The wisdom of Solomons
Imagine a country which up to now had maintained its stability through a network of dysfunction and a web of corruption. Sharar Hameiri in the Age described this country.
In the past, personalised networks of patronage and loyalty were precisely the way political leaders managed to maintain a modicum of cohesion in this geographically and ethnically fragmented country. ... [which] was ruled by a small group of corrupt politicians and ex-militants who milked the country dry for personal benefit.
But although things had gone on for a long time, the system was starting to run down. Political leaders at the top had become too greedy and began impoverishing the people. Money was not trickling down through the old tribal networks. Unrest was starting to grow. Imagine further that a contingent of foreign troops arrived in comparatively overwhelming strength arrived to set things right, but in the process disturbed the status quo ante. Although the foreign presence:
was particularly successful in the area of law and order because most [inhabitants] and eventually political elites, had had enough of this exploitative and unsustainable political order but were unable to remove the thugs by force.
Unfortunately the reforms also created its own tendency toward destabilization.
However, most [inhabitants] did not want [the foreign contingent] to eliminate personalised rule completely because it was the glue that connected [the national capital] to the provinces.
The country is not Iraq but the Solomon Islands; and the foreign contingent was not American but Australian and New Zealand. Not MNF-Iraq, but RAMSI. Let's hear the story again with the right names.
The development model RAMSI and other donors promote relies on the supposed "trickle-down" effect of private sector-led economic growth through export-oriented, market-driven reform. However, the measures pursued to attract investors actually increase poverty, at least in the short to medium term, because they stipulate severe cuts in government spending and public sector redundancies, as well as apply pressure on the customary land ownership system.
Consequently we have seen wealth disparities increase in the Solomon Islands in tandem with the rise of a small mostly Chinese business class that has benefited from RAMSI contracts and the presence of aid workers and other personnel.
Before RAMSI's arrival, the Solomons was ruled by a small group of corrupt politicians and ex-militants who milked the country dry for personal benefit. RAMSI was particularly successful in the area of law and order because most Solomon Islanders, and eventually political elites, had had enough of this exploitative and unsustainable political order but were unable to remove the thugs by force. However, most Solomon Islanders did not want RAMSI to eliminate personalised rule completely because it was the glue that connected Honiara to the provinces.
In the Solomons, political and economic power is gradually shifting from the public sector to the Chinese-dominated private sector, partly as a result of RAMSI's governance reforms. A dangerous disparity has thus appeared between the expectations and interests of ordinary islanders that their representatives in Honiara look after, and the needs of a market-driven economy, which tend to concentrate wealth in the hands of few. As the riots demonstrate, the legitimacy of formal political institutions is difficult to achieve in this context.
The Australian reports:
THE Australian-led and funded intervention team in Solomon Islands is finding itself on increasingly uncomfortable ground.
And for RAMSI, the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, which was welcomed with open arms by 99.9 per cent of Solomon Islanders less than three years ago, this is very unfamiliar territory.
As young islanders openly sneer at the heavily armed Australian troops making their rounds of Honiara's market, the real cost of last week's violence and RAMSI's mishandling of it is becoming apparent.
Images of the lockdown of the Solomon Islands parliament only add to the sense of a well-intentioned mission going terribly wrong. Parliament sat yesterday under the guard of highly armed, black-suited Australian and New Zealand anti-riot police.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports: Solomons Parliament Locked Down in a kind of Green Zone.
More, but not much more blog discussion here.
Commentary
I am waiting for someone to call for the resignations of the Australian and New Zealand Defense Ministers. But joking aside, sounds eerie, doesn't it?
One of the problems with the paradigm of nation building is the expectation of effecting change while ensuring that in the meantime things remain the same. The ancien regime and its supporters are somehow supposed to be overturned and supplanted by a new order through a procedure more painless than modern dentistry. Or our money back. And so there are calls for UN Relief Missions to Somalia to be protected from gangs; calls for intervention in Darfur; calls to end the Chinese occupation of Tibet. But nobody wants to think about what that really means.
And then there will be calls to examine 'what went wrong?'; to identify the defects in planning that led to the moment of disillusionment when it proved after all to be impossible to change things while keeping them the same. But the first thing that went wrong was the acceptance of the flawed premise.
