Some questions about COIN (IV): Do people prefer freedom or electricity?

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By Major Tom Mcilwaine, Queen's Royal Hussars

Best Defense guest columnist

Question Set Four -- What makes us think that
schools and hospitals are going to help us alter the behavior patterns of
others and win people over to our way of thinking? In the magnificent remake of
the classic film Red Dawn, there is
an excellent scene in which the North Korean occupiers offer medical facilities
and electrical power in return for cooperation with their regime. The bargain
is not successful. Americans, it seems, prefer freedom to electricity. At the
risk of drawing theory from the scriptwriters of Red Dawn, this seems to me to be a reasonable reaction -- it is
certainly in line with the reactions I experienced to development projects in
Iraq. People want electricity, yes, and they will accept development projects
if they are offered -- just as the Indian people accepted and (perhaps) benefitted
from railways, the telegraph, and the legal system imposed by the British
during the Raj. They still wanted the British to leave, though. Why would this
have changed? This does not mean that ignoring the material needs of the
population is helpful nor that it cannot work if you select an endstate they do
want (e.g. their independence) and couple it with development. It does follow
that development is not enough and cannot be detached from politics: we must
remember that politics is the art of the possible.