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

[ganulv]

[T]he Soviets revamped Eastern Europe into little communist clones.

And as we have all since learned, a dictatorship of the proletariat is just as hard to foist upon a society as is a participatory democracy.

[TheCurmudgeon]

And as we have all since learned, a dictatorship of the proletariat is just as hard to foist upon a society as is a participatory democracy.

Although I would amend that statement to something a little more broad and neutral in conotation:

No form of government is likely to endure where the values actually pursued by the government and those embraced by a politically significant segment of the population differ substantially without the ability to enforce that system through coercion or bribery (and the resources, either from internal wealth or external support, to maintain that coercion/bribery).

[TheCurmudgeon]

This is something I have been working on. More meaty than the other articles on modernization.

This is an excerpt, so to set the stage, I am discussing cultural values and their relationship to political preference. Schwartz created the theory of universal human values. What is important is at the end - Schwartz indepently confirms Ingelhart and Welzel's work on values and democratization:

Another researcher to find a connection between values and political preference was Shalmon Shwartz. Most well known for his Theory of Universal Human Values and the Schwartz Value Survey he has recently expanded his research into collective value systems. Schwartz identified ten universal values. Applying these to development and democratization he noticed a connection between certain values and democratization. Schwartz continued his work on values by examining collective value sets and systems. He identified seven collective values that are cross-cultural. These seven could be organized into three continuums; Autonomy versus Embeddedness, Egalitarianism versus Hierarchy, and Harmony versus Mastery. The two dimensions that had the stongest connection with political preference were the Autonomy/Embeddedness and Egalitarian/Hierarchy dimensions.

The Autonomy/Embeddedness dimension is similar to Hofstede’s IC dimension and overlaps with Inglehart’s secular-rational values. In cultures that are autonomous people express “their own preferences, feelings, ideas, and abilities, and find meaning in their own uniqueness.” In contrast in countries which emphasis Embeddedness “[m]eaning in life comes largely through social relationships, through identifying with the group, participating in its shared way of life, and striving towards its shared goals.” Schwartz’s Egalitarianism/Hierarchy dimension is similar to Hofsteade’s P/D dimension. People in Egalitarian cultures seek to “recognize one another as moral equals” where Hierarchical cultures accept inequity and an unequal distribution of power and property as desirable and “ascribe roles to insure responsible, productive behavior.” Schwartz’s Egalitarianism/Hierarchy dimension also overlaps with Ingelhart’s secular/rational values but to a much lesser amount. It appears that Ingelhart’s values are a combination of the both Hofstede’s and Schwartz’s dimensions.

In his analysis of the connection between his cultural values and political preferences Scwhartz also noted a connection between Autonomy and Egalitarianism and political preference. Using Freedom House statistics he noted a high correlation between a country’s civil liberties and autonomy and egalitarianism. This is to be expected. But what Schwartz also found was a causal relationship between socioeconomic development, values, and democratization. Using a different value set Scwhartz was able to confirm Welzel and Inglehart’s proposition that socioeconomic development led to a change in values that resulted in a greater likelihood of democratization. It also helped disproved the idea that democratic institutions created values that supported liberal democratic institutions. “The current analysis further demonstrates that the prior level of democracy has not impact on cultural values, once development is controlled.” Socioeconomic development has an effect on values but the existence of democratic institutions does not.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Sorry, the references for the above section include

Shalmon H. Schwartz. National Value Cultures, Sources and Consequences, Chapter 7 in Huntington, S. P., & Harrison, L. E. (2000). Culture matters : how values shape human progress / Lawrence E. Harrison, Samuel P. Huntington, editors. New York : Basic Books, c2000.

Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy : the human development sequence / Ronald Inglehart Christian Welzel. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Hofstede, G. H. (1980). Culture's consequences, international differences in work-related values / Geert Hofstede. Beverly Hills, Calif. : Sage Publications, c1980.

[Madhu]

....from each and every comment.

More papers for discussion:

All three groups—airpower theorists, adherents of the French Revolutionary War School, and the proponents of the new U.S. COIN doctrine—inverted the way military forces had traditionally fought wars. The first actions in wars fought between nation-states normally involved large battles between the military forces ofthe opposing sides. Depending on the nature of the war, at some point as the war progressed the civilian population might to some degree become involved in the fighting. But the airpower and counterinsurgency theorists reversed this process so that the first step in war would be to involve the people. For the airpower theorists, involvement would mean bombing them from the sky. For the counterinsurgency theorists,involvement would be securing thepopulation with military force in order to get at the insurgents. After this involvement between the people and the military, in either of the two cases, military forces might be engaged along the lines of more traditional warfare.

