Why sticking our noses in the affairs of the Third World is a bad idea

Since it's Sunday morning [early too! Ed.] I'll start with a text. This is from the chapter entitled "Recovery", in Butterfly Mind, by Patrick Brown (Anansi 2008). (More about the author and the book later.)

Intervention almost never works out as predicted, and it is almost never executed with sufficient thoroughness and commitment. The decision to intervene, either for humanitarian reasons or because a regime has become intolerable, are often made haphazardly, and the results almost always are disappointing. Those decision deserve care and attention proportional the blood and treasure lost when bad decisions are made.

I have been in Afghanistan many times since the Taliban left. I have watched a growing number of foreign nation-builders and peacekeepers lose their lives in the dusty hills of a country that once again produces 90 percent of the world's heroin.

NATO countries that are still willing to provide troops insist on à la carte deployment, picking and choosing where their forces are deployed and what they do. Countries that have put their troops in harm's way, like Canada and Britain, are naively stirring up a hornet's nest. Pacifying Afghanistan and improving its living standards rapidly would have taken much larger numbers of well-equipped troops, and an intensive and expensive development effort.

Those words were written in 2008, before the US-led "intervention" in Afghanistan had officially failed, yet the author refers to it (in the last quoted sentence) in the conditional past -- "would have taken". The conditions for success were never met, perhaps never could have been met. Six years after Patrick Brown wrote those words, even the greatest apologists for Obama's war have no choice but to describe it as a failure.

Thus endeth the lesson... Sad to say, the lesson has still not been learned by the Prez and other Leaders of the Free World (TM). If it were otherwise, why would be, at this very moment, making the same mistakes in Iraq and "the Levant"?

The failure of Western intervention in Afghanistan was hardly unique. During the 1980s, Patrick Brown was a foreign correspondent, reporting on the collapse of Communism, revolutions, wars and humanitarian disasters in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lebanon, East Timor, Burma, Cambodia and Korea. Western meddling, he observes, never solved the problems it set out to. Too frequently, our intervention only made things worse. As an interviewee told him, "WE have to solve our problems by ourselves."

There is more to Butterfly Mind than a potted history of Western failures in the third world. Patrick Brown is a recovering alcoholic. He speculates on the link between alcoholism and journalism. Perhaps journalism drives one to drink. Or perhaps alcoholics become journalists because it's a natural métier for garrulous drunks.

With professional help, Mr. Brown won -- or is winning -- his battle with the bottle. The beginning of his recovery coincided with his move in 1989, to China, where he now makes his home. In Butterfly Mind, he skillfully interweaves his personal story with his observations of Western engagement (to use the latest buzzword) with the Third World, and draws comparisons and parallels with the policies and politics of Communist China.

He writes of the efforts of several Chinese "freedom fighters", including several of those profiled in Out of Mao's Shadow, reviewed here a month ago. He concludes that if change -- regime change and/or social change -- is to come to China, the Chinese will have to bring about that change by themselves, without "help" from the West.

Patrick Brown wishes the Chinese good luck. Walt agrees and extends the same wish to the writer himself. And Walt recommends Butterfly Mind -- good reading as we approach the Chinese New Year.

Putin to Obama: "That's all... for now..."

Russian Tsar ["President", surely! Ed.] Vladimir Putin called US President ["Tsar", surely! Ed.] on the phone yesterday. What do you suppose he said?
a) "Can you hold off the sanctions for six weeks? I was going to take the kids to Disneyland."
b) "Your hockey team couldn't beat the Canadians either!"
c) "Just ignore the troops camping on the Ukrainian border. We're not going there... at the moment..."

The correct answer is "C". The Not-so-white-anymore House released a statement that said, "President Obama underscored to President Putin that the United States continues to support a diplomatic path... with the aim of de-escalation of the crisis. [He] made clear that this remains possible only if Russia pulls back its troops and does not take any steps to further violate Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty."

We were not told how Mr. Putin replied. Perhaps a snort of derision wasn't caught on the CIA's sensitive recording devices. In any case, the two leaders [one and a half? Ed.] agreed that their foreign ministers would meet soon to discuss the next steps.

For what it's worth, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said his country has no intention of sending troops into Ukraine. US Secretary of State John Skerry has said he hopes not, since any invasion would kind of... like... you know... oblige the US to do something to avoid losing the few shreds of credibility it has on the world stage.

The jaw that walks like a man is pushing a plan under which Russia would halt its military build-up on the border with Ukraine -- see (C) above" -- and withdraw its troops to its bases in Crimea.

Oh yeah, "international monitors" would be sent into the area too, "to protect the rights of Russian speakers". No mention was made of the rights of Ukrainians! The Kremlin version of yesterday's phone call says Mr. Putin drew Mr. Obama's attention to "the continued rampage of extremists" in Kiev and various regions of Ukraine. All is quiet in the Crimea, of course!

To sum up, Russia has occupied and annexed the Crimea -- a part of Ukraine for the last six decades -- with no casualties and barely a shot fired. And the Western "powers" have been unable to do a bloody (or unbloody) thing about it. Walt hopes that Mr. Putin will be satisfied that he's proven he's da man, and "The Leader of the Free World" isn't.