Jennifer Widner, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, said the United States must alter its fundamental approach in order to achieve successful reconstruction in Iraq.

At a discussion hosted by The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, Widner explained that because Iraq is such a volatile environment, consistency is essential. Solely introducing democracy to the society will not suffice, she said.

"The level of democracy doesn't seem to make much difference," Widner said. "What does make a bit of a difference ... is the proportion of people who have a high school education."

Carlos Pascual, former director of the State Department's Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization and current vice president of Brookings' Foreign Policy Studies, said overcoming instability in Iraq is important for preventing the spread of international terrorism and organized crime.

"Those kinds of threats are direct threats that we can feel in the United States," Pascual said. "We have to think about things differently."

Drawing on his experience as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine between 2000 and 2003, during the country's transition from authoritarianism to democracy, Pascual outlined several key points about achieving stabilization and reconstruction in Iraq.

The United States' efforts must serve as a starting point by which to control the root of internal conflict, establish order and facilitate the transition to local ownership, Pascual said.

This step is critical, he explained, because it ensures that a country such as Iraq does not revert to its former state. In fact, research has demonstrated that 43 percent of reconstructed states lapse back into conflict within five years, he said.

Pascual said the current, transitional phase of the reconstruction of Iraq is undergoing several problems that need to be addressed promptly.

Transitional security, which is fundamental to establishing peace, suffers from major security gaps, he said.

"As a result of that, they've lost that critical monopoly on the use of force," he said. "Once you lose that monopoly ... it is extremely difficult to gain it back ... and hence we have to be sensitive to those gaps in transitional security."

Transitioning to local governance has been another challenging area in reconstruction efforts because it has been difficult to impose peace on Iraq, Pascual said.

"The U.S. military and international forces can create an environment to transition to local governance, but without a firm local government to actually have a credible posture within that society, it will be difficult ... to actually impose peace," he said. "Eventually, in Iraq, we have to get a local government, which is credible."

After the transitional phase, ensuring that the controlling regime is transparent and decentralized is essential to completing reconstruction, Pascual said. If these two steps cannot be guaranteed, he warned, Iraq again runs the risk of lapsing back into conflict. As a result, the United States will not be able to devise an effective exit strategy because the transfer of military leadership to civilian leadership will have failed, he explained.

Finally, Pascual emphasized the importance of maintaining a U.S. capacity to engage in stabilization and reconstruction throughout the entirety of the process.

He suggested integrating civilian and military parts of the Iraqi government to develop the United States' strategy and to bring in critical skills, such as police training.

"This is a radical transformation and it is not going to happen in a short period of time. You can't impose it because you're fundamentally changing people's lives," Pascual said. "It's going to require a period of sticking with that process of transition and supporting that transition, as you get indigenous groups beginning to believe in that process of transformation."

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