Modernization/Development Theory, CORDS, and FM 3-24?

[ganulv]

It is not that we abandon Afghanistan. It is that we helped to create a power vacuum and then did nothing to help fill it with a government that would be friendly to us.

I would assert that while friendly governments are great they are not necessary for our security. It seems sufficient to me that a government not pose a realistically assessed threat to us. U.S. foreign policy discourse has the habit of taking hostile rhetoric and ideological opposition as prima facie evidence of threat. Through the years our leaders have made the Cuban and Iranian revolutions out to be threats to domestic, international, and natural order. But do we need more than two hands’ worth of fingers to count the instances in which either government has done anything more serious to our country than made a station chief get all butthurt?

[Dayuhan]

I would assert that while friendly governments are great they are not necessary for our security.

If a nominally "friendly" government is inept and unpopular with its own people, it can easily emerge as a strategic liability. Our desire to keep "friendly" governments in power can all too easily lead to expensive and generally pointless interventions. A "friendly" government that depends on our held to survive can be a greater threat to our security than a neutral or even mildly unfriendly government that stands on its own. As long as nominally unfriendly governments don't translate that unfriendliness into actual action against us, they aren't a problem, and at least we don't feel any obligation to protect and defend them when they make trouble for themselves.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I would assert that while friendly governments are great they are not necessary for our security. It seems sufficient to me that a government not pose a realistically assessed threat to us. U.S. foreign policy discourse has the habit of taking hostile rhetoric and ideological opposition as prima facie evidence of threat. Through the years our leaders have made the Cuban and Iranian revolutions out to be threats to domestic, international, and natural order. But do we need more than two hands’ worth of fingers to count the instances in which either government has done anything more serious to our country than made a station chief get all butthurt?

I will agree that "friendly" was too strong a term. It is really the wrong term. I will work to come up with a better one ... although I do like your general criteria.