As I walk along,
I wonder what went wrong ...
And as I still walk on,
I think of the things we've done
Together, a-while our hearts were young
posted by wretchardthecat at 4/25/2006 07:04:00 PM
35 Comments:
Dell Shannon vs Rodgers and Hammerstein.
wretchard,
Lyrics are from Del Shannon's "Runaway".
"Runaway", that may well bespeak the situation. These nation building exercises also may be suicidal.
Considering that the Solomons are Australia's neighbors it wasn't possible to first let things go to hell and then intervene. Thomas Barnett wrote about the "Pentagon's New Map" and the areas of disconnectedness, etc. But I have a feeling that in the end nation building is a problem that has to be solved. That we have to learn to solve. The post Colonial world is out there as much of it is a mess.
The kinds of intervention on the cheap that have been tried in the past, like aid packages, UN agencies and even NGOs have had about the same effect on the problem as a BB gun fired at a T-Rex. And still the T-Rex rumbles forward.
Admittedly off topic, Michelle Malkin is reporting that Ms. McCarthy will be interviewed this evening. Thought you might want to know.
Cedarford,
One of the sleeper regional issues is West Papua, which may want to separate from Indonesia. Why? Because they have nothing in common with the Indonesians. Visit West Papua: the next East Timor. The claim is that Indonesians have reduced the population of the native Melanesians (who are largely Christian BTW) from 5 million to 1.3 million. The linked site says:
Do not doubt the above heading for one moment. The parallels to pre-referendum East Timor on the ground in West Papua are already apparent: the transfer to West Papua of police and military commanders formerly assigned to East Timor, increased profligacy of various militia activities including Indonesian military-trained Laskar Jihad holy warriors, the influx of large numbers of Indonesian paratroopers and Special Forces into West Papua, foreign journalists barred from entry unless granted special clearance, constant harassment, arbitrary arrests and murder of West Papuans expressing their basic human rights which has been denied them for so long, and on-going wholesale environmental damage by the Jakarta elite and their military cohorts with absolutely no regard of the long-term and permanent damage to one of the few remaining tropical rainforests in the world.
Indonesia has been "nation building" in West Papua for a long time; as have the Janjaweed in the Sudan. From time to time the press discovers this fact, as in East Timor. But most of the time they remain blissfully ignorant of the fact. Because the only people who are supposed to get nation building right are the White Guys, though considering the modern ethnic composition of Australia and the US, we should find some better term.
Wretchard,
The disconnectedness is probably irretrievably systemic. The CIA site has statistics that are revealing: 120 dialects within a population of less than 600,000, with a median age of 19 years.
Can such a monstrosity ever be a nation? What solution would not fail to offend the sensibilities of the easily offended? Adult supervision is required and Australia is providing that, for the moment.
The reason a return to a market economy in this sort of situation can easily lead to a sharp concentration of wealth is that the change suddenly reveals that only a small proportion of the populace has been concerning itself with doing anything productive.
In this situation everybody likes the idea of the properity which a market economy can deliver, but everyone also wants to keep getting paid for doing what they have been doing up to now, which in many cases is not much.
It's hardly surprising that this is a volatile mixture. A lot of people have to deal with downward mobility, and don't like it, but pandering to them just hoses everybody's prospects for income growth for a generation (*cough* the Germans' mistake as they absorbed East Germany *cough*).
The solution is to learn, adapt. Work something out. I don't think there's a formula. However, there are a set of common capabilities that are probably required. Deep local knowledge. Good local partners. A willingness to use force when necessary. Timely intel. Good public diplomacy.
The alternative is to cut and run. But the long term problem with cutting and running is that the world never actually develops the capabilities necessary to solve the problem. They just bigger and better Last Helicopters.
On the other hand, Third World nation builders have got the alternative formula down pat. Supply of machetes. Selective terror. Landgrabbing. Ethnic cleansing.
But I have a feeling that in the end nation building is a problem that has to be solved. That we have to learn to solve.
What if, and I'm just asking the question, it's not soluble?
It's sobering to think about the implications of that. As the possible solutions to the post-colonial mess are whittled down, the remaining answers look more and more ghastly.
