Interesting. I wonder what the cost winds up being, and how it compares to the usual military options? Wouldn't surprise me if it's a good deal, at least in the short term.
Mind, I do think there are some clear problems with the idea, at least in a naive implementation. In particular, the obvious outcome is that this amounts to an ongoing subsidy from rich countries to poorer ones, and there's no obvious way to *stop* that subsidy -- if you try to stop it, people will logically claim that they suddenly have a Taliban problem. Moreover, once you do that, other poor countries now have a powerful incentive to join in: indeed, the most rational response is to deliberately *foster* a similar terrorist group, simply so that you can get in on the bribe.
It's possible that a subtler implementation could get around these problems -- the idea isn't obviously crazy on its face. But I think that there's a real chance of it backfiring unless they get the economic equation right. It's basically a variation of the classic terrorist-hostage problem, and has the same problems. (There are very sound practical reasons for policies requiring no negotiations with terrorists, and this shares some common features...)
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Re: money talks
Date: 2010-02-11 10:39 pm (UTC)Mind, I do think there are some clear problems with the idea, at least in a naive implementation. In particular, the obvious outcome is that this amounts to an ongoing subsidy from rich countries to poorer ones, and there's no obvious way to *stop* that subsidy -- if you try to stop it, people will logically claim that they suddenly have a Taliban problem. Moreover, once you do that, other poor countries now have a powerful incentive to join in: indeed, the most rational response is to deliberately *foster* a similar terrorist group, simply so that you can get in on the bribe.
It's possible that a subtler implementation could get around these problems -- the idea isn't obviously crazy on its face. But I think that there's a real chance of it backfiring unless they get the economic equation right. It's basically a variation of the classic terrorist-hostage problem, and has the same problems. (There are very sound practical reasons for policies requiring no negotiations with terrorists, and this shares some common features...)