US intelligence services are drawing up a secret watch-list of 25 countries in which instability might lead to US intervention, according to officials in charge of a new office set up to co-ordinate planning for nation-building and conflict prevention.
The list will be composed and revised every six months by the National Intelligence Council, which collates intelligence for strategic planning, according to Carlos Pascual, head of the newly formed office of reconstruction and stabilisation.
The new State Department office amounts to recognition by the Bush administration that it needs to get better at nation-building, a concept it once scorned as social work disguised as foreign policy, following its failures in Iraq.
But advisers say its small budget $17m requested from Congress this year and $124m in fiscal 2006 reflects a lack of commitment. They say the administration remains divided about the merits of nation-building and the international institutions that do it.
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