Quote Originally Posted by Stan View Post
Here's a great site from the CGSC History Department and this particular post is short and direct regarding The problem of creating a nation state, such as Afghanistan, is not a new one.

It however doesn't directly address Africa while comparing Afghanistan to Europe in the 16th century. I doubt the Europeans had many problems with cleptocracy to the level of The Sudan and Zaire, but I assume all have some experience with a military dictatorship.
Had to note the first statement of the cited post...

The process of creating a nation state begins with an increase in the ability of the state to provide security and stability through an increase in the size of the army and police. This increase required the creation, almost from scratch, of a centralized bureaucracy to collect taxes.
That suggests that the first experience of the citizen with the new "state" is likely to be exposure to men with guns demanding money. Not hard to see how the citizen might see this as a less than welcome development.

I suspect that European governments of the 16th century were every bit as kleptocratic as African governments today. The folks who built those palaces were not earning their own money.

If we're now talking about building states, or building nations, I'd say that's something we can't do. States and nations aren't built, they grow. We may be able to assist their growth with a bit of judicious cultivation (just as we may be able to derail their growth with injudicious attempts at cultivation), but we can't construct a state, any more than we can construct an oak tree.

The metaphor of choice may not be all that relevant, but I suspect that our preference for engineering metaphors (build/fix) might reflect a mindset that's causing us some problems, and that we might do better to draw our metaphors from an agricultural context emphasizing state growth as an organic process, not something that one "builds" or "fixes".