Investing in enemy-countries’ private sector (startups) from Foreign Governments as geo-political strategy to counter-fight terrorism?
Why western #geopolitics do not consider economical #grants — a mean of investment funds in private sector — as a strategy to prevent from war or terroristic attacks, or as a strategy to stabilise a region in own favour?
Disruptive governance?
Disruptive here is a click-bait subtitle: no disruptive qualification is good for a society. However, governments invest in geopolitical strategy to destabilise enemies and stabilise or cooperate with partners.
This article is about personal considerations for an alternative in geopolitical strategy, thinking about practical measures to achieve a more stable and peaceful global society.
Specifically, I look for alternatives to:
- investment in military technology in-house and military training in countries to counter-fight enemies locally
- investment in government-government cooperation
and I will propose arguments in favour of:
- investment in enemy-countries’ entrepreneurial ecosystem by alliance-governments, to create a wealthy ecosystems counter-fighting terrorism by locals.
Considerations about current strategy to counter-fight terrorism.
Which is the magnitude of military investment?
Who is bearing the cost?
Who is benefiting?
Has it being effective in modernity (from 1960–2015)?
Here some numbers about my reasoning. Syria is used as an example.
#1. Cost of Military operations VS Creating value in local Entrepreneurship
1 . Each rebel group in Syria is financially supported by at least one ally — intelligence agencies, governmental investment in military tech and training as well as corporate partners (illegal or not). Terrorism is also benefiting of selling oil price dumped to private stakeholders in enemy countries.
An example, let’s take some numbers of how much.
A #missile #tow cost 50.000US$, each.
Missiles TOWs are provided by #CIA only to a selected group.
From September, in response to the reaction of Russia, provision of missiles TOWs is increased by 850% (from 13 to 80~90), in three months.
That means 4.000.000 USD literally blew up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-lister/russias-intervention-in-s_b_8350266.html
- 4M USD is a proxy value for 4 startups in USA.
- In Italy, from where I am writing: let’s assume a proxy investment seed is 1 order of magnitude less (100K): 40 startups.
- Let’s assume seed investment in Syria and middle-east is even less: I put 50K per startup: 80 startups.
Average salary in Syria is 200 USD. That is ~50 times less then a IT-guy in USA South-California, and ~10 times less the average salary in Europe.
That is, you could trade the cost of 90 TOWs missiles to finance investment of 80 startups each with 2-3 people (founders) for one full-year.
2. Let’s think about distribution: where our grant go?
Let’s assume foreign money fund 1 startup each 30.000 people.
That means a startup per average town.
Since in Syria population is ~22M, 80 startups * 30K people = 10% of syrian population would be affected by our new economical push aiming to create value.
3. Let’s scale up.
F-35 fighter program is estimated to cost about 400.000.000 € per year for 24 years. http://www.ilpost.it/2013/01/18/f-35-costi-jsf/ [sorry link in Italian language]
400M euros shared 50K, that is 8000 startups.
#8000StartupsAyear.
8 times what #YCombinator would like to do in its experimental programme in the most advanced software tech country of the world.
https://fellowship.ycombinator.com/
4. Let’s scale up.
#Nato report that world-cost of counter terrorism is increased since 2001 of 70.000.000.000 US$!
http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2008/04/ap_cost/en/index.htm
That is 4.6B US$ / year. Let’s share it by 30-ish countries (USA + EU region including Russia Israel and such) — that is 150M US$/year each.
150M USD each is #3000StartupsAyear created BY EACH (“Developed”) country.
On the opposite, since weapons are meant to blew up by definition, we have 3000 * 3 founders = 9000 jobs not created (but they probably create more than the equivalent in reconstruction, benefiting contractor companies post-war).
# 2. Next. Psychological aspects.
Terrorism comes from #marginalisation. It sounds like an over-simplifying and naif opinion, yet it is very interesting that terroristic leaders and adepts are (also) raised in United Kingdom, Germany, Austria. Modern Countries. And some adepts studied at universities (Jihady John was engineer, Osama Bin laden was highly educated and former commercial partner with upper class in USA, studied in London). Why do people adhere to rebellion ?
