Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
I'm trying to sort out what works, and you can neither bribe nor kill your way out of insurgency, you actually have to assess where you are failing as a government and address those failures.
When the US goes through this process, though, we are not assessing where we are failing as a government: we have no insurgencies. We're generally assessing where some other government is failing. That brings certain complications into the picture.

Our assessment of the failures of other governments is likely to be influenced by oir own preferences and our own assumptions about what constitutes good government and what other people ought to want. These assumptions may or may not be relevant to circumstances in another country.

Even when we have accurately assessed the failures or another government, we do not necessarily have the capacity to compel another government to address those failures. The government may not have the capacity to address the failures. It may have its own assessment of the situation, which may not be compatible with ours. Even when we think we are acting on behalf of the populace, both populace and government are likely to take a rather dim view of external meddling in domestic affairs.