When wine sours, it turns into vinegar. When you pour old wine into a new bottle to cheat your customers, and the wine gets contaminated in the process, you end up with vinegar labeled old wine in a new bottle.
This is what Seth D. Kaplan and Patrick W.
Quirk are offering to the world. They did so in an article they co-authored
under the title: “The Next Push for Democracy Has to Be Different,” and the
subtitle: “The United States does a disservice to the places it seeks to help
when it does not customize its approach to context.” The article was published
on October 4, 2021 in The National Interest.
The first sentence in this 1800-word article
hits you in the face with the metaphoric suggestion that the writers are trying
to sell you something you can use on your salad, not something you can sip to
wash down a sumptuous meal. Here is that sentence: “After investing trillions of dollars and two decades
in Afghanistan, America’s withdrawal from the country has prompted reflection
on whether the United States should continue to support democratic transitions
around the world”.
What’s wrong with that? Why is it vinegar and
not wine? Well, look closely and you’ll find out.
Seth Kaplan and Patrick Quirk are admitting
that they began reflecting on whether the United States should continue to do
what it has been doing—only after the
withdrawal from Afghanistan where America wasted trillions of dollars having
achieved negative results, which is worse than useless nothing.
The fact that the two writers did not
understand or see what was happening early on, and never were in a position to
counsel immediate withdrawal, means that they were part of the problem. And
having been the problem, they surely cannot come now and suggest they can be
part of the solution. They have been selling the public and the political
elites, cheap wine at a high price, and now they want to sell them the leftover
that turned into vinegar, at an even higher price.
But how is it that the two writers, Kaplan
and Quirk, are going about selling something useless, having a ton of visible
failures under their belts?
Well, the first thing they did was blame
their failures on everything else. Note that word “everything” because what
Kaplan, Quirk and all those like them did, is place the blame not just on people,
but on things that invalidated their counsel—being
what they are by their very nature. This is like saying: We built the structure
with wood instead of steel because wood is lighter, but when the storm blew, it
brought the structure down because wood could not withstand the strong wind. So,
blame the failure on that damned wood, not us.
And here is a sample you’ll find in the
Kaplan and Quirk article, of that nonsensical piece of logic:
“Today’s transitions are
different than in the past. The countries trying to democratize today (e.g.,
Afghanistan) have more challenges to overcome: weaker institutions, greater
social divisions, poorer economic fundamentals, less supportive neighbors, and
domineering militaries. These difficulties are made more complicated by the
fact that authoritarians now use more effective techniques to squash dissent.
Despite these differences, Western governments supporting democratic change are
largely using the same playbook, disregarding each country’s underlying
democratic fundamentals”.
So, how do Kaplan and Quirk propose America
should go about remedying those weaknesses? Good question. Here is a short but
representative passage showing how they explain what needs to be done—if you can understand it or formulate a workable
policy that will be useful where it is needed:
“Each country requires
different strategic responses customized to the context. This depends on
structural social, political, and economic factors. Depending on the degree of
trust among key social groups, the strength of state institutions, the size of the
middle class, the influence of neighboring countries, the extent and nature of
the international context, and the dynamism of the economy, each country has
different possibilities that need to be assessed and understood before the US
formulates plans to realize them. We recommend using a framework that groups
countries into one of three zones along a continuum”.
And here is how Seth Kaplan and Patrick Quirk
describe each zone:
Zone 1: Countries that
have more cohesion, more robust institutions, better security, stronger
economic fundamentals, and a better neighborhood.
Zone 2: Countries with
middling, frail foundations where reformers should be more incremental and
opportunistic.
Zone 3: Countries with
highly fragmented political cultures, weakly institutionalized state
structures, fragile neighbors, poor economic fundamentals, and potentially high
levels of negative foreign intervention.
If you still cannot formulate a policy
according to these guidelines, Kaplan and Quirk give you further hints as to
how you can do it. Here is what they propose:
“Diplomats and
practitioners working on priority countries should conduct an in-depth analysis
of the democratic foundation and tactical landscape before devising their
priorities. Plans should be designed to be adaptable to local
conditions by ensuring that aid is designed so that there is ample scope
to monitor, evaluate, learn, adapt, and reformulate. Funding mechanisms should
be designed to respond to opportunities, with programming (not goals) altered
as needs evolve”.
In other words, Seth Kaplan and Patrick Quirk
are telling America it should assemble a team that will resume doing what the
previous teams have been doing, but pretend to do things differently this time.
And when doing the same thing—even if under a different name—will give the same results, you can always send the military to do the job, thus resume the forever war, to last to eternity this time.