Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton View Post
Yes - I'd pointed to a few earlier in the thread - put a "trans" in front of almost anything and you have a potential enabler or accelerator for instability - this just means that if you add more of something - it creates more things the HN government must contend with. Refugees crossing the border, nomadic influences, crop infestations, cyber-hacking/crime/espionage, human migrations, climate changes, crime, terrorism, foreign investment that attracts more of something else or creates something new, the use of ungoverned spaces as safe havens, etc. - you could really go for awhile I think.

I was thinking more along the lines of religious/ethnic/economic divides. In Iraq, for example, three religious/cultural groups and two sources of oil wealth is an obvious source of instability. "Breathing space" maybe necessary for a revenue sharing agreement, but I'm not certain that it is sufficient. (Many of the things Marc mentioned are relevant here. Establishing trust, transactions, leadership etc. aren't necessarily going to happen across cultures simply because we build capacity.)

Also, as long as opium makes up a huge percentage of Afghanistan's GDP, there is going to be corruption. (The demand for corruption will be huge: supply will expand to meet the demand.)

On the other hand, when a bunch of narco terrorists take over a remote town, a single platoon might be able to restore stability quickly and all government functions can return in a very short period of time. (Showing past examples is much easier than writing a predictive theory, but that's the direction I'm heading down.)