8:04 PM Why not just breed a selective Slug?
Aristides,
"What if...it's not soluble?"
It is. Will it be PC is the next question? Above all else, does the civilized world have the will to apply a solution?
Possibly off topic, but the issue always arises; I wait with bated breath to hear of a solitary Jewish shoe salesman who flew into Honiara to do business with a Chinese shop owner. If that did happen, soon the Jews will be blamed for the recent unrest.
That a topic, as that above, would have to be raised, semi-tongue-in-cheek, demonstrates why solutions are just so hard to implement. The adversaries of civilization are hopelessly corrupt. You can safely bet that the Australians will face racialist criticism. News accounts from Australia indicate that, indeed, the PC chorus is already warming up.
Will you still need me,
will you still heed me,
when I'm 64?
Political and military action either makes you stronger or weaker. It has to have a purpose that enhances our national interest or welfare. None of that has happened since our ill thought out and disatourous intervention in Iraq and the stationing of US troops in Islamic countries. We have strengthened ourselves in Iraq? Is our position in the world more secure? We have merely demonstrated the limits of our power. Our political power is hard to get much lower. Put a world map on the wall, blindfolds on and throw a dart. Wake me up when you hit a part on the map where US political influence is on the rise.
Nation building and our mission to establish democracies in The Middle East is going to put George W. Bush on the pantheon with Jimmy Carter and the scientist that brought the gypy moth to The USA to make silk and only succeeded in the felling of entire forests.
Two current items demonstrating our new influence and power brought to you by the White House OJT crew in the pursuit of nation building:
"Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Iran is ready to share nuclear technology with other nations."
'Zarqawi' shows face in new video
Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, appears unmasked in a rare video believed to be genuine.
orlandoslug,
Of course it's a long game and it's successfully done all the time. Think of all the countries that have successfully developed, or at least not fallen to pieces. India, Singapore, even Malaysia. If you really want a prospective nightmare scenario, think of India if one didn't know how it would turn out, with its multiple religions, castes, etc. Yet India is fine.
It's a myth to say it can't be done. It simply can't be done with a stopwatch going and the PC crowd second guessing everthing. The result is it doesn't get done at all. So we flit from one place to the other, saying "we'll get it done perfectly next time". And it never happened the UN way, which is why we keep trying it that way.
Real nation builders are civilians. The businessmen, commercial agents, doctors, indigenes who've returned from abroad, etc. Plus the ports, airports, newspapers. Nothing civilizes a man like civilization. In Bobbitt's the Shield of Achilles, a metaphor for the safety of civlization, he notes that the boss of the Shield was etched with the images of temples, theaters, schools and art. The Shield of Achilles is largely comprised of the very things we consider hateful. Nor do we put much stock in the bronze of the Shield itself. What we will trust is the chimera of the official "development".
As for the Chinese, they will survive in Southeast Asia. They always do. And they will actually outlast and thrive in despite of every effort to dislodge them. On the day the guy with the Politically Correct stopwatch quits the Chinese will sell him the airline ticket out and the meal at the departure lounge to boot. Maybe we should learn something from them.
Rini denies Taiwan link:
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Snyder Rini denied yesterday that his election was influenced by back-room bribes bankrolled by Taiwan or China.
Rumors that Taiwan or China helped fund bribes that secured Rini the prime minister's job last week in a secret ballot of the troubled South Pacific nation's 50 lawmakers have abounded in the capital, Honiara, and have been blamed in part for a rampage by looters and rioters in the city's Chinatown.
Rini Denial
"News accounts from Australia indicate that, indeed, the PC chorus is already warming up."
For the latest see,
Australia's Pacific intervention hits snag
By Janaki Kremmer, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Tue Apr 25, 4:00 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/
20060425/wl_csm/osolomons
Keep in mind, tho, that the video is all you get to see. And that his men are masked, and the exteriors are shot out in a forlorn wadi a hundred clicks from Bumfug. And that bin Laden has to communicate thru a cassette smuggled out the Himalayas up a goats ass.
Wretchard,
The French assisted the US in nation building because the Americans wanted to build a nation. The US helped France in re-building a nation wrecked by the Nazis. The French were pleased because they wanted France back. There has to be an overwhelming indigenous will that needs a boost rather than a prod.
