Ambassador James Dobbins is currently director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation. Previously, he served as assistant secretary of state for Europe; special assistant to the president for the Western Hemisphere; special advisor to the president and secretary of state for the Balkans; ambassador to the European Community; the Clinton Administration's special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo; the George W. Bush Administration's first special envoy for Afghanistan; and the Bush Administration's representative to the Afghan opposition in the wake of September 11, 2001. Dobbins gave a copy of the recently completed RAND History of Nation-Building to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer (newly-appointed head of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority) shortly after the US intervention in Iraq. The study suggested that a force on the order of 400,000 to 500,000 troops would be required to provide for public security during stabilization operations in Iraq. Bremer used these figures to argue with the administration for additional military manpower, but to no avail. In this interview, Dobbins describes his meeting Lieutenant General (Ret.) Jay Garner, leader of the Organization of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, and the early-on competing concepts for Iraqi governance - "a formal American occupation of some substantial duration before sovereignty" versus "a rapid transfer to a non-elected Iraqi government more akin to what occurred in Afghanistan." Dobbins goes on to share his thoughtful and insightful views on post-conflict Iraq; reconstruction; the disbanding of the Iraqi Army; disarmament, demobilization and reintegration; training Iraqi forces; US miscalculations and his theory of "calculated ignorance;" the rise of the insurgency; the US responsibility for Iraqi safety; and the role of Iraq's neighbors, namely Syria, Jordan and Iran.

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