The Selective Use Of History In The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine, Army History 2009, Gian P. Gentile.

I know I've screwed up the formatting in the above post but I don't have time to fix it now. I'll do it later.

[Madhu]

....and sometimes you have to stop reading and synthesizing.

My synthesis would be along the lines of this: the narratives and histories we created about the Cold War periphery countries (in this case, South Asia) were incomplete. We attemped a historical re-do of the 90s in the 00s in our attempt to gain a strategic endstate that kept shifting in some sense.

Another potentially useful publication:

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response, Steven Metz and Raymond Millen

(I never list references properly. It's me and that whole "word" borderline dyslexia thing. I just don't like writing.)


http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute....cfm?pubID=586

[Madhu]

@ Curmudgeon,

This is in response to a comment of yours above and I will flesh my thoughts out a bit later:

I thought about this while reading a commentary in Army History (by Gian Gentile). I think we have a selective history of that region and it affected us in the 00s in terms of our military and foreign policy strategies. We forgot our own history there, it was selective and we interpreted it completely through the lens of our battle with the Soviet Union, and our confused thoughts about non Western countries and post WWII colonialism/neocolonialism.

It was the correct way to view our European security theater but not the correct lens with which to view the AfPak theater.

You see, the fomenting of insurgency, and our contributions and our allies contributions to it, licit and illicit both, caused a problem. And instead of going back to first principles, we focused on the Taliban insurgency without thinking it through.

I don't know. I change my mind sometimes.

Anyway, the problems all started with this bit of conventional wisdom: "we abandoned Afghanistan and look what happened."

Uh, no. We were there on and off. I can see why people don't like to talk about it, though.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/ame...flunks-sun-tzu

[TheCurmudgeon]

Madhu,

In response to the quote from the Gentile article:

"All three groups—airpower theorists, adherents of the French Revolutionary War School, and the proponents of the new U.S. COIN doctrine—inverted the way military forces had traditionally fought wars. The first actions in wars fought between nation-states normally involved large battles between the military forces ofthe opposing sides. Depending on the nature of the war, at some point as the war progressed the civilian population might to some degree become involved in the fighting. But the airpower and counterinsurgency theorists reversed this process so that the first step in war would be to involve the people. For the airpower theorists, involvement would mean bombing them from the sky. For the counterinsurgency theorists,involvement would be securing the population with military force in order to get at the insurgents. After this involvement between the people and the military, in either of the two cases, military forces might be engaged along the lines of more traditional warfare."

I disagree with this assessment. What Douhet (Air Power) was arguing was that a nation's will could be broken directly through bombing. It was revolutionary for two reasons. First, it recognized the power of the airplane to circumvent conventional ground defenses. But second, and more importantly, it recognized that modern nations draw their power directly from the people - popular sovereignty. Break the people's will and the country collapses. COIN is based on a similar concept often oversimplified into the statement that the population is the center of gravity in a fight. It is not a matter of sequencing. If the will of the people is broken there will be no subsequent military engagement.

The problem with COIN as applied in certain parts of the world, in my opinion, is that you are applying rules that might work in a nation that is based on popular sovereignty to a country where legitimacy is based on more traditional systems like tribal or religious affiliations. It proceeds ab initio from a false assumption.

[Ken White]

I disagree with this assessment. What Douhet (Air Power) was arguing was that a nation's will could be broken directly through bombing. It was revolutionary for two reasons. First, it recognized the power of the airplane to circumvent conventional ground defenses. But second, and more importantly, it recognized that modern nations draw their power directly from the people - popular sovereignty. Break the people's will and the country collapses. COIN is based on a similar concept often oversimplified into the statement that the population is the center of gravity in a fight. It is not a matter of sequencing. If the will of the people is broken there will be no subsequent military engagement.

Both assertions are questionable. the record of air power and / or COIN efforts at 'breaking wills' is less than poor -- it is one of constant failures. That is not to say that neither effort can be successful in some uses and forms, just that breaking of the will of populations has not been shown.