re: "Asymmetric Advancement"

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") offered some historical perspective on counter-piracy operations.

Money quote(s):

"Some policy makers argue that we should “follow the money,” since the poor, benighted beggars chasing merchant ships around armed with AK-47s and RPGs are not reaping the windfall from their actions, but merely serving wealthy “businessmen” who make expensive real estate acquisitions in Kenya and Ethiopia with the proceeds. Others might would argue that the presumption that actions against armed pirates must be “nonlethal” is in itself a part of the problem: Replacing skiffs and even motherships is cheap, but pirates who feed fishes offend no further."

&

"This is not to suggest that we ought to hang impoverished African teenagers as we sweep them up, nor that we ought to use more than the minimal force required to defeat the imminent danger. To do so would be to become what we had beheld. But it does force us to acknowledge certain civilizational asymmetries: We’ve got a long way to go before we can integrate gap state Somalia into the “functioning core” of civilization, to use TPM Barnett’s formulation.

That which cannot be integrated must be isolated.

Hey, if this stuff were easy, the Air Force could do it."