We need less Chemo and Surgery and more "Voom."

[Dayuhan]

Did Caesar struggle with insurgencies?

...But soon it was not just the emperor's legions and his goods moving on those roads and vessels. All manner of commerce, migration and information moved with greater speed as well. This breakthrough in "information technology" designed to ease the control of empire soon drove the cost of sustaining empire to exceed the benefits. When people cannot be controlled in isolation, they will tend to act out en mass.

The same happened to the Holy Roman empire upon the advent of the printing press. When Rome could no longer control information and knowledge, they soon could no longer control those many diverse people who increasingly came to question the legitimacy of that system of rule.

Great Britain's empire began before the age of steam powered industry and transportation and electronic communications. But as their empire was a major facilitator of developing and expanding those technologies in efforts to maximize the income from their far flung possessions, it was those very technologies that soon came to tax the ability of a government in London to exercise control over diverse populaces around the world.

...The Soviets offered glasnost to the suppressed populaces of the Soviet Union in the hopes that this "openness" and increased transparency of governance would reduce criticisms of governance. Instead it provided a catalyst of information empowerment to many diverse populaces across the empire, and within a decade the empire collapsed. Oh, it could have sustained itself for decades no doubt, through generations of bloody, suppressive state violence and control over the people, but Gorbachev did what few in his position have done before or since: He let the people go, and in so doing sealed the fate of the Soviet empire.

All of these seem to wedge the history into the theory, and I'd have to question the fit: in each of these cases there were many factors active and the spread of information was not necessarily the dominant factor in any case.

In any event the fall of empires past seems of questionable relevance to the fight against terrorism and AQ. The US is not en empire, and does not hold the Middle East as an Imperial possession, neither does AQ threaten the existence of the US. The Middle Eastern countries now facing actual or potential upheaval are not parts of any empire, each has its own internal issues.

What is going on today in the Middle East is little different. A region of frozen conflicts, autocratic regimes, and powerful external influences. The people there are informed now in ways they have never been before, and with no threat of Soviet dominion to serve as rationale for accepting a much more benign brand of Western manipulation they are drawing courage from each other and acting out to force their own governments to listen and evolve, and to remove what they deem as inappropriate external influence.

I think it's very different indeed from any of the cited examples.

Certainly there's a great deal of tension between governments and various populaces and popular factions all over the Middle East, and in many other places as well. That's not about us, though, and our role in the resolution of those tensions is and should be generally pretty minimal. In some cases there may be scope for action by the US or other outside parties, but only when it's asked for and clearly needed: the last thing we want to do is to try and impose ourselves as a mediator, still less as a spokesperson for "the populace".

The link between AQ and this populace/government internal dynamic is the weakest point in your argument, and you've presented little evidence or reasoning to support it. It seems to me that AQ grows less out of the tension between individual Muslim governments and their own populaces than out of a perceived tension between a long-oppressed but rising Islam and a long-dominant but crumbing West. Again, AQ have tried to extend that perception to generate support against Muslim governments they dislike, but those efforts have seen very limited success. Tho only narrative that's ever really worked for them is opposition to direct foreign occupation.

Equally the cost of control is going up. Governments overly reliant on control to sustain an artificial stability create very brittle systems, and those systems are shattering. Governments that have more flexible systems are also under pressure to evolve, but are better able to flex and bend and continue on.

The cost of controlling what, for whom?

When we learn how to facilitate and accept for others the same freedoms we demand for ourselves, we will break free from the challenges of this period of post -Cold War transition and enter a new age of American influence. But if we cling to the past and the comfort of a status quo designed by and for us, it will break us, just as it has so many before us.

When we learn that the internal affairs of other nations are not our business, and that we've no business trying to define any other government's relationship with its populaces, we may (or may not) begin the process of extracting our collective head from out collective bung. That may take time and effort; it's been there a while and it's in deep.

There's a lot to be thrashed out, all over the world. Most of it isn't about us, though it may have some effect on us.

After all, it is human nature.

It's also human nature to shove reality into our pet theories, whether or not it fits.