U.S. military is expanding special forces operations in Africa
news.vice.com
news.vice.com
Organizations such as AQM have so much support and capability that local governments are often afraid to oppose them directly for fear that things will escalate and they'll lose the entire country. This often presents logistical challenges for US forces.
American forces are working on multiple levels and approaches not just "direct action".
It's not just about Somalia. Somalia is the poster child and gets the most press but really a drop in the bucket. Africa is a big continent with systemic challenges and those challenges are the perfect power vacuum for these groups.
We've been there since before 9/11. It's an ooooold fight.
> In 2006, just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa. In 2010, it was 3 percent. By 2016, that number had jumped to more than 17 percent. In fact, according to data supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command, there are now more special operations personnel devoted to Africa than anywhere except the Middle East — 1,700 people spread out across 20 countries
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-hedge-fund-manager-founds-sch...
The U.S. is now fighting a active war against "loosely connected groups from north West Africa to Central Asia" most are Sunni Extremists. This is already a insane thing to do, war on loosely connected groups that reach over 10000km even when the waste majority of these groups have never actually attacked the US or have any plans to. There is also almost no evidence that one can actually win such a war in a military sense. The guy who lead ISIS was turned into a terrorist not in the 1980s when the US was supporting Afgans against the Soviets but rather in 2004 during the Battle of Fallujah. Fighting and bombing people everywhere will create more Anti-American opinions then it destroys. Ironically the only place people actually like the US is in Iran where the US have not been able to bomb anybody for 40 years or so.
Outside of that they are also actively working against and sometimes fighting with the Iranian block (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and maybe even the Houthis plus a few other groups) who are often equally opposed to the before mentioned "loosely connected groups from north West Africa to Central Asia". This means the US is at a total strategic impact where there are people already fighting but the US wants to get in there and crush both groups but also make sure the destruction of one does not empower the other.
The allies of the US, Israel, Saudis and Pakistan are all highly problematic and in many ways strategically counterproductive. Israel because support for Israel makes everybody else, especially among the population of the region angry prevent the government from embracing any alliance with the US. The Saudis and the Pakistanis are largely responsible for the creation of many of the before mentioned "loosely connected groups" and continue to support them all over the world.
The US supports Sunni governments against Shia governments but is fighting a war against both Shia and Sunni non-government actors. At the same time non of the governments they support actually give flying fuck about the US except for the support they can get from the US.
Why all of this? The US was only involved in the region because of oil. The US does not actually need the oil anymore, even if they did the resources spent are probably higher then just paying the higher price for oil. Not to mention that even without the US everybody who has oil has a huge intensive to sell it.
If you look objectively at any of this you can only shake your head. The danger of all of these groups is minimal. Yet the US spends the same amount of money they did when they were opposing another world supper power.
Sadly in Washington there is a foreign policy consensus and a echo chamber and there is almost nobody who moves very far from the 'party line' on foreign policy. Not to mention the massive vested interest that it supports when the Saudis buy 10 Billions in US weapons.
The US political class really do believe in this project. They do teach these things in reputable schools. This goes to deep to be just about cronyism. That explanation does not work for WW1, neither does it here.
It's about strategic positioning to control resource routes in anticipation of the coming resource wars that everyone pretends isn't going to happen. This while the Leo Strauss-ians like Kissinger and Brzezinski work hard to initiate cold-war 2.0 because the Middle East destablization program was simply a precursor to bigger more nasty conflicts, (which start economically) and most of this is arising due to the fact that technology has advanced so fast it altered the nation-states threat model and they don't know how to handle a kind of world where any lone-wolf actor could do devestating things. Hence a surveillance state of totalitarian dystopia is the only response they know that might be able to handle it except they don't really care about national security that much or they wouldn't be wasting taxpayer dollars on kickbacks to relatives around the beltway instead of fixing problems.
Africa is a war ground for precious minerals and metals (and some oil) and because the Chinese have been making big plays there the Americans want to balance out the power so they have a foothold when the minerals that go in that phone in your pocket become more scarce because China suddenly halted exports of theirs or something similar.
