Tentative Guidelines for building partner armies post conflict

[Tom Kratman]

Oh, it's flawed at that level, too, but that wasn't what I meant. His entire thesis is based on a fatal flaw which, at it's root, is the association of a "civilization" with a genetic grouping. In reality, there are three fatal flaws in it. The first is that he doesn't understand genetics and uses "culture" (actually "civilization") as a proxy for it. The second is that he doesn't understand genetic variances and the interplay between genetic groupings and cultural groupings. The third fatal flaw is that he doesn't understand the relationship of culture as a selection criterion in natural selection.

Except in the case of the Japanese, I'm not sure that's true, both your criticism and your characterization. I mean, he has to have been aware of blond, blue eyed Islamic Circassians, highly western Americans with epicanthic folds, bloody Magyars, and the like.

Given those three flaws, I would have to chcracterize his exclusion of the Latin and Orthodox "civilizations" as a minor peccadillo .

It's a theoretical distinction that flows from his flaws. Given his model, it's the only possible solution. However, his model cannot account for the rise of trans-civilizational actors or intra-civilizational ones either.

Hmmm, let's see: how would Huntington account for the rise of the Cosmos? What "civilization" would they be part of? (Note: for those who don't know what I'm talking about, this is a scenario that is playing out right now that Tom examines in some of his books)

Most are likely to know it under the term "Tranzis." Though I think my term, "Cosmos," is slightly more accurate, and less prone to mispronounciation. (Tranzis as in "band," not Tranzis as in Nazis.)

By and large, they're western with some token participants from other civilizations tacked on, mostly for reasons of Cosmo aesthetics. They're neither diasporic nor primarily from any other civilization. And, as I've said, somewhere or other, they're a disease not unlike AIDS.

At best, Huntington's model would have to assume that such groups were a) part of a "civilization" and b) were diasporic in some sense. He would have to model them, since he uses an organicist analogy for civilization, as an "infection" of some type (cf Mein Kampf, Book 1, Ch. 11 for an example of this).

Getting away from the flaws in Huntington's model for a minute, and back to your observation about peer and near peer competition, sure they happen and, you're quite right, only a twit would argue against that. Of course, "competition" doesn't necessarily mean conflict, it could be economic, it could be status oriented (think about the monumental architecture of the early Sumerian city states), etc. I'm not saying that it won't be conflict, just that that will not be a constant.

Well...no; exhaustion sets in. But something need not be constant to be more or less endless, which is, I think, Huntington's view.

Furthermore, it is likely that in any long run of peer / near-peer competition, sets of "conventions" governing both competition and conflict will appear as a way of reducing the risk of total annihilation. A good example of this was the development of the Five Empires agreements (~1800 - 1300 bce) between some pretty different "civilizations who were all peers / near peers. On the flip side, sometimes they just end up annihilating one another...

Tom, I've got to agree with Dayuhan here:

Can they industrialize? Sure they can, that really isn't the question for me at least. For me, it's more a matter of how they industrialize, using what relational model. Britain (and the US) industrialized along a Robber Baron mode of relations which, in the case of Britain, had already been a cultural vector for several hundred years before the invention of the Watts engine (the Enclosure Movement). The key problem, at a social level, is how do you bring industrialists into a beneficial relationship with the rest of society? In Britain, they did it in part by creating new Peers of the Realm. and intermarriage with the great families. In the US, they did it by letting industrialists control large parts of the political process, although I don't think that option is as stable as the British one.

So, how is it being done in Brazil and Argentina?

Then there is the issue of capability vs. utility. Sure, both Brazil and Argentina can produce tanks, but should they? What are the social relations of their society likely to produce if large numbers of tanks become standard equipment?

I used tanks, of course, as a measure of can, not should, and only in relation to the question of "can they industrialize?" which you seemed to be answering in the negative. Or did I misread you?