It wasn’t that long ago that a country like England or Italy would go into Sudan or Somalia or Afghanistan and run things under either colonial or “international mandate” protectorate status. The theory was that they would tamp down inter-tribal massacres and be recompensed with all the natural resources and trade.
No need for phony local elections because government posts would be handed out according to politics and bribery back in the ruling country.
…
It was more like a contry would go into a “region” and then artifically create borders that were based more on defending it militarily than ethnic and language similarities of the population. Then they would remove the natural resources, create an economy that allowed the conquerors to be top dog, try and wipeout native religions, and often commit genocode on the locals.
So yeah, I think it’s time to do that again. Can a ciilized country like Canada please do it the the US.
Beyond that, borders were often drawn right through the territory of the strongest tribes, specifically to hinder their becoming powerful enough to threaten the undermanned colonial governments. That’s led to a number of problems today, in cases where those tribes never did recognize the authority of a government outside their territory. The Pashtun on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border are the best known example today, but there are plenty others in Africa too.
No, the theory was “you have a lot of gold and spices and land and we want them.” Intertribal massacres were tamped down when they interfered with business. And keeping people from killing each other is a good thing, but presenting this as a favor from the colonial powers, or even as a business transaction that everybody agreed to, is completely out of line with history. Colonialism created a state of dependency and exploitation of resources and didn’t usually set up much in the way of a functional government, so if not for all that, perhaps those countries would not be in the condition they are in now. Colonialism is the cause of these problems and not the solution.
That’s more of less still how it goes, but the beneficiaries of the bribery and corruption are local powers rather than, say, the royal family of Britain or Spain.
I don’t think I can say it any better than I said it in the OP ofthis thread. TheMadHun, you can consider that thread as being for you, as well.
In addition to the issues raised by other posters about the direct negative consequences of colonialism for the colonized, we should bear in mind that disputes among the colonizers could also be seriously disruptive, on regional and even global scales.
If wealthy military-industrial nations are once again allowed to take over poor and unstable countries and run them for their own profit, the wealthy countries are naturally going to have differences of opinion with each other about whose finger is in whose pie. That can get ugly.
Comparing any sort of benevolent control of other nations to Colonialism is a fairly poor way to start the discussion. As such, I think it’s best to just throw that off the table as anything other than an example of how not to do things.
On the other hand, in regards to Iraq and Afghanistan, what should have happened was that Bush II should have distributed pamphlets and made radio broadcasts describing what all sorts of advantages to daily life, health and education for children, and other such things could be brought to them, and the specifics of how and then set up a date by which the whole country could vote whether they wanted us to proceed with that plan, or simply kick the asses of the people who pissed us off, then leave.
As shown by Vietnam, regardless of whether you have something good to offer, if the local populace doesn’t want you (probably partly because they don’t know what you have to offer), then you’re just wasting your time there. But if the populace is willing to accept 20-40 years of foreign rule, with a clear plan to transition to local rule, then personally I’d say that’s great and should be something we offer to every country in the world. But again, that’s an offer. The people of that country need to have democratically chosen to go for it.
It’s already pretty much like that now, and it’s still not going great. Most of Africa’s worst leaders were and are installed and supported by European nations, who provide arms and comfy exile in exchange for natural resources. We’ve got our hands all up in their business. Many Africa countries allow foreign interests to run even basic infrastructure- like electricity and roads. They run those facilities to best facilitate getting tree out of the forest, ore out of the ground, goods out of the country and money into the leaders’ pockets. These foreign companies happily skim off the top just like everyone else. Look at a map of Africa’s trade routes one day- all those resources are flowing right out.
It turns out that inter-ethnic warfare is a natural byproduct of the keep-a-guy-in-power-get-his-country’s-stuff game. And sometimes it even helps keep those resources flowing, as people fighting for their lives generally aren’t going to bother to fight for their stuff.
Do you really believe there are arms factories in Sudan? Who, then, is supplying these arms. Look it up. You’d be surprised. Go ahead, take a look and then tell me this is about “tribal warfare.”
Anyway, of course the corrupt leaders and their cronies are equally to blame. But don’t think for one moment Africa sucks because “those black people just can’t stop killing each other.” Africa sucks because everyone on this planet besides the normal African people are having a grand old time profiting off their backs, and then blaming them when stuff goes to hell.
There are so many problems with this that I don’t even know where to start.
Here’s one: What, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein’s governments were just going to sit idly by and let the people vote on whether to evict their own governments or let the West do it for them?