I spent some time in the Horn of Africa, and I can tell you I'd rather be in Iraq... at least Iraqi's pickup their dead bodies, and I never saw a 12 year old patrolling with an AK in Iraq either.
The point is that while you are right that we need to rethink how far we overextend our forces into foreign entanglements, there are other things at play here of which terrorism is only a part of and is often a byproduct of. We also need to consider how often such moves have resulted in blowback worse than the initial problem. I look all over the world and see problems that are blowback from our meddling in the first place. (Iran is a prime example of this. The Mullahs would have never come to power if we hadn't overthrown their gov for oil in the first place.)
> It's about strategic positioning to control resource routes in anticipation of the coming resource wars that everyone pretends isn't going to happen.
I don't know why that should happen. Even if it did, why would you care about the Middle East? Oil will no longer be a important resource and as long as it is the US has its own supply. A middle east that is unable to export Oil would mean LESS resources for china who I assume would be the enemy in that massive war you are predicting.
> because the Middle East destablization program
If they only want to destabilize the region there would be more effective ways to do it. It also assumes that all the people involved in for example the Iraq invasion were all lairs and all of them seem to be able to keep this secret even once they are retired. It also does not explain why the US send 100'000 people into Iraq to stop the civil war, it would have been far cheaper just to keep out and let things happen.
I see no evidence for this theory.
> they don't know how to handle a kind of world where any lone-wolf actor could do devestating things
Bomb building has not changed that much, Anarchist have killed far more people in the US then Muslim Terrorists. A small group of students started WW1.
> Africa is a war ground for precious minerals and metals (and some oil) and because the Chinese have been making big plays there the Americans want to balance out the power so they have a foothold when the minerals that go in that phone in your pocket become more scarce because China suddenly halted exports of theirs or something similar.
The US position on Africa has been extremely light touch. They operate with special forces for the most part. They don't attempted massive economic inroads or outright conquests that would be required if resource security was the main goal.
I agree about blowback.
The main difference between us is that I believe that it is stupidity and internal political intensives. Not some long running prepare for some future war. I don't think any such war will happen, politically, economically and there is the problem of nukes.
I don't think people will be able to ever understand whats really going on in the world until they understand it's true, and makes lots of sense. (not sure what you mean by "waste" though.) I have spent the vast majority of my time since I got out of the military tracing the big picture for myself based on the evidence, wanting to find the truth regardless of where it took me. Those who invoke variations of hanlons razor (it's all incompetence) or just say it's perverse results of bad incentives organically corrupting the system, simply haven't carefully examined the evidence. That being said, I do acknowledge two things that hamper my claims somewhat. First, when dealing with such issues I am often restricted to inductive logic due to a lack of hard evidence. Deductive logic is always preferable. Two, I know it's hard for claims such as mine to be taken at face value without better citations, but I do have many contextual citations that I simply haven't made public yet. I also understand such a vast scope means I still have a shitton of things to learn, and don't know everything.
> why would you care about the Middle East? Oil will no longer be a important resource
This is a line I have heard from the intelligencia that hasn't stood up to actual real-world tests. Like I said most of the oil issue was never about us actually having the oil, it was about us controlling who did get the oil. Likewise, I find it humourous that people have already bought the line about no needing oil hook line and sinker. It's simply not realistic to pretend a lack of potential depedence on oil in 2030-50 is going to cause us to suddenly give up our imperial ambitions. Oil is but a part of a much bigger game.
> If they only want to destabilize the region there would be more effective ways to do it.
What other than war, and especially civil and secretarian war comes even close to the same amount of destablization?
> It also assumes that all the people involved in for example the Iraq invasion were all lairs and all of them seem to be able to keep this secret even once they are retired.
First of all, yes, most of them were/are pathological liars. Second, the nature of compartmentalization creates a breeding ground for such abuses to be top down while middle-men ground-pounders (in this case military generals) have no clue about what's really going on. This is a variation of the fallacy I hear too often about "if X conspiracy theory is true, it would take Y number of people to be silent which is impossible/improbable and therefor conspiracy theory is false." Really, all you needed was a core group running the show, the rest tend to just do as told. (Bremer/Wolfowitz/Cheney/Rumsfeld part of core group)
> I see no evidence for this theory.
