No idea how I missed this extraordinary gem the first time around:

Last fall I met up with an old friend in the security consulting business. We met for breakfast at an upscale hotel in the DC area. As he was having a second cup of coffee he leaned forward and said, “I’m going to say something crazy, but I can be frank with you.” He paused and added, “what we need is a new East India company.”

He went on to say that one of the problems in the US response to terror has been in the conduct of stabilization operations — the critical task of building up a country after the kinetic battles have been largely won. These operations have been costly, prolonged and have largely failed. Billions of dollars spent on traditional aid approaches in Iraq and Afghanistan; and in countries changed by the ‘Arab Spring’ have yielded but little result. Often they have ended in abject disaster.

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Jim:

Anti colonialism is imperialist, and imperialism was anti colonialist:

Consider the path that Alassane Ouattara took to power: Educated in the US, career in Washington, raised to high position in the IMF. In due course jointly holds high position in the IMF plus high position in the Ivory government, despite the fact that he seldom visits the Ivory coast, briefly flying in from Washington from time to time, Election rigged in his favor in the Ivory Coast by UN troops, large numbers of native thugs imported from neighboring country. Population replacement and ethnic cleansing of the native population. Alassane Quattara then flies in from Washington to take power, despite the fact that he had not bothered to show up to his high Ivorian government job for six years. Clearly, the power that installed him over the Ivory Coast was located in Washington, not the Ivory Coast. Imperialism is still going strong today, and it still spouts anti colonialist rhetoric. Similarly Aristide and Mugabe, installed from without against the wishes of the locals.

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The British empire was not conquered by imperialists, but by eighteenth century merchant adventurers, who mixed honest trade, piracy, conquest, and state formation. The nineteenth century imperialists took it over from the colonialists, and immediately the empire went into decline. In the nineteenth century, Colonialists right wing, Imperialists left wing and anti colonialist.

Today’s anti colonialism is still imperialist, as illustrated by population replacement in the Ivory Coast.

(Jim has worked on this crucial distinction before.)