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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

I agree entirely for middle tier countries (which Russia was -- and, honestly, Iraq under Saddam was). For really defective places (NK, Somalia, EG, maybe Afghanistan under the Taliban, ...), your odds of killing the leadership and randomly replacing are much more likely to give you something adequate. It doesn't always work out, and it's hard when you have set yourself up for failure (like the US did in Afghanistan, for a variety of reasons, but I don't think just eliminating AQ and some of the Taliban leadership was doomed to turn out badly), but in a lot of cases it's beneficial.

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You discount so many variables that go into making a place a "good" place to live that it's actually a little humorous to read these posts.

Look, EG is, I'm pretty certain, almost 90% Fang. That probably doesn't mean much to you but for Africans... tribal affinities matter. The idea that you would get rid of one government, and another would govern appreciably differently in EG is fanciful. Add to that Oil and then unexploited Gold and Zinc deposits, and anyone who is familiar with Africa, and especially EG, would laugh heartily at your assertions.

Places like the MidEast and North Africa also have more issues than can be solved by changing governments. For instance, the reality in Somalia, or indeed even Egypt, is that there are hard Bio-Physical resource constraints that are not going away. Desertification and Soil Salination are mother nature's method of breathing. And she doesn't care about governmental edicts. Egypt's population is around 80M I think... and I'm pretty sure the arable land is right around 2% and it drops every year. Somalia is what... 10 maybe 15 million? With MORE diversity (ie - tribes) and even LESS arable land.

One of the first things I learned working at Halliburton was that if a nation is importing energy AND food... it's in trouble. Nation building is much more than Civil Affairs. If the requisite people and materials aren't there ... it doesn't work. Full Stop.

"Bad" governments, for a given definition of "bad", are symptoms of problems. Not the problems themselves. The Taliban and the NA are manifestations of the lack of resources in Afghan land and the lack of trust among Afghan people. These are difficult problems to solve. And certainly simply changing the government will not make them go away.

What exactly do you mean by a lack of resources in Afghanistan? I've always heard that it was one of the richest places in the world of unexploited minerals. Does it need to be more specific than that?

Afghanistan has high amounts of mineral wealth locked away, but while it had decent irrigation and farming in the pre-Soviet period (near Kandahar; it's really shitty to fight in btw due to old irrigation channels and just enough cover/concealment to hinder UAVs), decades of war have really hurt the agricultural sector.

More importantly, decades of war have also essentially eliminated any societal reserves of trust, so corruption at all levels is the default. The only functional unit is the family or clan, and very minimal ties to higher units of a tribe -- not to the state. Individual governors, mayors, and police chiefs rule by personal charisma and graft, and bringing their pre-existing tribal relationships in. Organs of the state end up used to settle personal vendettas, too.

There's a lot of literature that national resources (extractive, with low local labor involvement) are a curse -- the "resource curse". Norway has done ok with its oil. Gulf societies have in some ways succeeded but in other ways oil has crippled them. African countries with mineral wealth usually end up relatively fucked compared to countries with productive agriculture or a vibrant commercial sector (Nigeria minus oil is actually pretty decent; Kenya is great. Ghana until recently had no resource based wealth and is basically the Chile of Africa).

I agree the culture in EG is probably fairly stunted at best, and probably inadequate to the task of self government (once the ruling elite is gone). However, Obiang is an outlier. Getting rid of him is necessary but not sufficient to fix the country, and it's one thing AU won't do (because they're afraid of slippery-slope), and something the people can't do themselves.

The "stratfor" "geography drives political destiny" thing isn't predictive for small oil-rich countries. I mean, look at the smaller Gulf states. The issues in small oil-rich countries are essentially down to leadership. A broad democratic government is probably not the achievable goal, but something like Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, most of the Emirates, or Kuwait is far superior to EG.

That is a historically naive assertion. Take a look at the list of countries in this article - most of them are still in pretty serious shit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_re...

It very rarely works out.

The US government's interest in intervention is not "fix things for the residents" but "US interests" (which, during the cold war, essentially just meant opposition to the USSR and some basing rights or access to resources). Admittedly even by that metric, most of the US interventions have been failures.

There are a few cases where US/NATO intervention has been sort of helpful. Panama is probably better now that we got rid of Noriega, although we put him there in the first place. The Balkans at least didn't turn into a pan-European or WW3. French intervention in Mali seems at least not to be making things worse, and while they went into Rwanda late, they did at least settle things down. Australian forces actually did a lot of good in PNG/ET from what I've read, although I don't know too much about it.

I am from Balkans, Balkans conflicts were largely influenced and made worse from the outside, I would even say that they would not happen if there were not desire from Germany and other powers to make as much mess as possible.

Somehow Balkan conficts never got critical review from journalists and rosy propaganda stayed even to this day.

For example in present day Croatia there is only 7% of people who would actually stay to live there if they could go and live somewhere else. Danke Deutschland indeed.

Where would people from Croatia go? All the ones I've met have been either KBR people in Iraq/Afghanistan or people in the US, and they seemed smart, but they were probably outliers. Germany, or US, or elsewhere?

I assume, and Australia, but the point is that no-one likes living in what Balkan turned out to be, not only in Croatia, others as well have similar situation, Bosnia probably has even worse, I happen to remember this number from recent study which is shocking.

My point is that those conflicts were stirred by industrial lobby's, not by genuine need to protect or save anyone.

"I am from Balkans, Balkans conflicts were largely influenced and made worse from the outside, I would even say that they would not happen if there were not desire from Germany and other powers to make as much mess as possible."

Would you mind saying which country you're from? I ask because I have recently met Serbians who seem like very good and reasonable people, but who have very different views on the conflict from the accepted view in the States and "Western" Europe. In particular, they are very nostalgic for Yugoslavia, and seem to think that yes, some bad things happened during the war, but that no one in particular was more genocidal than anyone else.

"For example in present day Croatia there is only 7% of people who would actually stay to live there if they could go and live somewhere else. Danke Deutschland indeed."

This is very surprising. I would love to see the source. Croatia is the only Balkan state now part of the EU… perhaps they'll find it rather easy to emigrate where they please.

The Slovenians seemed to have the right thing set up -- closely allied with Austria, well defended, and basically stayed out of the whole mess. Also the only Balkan state I've visited, and aside from a tragic lack of vowels, an awesome place.

How exactly did "Germany and other powers" cause the 1991-1995 war?

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