A Modest Proposal
Rex,
First off I am glad to see that I got someone’s goad ... and for the thoughtful and information filled reply. Even though this season brings out the Nietzsche in me and I personally do believe that certain environments have a Malthusian limit on the size of the population it can sustain, I am really not advocating letting children needlessly die (and then using their skins for gloves ... hence the title of this entry).
What I am advocating is a coherent, congruent approach to a systems level problem rather than piecemealing solutions that tend to concentrate on what makes westerners feel good about ourselves; solutions that tend to invoke the law of unintended consequences.
The article cited by Jedburgh discussed trying to create a system where security and development work together similar to what is advocated in many nation-building references. Rand “A Beginner’s Guide To Nation Building” http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_MG557.pdf. A holistic, nation or state building approach is what I would advocate. How to get the various organizations, each with their own mandate and agenda, to work together in this fashion is the problem.
Two other points that are closely related. First, whatever we do must meet the needs and desires of the target population or it may all be for naught. What they see as important must be take into consideration or our meddling will be viewed with contempt. Where and when it fails, regardless of why, the backlash will be targeted at similar efforts in the future or at the west in general.
Second, whenever we intercede to assist a portion of the population (children, women, etc.) we are, in fact, injecting our values and morals into the target population, potentially subverting existing cultural systems. This is an arrogant approach. As outsiders how and why traditional approaches work may not always be clear to us. They MAY in fact NEED to be replaced if development is going to proceed. But if we plan on fooling with another cultures system potentially subverting traditional values we had better be ready to replace them in total or watch entire cultures slowly degenerate into chaos and then incorrectly blame it on whichever warlord ends up in control.
There are of course exceptions where immediate and targeted action is required; the genocide in Rwanda being the most obvious. But wherever possible our efforts need to be designed to put the entire country on a long term (plans should be based on a twenty to fifty year time frame) development into a stable, self-sustaining state.
Again, Happy Holidays.
PS I would wish you “Peace on Earth” but that would put me out of a job
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