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I fantasize about doing that sometimes, but usually, you can't get into politics without being a citizen — either due to legislation or because you won't be acc
by ewolf 14y ago
I fantasize about doing that sometimes, but usually, you can't get into politics without being a citizen — either due to legislation or because you won't be accepted as a representative by the population, for obvious reasons.
But assuming you can get into politics, you'll still have to deal with an enormous struggle for power (be it elections you have to win or powerful people you have to convince) in order to get into a position to even make any change.
Thus, this endeavour is practically impossible — it's already difficult enough to change something in your fatherland.
AFTER tokenadult's EDIT: Your edit clarifies a lot. But fraternalism is still difficult to achieve: if you are from a different race than the native population, you'll have a hard time being accepted as their representative.
An interesting example for this might be Singapore, where Lee Kuan Yew pushed the country from third to first world in 50 years. Although he is Singaporean, he brought in a lot of foreign knowledge as he had studied abroad. And the same issues with corruption/illegal methods some commenters mention here can be observed: in the early days of his career, he arrested his opponents, the communists, without any legal process to prevent them from jeopardizing his plans. Later, he made some radical decisions, that were not widely accepted by the population, bu that led to better results for the country (for example, he tore down old villages to replace them by high-rise buildings).
- nnq 14y agoIt's probably doable, but not without a whole bag of dirty tricks, and a group of well trained supporters... but you'd end up being like a secret agency manipulating foreign countries' politics, nothing new here, and if you were to succeed you'd give in to the temptation of using your "great benefactor, savior from poverty..." power for more one-sided goals. If you want to change a foreign country for the better and not make a bloody (literally) mess of it, stay away from politics (ok, bribe who you need to to keep you humanitarian organization afloat if needed) and work to improve education, basic healthcare and economic growth by means of bringing foreign investments to businesses in a poor country or things like that. Any other way to do it and you'll probably end up on "the dark side" sooner or later :)
- rdl 14y agoIt would be amazing to have an entity, sort of like the US military crossed with the Red Cross, which just went into conflict zones or repressive regimes to provide infrastructure of government (power, water, education, transportation, law enforcement, security for civilians, etc.). Capable of defending itself, but not taking sides other than providing that infrastructure to everyone. Nominally this is the UN's mission in some countries, but it doesn't really do it. Satellite TV (Al Jazeera and western sitcoms) largely accomplished this for information in the greater Islamic world. Doing the same for non-information goods would require actual infrastructure on the ground, though.
- noonespecial 14y agoThere are very few things that people in power hate more than someone else succeeding at something without consulting them first. I'm afraid you organization would need to be almost all military.
- rdl 14y agoMost of these countries have fairly ineffective militaries, though, so even a lightly armed force could deter them. Blackwater and at least 2 other PMCs in Iraq could hold their own vs. any failed-state force or militia. It wouldn't need to be like the US Army or USAF fielding high-end weapons where a huge tail to tooth ratio came into play.
- 18pfsmt 14y agoI realize this is pretty much irrelevant, but I just wanted to point out that Blackwater has changed its name twice, and is now known as Academi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi
- rdl 14y agoEven after they renamed the first time (to Xe), all the guys continued wearing Blackwater caps and shirts. Even the nominally-separate Presidential Airways guys were wearing Blackwater clothing with the bear claw logo :)
- eCa 14y agoBut you don't need to get into politics directly. If you create a business that solves a local problem (local to the poor country of choice) good enough, and fairly enough, you can create ripple effects. Maybe not at national levels, but at regional and municipal levels. Not easy, but not impossible. (At least I hope so when I got my rose-tinted glasses on.)
- ewolf 14y agoAlright, that sounds feasible, albeit being on an entirely different scale.
- gus_massa 14y agoCorruption. Remember that if you go to one of the 20 poorest or tyrannical countries of the word, you will probably go to one of the 20 more corrupt countries in the word. So while creating a successful business you will be "asked" to share a part of it, and I hope you can keep enough to create the ripple effects.