Wednesday, February 7, 2018

How Neocolonialism Keeps Developing Countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan Perpetually Destabilized

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions]
The analysis of the recent NewYork Times article about Afghanistan indicates that think tanks in USA have worked out all the options for Afghanistan. All these options perpetuate destabilization for the long term which is the actual objective of the policy. Endowment based think tanks and the area study centers spread across universities war game several options, and present a list of options to the President of USA. Whichever, option the president selects, all end up at the same goal; keeping developing countries perpetually destabilized. These options are flexible enough and can be quickly morphed from one option to another as the situation dictates. If all else fails, direct occupation a' la Iraq is always an option.  The un-elected elites installed in such countries become simply a pawn in the machinations of the neo-colonial powers to protect their vested interests and their lives. They are herded into a direction where they can not but follow the desires of the neo-colonial powers. Those that try to pull a fast one, such as Saddam or Gaddafi or Gen Zia are made a spectacular example for the rest to remain in line. The picture below shows how sheep are herded in the direction wanted by the shepherds. Similarly, people of developing countries are driven through the course selected by the neocolonial powers through the shepherds that consist of unelected elites (judiciary, military, dictators, gangs,  extremists) through an option that can only end in a single result: Chaos. The objective is never to give the people a choice to select their own destiny by perpetually keeping them off balance,  and destabilized and fighting for their survival. Hence, none of the developing countries have a functional democracy,  and are perpetually in the survival mode of existence.

This is how neocolonialism powers (USA) play with destiny of Pakistan keeping it perpetually destabilized with military, bureaucracy, judiciary, politicians, religious extremists as pawns on their chessboard. The scenarios described in this New York Times report on Afghanistan suggests that there exists a similar listing of scenarios for Pakistan. Each scenario will end up serving the neocolonialism interests, to keep the country in a perpetual chaos. Researchers have analyzed these options from every angle, they have war gamed the alternatives and ensured that each ends up in a perpetually destabilized situation. This research is carried out in specialized area research centers in various universities, think tanks and state department research centers. As can be seen through this case study analysis of Afghanistan, that whatever course un-elected elites of Afghanistan will take, the country will end up serving the neocolonialism agenda. The decision maker, whether Bush or Obama or Trump can pick up any option. However, each option will end up serving the interests of USA in Afghanistan.
This is how Pakistan have been war-gamed. Each important player in Pakistan is compelled to play in the hands of neocolonialism power. The only way out is for the Pakistanis to sit down together and build consensus on the rules of the games and agree on not destabilizing the country. NS and BB did that through Charter of Democracy. However, a new player Imran Khan was injected or primed to topple the apple-cart of Charter of Democracy. This has ostensibly been done through the raising of the third umpire's finger and the second umpire's finger.
Excerpts from this article in New York Times are given here with my commentary in square brackets, explaining the real intentions of the neocolonialism powers:

In Afghanistan’s Unwinnable War, What’s the Best Loss to Hope For?

"After 16 years of war in Afghanistan, experts have stopped asking what victory looks like and are beginning to consider the spectrum of possible defeats". [Reason: They want to keep Afghanistan perpetually destabilized. ]  “I don’t think there is any serious analyst of the situation in Afghanistan who believes that the war is winnable,” Laurel Miller, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, said in a podcast last summer, after leaving her State Department stint as acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. [They want to convince everyone that there is no winnable option]

This may be why, even after thousands have died and over $100 billion has been spent, even after the past two weeks of shocking bloodshed in Kabul, few expect the United States to try anything other than the status quo. [Because destabilization is the actual policy]

1. Nation-Building, Minus the Nation

“I’ll tell you what my best-case scenario would be,” said Frances Z. Brown, an Afghanistan expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  [This is the recommendation of Carnegie Endowment]. .., she said, would see the American-led coalition abandon its efforts to impose a centralized state and instead allow Afghans to build their own state from the bottom-up.
It would mean accepting a central government that acts more like a horse trader among local strongmen and warlords. American and allied troops would guarantee enough security to sustain the state. Afghans would figure out the rest for themselves. “But what we know from other cases is that this takes generations,” Ms. Brown said. “So the 18-month time frames we’ve always had for Afghanistan are not realistic.”

