Tentative Guidelines for building partner armies post conflict

[marct]

Hi Colin,

So states have to evolve.. and we can't do it for them. Thus the question is, does it all come down to the slow evolution of indigenous democratisation?

Why assume that governance structures will flow towards democratization in any form? Democracies have a lot of functional requirements (education, leisure time hence decent economy, fairly open communications) and they are stricter for the modern democracies (universally applicable legal system, large bureaucracy hence an even more productive economy to support it). Democracies also have a fairly lousy track record of lasting in any efficient form, usually devolving into mobocracies (Athens, Syracuse), oligarchies (Rome and, possibly, the US), bureaucratic oligarchies (Byzantium, China, Canada & the EU).

And what the flying f*** does that mean for our agenda in the worst case, the DR Congo?

Don't try to create a "Western state" or a "western" army; build a force that matches the stablest state form achievable, which may be a mutated form of a tribal confederacy, albeit with the mandatory democratic trappings.

A lot of this goes back to working with, rather than against, the local culture both civil and military.

Cheers,

Marc