Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
Second, what is the military tradition of the country? If there is an indigenous military tradition, how does one best exploit it to meet the threat and achieve the objective?
This point underscores a problem that we all too often dodge around: in many cases the "indigenous military tradition" in the environments where we're trying to build military/police forces is that the guy with the gun gets to do whatever he wants and the whole point of a military/police position is the ability to use it for personal/family/clan/faction advantage - up to and including taking over the country. Trying to counter that sort of tradition is a major challenge. Of course people will sit through our lectures about civilian supremacy, human rights, and military/civil relations, and of course they will nod their heads and recite the mantras at every full stop - if that's a prerequisite for getting the hardware. What they do when they're out on their own is likely to be another story altogether.

Not saying I have a solution, but the problem deserves more attention.