The Fundamentals

Yet another off-the-wall idea. Enjoy. . or not.

In Collapse, Jared Diamond, author of Gun, Germs and Steal, postulates that the ability of a nation to succeed is fundamentally based on its ability to sustain it population growth with the resources that are available to it. He goes further to suggest that the regions of current and future conflict are ones in which this critical point of population need vs. resources available has been passed. What he doesn’t explicitly state is that when that population growth exceeds the resources available, the population will strike out against its neighbors, or experience violence within.

Striking out as a nation requires resources, organization and infrastructure. For countries that have been languishing on the boundary of the critical point, these elements would essentially be eroded rapidly by the continued effort to retain control of the country. As resources declined across the land, those with the ability to secure resources (often those in government) would harden their position by rewarding those who helped them secure those resources with more resource than what they would have as part of the general public—thus warlords would be established. The rest would try to secure whatever land they could tactically keep out of the hands of newly formed warlords, or roam the land looking for tactical no-man-lands formed by the vacuum of the reach of the warlords. Generally, as predictable by genetic propensity, they would group together by family. Without a justice system that is seen as legitimate to exact any kind of fair retaliation, there is no means for the disempowered to help from getting victimized or killed.

This doesn’t entirely explain the civil war aspects of Iraq, but the collapse of Iraq was more sudden and dramatic. Remember inward collapse comes from the lack of access to resources, not necessarily lack of resources. For instance, Germany didn’t necessarily lack resources before World War II since it was able to generate tremendous amounts of infrastructure and weaponry. Germany and most of the world experienced a monetary infrastructure collapse, the depression, because of their monetary regulatory system. This collapse kept normal amounts of food and resources out of the hands of the public. Funny things happen when you restrict food from people, their brains react, putting them in hunting mode. With prolonged deprivation, this focused mentality looks for the means to acquire the much needed resources. If there is no governance that can facilitate finding these resources, or that governance has eroded, alignments of population subsets can form like hunting packs seeking to free resources from a perceived holder of them. To the starved mind, this enemy can be defined as simply as by the color of one’s skin or an association to a religion.

The mind is a difference engine. So long as it perceives it has nothing to lose and a chance of a gain it will engage in violence to try to solve a problem. If the infrastructure has eroded in Iraq such that businesses can’t open, jobs can’t be found, and resources are hard to come by, then there is little reason for the radical members of the population to restrain themselves from violent acts. So my radical theory is that by facilitating economic stabilization, you can quell violence, but that is far easier said than done.

My idea is similar to the Berlin airlift but on a much larger scale. The most efficient way to bring about stabilization through resource supply is to attack the region fractally. Identify multiple independent areas of an unstable region, certain block groups in Bagdad, Fallujah, etc. In each of these, place a portable power generation station capable of sustaining three times the power required for that area, likewise bring in food and water for a larger population than one is securing. Secure the area, the energy, food and water. Link these independent areas with supply lines such that one could connect three “stable” regions with secured supply lines, creating a triangle of stability with “unstable” areas between them. Create a grid of these regions such that a supply line could be indirectly created from the secured triangles. Do everything possible to secure these areas and the power supplied. This should be helped by the multiple failures required to knock down the grid. Choke out the unstable regions by growing the stable regions in all directions (the overabundance of capability by the generators and resources being able to handle the growth). Theory would suggest that blocks would willfully join the stable region. The constant flow of energy, water and resources would provide a fertile ground for rationality and economic stability, an attractive trait. It would provide something for others to lose, and as stability grew in the region the actual requirements on the grid would decrease since the area of the boundary would decrease because the unstable areas would be relegated out of the grid. Attacks on the very things that were stabilizing the region would work against terrorists since those in the stable regions would now have something to lose.