Then I don't think you have examined very much material relating to it.
> Bomb building has not changed that much. Anarchist have killed far more people in the US then Muslim Terrorists.
Modern threats are cyber, genetic, etc. That's the threat model shift many in the natsec industry are at least pretending to try to shift to, and even the most academic of the natsec group admits technology has rapidly shifted the equation faster than nation-states of been able to adapt. Ignoring this with such a flippant dismissal isn't a serious attempt at conversation on the topic.
> A small group of students started WW1.
History as written by the instigators. King Edward the 7th was the single man most responsible for WW1. I don't have time to get into this one though.
> The US position on Africa has been extremely light touch.
It has been, but it's not going to be for much longer.
> They don't attempted massive economic inroads or outright conquests
The American's haven't, but the history and modern history of Africa and it's current state is inextricably tied to the European colonialism and exploitation of Africa through "economic inroads" and "outright conquests". Rhodesia, Congo, Suez, Morocco, are all examples of this. Not to mention IMF/World bank explotation that creates the corruption and inculcates the extremism being fought. Hell, South Africa apartheid barely ended in 1991!
So your comment about the US is mostly true, but I'm also talking about the supranational oligarchy of the west as a whole, not just the US.
> The main difference between us is that I believe that it is stupidity and internal political intensives.
I dismiss Hanlons razor as an inherent logical fallacy, and the organic incentives angle simply doesn't match the evidence or fill the gaps needed to understand the global geo-economic/political games being played here.
Don't get me wrong. I see this response from intelligent people quite often, and I understand it because it's the safe academic viewpoint especially without all the contextual knowledge/evidence required to say otherwise, but I'm telling you now it's not the truth of the matter at all.
The pages of history are littered with conspiracy, and until people can stop trying so hard to dismiss it because of the negative modern connotations they won't be able to approach the evidence and follow it to the truth regardless of where it leads.
See part 4C. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/1967-he-cia-created...
> King Edward the 7th was the single man most responsible for WW1.
I would actually be interested in that one.
I have only heard one person ever to blame Britain for WW1. That person was conspiracy theorist who believed in Anglo-Saxon elite that has a secret plan for world domination and they had it since 1066.
I myself have read quite a lot about WW1 and making Edward the 7th responsible is simply wrong.
Not like UK intervening in WWI ensured peace or anything
I really don't understand how people can blame Britain for join a war to enforce a treaty that Germany had was a signatory to, and had broken.
That seem like evaluation the two power with different moral standards. Britain tried everything in their power to bring people to peace talks, these peace talks were blocked by Germany and Austria. Then Germany is the first to violate borders and Britain eventually joins the war because they had a treaty and because the Germans behaved like animals in Belgium.
How can anybody make the argument Britain is at fault here?
An interesting book about the topic is The Great Illusion By Norman Angell [1]
Saying a bunch of students started WW1 is quite absurd.
I did find some material pointing fingers at King Edward though, might want to take a look [2]
[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38535/38535-h/38535-h.htm
[2] http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1995/eirv22n13-1995032...
That is an argument often made, but the evidence for it is basically speculation based on pure balance of power theory.
There is just one very big problem with that theory. Why would Britain not have the same issue with the US? The US was tracking and even outpacing Germany in growth and population, but Britain was willing to compromise with the US based on reasonable disagreements. Because the US did not overreach, Britain was content with losing influence.
The US for example promised not to annex Cuba and signaled that they did not have much interest in further expedition in the east. The also agree on how to deal with South America.
Germany on the other hand was different. They essentially tried and did everything to piss everybody off. Britain was in some cases actually prepared to agree with Germany, but Germany behaved so stupidly that they drove them in French hands.
Then Germany continued to behave like idiots so that eventually the arch enemies Russia and Britain agree to an alliance even when they had outstanding issues in Persia and other places.
