Modernization by any other name ...
Yep, same idea, different forum.
"Moreover, it has been affirmed that existing occupation law does not sufficiently take into account the development of human rights law and the advent of the principle of self-determination."
Self-determination is rapidly eroding Westphalian sovereignty. A country can no longer do what is required with its citizens in order to secure stability and the common good. The individual trumps the collective in Western legal thought. It is just too bad for the rest of the world that they look at things the other way around.
On a separate but related note, I did get a kick out of reading that:
“Under occupation law, the occupying power does not acquire sovereignty over the occupied territory and is required to respect the existing laws and institutions of the occupied territory as far as possible.” … NOT!
We wrote Japan’s Constitution and the Soviets revamped Eastern Europe into little communist clones. Neither Germany nor Italy were allowed to remain Fascist states. You occupy a country for a reason. In the old days it was to secure resources or gain concessions. Nowadays it is also to make institutional changes that are appealing to the occupier.
An excerpt from something I am working on...
This is something I have been working on. More meaty than the other articles on modernization.
This is an excerpt, so to set the stage, I am discussing cultural values and their relationship to political preference. Schwartz created the theory of universal human values. What is important is at the end - Schwartz indepently confirms Ingelhart and Welzel's work on values and democratization:
Another researcher to find a connection between values and political preference was Shalmon Shwartz. Most well known for his Theory of Universal Human Values and the Schwartz Value Survey he has recently expanded his research into collective value systems. Schwartz identified ten universal values. Applying these to development and democratization he noticed a connection between certain values and democratization. Schwartz continued his work on values by examining collective value sets and systems. He identified seven collective values that are cross-cultural. These seven could be organized into three continuums; Autonomy versus Embeddedness, Egalitarianism versus Hierarchy, and Harmony versus Mastery. The two dimensions that had the stongest connection with political preference were the Autonomy/Embeddedness and Egalitarian/Hierarchy dimensions.
The Autonomy/Embeddedness dimension is similar to Hofstede’s IC dimension and overlaps with Inglehart’s secular-rational values. In cultures that are autonomous people express “their own preferences, feelings, ideas, and abilities, and find meaning in their own uniqueness.” In contrast in countries which emphasis Embeddedness “[m]eaning in life comes largely through social relationships, through identifying with the group, participating in its shared way of life, and striving towards its shared goals.” Schwartz’s Egalitarianism/Hierarchy dimension is similar to Hofsteade’s P/D dimension. People in Egalitarian cultures seek to “recognize one another as moral equals” where Hierarchical cultures accept inequity and an unequal distribution of power and property as desirable and “ascribe roles to insure responsible, productive behavior.” Schwartz’s Egalitarianism/Hierarchy dimension also overlaps with Ingelhart’s secular/rational values but to a much lesser amount. It appears that Ingelhart’s values are a combination of the both Hofstede’s and Schwartz’s dimensions.
In his analysis of the connection between his cultural values and political preferences Scwhartz also noted a connection between Autonomy and Egalitarianism and political preference. Using Freedom House statistics he noted a high correlation between a country’s civil liberties and autonomy and egalitarianism. This is to be expected. But what Schwartz also found was a causal relationship between socioeconomic development, values, and democratization. Using a different value set Scwhartz was able to confirm Welzel and Inglehart’s proposition that socioeconomic development led to a change in values that resulted in a greater likelihood of democratization. It also helped disproved the idea that democratic institutions created values that supported liberal democratic institutions. “The current analysis further demonstrates that the prior level of democracy has not impact on cultural values, once development is controlled.” Socioeconomic development has an effect on values but the existence of democratic institutions does not.
I can't believe how much I am learning
....from each and every comment. :cool:
More papers for discussion:
Quote:
All three groups—airpower theorists, adherents of the French Revolutionary War School, and the proponents of the new U.S. COIN doctrine—inverted the way military forces had traditionally fought wars. The first actions in wars fought between nation-states normally involved large battles between the military forces ofthe opposing sides. Depending on the nature of the war, at some point as the war progressed the civilian population might to some degree become involved in the fighting. But the airpower and counterinsurgency theorists reversed this process so that the first step in war would be to involve the people. For the airpower theorists, involvement would mean bombing them from the sky. For the counterinsurgency theorists,involvement would be securing thepopulation with military force in order to get at the insurgents. After this involvement between the people and the military, in either of the two cases, military forces might be engaged along the lines of more traditional warfare.
The Selective Use Of History In The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine, Army History 2009, Gian P. Gentile.
I know I've screwed up the formatting in the above post but I don't have time to fix it now. I'll do it later.
More, there is always more....
....and sometimes you have to stop reading and synthesizing.
My synthesis would be along the lines of this: the narratives and histories we created about the Cold War periphery countries (in this case, South Asia) were incomplete. We attemped a historical re-do of the 90s in the 00s in our attempt to gain a strategic endstate that kept shifting in some sense.
Another potentially useful publication:
Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response, Steven Metz and Raymond Millen
(I never list references properly. It's me and that whole "word" borderline dyslexia thing. I just don't like writing.)
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute....cfm?pubID=586
I don't believe we quite abandoned Afghanistan....
@ Curmudgeon,
This is in response to a comment of yours above and I will flesh my thoughts out a bit later:
Quote:
I thought about this while reading a commentary in Army History (by Gian Gentile). I think we have a selective history of that region and it affected us in the 00s in terms of our military and foreign policy strategies. We forgot our own history there, it was selective and we interpreted it completely through the lens of our battle with the Soviet Union, and our confused thoughts about non Western countries and post WWII colonialism/neocolonialism.