Islands in the stream
That is what we are
No one in be-tween how can we be wrong
Sail away with me to another world
And we re-ly on each other uh huh
From one lover to another uh huh
Jared Diamond looked at nation building as well.
To date, despite the wealth of material, no one has done a comparative study of the UK and Japan.
Initial conditions have a lot to do with how the equations work out. Different boundaries lead to grossly different results. Same with nations.
re: nation building.
There appear to be a number of opportunities to experiment. All the way from, say, tough-love - i.e. shed our own blood to destroy the noxious weeds, wish whomever remains well, and say "we'll be back if the weeds return, and you really don't want us to come back." (and, "sorry, no, we don't expect you to succeed on your first few tries.") to swedish-(or U.S.)-style birth-to-death welfare.
It's bad enough being forced to do this type of police work. Playing nanny is above and beyond the call - best left to the liberated and those who did not have to get angry enough to put their sons at risk.
Policy Is More Important Than Personnel:
But the issue is not who serves as Secretary of Defense, the issue is how, when, and why the United States uses military force. It makes no sense simply to replace Mr. Rumsfeld with someone else who holds the same view, namely that it’s the job of American soldiers and U.S. taxpayers to police the world.
We should be debating the proper foreign policy for our country – utopian nation building vs. the noninterventionism counseled by our founding fathers – rather than which individual is best suited to carry it out.
Policy vs. Personnel
Not to pick to fine a nit, Sam, but our founding fathers were citizens of an upstart, relatively weak nation surrounded strategically by warring powers. Their warning was against permanent alliances. Intervention as a geo-political concept did not yet exist.
And I wouldn't say that nation building is utopian. Instead, I would say it is resignation: a grudging acceptance of the world as it is, rather than the world as it should be.
Cedarford, sometimes you are so close to a solid rational thought, but then you latch onto the inevitable vapor.
For instance, trickle-down economics doesn't work? How 'bout doesn't exist, at least as a defended theory. It is an apparition, a buzz-word created by critiques, and a fundamental misunderstanding of economics.
Trickle-down is a term of derision for supply side economics. Bush I also called it Voodoo Economics in the 1980 Primary. Paul Krugman thinks the entire supply side theory is a ruse for Republicans to enrich their wealthy constituents. It is, in fact, none of the above.
Supply side economics is not simply giving money to the rich and waiting for it to trickle down to the poor. The most significant goal of supply side economics is to increase production. The theory is to increase the incentive to save through tax-manipulation to encourage asset allocation to investment, which would then spur production, which would then create jobs, which would then create income. This income would then be taxed, and the remainder would be traded for goods and services or it would be invested. Both would create positive returns on the initial investment, and away we go.
This is not trickle down, it is wealth generation. This process writ large creates wealth, and it creates tax revenue. If the incentive to invest is considerable, "rich people's" money (the one's with the disposable income) goes to work, instead of being tied up in tangibles like gold and land.
So it's not merely tax cuts for the rich. It's more like miracle grow. The only problem with exporting it is that it needs a viable seed on which to act.
And as to "middlemen", I would recommend Thomas Sowell's well-researched chapter on Middlemen in Black Rednecks and White Liberals. According to Sowell, the ill-treatment of middlemen is more a jealous racism and a lower-class ignorance of why they are necessary than anything else.
OT
Why Bangladesh Matters
The new battleground between Islamic terror and democracy.
The terrorists, meanwhile, have had astounding success in a recent operation to explode 500 bombs simultaneously in different parts of the country. Five hundred bombs in one day anywhere in the world should be newsworthy, but the Western press has largely ignored these coordinated attacks.
Wretchard, I sang Del Shannon's "Runaway" at our final ball at college, but it was a costume ball, and I was made up quite like a cross between Frankenstein's monster and Nosferatu, hideous really, and my classmates didn't want to even come NEAR me...
..Then came the place we'd practiced for a month, and I played my 12-string and sang Runaway, and it was cool! :D
(ROFLMAO)
Wretchard,
An insightful dissertation is being developed on PRECISELY this question, this dynamic, at:
"Treason Forest"
treesnforest.blogspot.com
When our troops entered Somalia in 1992 for the purpose of protecting famine relief workers, they found that the local young men sat around all day chewing the leaves of a plant, Quat, which produced intoxicating effects. Then at night they shot the place up.