Even then, once German soldiers were literally walking threw and destroying Belgium Britain only joined the war on a thin margin in parliament.
I really don't see how Britain can be made responsible for any of it. Britain loudly called for peace talks until right before WW1 and Germany/Austria refused any kind of talks.
> Saying a bunch of students started WW1 is quite absurd.
The caused a geopolitical event who's fallout caused the war. Of course they did not put on German uniforms and walked over the Belgium border.
> I did find some material pointing fingers at King Edward though, might want to take a look [2]
Seems to me that amounts to about a conspiracy theory. There is this Anglo-saxon elites conspiricy theory going around. Everything that happens was somehow planned and put in place by the British so they could profit form it.
I have read multiple very modern books that in detailed researched these diplomatic relationships and not a single modern historian seems to endorse this theory.
> An interesting book about the topic is The Great Illusion By Norman Angell [1]
He had some good points. His problem was to misunderstand the political economy of the countries. In the autocratic empires the people who have the power to declare and make war are not the same people who mostly profited from the markets.
The German and Austrian high officials were part of a separate culture where they actually look down on many business men and the newly rich, all they car about was power and honor. Looking at the Austrians makes this point quite clear, these people were not living in the same world that Angell was outlining.
Many German capitalist understood the problem and were against war, but they did not have the required influence.
Edit:
If you want to read one book on the subject I would recommend "The War that Ended Peace" by the highly respected historian Margaret Macmillan.
I agree with you about the King Edward material, feels a bit conspirative to me too. Although some political and economical points there make sense.
Thank you for the book reference, will check it out.
Btw, this discussion is a bit discouraging to me since I realise that not even after 100 years we can properly agree on some facts. Tech giants fighting fake news will have a big challenge.
Britain was perfectly willing to accept the rise of the US. They were willing to accept the growth of Germany until they started behaving very aggressively.
Germany could not defeat Britain in a naval race. They had already given up even trying before WW1. Why would Britain intentionally start a war, after Germany had already been defeated. That would only give them the chance to conquer France/Belgium.
None of this has changed the fundamental laws of nature that govern the power of nations. War is coming and it will be very bad for almost all Of us. As has been the entire history of humanity before us.
Try bribing a cop in a developed country and you'll find yourself in an even bigger hole. But in the developing world, it's the normal way of doing business. You bribe a cop to get out of a ticket, you bribe an official to get your paperwork done faster.
Faced with these stupid requirements and tons of needed stamps and seals and signoffs, if you wanna get stuff done, you pay Vs letting the ineffective system slowly get to it. In one case, the customs officer worked overtime: after 5, he'd continue to process paperwork, correctly, legally, but extra money decided which pieces he'd work on. After anti corruption systems went into place, he can't do this anymore and just goes home at 5. No one wins.
Isn't that analogue to net neutrality though? Old situation: those who pay enter the bureaucracy fast lane, screw the rest. New situation: everyone gets processed at the same speed, regardless of monetary power.
It actually has some nice side-effects like cops targeting only the expensive cars, whereas if you're on a cheap motobike you can pay a $1 for a ticket. Having lived for a while now in a country that fares very poorly on the Corruption Perceptions Index, I prefer it to living in the US.
Edit: You fixed it, hurrah!
What bothers me is that there is a ,largely, simple solution here: stop global warming and build educational, medical, and governmental structures to support the people in Africa. We need to bring them along with us in our prosperity, and, find a way for them to enjoy stable government. I know that part of the stable government solution involves taking down dictators and other military action, but this has to also include education, food, medicine, and teaching people how to build things.
EDIT: read that link and then explain how that is not a problem instead of downvoting:
"The ethnic groups of Africa number in the thousands,"
Wake up boys - it's all the same meat and bones.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_of_Afric...
Tribalism and the "killing each other" thing is not unique to Africa. On the latter, Europeans have Africa beat. If you're an America, I'll suggest you make a study of your ancestors history.
War seems to have stopped in (Western) Europe though. That is until the Russians take advantage of the current power vacuum to start one, or a spark ignites between ethnic groups that haven't been around in large enough numbers until very recently.
