Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
Agree that nation building and state building are poor shorthand. What we are really trying[/U] to do is assist a state in achieving some mutually agreed upon goal(s).
True, but our assistance generally takes the form of large quantities of money and material, which is seen as desirable, and advice, which is often seen as not desirable. This creates a powerful incentive to nominally "agree" to goals that a party may have no desire or intention to pursue, assuming they can us the money and the material to their own ends while ignoring the advice.

We need to be careful about the incentives we set up. If it becomes clear that we are going to shower funds on whoever agrees with our goals, we can expect a whole raft of people announcing solemnly that they share our goals. A bit of cynicism may be called for in assessing such claims.