Policy Think Tanks Re-thinking Views on Local Warlords
3 June Washington Times - Policy Think Tanks Re-thinking Views on Local Warlords by David Sands.
Quote:
Warlords may be getting a bad rap.
Amid a furor over suspected U.S. payments to local militia leaders battling Islamists in Somalia, some policy analysts are arguing that not all warlords are created equal, and some may even be vital in advancing U.S. foreign policy goals.
John C. Hulsman, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation, and Alexis Y. Debat, a senior fellow at the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute, go even farther, saying some of America's most glaring recent policy reverses can be blamed in part on the failure to work with local warlords.
"When looked at in the glare of reality, America's state-building record in the post-Cold War era is dreadful because of our reflexive antipathy for warlords and our unwillingness to co-opt them," they write in an essay for the journal "The National Interest," to be published next week...