On the other hand, Africa is at war today. See: article being discussed and [0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Africa#21...
But yes, wars stopped because after WW II, they decided the madness had to stop. That led to the formation of the EU. Countries that belong to the same economic group seldom go to war. ECOWAS serves the same purpose in West Africa.
Assuming you're an American, you should be blaming your govt. rather than Russia for the what's happening around that region. I know you won't believe it, but that doesn't change the facts.
There might be differen reasons than giving up on tribes. Afaik the biggest wars we had were totally not tribe related, but rather "Nation" and than "Race".
And the original tribes in central europe are loong gone, replaced by feudalism and christianity over 1000 years ago.
My point is that progress in Africa is hampered by unnecessary divisions between people. It's obviously not the only problem, but it's not helping, either.
Let me pose it this way.
You were born a Native American, your tribe is your family, and your history. For all intents, yhey are a nation that raised you.
Around you are strangers. They come from a different nation.
They butchered your ancestors to steal what they had.
Yet, as is the way of your tribe, you try to be peaceful and considerate.
In response, some are kind to you. But, their leaders steal your water.
Not just sustinence, something special to the stories of your people.
You protest peacefully.
They react with violence.
How do you feel?
Tribes aren't something to give up. They're a part of you. Your history. Do you tell an Irishman to forget his kilt? An Englishman his Coat of Arms? Do you tell someone who's grandfather was a slave that its okay to be poor, because he's equal now?
The tribe is family, history, and nation. When your neighbour tried to sell your grandfather out for diamonds, there will be problems.
If anything, Africa shows us problems we ignore... And that with time and effort, relations can be improved. Sometimes it doesn't work. Bill kills Joe, because Joe bragged that his Da used to eat your family.
But forgetting who you are, isn't going to help.
Ordered by number of conflicts, in decreasing amount:
Tribes > Nation-states > Unions.
There will be more wars when the European Union breaks up. Or when the US does.
Conversely, Africa will greatly benefit from becoming more united in the same way the West has. This is now being reverted (see Trump, Brexit), so you just wait and see where that takes us.
It isn't as simple as you say, because a tribe is more than you seem to think it is. I can change my country, I cannot change my tribe.
Having many tribes does not mean unity is impossible.
You're missing my point. There are no tribes in Australia, for practical purposes. Australia has moved past the concept of tribes. In Australia, people are born into Australia.
In Africa, in 2017, people are born into a tribe.
That is utter, utter crap.
The Tiwi don't associate with the Kimberly kids. Their islands are closed to outsiders. You are given your totem at age of 12 in a smoking ceremony that outsiders are not permitted to witness. You are not born Australian. You cannot marry one. You are Tiwi.
You mean, like overwriting my actual life experiences with some sort of "narrative" that becomes more synthetic the more it becomes generalized and massaged? That's exactly what tribalism and group think are to me. "fools in old-style hats and coats, / Who half the time were soppy-stern / And half at one another’s throats" come to mind.
> The tribe is family, history, and nation.
It's funny though how as babies we start out mostly alike, and happily adopt a lot or even all of wherever we're put. History is kind of irrelevant if you don't actually tell it, it's a story. Yes, knowing why one's parents behaved the way they did is useful, but anything before that isn't really different from stories about other people. Interesting for their content, but with no super special connection to me, giving me identity or anything remotely like that. In so far as they affected me, in so far as I am a result of that chain, I can more accurately examine those current traces in my current me, simply find out who I am, in the flesh, not in dead words and thoughts.
Now, don't get me started on "communities", beh. I know all of this sounds so anti-social, but it's not, I hate how the actual people let themselves be buried under essentially religious systems that will spew them out as quickly as they snatched them up.
We clearly have different thoughts on the matter, so I won't delve deeply here.
But I would say the message becoming more generalised isn't what I've seen. Though, the tribes I was immersed with had deep story-telling practices, such as weaving and repeated communal retellings. Resulting in near word-for-word retellings some hundreds of years apart. The moral isn't explained or given. Its just history.
