Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
Not so long ago Southeast Asia and Latin America were the focus of American attempts to prop up "friendly" governments and destabilize "unfriendly" ones. They were seen as basket cases; the terms "banana republic" and "tinpot dictator" were coined to describe Latin American nations and governments. We poured on both military intervention and "development aid," all calculated to support the governments we liked and exclude those we didn't.

Today, of course, Southeast Asia and Latin America are generally quite peaceful and are chalking up impressive economic growth and development figures. They've a long way to go, undeniably, but there is real and impressive progress. So what happened? Did America rescue them from their benighted squalor with development aid and military intervention to protect them from the bad guys within?

Actually, no. What happened was that we finally left them alone.... Without the Cold War paranoia, we've found Chavez and Morales to be minor inconveniences, easily managed.... With less meddling and less aid these regions have actually prospered, and found their own ways to peaceful coexistence.
I like this observation. Your signature line references keeping a population in check through fear of monsters. A "leader" can easily manage his flock through fearmongering, as easily as a comic pulls laughs through potty humor; both are hollow and of a much lower order than their potential.

This comes right back to the original point of this thread! Fearmongering is no more than a form of hard power and, though a necessary tool, hard power does not endure on its own. It's time to move beyond the legacy of management through paranoia. I grew up fearing the "Red Menace" and preparing to "Kill a Commie for Mommy." Artists like Sting cut through that nonsense with songs that told the truth about the Other Side, like "I hope the Russians love their children, too."

I'm pro-intervention, at the right time for the right reasons. Of course, that sounds like non-speak, but like Sting it gets at the truth. Fearmongering made it easy to prop up tin-pots...and those decades have left us with a cumbersome alternate legacy to live down: that of a meddling, uncaring, manipulative power interested in taking and promising and never following through. The future of international interdependence is being revealed day-by-day. In the new reality such a reputation is a severe liability.

Genuine smart power will always consider national best interests, but with more forthright and transparent (and, dare I say, humble?) efforts we can disentangle the snarl of this reputation while actually contributing to local improvements and corresponding, general Improvement.