TJP

Reducing Western Conflicts in Foreign Lands

By Byron A. Ellis – November 23, 2008

It is interesting to observe how Western politicians and elected officials engage the world; they are constantly asking non-Westerners to accept Western worldview. Thus, they presume that Western worldview is best for others. However, seldom lasting change arrives through imposition, even if the barrel of the gun imposes it.

The current impasse in world conflicts is due to differential assessment of the benefits and costs associated with a given change. For instance, in Asia the Taliban believes that they are fighting to liberate their country from foreign invaders. The West believes that they are fighting to liberate Afghanistan from terrorists. In early America, the conflict between the British and the Patriots also involved differential assessments.

The conflict with Iran also involves differential assessments. The West’s assessment is that Iran wants to acquire a nuclear bomb. Iran argues that its intentions are peaceful, but what if they are not. Israel is a nuclear nation and the West has not assessed its possession of weapons of mass destruction as problematic.

Thus, it appears that Western assessments are merely judgmental: applied positively to strong ties nations and negatively to weak ties nations.

When assessments are perceived as biased, they create uncertainty. In the face of uncertainty, the process of exchange breaks down, because the parties believe that cheating and favoritism will occur.

In the age of information, any strategy that does incorporate the interest of all stakeholders will create conflicts. Therefore, Western relational strategies cannot be decoupled from the interest of developing nations. To do so is to give China free reign to develop and cement relationships with natural resource rich nations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.

Thus, biased assessments and barrel of the gun strategies are counterproductive and colonial. Furthermore, they are costly and suboptimal. For instance, the barrel of the gun strategy is estimated at million dollars per soldier per year.

The public often confuses politicians and elected officials with leaders. However, most politicians and elected officials are managers not leaders. And, some have never managed anything, so they are not even managers.

Leadership is related to the voluntary acceptance of the influence of another person. Of course, this voluntary acceptance may be due to deception. However, when deception is involved in the leader-follower relationship, the leader’s influence is often temporary.

Management is related to path-dependent processes and is devoid of voluntary acceptance of influence. Rather, more often than not, management is based on coercion.  

The relationship of the West with Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East is often a management relationship, based on conditional aids or military coercion. Coercive relationships are resentment and conflict prone relationships.

China’s relationship with developing nations is not premised on the imposition of China’s worldview or conditional aids; it is premised on a voluntary transactional process and it is not imposing. One could label it as soft coercion. Thus, it is devoid from the heightened conflicts associated with the relationships between the West and developing nations.

It is therefore important for the West to study China’s relationship with developing nations and appropriate conflict diminishing techniques, which could help reduce the Western military footprint in foreign lands and secure needed natural resources.

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