You should have started off with that. There's no point in arguing with you if this is the case. You're too invested in them.
This is fine. You're probably more correct that I am anyway, since you've experience on the ground. I'm just armchair quarterbacking.
> As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. [...] This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion.
-- Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man" (1871)
It's the in-between that drives me nuts, and the closing window of opportunity to achieve some kind of unity that isn't based on deformity and deception, if not outright force.
I don't understand why half the world is still crying, man
And the other half of the world is still crying too, man
But if we forget our past, we risk repeating it.
Remember the bad, and where you came from, and remember the good, so that you have a chance at ensuring the future doesn't look like your nightmares.
Maybe this might be an example of a tribe serving a better purpose:
The elders acknowledged the problems of the next generation. So they built a school, and brought in outside knowledge to run it. The school was too far inland to run from, and a long way from anywhere else. They learned maths, alongside the story of the elder who decided to make peace with the other tribes.
The school is their pride. They rejoice in the girl learning to be a doctor, and the guy who is now a national athlete.
They didn't forget who they were, but they saw who they weren't and are actively trying to add to it. Enhance themselves, by using their past as a guide.
"Yes, knowing why one's parents behaved the way they did is useful"
and
", but anything before that isn't really different from stories about other people"
are contradictory. How could you know why your parents behaved the way they did if you don't know about their parents?
The person you are is a function of where you grow up, that is, your community. To deny that is to deny what humans are: social primates programmed to absorb a culture.
I only need to know their experiences with them and other people. Anything before stuff that shaped them is a bonus. Otherwise: how can you know your grandparents without knowing your grand grandparents? And so on? At which point does "knowing" become clogging up your mind with fuzzy distant blobs, then?
> The person you are is a function of where you grow up, that is, your community. To deny that
Would be contradictory with "in so far as I am a result of that chain, I can more accurately examine those current traces in my current me".
Though come to think of it, I'm denying it the way you phrase it. Communities and societies are even more importantly functions of the individuals in them. They have no meaning and no existence on their own, outside of a mutual agreement of actual people. We get shaped by our relationships and experiences with other people, and you can sum that up as "my community", but that's just a shorthand for my own actual experiences with the actual people I interacted with, and their experiences with me.
And who would you "absorb" culture from, if that was all there's to it? From others who just absorbed it? There needs to be a source at some point, why not be such a source, at least partially.
And I disagree with you. The solutions themselves are trivial. What's difficult is, as you said, getting the "rich" countries to support it. But these immigration issues don't exist in a vacuum. Why do you think Africans are fleeing Africa? What do you do if all you have is a farm and it dries up? Do you just sit there and die? Do you try to travel to Europe?
I'm very bearish on immigration. I think immigration policies in both the United States and Europe have been so negligent that they might be considered criminal, but I don't think it gets any better or easier if we leave people in Africa to starve or die from war while we keep pumping the atmosphere with CO2.
My point is that it's in our best long-term interest to create stable societies in Africa.
But here we are, and today even the anti-colonial ideologys exclaiming "help to help themselve" sound exausted. Europe has the most interest to stabilize africa, but good ideas on the how to are rare.
I know, colonialism- the excuse for everything- but other countrys where colonized several times over and are back on theire feet or ruling the world by now. And africa is diverse enought to show that colonialism is not just it.
My personal believe is that africa pays the price for bad circumstances (in part due to beeing the craddle of humanity/ bad distribution of croppable plants/ diseases) and living the facists and racists dream: "Constant warfare of one ethnicity against another. Mighty, messianically worshipped leaders, with no bigger aim then keeping the lion pack that brought them to power with corruption from tearing them apart."
My assumption is that if you have this mix, a spiral sets in which optimization is geared towards "surviving and propsering within the cycle of constant strife". The effect is partially visible in other country not on the african continent. To break the cycle, one would have to understand the human adaptions to crisis and strife - and combat the reactions. Create small oasis of prosperty- who can defend against african anti-capitalistic traditions, like leeching of the wealth of wealthy relatives (like public officials- who need constantly bigger bribes to pay this family mafia) and begin the same journey like south korea and south america did.