What if the people of Iraq or Afghanistan said “Hey, now, this government is lousy, but you know what’s worse than this government? Foreign occupiers. And you know what’s worse than that? Civil war. I’ll take this repressive peace any day.” You’re still making them vote?
This is just as bad an example of Western imperialist thinking as any colonialist; that we have the right to go into another country and do what we will there.
I’m talking post-occupation, obviously.
You know, like we’re still doing without any particular reason to think that the populace wants us.
That’s theory, yes. In reality they made tribal and ethnic divisions much worse. In order to run a country they needed locals they could trust. The typical way they did this was to choose a minority and given them all the power. They knew they could trust them as their interests (and survival) would inherently linked to the colonial power. In the long term this added a whole new layer of grievances to existing ethnic issues.
Additionally the British didn’t touch the government of the Pakistani tribal areas with ten foot barge pole, they took the same attitude the Pakistani government took (until recently). And as for Afghanistan things did not goso wellthere for them.
Isn’t this sort of like saying that delerium tremens is a good reason to go back to drinking? Sure, you don’t get the DTs while you’re actually drinking, but that doesn’t change the fact that the drinking is the cause.
That is utter tripe. What exact leaders are you refering to? Mugabe? DRC. Museveni? The series of locally promoted kleptocrats in Nigeria? The clown Camara in Guineau (or his even worse predecessors, all of which told France to fuck off…)? This kind of Leftist tripe excuse making rather gets on my nerves.
The West has nothing to do with the massive bad governance now. Colonial boundaries, etc., absolutely, and the OP is a ridiculous misrepresentation of the Empire. It wasn’t no bloody charity and it certainly wasn’t about stopping massacres as such. T
Which concessions are you actually referring to? Or are you simply making vague Leftist assertions?
In any case, the concessions are generally run better, more effectively and less corruptly than the government run services.
More vague assertions.
Roads are always built to serve economic interests, so getting goods to export markets is hardly a bloody sin.
Now, the old colonial infrastructures, there you can cock a snook at them, but modern concessions in electricity, public works - those follow local government plan, and are a damn sight better at it.
All fucking trade routes flow out, this is more empty Leftist tripe.
“Normal African people” are as much a part of the problem as you mythical foreign blood suckers, rather more so as the sad history of populist coups in Africa show.
Now, I will grant right out that colonial powers left a hodge podge of borders that made no real sense, either socially or economically, and that continues to pay bloody negative dividends to this day. But pretending 50 years on that this is 1960 and your bankrupt Third World narrative has any proper sense is baseless.
It’s not as easy as it looks. This is the fourth time Britain has tried to get Afghanistan to be more like Britain and the fourth time they’re going to get kicked out. Especially since the invention of the AK 47 and the widespead availability of high explosives invading third world countries for whatever reason just hasn’t worked well at all.
I’d also say that the roads and the rail systems that especially the Brits built didn’t tend to link up population centers or outlying regions to the capital but generally went from the mineral/wealth source direct to the nearest port. They did occasionally add infrastructure after that but in a lot of cases the get-the -valuables-out-of-the-country system was the only thing built.
Great!Let’s all descend upon Somalia and help those benighted locals straighten things out! Anybody care to remember what a disaster that was?
Face it, some places like Somalia are not “fixable”.
Trade routes flowing out is a bad thing?
Africa has nothing to sell but resources, yet is has things it wants to BUY. How does it buy them? By selling resources maybe? Is that bad? What should it do? Starve and not have medicine because it doesn’t want to lose “resources”? Leftist nonsense.
Sudan has no arms factories? And this means what? People and governments buy arms…do you want to stop them from doing so? Lots of countries buy arms…but you only want to stop the blacks from doing so? Racist much?
Everything that anybody wants to sell is a “resource” of some kind. Maybe you’re trying to say that Africa (big brush there, btw, though I assume you’re using it to mean sub-Saharan Africa in particular) has nothing to sell but natural resources, aka “raw materials” or “unprocessed primary products”?
in fact, while about 75% of Africa’s exports are unprocessed primary products (see Fig. 2 in this PDF report from the UN), it’s not true that Africa sells nothing else.
Moreover, sven and Dick have a valid point that letting developed nations or multinational companies “shoulder the burden” of African countries by moving their unprocessed primary products as directly as possible to the nearest port is not necessarily the best thing for African development. For one thing, the foreign countries/companies are naturally more focused on their short-term profits than on the long-term health of the exporting country, which can result in environmental degradation, overdependence on cash-crop agriculture, and/or overexploitation of resources.
I believe a cadre of South Korean elites should run the economic affairs of the United States. Because we are sure don’t know what the hell we’re doing.