I think there is something missing from the whole debate about our progress or lack of it in Afghanistan and Iraq. The possibility that our problem is the inability of these societies to solve their collective action problems.
A tacit assumption that lies behind a lot of the thinking about the war is an assumption along the lines that if a society fails to form an effective national army and police force it is because they don't want to. There is another possibility. they may be entirely on our side and may overwhelmingly want to form and effective national army and police force but may just be incapable of it for reasons that have nothing to do with their preferences or level of commitment.
The beautiful thing about a collective action problem is that you can have everyone wants to do one thing individually but as a group behave in a precisely opposite fashion. To the extent that the failures of the Iraqis and, to a lesser extent, the Afghans, to stand up effective national police forces and armies are due to collective action problems rather than a lack of commitment to the cause of liberal democracy at an individual level then calls to impose benchmarks or to "leave them to kill each other" are misplaced to say the least.
There is this odd similarity between the 19th Century Imperialists and contemporary liberals in the way they evaluate the attempts of Iraqis and Afghans to form national institutions. The fact that the democratically elected governments of these countries to form effective fighting forces is seen as proof of their unfitness to govern. In the case of the British Imperialists the conclusion was that they should be ruled by the British. In the case of contemporary liberals it is that we should abandon them to the terrorists.
1 comment:
i think you got the first part right - yes, there are countries out there where the collective action problem cannot be resolved. however, I don't see how what you offer is better than what the liberals offer.
to pick up on your last line:
.. and in the case of guys like you these countries should be ruled by USA? how is that different from the British position that you seem to dislike. and please stop saying "democratically elected" governments in those countries - if you've lived in one of those countries you know how easy is to buy votes there or threaten people to vote for whoever is the local strong guy. democracy is absolutely hopeless in such situations until the country resolves those very same collective action problems you talk about.
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