Gloomy US intelligence assessment coming or Let's hear from the spies

[Bob's World]

I make an issue of it because I believe that the focus on "The Constitution" or "the Government" raises a very dangerous possibility. If that's presented as the problem, some less than bright person somewhere is going to have the wonderful idea that all we have to do to solve the problem is to fix the Government or change the Constitution, and that's just going to start the cycle of mess and intervention all over.

Far better, I think, to focus on what you described like this:



Our people need to understand that the obstacle is not a government or a document, but the existing cultural reality, something that is not going to change because we put someone new on the chair or change Constitutions. Understanding that provides a badly needed perspective: people who might be tempted to try and "fix" a government or a Constitution might think twice - or one hopes more than that - about trying to "fix" a culture.

This is the balancing that I am attempting to get at with an idea I am calling "exploitable gaps." Essentially that any form of government can be stable if it is in synch, along a handful of critical measures, with the populace it serves. When the government is out of synch a "gap" emerges that is then easily exploitable by internal and external actors alike who may come along with any range of agendas and purposes. The key to success being to get the government to move to being in line with their populace.

Efforts to preserve the status quo of governance where such a gap occurs, and to help that government "control the populace" and drag them back into submission can only suppress the problem, and likely broaden the gap.

Equally, efforts to over-westernize/liberalize some government may very well drag a government that had previously been in synch with its populace out of that zone and create a gap where none previously existed. US calls for "democracy" and "universal US values" are both powerful examples of well -intended concepts (make others more like us and they will be less likely to oppose us) that are potentially extremely dangerous when one applies this deeper understanding of insurgency. Such radical reforms based upon externally determined answers as to what "right" looks like could also take a government that is out of synch in one direction, and move it past the populace even farther in the other direction. (Example, the Syrian and Iranian governments are clearly two that are out of synch with their populaces. The US has no clue what those populaces want, need, or expect of their governance. Our message should simply be "listen to your people, not to us, and get in synch with their expectations of you, not ours." I suspect that governments and populaces everywhere would find that a refreshing change of rhetoric for the US and might point out to us that "you sound more like America and less hypocritical of your own professed principles now.")

Like a boss once used to always remind us, "target audience, target audience, target audience." Governments are bureaucratic and slow to reform. Populaces are in a period of relatively rapid reform. Governments are getting out of synch. They are unlikely to find stability by mirroring the US in deed, but rather in spirit; by seeking to better understand their own populace and to create a system consistent with their culture that allows them to stay better aligned and to build a sense of confidence in the populace that they retain the degree of legal control over government that makes sense to them.

(oh, and I should have attached this with the previous post - warning a couple of F-bombs get dropped)

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=...st=0&FORM=LKVR