IMMIGRATION thread

[Montmorency]

One thing to note, Pan, is that there are indeed interventions in which the local populations have an improved disposition toward the intervening country, or at least are grateful. France's contemporary missions to its former African colonies are an example, and these are low-intensity missions involving personnel on the order of only thousands. Maybe that's why they are comparatively well-received: inserting a sharp tool into a bad situation to improve it without becoming omnipresent,avoiding explicitly taking on massive burdens and responsibilities, and not visibly causing much general devastation (or at least being around to be associated with it). Intra-national examples (though of disaster response) are also good food for thought: compare the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina in the US compared to the rapid Japanese mobilization after the Fukushima quake. In both instances the government was rightly excoriated for prior negligence leading to exacerbated harm in the event, but it's widely agreed that Japan did a much better job with evacuation, shelter, and reconstruction under similar environmental conditions and with a comparable number of displaced persons.

To make it more obviously pertinent, recall the UN intervention in Haiti after the 2010 quake nearly obliterated the country. In fact, much of the damage occurred due to the UN's administrative and logistical failure, such that it sent soldiers to provide stability, but the soldiers were from South Asia or South America with few interpreters, hindered reconstruction, abused the local population under their UN immunity, and even caused a cholera epidemic due to bad sanitation and waste disposal practices. Does this mean the UN should not have bothered to send agents to Haiti? And keep in mind that humanitarian intervention is one of the few areas in which we actually give the UN much scope and funding to act.

the premise that we're wrong and the question is merely how

This is true of a subset of academics, but it's important to differentiate between academics on the one hand, and foreign governments or nations on the other. If intervention is on the table, then leaving aside all the other potential factors I think the former should count for much less than the latter. Don't let armchair criticism drive you into categorical rejection of a policy tool. If you actually screw up, that's on you. If you make that investment and achieve good results both for the people of the country and state-level (e.g. economic) interests, then academic whining is just background noise - at best it might clarify areas for improvement.