-solvers cannot agree on how a problem should be solved, trouble almost certainly follows. This lack of consensus has undermined efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq, yet we might have learned its pitfalls from Kosovo.

Michael Steiner, a former head of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, put the problem bluntly: His function was not nation-building, because the U.N. Security Council had not mandated him to give Kosovo a state. The result is that Kosovo, indeed, is not a state but a colonial U.N.-run entity -- and a poorly functioning one -- that the international community refuses to alter despite the depressing economic conditions and the growing threat of internal violence.

• The problem of legitimacy. International legitimacy for military intervention and occupation derives from a U.N. mandate. The Bush administration hoped that the operation in Iraq could be legitimate without U.N. approval. But continuing violence has further undercut the intervention's validity and has made it more difficult to prolong involvement, share burdens and sustain domestic support. Mandates come with their own burdens. During negotiations to gather support, compromises often end up, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, limiting the military operation and making post-conflict administration more difficult.

But international legitimacy -- however important -- is no substitute for local legitimacy. Without local acceptance and participation, nation-building fails. Not enough of that involvement has happened yet in Kosovo. And when the United States has sought local involvement in Iraq, it has seemed to be mainly in response to violence.

When it comes to the comprehensive remake of collapsed and defeated states, it would be best to say straightforwardly that we do not know how to build nations in faraway places. And it is hard to foresee any enthusiasm for the next candidates for takeover and large-scale nation-building -- Iran, North Korea and the Congo, although military action against the first two cannot be ruled out.

Yet, despite the sobering record, the United States and the international community do not have the luxury of ignoring unsavory or crumbling states and the threats they can spawn for us or their own people. Disregarding Afghanistan during the 1990s has shown the peril of that approach.

This should put a premium on "preventive action" -- and not simply the sort aimed at enemies. This kind of preventive action should be aimed at preventing war, not relying on it. It needs to come earlier and discourage hostilities between states, try to prevent others from descending into chaos, and steer leaders away from self-destructive, repressive practices. There are many candidates now -- particularly in central Asia, the Caucasus and Africa -- where diplomacy, economic pressure and incentives might do some good. Unfortunately, leaders of democracies have shown little dedication to preventing conflict, the disintegration of states or genocide despite all their genuflections and apologies. That is because this sort of preventive action can exact short-term political costs in exchange for vague long-term goals and unmeasurable progress.

There isn't much choice, though. We can go on voicing ambitious objectives and watching them founder, or we can be realistic about our constraints and limitations and thus escape being immobilized by them.

Morton Abramowitz, former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research and former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. Heather Hurlburt, a Michigan-based writer, wrote speeches about foreign policy for the Clinton administration and was deputy director of the International Crisis Group's Washington office.