Hi Steve,
Good
. Part of the reason why I brought that up is that that has been a fairly consistent rhetorical message that has been coming out of the US Executive branch for the past 50+ years. As Steve Blair just noted, we've seen it time and time again in Latin America, Africa, etc.
Certainly there are elements that hinder both security and development - I totally agree. Sometimes, however, the elements that hinder development are the same elements that lead to stability, so it's not a good idea to lump the two together - sometimes it is an either / or situation.
Let's take this element of "represses women". First, who defines what "represses" is? This has been a real fight inside the women's movement globally when, for example, wearing a hijab was listed by some as a form of repression and by others as a form of freedom. Second, a rapid change in gender roles inevitably leads to massive social instability - look at the first women's movement (1890's), the effects of the Suffragette movement and the second women's movement in the 1960's-70's. It has taken Western societies over 100 years to change the social definition of women's roles and it is still causing instability.
Okay, let's look at the idea that "cultures which are not competitive are prone to instability and violence". I'm assuming that that refers to economically competitive. While I would agree that there has to be an outlet for inherent competition within a society, I would disagree that it has to be economic competition - that's only one form of institutional outlet amongst many, although it is an important one.
<sigh> And how is this different from replicating the US or other Western nations which are the very data points used to define "competitive, stable states"? It's only running the same replication strategy through the black box of academia.
Okay, having said that, there are ways to do it that do not cause massive instability because of the cultural engineering that you are requiring. Malinowski's
The Dynamics of Culture Change goes into how to do this but, as a caution, it requires a very long term commitment and, at the same time, quite a few resources.
Sorry, I should have made my point more clearly. What I was asking you to do was to think / feel / react like someone who is being
told by the US that they have to change regardless of what they want. It's that, let's call it an emotional reaction, that is crucial in both politics and diplomacy that I was after.
Does that apply to the US as well? Should the European nations of NATO demand that the US institute universal medical care because all advanced societies (outside of the US) have it? Given that an insane amount of the US' GDP will go into their health care system over the next 20 years, this is clearly a sign of a social trend towards both instability and non-competitiveness. Why should we support you
?
Marc
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