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Chapter 5 critiques the weaknesses of the mainstream democratic reconstruction model (DRM) for international peacebuilding, as well as alternatives such as institutionalization before liberalization (IBL) and the light footprint (LF). Though each has its merits, the DRM has proven too complex to implement, politically insensitive, and too costly to be sustained. IBL risks aiding authoritarian elements and fails to acknowledge the limited staying power of international actors, and the LF commits insufficient international staff and financial resources for developing indigenous capacities. Learning from Afghanistan and the interventions discussed in Chapter 2, a new “democratic peacebuilding” approach is needed to address these shortcomings in responding to violent crises. It is guided by three intertwined principles that inform a comprehensive strategy: (a) assessing preexisting local conceptions of authority and the degree to which they diverge from democratic legal authority; (b) putting locals in leadership roles and invest seriously in local human and institutional capacity from the outset and over the long-term; and (c) favoring multilateral approaches through the UN that ensure political neutrality, technical competence, cultural sensitivity, and long-term burden-sharing.

The fading of the U.S. security guarantee led to an increase in violence throughout the energy market states. The host states became vulnerable to military challenges by their rivals and began initiating conflicts to eliminate their internal and external rivals immediately, before the time when they would lose American support entirely. However, because the U.S. was now adopting a strategy where it worked with local partners to protect its energy interests rather than working with host governments, these efforts often escalated into larger, longer, and more deadly international conflicts. To illustrate this dynamic, the chapter examines the conflicts in Yemen and Syria. The chapter concludes by arguing that this escalation indicates that many of the host states once allied with the U.S. now seem to doubt the value of the security guarantee, leading them to seek alternative security arrangements.

This chapter argues that the strain of the war created a risk that the U.S. would scale back its security guarantees to the hosts of the energy market. Instead, the U.S. would rely on non-state actors within the hosts’ territory, which would ultimately undermine the hosts’ territorial sovereignty. The threat that the U.S. would adopt this alternative strategy ultimately compelled several of the host states into actively fighting their terrorists, before they lost all American support. While this solved the moral hazard problem, it also created a negative consequence for the U.S., in that it weakened the strategic credibility of the American security guarantee. This in turn led host states to question whether or not they should continue to cooperate with the U.S. in maintaining the petrodollar system.