2. Starting Over

If Afghanistan were forced back to square one, it might, some scholars think, be able to rebuild itself from scratch. After all, humanity lived for millenniums in something resembling low-grade anarchy. Modern nation-states grew out of that chaos only recently. [Justifying Chaos]

This would start with the effective collapse of the state and American withdrawal. Because the Taliban are too weak and unpopular to retake the country, as most analysts believe, Afghanistan would splinter. [Read: We want it to breakup] ...Their [resulting] fiefs, once stable, could coalesce over years or decades into a fully realized state.

Research by Dipali Mukhopadhyay, a Columbia University political scientist, suggests that the warlords would gravitate toward the kind of state building that occurred in medieval Europe over centuries. [Destabilization would continue for centuries]

3. The Somalia Model 

In a sign of how far hopes have fallen, the war-torn East African country of Somalia is increasingly being raised as worthy of emulation. [Somalia type chaos is also acceptable to US]
...
In Somalia itself, this model has found mixed success. Security has improved nationwide, but a devolving state has been left unable to root out extremists, who still carry out devastating attacks. [which is the real objective]°.

4. A Peace That Satisfies No One

The paradox of peace deals is that while all sides benefit, each fears that it will not do as well as it could — or that its enemies might do too well. This gives each an incentive to block all but the perfect deal, a dynamic so pronounced in Afghanistan that in 16 years, talks have never advanced far enough to make clear what each side considers acceptable. [We don't want peace]
....
The clearest winner of any deal might be the Afghans themselves, but they are largely at the mercy of political actors for whom peace is risky. [Foremost is USA for whom peace is risky]

5. A Post-American Civil War

There is a more pessimistic version of the collapse-then-rebuild model, in which warlords compete until one prevails over all. Afghanistan itself offers a particularly vivid example of this scenario: After the 1992 collapse of the Soviet-backed government there, the country was gripped by a terrible civil war. If the Americans abandoned the government now in place, that history could repeat. [Civil is also acceptable to US as we have been through that already]

6. Perpetual Stalemate

The likeliest outcome may be allowing the status quo to continue, even as all sides suffer under rising violence. [This is what the think tanks want]
Neither the government nor the Taliban are strong enough to retake control. Outside actors like the United States and Pakistan may be unable to impose their vision of victory, but they can forestall losing indefinitely.

Narratives to Support Dictatorial Interventions and Continuous Series of Destabilizations 

A deeper look at the dictatorial interventions and a continuous series of destabilization efforts during civilian rules indicate that this kind of destabilization is present in all the developing countries and is part of post-colonialism exploitation by the world superpowers, this has been named as neo-colonialism. My post on narratives designed to dishonor popular choice and support neocolonialism explains how neocolonialism spreads destructive narratives in developing countries which are taken up by vested interests and un-elected elites. These narratives are used to dishonor the will of the people, and justify the takeover by un-elected elites. This seems to be the history of post-colonialism in developing countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and on and on through out all the old colonies of the imperial powers. This is how they are kept perpetually destabilized and hence "perpetually developing".

Neo-colonialism

[begin Wikipedia excerpt]
Neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalization and cultural imperialism to influence a developing country in lieu of direct military control (imperialism) or indirect political control (hegemony). It was coined by Kwame Nkrumah in the context of African countries undergoing decolonization in the 1960s.

In Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism, Kwame Nkrumah wrote:

In place of colonialism, as the main instrument of imperialism, we have today neo-colonialism . . . [which] like colonialism, is an attempt to export the social conflicts of the capitalist countries. . . .

The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment, under neo-colonialism, increases, rather than decreases, the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world. The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in less developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of the developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the less developed.
[End excerpts from Wikipedia]

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