A Gulf Sheikh down coming?

[Bob's World]

Thanks for neatly encapsulating one of the most important challenges facing the Arab World and Africa. The US, on the other hand, really needs to look beyond counter-terrorism and energy security.

This applies to US foreign policy as well. When a system of foreign policies are designed for an era and mission that no longer exists (as the US Cold War based, "GWOT"-shaped containment grand strategy is) similar "gaps" occur. When that policy is seen as promoting an artificial stability dedicated to an increasingly irrelevant status quo it also creates motivations in the populaces of the affected nations to be more apt to participate in acts of transnational terrorism.

We see the Obama administration working on one hand to break from the status quo and to become more supportive of those populaces who are willing to pursue reasonable (if not entirely peaceful) ways and means to achieve change. This is a start, as it is not a blind commitment to forcing the status quo. Equally dangerous, however, is to push for US forms of governance, and current US values; as if populaces everywhere were somehow in the same culture, the same time and place as US socio-cultural evolution is right now. To move another government artificially in such a way is to create an even larger, more illegitimate, and more inappropriate, more exploitable gap in the other direction. Neither internal nor external governments should expect the populace to conform to them, it is governments that must conform to the people.

For US foreign policy we need to tailor our approaches by nation, and be more respective of differences, and if anything, encourage governments to be more in synch with their own people. We need to find new ways to pursue our own interests that are less tied to artificially stabilized status quos, as this is the primary driver of transnational terrorism against the US.

This is simply a matter of leadership style. We've been able to get away with "lazy leadership." A controlling style based upon superior strength and wealth. We will need to adopt a more sophisticated and nuanced form of influence-based leadership. The best leaders always spent 80% of their time in influence-based leadership, only applying power as needed, when needed. Lazy leaders are all power, all the time. The US is a lazy leader. Maybe that is what the president meant in his recent comments in Asia... He is seeking to turn this around, but we've been on this path for a several administrations and too many people have come to see such power-based lazy leadership as "what right looks like."

Just a theory. Governments need to control the one thing they have the right to control, their own actions. They need to then govern in ways that are more attuned to the people they affect, at home and abroad.