{"id":3089,"date":"2010-01-08T21:12:31","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T02:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=3089"},"modified":"2010-01-08T21:12:31","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T02:12:31","slug":"nation-buildling-lessons-from-liberia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/3089\/nation-buildling-lessons-from-liberia\/","title":{"rendered":"Nation Buildling Lessons from Liberia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a fascinating piece over at <em>Foreign Policy<\/em> from a former American paratrooper and human rights defender who was tasked to <a href=\" http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2010\/01\/07\/i_built_an_african_army?page=0,0\" target=\"_blank\">help remake Liberia\u2019s decimated military<\/a>.  The almost humorously titled \u201cI Built an African Army\u201d provides a sober assessment of the big picture thinking needed to train, equip, and manage a developing country\u2019s military.  One of the most important insights was to inculcate ideas about social justice, and a soldier\u2019s place in a democracy into recruits who identified themselves and others by tribe membership before citizenship.<\/p>\n<p>And though the author doesn\u2019t linger on it, early on he mentions that his mission on behalf of the U.S. State Department was contracted through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dyn-intl.com\/ \" target=\"_blank\">DynCorp International<\/a>, a private military company.  Yes, liberals, there are plenty examples of private military contractors doing the kind of nuanced, real world nation building that all the money from the UN, WTO, and IMF couldn\u2019t equal.  It\u2019s nice having a new round of ammunition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a fascinating piece over at Foreign Policy from a former American paratrooper and human rights defender who was tasked to help remake Liberia\u2019s decimated military. The almost humorously titled \u201cI Built an African Army\u201d provides a sober assessment of the big picture thinking needed to train, equip, and manage a developing country\u2019s military. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[216,714,715],"class_list":["post-3089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-foreign-policy","tag-liberia","tag-nation-building"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3089"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3093,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3089\/revisions\/3093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}