Transcendent Loci of Political Power and Their Role in Thailand’s 2006 Coup

Thai royal palace

Click for larger view

The 2006 coup in Thailand has been described in terms of an ongoing struggle between the Thai military and the Thai citizenry. (See, for example, Chambers 2010.) According to this view, the military rose in power because of the coup, bringing with it various non-democratic changes to the political system. This model views the people of Thailand more-or-less as an amorphous whole. The divisions between Red Shirts and Yellow shirts are treated essentially as the transient political movements of the moment, and only passing attention is given to the predominant economic strata within these groups. I offer a different interpretation, one that introduces the concept of transcendent loci of political power. Political identities such as Pheu Thai or Yellow Shirts may come and go with the times, but immortal sociopolitical forces within Thai society have existed in some recognizable form or another for hundreds of years, and will survive all of Thailand’s modern-day political intrigues. When interpreted in terms of these transcendent loci, the Thaksin phenomenon and the political clashes that have continued are revealed to be aberrations, contrary to the ordinary structure and flow of Thai political life. The conflicts cannot last, because the opposing parties of today are, in the transcendent sense, natural allies; their reconciliation is inevitable. This interpretation suggests a profound stability to Thai political life, in spite of great bang and clatter at the surface. Continue reading

Aid-For-Labor

Afghan rag doll

Handmade Afghan doll: click for larger view

If our aid efforts in Afghanistan have largely gotten us nowhere, we would do well to consider that most of them are implemented in a way that amounts to Marxism: the central authority distributes goods according to people’s needs, with the expectation that those people will produce according to their abilities. Humanity spent the twentieth century proving that such a model does not work, so it is incongruous that we would attempt it in Afghanistan. At one point during the last three years, I was given control of an aid program operating in rural Dand District, south of Kandahar City, and I was free to employ my own market-based implementation strategy. I may report that we not only sparked booming economic growth in all our target villages, but we also wrested two villages from Taliban control and formally aligned them with the Afghan government. Think about that: an aid program seized ground from the enemy without a shot fired or a life lost. If we want to win in Afghanistan, I offer this program as a blueprint.

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Meditations on Earlier Heaven and Later Heaven

Earlier Heaven yin yangThere are two principle arrangements of the eight trigrams: the primal arrangement of Earlier Heaven, and the inner-world arrangement of Later Heaven, also called the King Wen arrangement. The placement of the trigrams in these arrangements is not arbitrary, and in fact the hidden order behind each is surprisingly complicated. The two arrangements differ in how they interpret the universe, as will be shown. Continue reading

The Civilization Molecule

Vercingetorix surrenders to Julius Caesar

Vercingetorix surrenders to Julius Caesar

Consider the civilized and the barbaric. There are many differences between the two. The civilized enjoy the benefits of rule of law, while barbarians tend toward tyranny. Civilizations usher in technological advancement while barbarians are technologically static, if not regressive. Civilizations have the potential for enlightenment, barbarians usually don’t have words so large as ‘enlightenment.’ But I believe there is one difference that explains all the others, one molecular component of culture that spells the difference between societal advance and decay. Continue reading

Lessons From Astronomy

Image: NASA

Image: NASA

If Orion is visible in the east just before dawn, then it must be August.  Empires may rise and fall and governments may rewrite calendars, but no project of man can alter the course of the stars in the sky. I saw Orion this morning and it was August. They can take away my office and my phone, my calendar and computers, they can shutter the schools and burn all the books, but they cannot budge Orion from his track through the sky. It is August. Continue reading

Read Better Books

A counterinsurgent's bookshelf

Books are generally a waste of time. Most books are not worth the paper they are printed on, and I have actually burned quite a few books in my day. One time I was in a remote part of the Outback, and I needed fuel for the water heater so that I could take a hot shower. A book happened to be the most readily available fuel source for this task, and it was some random piece of trash that I had already read, so up in smoke it went. I don’t tell that story very often, even though I did the right thing. I had a warm shower that morning, which is a lot more benefit than I ever got from reading that stupid book. Continue reading

Counterinsurgency for Aid and Development Organizations

Counterinsurgents planning their next moveCounterinsurgency is primarily a political operation, not a military one. The only reason the military even gets involved is because, as Mao Tse-Tung wrote, Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The reason insurgencies happen is because people are violently dissatisfied with their legitimate government. It is then up to the legitimate government to change in a way that redresses people’s grievances. Aid and development organizations end up playing a major role in this process. Unfortunately, the members of such organizations do not think of themselves as counterinsurgents, and they tend not to behave like people waging a war. As a result the military has extensive literature on the topic of counterinsurgency, the aid community has virtually none. This is backward. Continue reading