I have to admit when I read COL Jones' piece, my first reaction was 'mehhhh...' It doesn't appear to me to be saying anything particularly new or insightful. We should support good governance. OK. We should rely less on brute force. Check. The State Department should have the lead on foreign relations and setting foreign policy. No objections there.

Having followed the thread since, I'm surprised such a pedestrian essay should generate so much controversy. I mean, there are no new ideas there. And, practically, it is doubtful we could implement a PCE if we wanted to.

First of all, where good governance already exists, it would be superfluous. Where governance is poor, it is usually because an entrenched minority is governing for its own benefit. Promoting good governance is going to put us at odds with the existing power structure in many places - that is, we will become insurgents more often than we would be counterinsurgents.

Second, in those places where governance is poor but the government is altruistic, the cause must be poverty - of resources, of technology, of markets, or some combination thereof. Certainly we should promote good governance in those spaces, but I am skeptical of the US ability to truly address underlying, endemic problems such as those even where our indigenous partners are willing participants.

Thirdly, I don't see our State Department as becoming proponents of good governance in any but the most superficial sense. They are diplomats, trained (and organized) to deal with states and state structures, not with populations. I just don't see them becoming agents of change capable of reforming poorly governing states.

Finally, I'll repeat what I said earlier: I don't believe many outside the west share our paradigm of the purpose of government. The idea that governments exist 'for the people' is relatively new, though I will admit it is an idea in the ascendent.

I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. Can anyone provide an example of successful PCE? Especially, can anyone provide an example of successful PCE where the engaging power had to work through a local government - that is, where the engaging power did not rule directly the territory under consideration?