Sanctuary or Ungoverned Spaces:identification, symptoms and responses

[Ken White]

Tom:

...Our system of diplomacy including international diplomacy is built on the exact opposite premise: that governments control all regions and that if you plug into the correct government you can influence its behavior.

Astute observation -- and you'd think after the last hundred plus years of 'intervening' to little good effect in many such conglomerations we'd learn a little something...

Eden:

...we would be more effective if we thought of ourselves as one amongst several competing insurgencies, rather than as a counterinsurgent.

Equally astute. Kindred thoughts have been expressed about other places at other times in the memory of those living. Notable that the Marines effectively did that prior to WW II.

Appropos to both comments, some obvious good flowed form our WW II experience -- but so did a lot of really bad military AND diplomatic ideas; add too much wealth to that -- and here we are...

[Bob's World]

Wow...great discourse. This is exactly what I felt needed to be fleshed out and discussed. Tom, your experience squares with my perception, so thanks for putting that on the table.

As we look to what this means in places like Afghanistan, I think it is fair to go back to our own doctrine of self-determination. Perhaps what the populace of Afghanistan needs is something that may very well qualify it for "failed state" status by metrics the West applies; yet to attempt to force it to look like a "real state" (in a Hollywood set kind of way...think of the scene in Blazing Saddles) on the surface, we actually set it up for even greater failure in terms of human suffering as that unsustainable situation returns through violent competition to a more sustainable norm.