by Chris Wallower

Created on: November 02, 2008

Cultivating a Country

11/1/08

When the United States conducts covert actions in other countries, on the grand scheme of things, it is designed to turn that country into an American asset; to ensure that the policies, economics, resource exploitation is all beneficial to us. This relationship is a lot like owning a dog, in this example we will use a guard dog to illustrate the point. From the CIA's birth it has taken a Michael Vick approach to sustaining and acquiring these assets. If you bang on enough heads, blackmail the right people, or pay off the top officials you can pretty much get anyone to do anything. If that doesn't work, you can always kill them. These tactics are very similar to those utilized in the training of attack dogs used in illegal dog fighting. Starvation, torture, and psychological tactics are all used to bring out the worst traits in the dog through negative reinforcement. This type of training creates dogs willing to fight with ferocity, at the risk of life and limb, at any adversary placed in their path. Now here's the problem: sometimes that adversary is you. We can plainly see this in the majority of conflicts that we're involved in around the world. At one time or another, we were the ones training, arming, and funding those who are now attempting to kill us. With the given analogy, this should come as no surprise.

So what am I really saying here? Should we no longer look outside of our boarders for assistance economically, politically, or militarily? Of course not. Like it or not, we are part of a tightly connected world market where the policies and economics of nations across the globe can have a profound effect on everyday life here (and visa versa). So having allies in both the developed and undeveloped role is a pivotal element of our foreign policy that can help ensure our safety and boast our economic growth; however, the way in which we conduct these operations is in need of a serious overhaul.

Going back to my original analogy which compared the recruitment of another nation to owning a guard dog, we see that the United States has not treated these countries very well and, in fact, has actively engaged in the assassinations of democratically elected political leaders, the overthrowing of governments, and the corruption entire systems. Without much surprise, these tactics have come back to haunt us more than once, but since we already know that these types of operations are needed, how do we still look out for our own interests

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