Bret Devereaux

The predictable 'didn't read the article to the end' criticism here is to say that I am advocating returning to bad old imperial models. That's not what I'm saying. We need to learn from those models, for sure, but learning from doesn't mean imitating.

Instead, my point here is that the scale of the goals of intervention and the desire to avoid imperialism (or at least the appearance of it) are in quite direct tension, a tension which we have generally refused to acknowledge because it leads to unpleasant conclusions.

But the tension is real! and it comes out clearly when thinking about training local forces. If you want to radically remake a society (say alter its civil & military institutions & rewrite its gender norms), you are going to have to do some imperialist, even colonial things.

My own view is instead that we need to trim back our objectives to things which can be achieved largely through local institutions. That means we can't fix every problem! It places hard limits on what an intervention can achieve and we need to accept those limits.

But in either case, we need to give up the notion of getting maximal solutions out of minimal investment and dislocation. These are trade-off questions and worse yet, ones where 'split the difference' approaches generally fail.

So if full on imperialism, complete with semi-permanent colonial governance is politically unacceptable (and in my view it should be) then you have to accept that only a very limited range of objectives - mostly just picking which pre-existing local elites rule - are possible.