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In older times a dysfunctional country would be quickly conquered and fixed by the nearest competent neighbor. I don't even know what a solution could look lik

• nostrademons 17y ago
  That still holds. The problem is that it's been taken to its logical conclusion: all dysfunctional countries have been conquered by their competent neighbors, which means that there are large landmasses that contain exclusively competent nations (North America, Europe, Australia/Oceania, and soon Asia) and large landmasses that contain exclusively dysfunctional ones (Africa, Arabia, and South America). There are natural barriers that prevent competent but distant nations from conquering dysfunctional ones. Colonialism was an attempt to ignore those, until people realized that it cost far more than it was worth to the colonizers. I should probably mention that much of the reasoning behind the Bush invasion of Iraq was along these lines. It was hoped that Iraq would become a "beacon of democracy" in the Mideast. Then, all of its neighbors would either adopt Western institutions to maintain their relative positions, or they would be conquered by a U.S-supported Iraq. Somebody forgot to factor in the effect of an 8000-mile supply line, or the reluctance of a people to give up deeply-entrenched customs.
  • DenisM 17y ago
    I don't think it holds anymore - people of successful countries have really soured on the whole conquest idea after WW2. Which is why I think these handicapped countries still exist and will continue to exist.
    • yardie 17y ago
      Some haven't and are engaged in it outright or through proxy. China claims all of the South China Sea (and islands) to be theirs. Ethiopia, I personally believe, is just still playing with the idea of taking parts of Somalia. This would be done already if their government wasn't already corrupt. And Morocco still claims Western Sahara, a quasi independent nation with no formal government. And don't even get me start on Israel and the west bank.
  • fbailey 17y ago
    maybe one of you could show at least one example of a "competent" nation conquering disfunctional ones before building your complete world view on it.
    • JeffL 17y ago
      Roman Empire? Pretty much all empires through history? Of course "competent" can be interpreted a lot of different ways.
      • rbanffy 17y ago
        It's not always fun to have a competent foreign power administrating your country...
    • lionhearted 17y ago
      > maybe one of you could show at least one example of a "competent" nation conquering disfunctional ones before building your complete world view on it. Countries with a mix of a stable economy, advanced technology, and organized military regularly conquered their neighbors that didn't have those things. Countries with the tech/military but not the stable economy (USSR, for instance) could have a brief go at it, but inevitably came down upon themselves. What sort of examples were you looking for? Nations with the combination advanced technology relative to their neighbors and a well organized military have done a lot of conquering throughout history, and those with stable economies held onto their new possessions. There's so many examples I wouldn't know where to start. Rome and all of its possessions would be a decent place, or one of the many functional or dysfunctional Russian Empires, or the Unification of Japan under the Oda, Toyotomi, and Tokugawa daimyos, or Manifest Destiny in the United States... Those are just a few to come to mind with the economy/tech/military edges, but there's quite literally hundreds, from little tiny islands taking over other little tiny islands in Oceania to the various international powers/empires. Maybe the question is with the word competent? You do need a healthy economy, advanced technology, and stable military, which in turn requires some sort of decent courts, checks and balances on military rule, some science and production happening, and so on. Complicated question - could probably go on more if you clarified a bit.
    • 17y ago
  • ytinas 17y ago
    What does your (and the GP's) definition of "competent" mean, "imperialistic"? Were the native Americans less competent because they weren't always trying to expand and conquer? Looking at today's rat race, I don't think it's conclusive that we did a better job than they would have. Sure, it seems likely that we ended up with better medicine than they would have had by now, but the rest of it? "I should probably mention that much of the reasoning behind the Bush invasion of Iraq was along these lines." This statement seems extraordinarily naive to me. What is it based on?
    • thaumaturgy 17y ago
      Which native Americans? The Yaqui? Or the Iroquois, pre-league or post-league? Or the Chiricahua Apaches? Or the Pequot? Each of those had their own unique culture, their own identity, their own language, their own technology. Some were cruel to their captives and in times of war; others were not. Some wanted to expand their territory and conquer lands and other tribes, while others had found territory to settle in and had no desire to expand, while still others were purely nomadic. If you have any love at all for history, stop referring to all those pre-colonial nations under a single name and title. Doing so is a vestigial prejudice in our culture, and worst of all, it's completely destroying any chance we have of learning what they were actually like. As to relative "competence" -- well, we've begun exploring space. So, I guess it all depends on what you consider to be important.
      • ytinas 17y ago
        Any of them. They were all steam rolled by us. >Some were cruel to their captives and in times of war; others were not. What bearing does this have on anything? Most of the bad things we hear about were learned from someone else (e.g. scalping from the French). >Some wanted to expand their territory and conquer lands and other tribes, There was in-fighting between certain groups, but obviously none had the same appetite we did. >If you have any love at all for history, stop referring to all those pre-colonial nations under a single name and title. You seem to have an axe to grind. In normal usage, one provides as much detail as is relevant. If I were talking about people of earth in relation to some other alien race I would most likely say "humans" unless there was a real reason to be more specific.
  • daniel-cussen 17y ago
    They also forgot the conquering usually also involved intentional, thorough genocide (as opposed to picking people off piecemeal, as they are now) and/or enslavement of the conquered people.
  • bokonist 17y ago
    Somebody forgot to factor in the effect of an 8000-mile supply line, or the reluctance of a people to give up deeply-entrenched customs. That's not the problem. Britain ruled Egypt for many decades using only 5,000 soldiers and actually turned a profit. Egypt at the time had 9 million people. Back in 1900, logistics were even more difficult, and Britain's technological edge was actually much less. The core problem is the the U.S. cultural DNA is anti-imperialist. No one in state department or DOD has actually read the memoirs from the British empire about how they did it. Nor is the U.S. willing to use imperialist tactics. For instance, if you're doing imperialism you need to have a native army reporting directly to the ruling officer class. Instead, the U.S. is trying to police every street with American soldiers. Second, instead of encouraging political parties and democracy, an imperialist needs to prevent them. Political parties incite people to action by blaming other ethnic groups for problems, and they spend all their time worrying about grabbing their peace of the pie. It's very easy for political parties to turn into actual gangs. Third, you cannot be afraid to issue the entire population ID cards, have curfews, checkpoints, population control, etc, until the region is pacified. Do the above three things, and imperialism is easy. You can do it with 5,000 troops and turn a profit. But do it American style, where you are doing imperialism without admitting it, and you get disaster.
• sethg 17y ago
  The British got out of the imperialism business soon after they introduced universal sufferage; the average blokes would rather see their tax money spent on things like jobs for themselves than on maintaining supply lines to India.
  • eru 17y ago
    And that's a good thing. But the democratic rich world still has too many costly foreign adventures for my liking as a tax-payer.