The Other Side of the Mountain

[Dayuhan]

I could see Africa growing in stability if they could work toward a similar path, where they could develop a few broad confederations that could someday evolve into large, powerful and stable nations, or something similar to that that makes sense in their cultures. One such structure could be a Caliphate. We should become the champion of such a concept, not the obstacle to.

I suspect that Africans, like Europeans, are going to have to spend a whole lot of years killing each other before EU-like structures come on the table. Not something likely to happen any time soon, and if we try to promote the idea it's likely to set it back further: anything we support will be seen as an exploitive device designed to further our interests. It would have to come from the inside, and as I said I wouldn't expect it any time soon. As Omar has told us, the Caliphate is a dead parrot.

As failed states go, inability to live up to Westphalian constructs seems a fairly minor issue. A place where starvation and disease are rampant and where the populace can't go about their business without being shot, raped, robbed, or having their children dragged off to be soldiers (or worse) has unquestionably failed. It may not be a failed "state" per se, but it's a failed something.

I don't honestly see a great deal we can do about it. Trying to alleviate the worst catastrophes with targeted relief aid, yes. Trying to improve development aid to the point where it actually accomplishes something... difficult but worth a try. Trying to obstruct absolute aggression and genocide, yes. Targeting groups and individuals who are directly targeting us and our interests, yes. These are things we can and should do, but none of them are really going to change the picture. That has to come from the inside, and our role in cultivating it has to be minimal. Any direction that we support and promote is, by virtue of the colonial legacy and the perception of American imperialism, immediately de-legitimized.

[Bob's World]

Soooo, snipe at the symptoms, but ignore the problems?

I have to go with Henry David Thoreau on this one:

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

I choose to hack at the root.

[Dayuhan]

Soooo, snipe at the symptoms, but ignore the problems?

Not ignore the problems, accept that they are not our problems to solve and that we've neither the responsibility nor the right to impose ourselves and our "solutions" on those involved.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Not ignore the problems, accept that they are not our problems to solve and that we've neither the responsibility nor the right to impose ourselves and our "solutions" on those involved.

While that solution has a certain elegance reality is that we have made it our problem. Call it "the best defense is a good offense" or simply a prophylactic approach to instability/terrorism, we have decided that it is better to expend a little blood and treasure now than have to deal with the consequences latter.

Taking that as a given, I think it better to do it with some understanding of the social/cultural systems we are screwing with rather than to simply continue to tinker with them, assuming everyone wants to be just like us without analyzing what it is they actually want or even what it is about us they may have any desire for. When things don't work out we blame them for being "too corrupt" without understanding why corruption "works" in their society. We say they don't understand, they have no loyalty, they are not professional, they micromanage, all the while thinking to ourselves 'we're right, why can't they just be more like us?" but never really looking into why it is that are not like us.

Assuming there are actually recognizable cultural/political typologies and that there is a reason why these typologies work in certain situations and not in others, I would think it would be worth our effort to look into these rather than continuing to try things and then analyze the data after our failure to figure out where we went wrong.

There ... I feel better now.

My interest is primarily Afghanistan, but it would make no deference if it were there or Africa -- the cultural/political typologies should be universal (with obvious local flavors): Head Man/Big Man; Chiefdom/Monarchy; Democracy/Republic. What I am looking at is the value system that underlay each of these and make them acceptable to the segment of the population we are concerned with influencing. I do not believe they are evolutionary, but rather specific to the environmental/economic condition the population find themselves in.

[M-A Lagrange]

My interest is primarily Afghanistan, but it would make no deference if it were there or Africa -- the cultural/political typologies should be universal (with obvious local flavors): Head Man/Big Man; Chiefdom/Monarchy; Democracy/Republic. What I am looking at is the value system that underlay each of these and make them acceptable to the segment of the population we are concerned with influencing. I do not believe they are evolutionary, but rather specific to the environmental/economic condition the population find themselves in.

For that you need to have a starting point. That is why I like very much the foucault approach which consist in saying: here is the norm we have created for us. Then let's look at how/why others are differents.

It is also what I tried to do in the piece of work I presented. I tried to not judge but just demonstrate that what we though was a non functioning system is just something based on a revers understanding of exercing power.
Power and being chief basically can be: giving/rewarding or punishing/dominating.
All after comes in the way you exerce the reward and the domination.

The exemple of Eden is very much in the line of I first exerce my power in showing and enjoying domination to finally reward. While we would rather have an approach based on first rewarding then exercing domination by punishment.

But that's just a thought from the top of my head.

M-A

[Dayuhan]

While that solution has a certain elegance reality is that we have made it our problem.

Afghanistan should teach us that making a problem ours does not necessarily provide us with the means to solve the problem.

I'm not actually sure that we have mad Africa's problems ours. Since Mogadishu, hasn't our policy generally been to avoid entanglement on that continent?

There's a process of political evolution going on in Africa, as there is everywhere else. That process was frozen for several hundred years by colonial intervention, now it's on again, distorted by a variety of colonial legacies. We don't know where that process is leading. We can assume that the process will be violent and messy, as it has been everywhere else. We can try to alleviate the worst effects of the mess, and we can try to prevent the mess from affecting us, but we can't control or direct the evolutionary process. Omnipotent we are not.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Afghanistan should teach us that making a problem ours does not necessarily provide us with the means to solve the problem.

I agree completely that having a problem and having the solution are two different things. I believe we should spend more time defining the problem. We assume the problem and try solutions and then we wonder why they don't work. We will assume the problem in Afghanistan is the same as it was in Iraq and drive on. That may be old news and we should be smarter but we never truly examine the society we are working in, we just go about "fixing" it because obviously it is broke.

I'm not actually sure that we have mad Africa's problems ours. Since Mogadishu, hasn't our policy generally been to avoid entanglement on that continent?

I am guessing we have people there now with AFRICOM trying to fix them too. But you are right, the policies there may be more hands off.

There's a process of political evolution going on in Africa, as there is everywhere else. That process was frozen for several hundred years by colonial intervention, now it's on again, distorted by a variety of colonial legacies. We don't know where that process is leading. We can assume that the process will be violent and messy, as it has been everywhere else. We can try to alleviate the worst effects of the mess, and we can try to prevent the mess from affecting us, but we can't control or direct the evolutionary process. Omnipotent we are not.

I despise the idea of "political evolution". It creates the image that political transitions are only one way (i.e monarchy to democracy) which they are not. It also subtly supports the idea that the more "advanced" systems are better.

When we try to alleviate the worst effect of the mess we are screwing with the system, so we have to be careful there too. First, we are substituting ourselves for whatever local leaders may be in place, and second, if the disaster is not man made, we are screwing with an complex human/natural environmental system.

I know we are not omnipotent, but we can be smart.