Let’s look for causes beyond a story-telling of cultural traits and religion — I believe they are interpretations of events, but macro-phenomenas happens for basic and concrete unmet needs: relative poverty, and lack access to resources .
I won’t dilute too long here, just to remember that people adhere to rebellion and are available to invest in war (and their own life) for something bigger at stake: this holds true in terroristic fighters as well as soldiers recruited with higher salary in prospect of a more decent life respect to the one they could imaging. Thinking about Atlanta, a supplier of Black soldiers in US. Army, but also in Italy a vast majority of people enrolled in Army come from South of Italy, historically more relatively-poor.
Marginalisation cause relative poverty, anger, frustration, an urge to find a self-identity —also as a revenge.
It is also an incredible “glue” to keep together people affected by marginalisation, and go against people looking for a change in the community. Here, think about Mexicans grew up in marginal areas in Mexico, protecting criminal organisations and
absconding chiefs — El Chapo in Mexico; or Provenzano in Italy.
Local population in marginalised area abide by criminal organisations operations— Cosa-Nostra, Sacra-Corona Unita, Camorra in Italy. Roberto Saviano, a writer that denounces the facts of organised crime and traced the cocaine and entrepreneurial power of Camorra (FYI here the book) is loved by some, and hated by quite a number of locals in Naples — for he casted a “bad trace” of the city and did not have respect.
I think that ultimately part of the local population abide by criminal terror in Syria, or Boko Haram controlled region, because it does not leave well and there is no perspective, beyond the cultural or religious explanations you could and they could tell themselves to keep up with no-change.
Local population delegate power, either by undergoing super-imposed violence, either by casting their own power to someone else to fight for their own rights. Self-governance and self-organisations.
I argue that, if jobs were created at a rate that at least 1 person in a 10.000 community people (think about a startup funded by foreigner money each town of 30.000 people), one could have a scope in life, local people themselves will think twice to adhere to radical causes.
My argument find also support in cost-opportunity data published by #Nato: cost for suicide bombing is 150$.
Now, would you prefer to blow up for 150$, or being financially covered for the salary of a month in anything that could inspire you ?
http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2008/04/ap_cost/en/index.htm
There is always a social pressure preventing changers to actualise a change, and there is a price to evaluate the direction for a change: is it worthy to blew up or is it worthy to create? If you choose creation over destruction, you now you gotta create value.
Keep in mind that, as a fact, also in western religious countries most extremist comes from relatively poorest regions.
# 3. Next. A new hypothesis
Who bear the cost of war and current geopolitic strategy?
Tax-payers.
Who benefit of the re-construction?
A selected number of stakeholders — a lobby advocating in keeping up with supporting this political strategy.
Here some numbers and outcomes.
Having such high demographic pressure of migrants in Europe is destabilising governance and the pillars of European Union itself: it is 1M people displaced in 2015 that achieved to reach continental Europe. But 4M are blocked in Turkey and even do not enter!
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911
And also, Iraq war costed 50% of USA GDP!!! You could have had 120 Ubers — 120 monopolies, and instead you probably have only one.
Who born the cost of Iraq war? What was the effect?
That calls for a cultural change in countries financing military strategy as a plan for security.
I conclude that a governmental grant from the allies to the private sector in countries there are now “risky” can be a viable hypothesis. And something never done before, that I know.
Some could object, hey you would finance terroristic groups — but numbers show that:
- the money that would be put can be up to two orders of magnitude less then the one actually spent in preventing war and terrorism, that means also less money circulating to buy bazooka, tractors, tankers, kalashnikov, TOW, and training.
- You could achieve the same goal of destabilising the soveraignity of a country, for the recipient country might oppose its private sector receiving foreign money.
As example, which would be your opinion if Chinese government subsidised private sector abroad, to stimulate trade with own private sector partners?