It was the correct way to view our European security theater but not the correct lens with which to view the AfPak theater.
You see, the fomenting of insurgency, and our contributions and our allies contributions to it, licit and illicit both, caused a problem. And instead of going back to first principles, we focused on the Taliban insurgency without thinking it through.
I don't know. I change my mind sometimes.
Anyway, the problems all started with this bit of conventional wisdom: "we abandoned Afghanistan and look what happened."
Uh, no. We were there on and off. I can see why people don't like to talk about it, though.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/ame...flunks-sun-tzu
Phylosophization of the situation...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheCurmudgeon
We left Afghanistan alone the first time and ended up with 2800 dead American's in New York. We could leave Iran alone ... not sure that would work out for us either.
The reality is that we meddle in the affairs of other countries all the time. That is why we have the Instruments of National Power (DIME). At least since 1945 and well into the foreseeable future we try to mold the actions of other countries to meet our desires.
I would say there is nothing wrong with that. My reference to the Prime Directive was less to pursuit of national interests than to non-interference in the manners of others. That is to say, there is nothing wrong with enforcing our interests and demanding acceptance of our goals. The wrong-headedness comes in when we decide that we are so fed up with our opponents that we will try to change them. By way of analogy - imprisoning a murderer vs. rehabilitating him and releasing him back in the hope he is reformed and useful. We can't seem to help ourselves from slipping from enforcement to rehabilitation. But just as with murderers, no one seems to know exactly how rehabilitation works or how long it takes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheCurmudgeon
If it is our policy to promote democracy (which it was the last time I looked)... Democracy will not always yield a liberal political system which is really what the policymakers are talking about when they refer to a democracy.
This is where there is a real ideological divide between us all. Those that see export of democracy as imperative, those that see export of liberal political systems as imperative, and those that seek neither. The true tension of the discussion is with which of these ideologies rests the burden of proof. Do the exporters have to prove to the non-intereference crowd that it should be done? Or do the non-intereference crowd prove to the exporters that it shouldn't? and so on. Note that I call all three ideologies.
Since we haven't been in the business of annexing territory in about 65 years or so, and we don't like to extend the privilige of being an American to just anyone, but at the same time we are obsessed with everyone seeing us as primus inter pares as some sort of ideal, we have ourselves a bit of conundrum. If we are to be among equals, all others must be made in our image. Yet if we do not convert them through annexation by fusing their socio-economic systems to our own, we must convert them through ideology. So we go forth, democratizing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheCurmudgeon
I would argue that what Russia, China, and Japan did were all success of a kind. Russia when from a weak empire to one of the world's superpowers; China is an economic powerhouse; and Japan went from an island nation to controlling most of the Pacific. This kind of thing happens. The question is why did it work for them?
The thing to remember with all three cases is the huge human toll. There is more than an ounce of discomfort with the proposition that these countries did much of anything worth emulating. Russia killed between 30 and 50 million people between 1905 and 1953 (not counting the 25-30 million from WWII). In that time the country went from looking like it was stuck in 1600’s to mid-20th century. That upheaval is titanic. China lost ungodly millions, again, apart from the benevolent Japanese occupation. And the Japanese, after upending their entire society, wound up killing and losing millions in endless wars of expansion as they sought to feed the economic machines they were modernizing with.
I do think that a lot of these issues result more from the intellectual challenge of reflection, compared with the intellectual ease of theorizing to personal satisfaction. Every human in history is subject to this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheCurmudgeon
socioeconomic development led to a change in values that resulted in a greater likelihood of democratization. It also helped disproved the idea that democratic institutions created values that supported liberal democratic institutions.
When they say “socioeconomic” to what extent to they distinguish it from cultural change. It seems that is the logical implication of this finding.
Not sure where to go next ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dayuhan
The values and the cultural systems do not appear out of the void and they aren't presented on a platter by a foreign power. They have to grow from the inside. A "strong government" that suppresses that growth and imposes order at the expense of stability leaves those capacities underdeveloped, and they have to catch up. It's often a messy process.
Agreed ... and I have not real wisdom to add. These things are internal and take time. You could impose another "strong government" in order to preserve stability with the aim that it will, in a series of stages, cede power back to the people, but any single nation should not be the proponent of that solution. Something similar to what Bill Moore was talking about (http://www.icrc.org/eng/war-and-law/...occupation.htm) .
The real world problem with that idea is that at least two members of the Security Council do not share the vision of popular sovereignty that the other members do. They are fine with the idea that the government can do whatever it needs to do with its population to keep order. Not sure they would back a plan that creates more countries that adhere to the idea of popular sovereignty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dayuhan
The emergence of nations has typically been a messy process. The US fought an epic civil war, conducted one of history's great genocides, and fought wars of expansion against the Spanish, the Mexicans, and the Filipinos. The ever so civilized Europeans bashed the stuffing out of each other and anyone else they could get their hands on for centuries before exhausting themselves to the point where they had no recourse but to proudly embrace pacifism. Why would we expect Asians, Africans, or Latin Americans to be any different?
Agreed. This goes even deeper into the idea of whether the Western version of a Nation is or should be exportable. While I lean toward the idea that it is universal I am not set on that assessment.
Again I return to the question from a Soldier's perspective. What are the politicians, in response to public outcry, going to expect us to do in failed or failing states or in response to genocide or other war crimes? If we do intervene, do we just stop the carnage and withdraw? If not, what are the realistic options?
In another article someone proposed the idea that Green Beret, in addition to FID, be capable of teaching basic economics to villagers, so I don't think I am being facetious when I toss these ideas out for comment.