I guess saying that makes me a racist. And for racists im worser, calling theire gut feelings to "walk in cirles" dangerous. I just think it would be great if africans where the first to build a beanstalk for humanity.
Do you have anything to support this? I am not a global warming/climate change denier, but from what I have read, much of the farming problems is due to population growth and increased strain on existing irrigation sources. I have a hard time making a connection between a bad crop and political instability.
I'm not sure how to overcome this and I have to admit that at one point or the other I thought that the EU should simply stop providing any help to Africa and just make sure the problems don't swap over here, cause Europe will be blamed anyway - and being blamed for not helping is far cheaper than being blamed for helping. Most of the time, I just hope there's still a solution which doesn't end in a complete disaster.
Never heard of that once. Where did you get it from?
It seems that pretty much all of Africa was affected by colonialism; even "litte" colonial involvment would have dramatic effects. Just upsetting an established government can lead to extreme instability down the road, and redrawing country borders can pit cultures into unresolvable conflicts forever.
A country not affected by colonialism would be Japan which did quite well throughout the years.
Almost all of Africa was in some way effected, but that leaves you with the same problem. Why is Botswana doing fantastically well when Zimbabwe is going down the drain. Why is Tunis doing better then Libya?
We also have to account for the fact that all of these countries were pretty poor before the Europeans arrived as well. So you can really only blame Europeans for them to continue to not do very well.
Colonization is still a very important topic, but more in the context of how it shaped the institutions in those countries. The question we are trying to explain is why are all these countries unable to make sustainable institutional changes NOW.
> A country not affected by colonialism would be Japan which did quite well throughout the years.
Well, first I would argue that Japan culture has been far more effected by the West then the culture of Nigeria or Botswana. Why the Japan is a pretty special and unique case is a separate debate.
The same pattern does not hold for south east Asia for example. The countries not colonized are not doing better then those who have.
Turns out that even under perfect conditions developing a country that was held back just 40 years in its development is extremely difficult.
Africa was held back 1000x more, and in crucial moments in history (industrialization) at that. The situation of Japan is highly relevant as an example what can happen when you have continuity and a stable environment.
It just not as simple, its not linear and then colonialism comes along and is holding you back. The reality is that the institutions need to develop are complex, culture, foreign involvement, geography all play a role.
Africa is poor because colonialism story just does not hold up. Its a part of the story, but by itself it explains little.
Japan is not successful because they were not a colony. The are successful because they had a centralized state for a long time, that state was was able adopt new institutions. Even had the been a colony, once the imperialist leave Japan would probably have better growth is the avg. growth in Africa.
Africa's poverty is an African issue. In fact (and don't take this as a pro-colonization statement because I'm very anti-colonization) they were in many cases materially better off under foreign rule. Zimbabwe comes to mind.
The economics profession has studied these problems for a very long time. If it were simple to do what you suggest then we would have done it. Literally everything has been tried in Development Economics.
> I know that part of the stable government solution involves taking down dictators and other military action
Again, based on what evidence are you making these claims? The story that you can military overthrow dictators and put in a stable government has utterly failed in most cases.
> but this has to also include education, food, medicine, and teaching people how to build things.
Do you have evidence for any of this? Development economics has long ago concluded that 'teaching things' has no long run impact.
Have you ever actually looked at the evidence and history of all these policy's?
Could you point me towards some overview of the issues?
I don't know a book specifically focusing on that issue, but any book on the history of economic development should have some discussion on this problem. There are good books both those that are more populist and the more academic ones. There is also the question do you want to focus on Development Economics specifically or general growth theory. One is more about how you can help somebody grow the other is more fundamentally about why growth happens.
I suggest you start view something more broad then just looking into education. A mooc like this: http://www.mruniversity.com/courses/development-economics-0
The list of books are very long. Something like "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics" might be a starter. Once you get into the topic you can go in different direction. I am confident that I will also conclude that education by itself will not lead to sustained development.