James Madison - Greatest COIN leader in History

[Bob's World]

We Americans do tend to have a rather odd concept of our Constitution as a sort of magical document where Madison and the Founding Fathers somehow glimpsed a template of Good Government in the ether and then brought it back to America for enshrinement in perpetuity. A whole legal ethos in the U.S. - originalism - appears to be based on this concept.

As John Grenier points out, the Constitution is a document of its time, built out of the political compromises necessary to pull many very different interests and entities together. These compromises failed in the long term - the result was a massive civil war that nearly resulted in the breakup of the country. A long period of civil unrest followed that saw many state-level insurgencies where the losers of the civil war managed to reassert political control at the local level through a campaign of bloody violence abetted by corrupted/infiltrated security forces and sectarian militias. Peace was largely restored because these insurgencies achieved victory at that level.

So while the Constitution was not exactly a failure, I would hardly call it an unmitigated success.

So yes, the US was forged from insurgency, and tempered in civil war. We are the oldest enduring republic. It is the unique blend of compormises and protections that make our documents strong. Other countries and populaces have unique issues that divide and concern them. I would never argue that everyone must be like us; only that what we did worked, and that their is value in understanding WHY it worked and to capture those same components in their documents as well.

The Afghan constitution was not designed to preserve rights, it was designed to prevent warlords. As such it created a national ponzi scheme of leadership and patronage that robs the government of local legitimacy and robs the locals of their wealth, while literally Billions of dollars are sent to banks in Dubai by Afghan officials. Maybe it was the right constitition for its time, but now it is arguably the root of the current insurgency.

[slapout9]

As such it created a national ponzi scheme of leadership and patronage that robs the government of local legitimacy and robs the locals of their wealth, while literally Billions of dollars are sent to banks in Dubai by Afghan officials.

Got confused there for a minute, thought you were talking about America and not Afghanistan.

[Dayuhan]

The Afghan constitution was not designed to preserve rights, it was designed to prevent warlords. As such it created a national ponzi scheme of leadership and patronage that robs the government of local legitimacy and robs the locals of their wealth, while literally Billions of dollars are sent to banks in Dubai by Afghan officials. Maybe it was the right constitition for its time, but now it is arguably the root of the current insurgency.

Was the system of patronage and privilege created by the constitution, or did it exist prior to the constitution? I suspect that documents reflect the pre-exisiting values and norms of a society as much as they shape those values and norms. There is no system that cannot be corrupted.

[Rex Brynen]

I'm not at all convinced that the Afghan constitution is at the root of the current insurgency.

Certainly, aspects of it—especially regarding the centralization of power—aren't helpful, but the failing is more one of leadership (at a variety of levels) than the legal structure of power.

[Ken White]

a not unique but very strongly embraced culture of independence and non-cooperation due to the geography...

[Entropy]

I'm not at all convinced that the Afghan constitution is at the root of the current insurgency.

Certainly, aspects of it—especially regarding the centralization of power—aren't helpful, but the failing is more one of leadership (at a variety of levels) than the legal structure of power.

I agree but still say it's a pretty big factor. As I've said many times now, Afghanistan isn't merely an insurgency - it's still in a civil war. And the Taliban aren't merely insurgents - they are the former power looking to regain what they once had.

Still, the over-centralization of Afghan governance causes all sorts of problems and prevents solutions and accommodations that could be made at the local level from occurring.

[Rex Brynen]

I agree but still say it's a pretty big factor. As I've said many times now, Afghanistan isn't merely an insurgency - it's still in a civil war. And the Taliban aren't merely insurgents - they are the former power looking to regain what they once had.

I certainly agree that it is a civil war--as was Iraq for a time too.

However, the Afghan constitution per se has lots of wiggle room if the national leadership wanted to use Chapter 8 (especially Articles 2-3) creatively to devolve power and coopt local elements. That it doesn't do so is a function of both leadership choice and the (preexisting) social-political distribution of power.

Moreover, it is entirely possible for centralized administrations with centralizing constitutions to effectively coopt into the periphery in a decentralizing way--Morocco would be a case in point. The problem with Afghan patron-client structures may not be that they exist, but that they exist in such an inefficient, corrupt, and predatory manner.

As I've argued elsewhere, I don't think the development/peacebuilding/stabilization/COIN crowd has a good handle on this:

...conceptually, the peacebuilding and reconstruction community has largely failed to deal with this, and that as a consequence there is a current and potentially growing disconnect in both theory and practice. How is it that patronage politics can be limited, contained, channeled, or attenuated in ways that create maximum benefits in terms of stability and legitimization, and the least damage in terms of corruption, inefficiency, inequality, and delegitimization? How is it that we encourage countries emerging from conflict to look more like Jordan and less like Yemen—both places where neopatrimonialism has played a key role in domestic politics, but with strikingly different developmental and institutional outcomes?

[Entropy]

Yes! My sense is that the powerbrokers view the government (almost wholly funded by the US) not as an instrument of governance, but as a vehicle to further their own factional interest. If that is the case, then it's no surprise that those parts of the constitution which favor devolved power remain anemic, while those that provide centralized control of largely foreign resources prosper. The constitution abets this process though by specifically favoring centralization.

[Bob's World]

Bad governmental frameworks promote the type of bad behavior that leads to perceptions of Poor Governance; Good governmental frameworks promote the type of behavior that leads to perceptions of Good Governance.

Madison was the driving force in ensuring that the US framework was designed to promote Good Governance perceptions. THAT is great COIN. Military efforts to deal with insurgency merely dealing with the mess after government has failed in a primary function of serving its populace in a manner that promotes perceptions of Legitimacy, Justice, Respect and Hope.

The key is not to mimic the US constitution, but rather to understand why it works and to mold appropriate constructs to produce similar effects when developing constitutions elsewhere. Every culture is unique, and different things will contribute to these universal perceptions accordingly.