These traces can depict how China “stole the control of Africa” from former metropolitan countries, and their private operators — they were able to put in place a “win-win” situation on one hand, on the other hand they dumped local economy with enormous impact on local businesses.
E.g. a bridge in Niger, Niamey capital, build by Chinese and local companies costed 50 times less then the project proposed by an American contractor);
http://www.chinafrica.cn/english/index.htm
But also, local african traditional clothes are more expensive then Chinese manufactured and imported-from-china African clothes.
What if a western government would start to fuel startups in BY GIVING GRANTS THAT ARE MANAGED WITH A DEGREE OF INDEPENDENCE BY THE BENEFICIARIES to actually fund startup that fit in the economical tissue.
It would be different from the disasters of Government-Government cooperation for development during ’70s and ’80s, and I suspect more efficient than bilateral or multilateral agreements between countries and handled by poorly efficient governmental or regional agencies (CTA, FAO, ASEAN, UN…)
I here that granting money, it would be called charity in this context.
But think, is it better to spend 4M millions dollars DONATED in armaments (and only for selected groups by CIA. Others have Arabian supporters) or grant 10% of the same sum to enable some locals to create value locally?
Also, the gains from granting weapons and invest in military technology are completely asymmetrical within democratic countries too.
Who gained from war in Iraq the first one?
Who gained from war in Iraq the second one?
Who gained from the war in Afghanistan?
Who gained from the war between Israel and Palestine?
Who gained from the provision of counterfeited weapons from china and russia through Albania in 2012 ?
And so on.
I bet that many people living in western largely asymmetric democracies will here name “Democracy” “our Values” “our Countries” as an answer, but that’s myopic cause it does not reflect the benefit spread across the population (and in fact civil population is undergoing tensions and attacks in France, Germany, USA).
We should look at which corporate entities were actually able to make business, and how the war-generated wealth has been redistributed within the same Countries whose tax-payers invested in wars either in military strategies to prevent wars.
How much those money created value among tax payers?
With which proportion?
Did they engender any value which could even out the cost of having 20.000.000 people needing humanitarian assistance and 6.6 millions displaced ?
http://www.worldvision.org/news-st…/syria-war-refugee-crisis
Who bear such a cost?
Who gain from the strategy of investing in military tech rather than what it could a 2.0 peer to peer (or country to country) fin-tech (could it really be called like that, I don’t know).
#4. Next
Aside from the fact that in December 2015 may not be practical an economic intervention in actual Syrian region.
Aside from the fact that community empowerment is biased by ‘#theRichGetRichest’ principle of preferential attachment — who can embody and administer power will accumulate wealth much much more respect to peers or sub-peers — yet it is possible that all the community register an improvement.
Which counter argument are currently supported in considering military investment as the only option in geo-politics and national security?
Why economical #grants — as a mean of investment funds in private sector — are not considered a strategy to prevent from war and/or keep a region stable in #geopolitics ?
It would cost a fraction rather than military tech strategy.
And plus, #technological #progress (and so investors — citizens of a whole country — happy) may arrive also from beneficiary countries.
Apart from less tears and despair, it may have also the same effect as a post-war: redistribution of private wealth, as it happened here after first and second world war (for the composition of capital in EU is now equivalent of what it was before #WW1 and #WW2 (source: Thomas Picketty, a book that i found inspiring).
http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656
So, also macro-economically, with a proper macro-lens to consider human history, I come to believe that #granting #money to #relatively #poorer#people could be a pattern to substitute war as a mean to redistribute resources and #societal #evolution.
Maybe it could be a new chapter of sharing economy.
Or a much more mature and wise capitalism — for I feel a change, an improvement, is needed don’t you think.
Or #Disruptive #Governance.
Or just the premises of a science fiction book. And I even did not name#singularity or #trans-humanism.
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I’ll be happy to hear constructive opinions, especially from ones studying/expertise in politics, geo-politics, military strategy.