US troops eventually began confiscating Quat. This did not set well with the locals, even those who thought an AK-47 and a bundle of Quat did not constitute quality entertainment. (At least here in the South that is defined as a six pack of beer and a bug zapper).
A Somalian doctor summed it the local attitude. "You are supposed to be here to help us, not change our culture."
But of course, with not only Somalia, but also much of the middle east, the Amercian ghettos and the hordes of Mexicans flooding into the US, the "culture" is the real problem.
Brilliant observation Wretchard, thank you. In the software industry we call this 'conflicting requirements'. Yet most software managers insist on forging ahead anyway 'to get something done' and show that 'we're team players'. The results are predictable.
Fred:
It appears that a major problem with nation building is that it looks so much like colonization.
And of course, it is, at the most basic level - that of "imposing" cultural characteristics like don't shoot your neighbor or take a crap in the middle of the street.
Some years back on 60 Minutes they talked about a program where inner city families were moved to the suburbs in an attempt to "innoculate" them with what today would be called "middle class values." And it worked. Even those who decided to move back to the city never again looked at their environment in the same way. BUT - they managed to find one critic - a black professional with a college degree - that deplored the fact that those families "had" to go to the suburbs to learn such values - and could not get them in the inner city. Of course, if those attitudes were prevalent or even available there, it would not be the innter city.
Bigotry had one useful purpose - it provided a set of guidelines for those too stupid or lazy to figure them out on their own.
One thing we've learned--multiculti politics are less "felt" spiritually than as political weaponry. Otherwise the Iraqi people would've been worth saving, right?
I don't know of any situation where 1st worlders have ever been able to "nation build" another nation. They build colonies, yes. Annex territories and populations, yes. That which is necessary to build a nation is not bureaucracy, nor religion, nor aid packages, nor peacekeepers -- it is legend.
Nations, empires, and all other powerful states rely upon myth and legend to build themselves and sustain themselves. It could be a contemporary legend; it could be an ancient legend; it may even be true! The key, though, is for there to be a compelling story, a creation myth if you would like, that can evoke the loyalty of the people.
Post-war Germany and Japan weren't built -- they were rebuilt. This is a major difference. And the national myths of each state were so strong that they could bend more easily to the will to an occupation. In contrast, most other states have been far more brittle.
In America, our Constitution is basically a truce between the rich and the poor, among the states, and among the confessions. A "social contract" is essentially a truce, a decision to substitute symbolic rebellion for open rebellion in exchange for government recognition of the freedom to engage in symbolic rebellion. This contract has worked reasonably well for us.
One suspects that places like Iraq would be the most likely Middle Eastern states to embrace liberal democracy if it is seen as the most effective means to manage Iraq's perpetual civil war. In this sense, Iraq's civil war can be seen to have lasted over thirteen centuries -- and perhaps thousands of years longer than that!
Alexis: Very well put! I very nearly got into similar ideas myself, but decided that it was too verbose.
Just before retiring from thE USAF I wrote a paper describing how our approach to space launch capabilities has been time and again driven by what I call "mythologies" - overall ideas which inspire detailed plans - and then we are jerked back to reality by disasters such as the loss of a space shuttle or a series of launch failures that derive from the mythology. The paper was well received, the most common comment being "That was great! I never thought of it that way..." I am working on a full length book treatment of the idea.
Thinking about this has also caused me to realize how "mythologies" drive a great many things. All are unrealistic in some way as compared to the real world, but some serve as a useful basis for thought. For example the "all men are created equal and have inalienable rights" idea is demonstrably false and is clearly a mythology - but evidence exists that building a nation based on that mythology gets some damn fine results.
Foreign Minister Downer says "the Solomons will remain unstable" and adds a 'shrug' (I thought) re the Chinese residents.
In 1940 Australia had to protect New Caledonia from Vichy France. Now it has to protect the Solomon Islands from the UN. Australia is a federation that once was a group of arguing colonies. They could not even agree on the gauge for a railroad between colonies.
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