Stardate 20011003.1656 (On Screen): Senator Biden will propose a project to rebuild the central Asian countries after any war we fight there. It is, perhaps, a bit premature to be thinking about this, actually. But I also forsee problems; this isn't really quite the same as what happened with the Marshall plan, after which it is consciously patterned. In the case of the nations rebuilt by the Marshall plan, there was already a history and tradition of industrialized capitalism, and already in place a substantial well-educated middle class. What was missing was infrastructure, which can be brought in with ships.
It is naive to believe that the central Asian nations could be converted into liberal democracies in that way in such short order; it's more likely that this would result in wholesale embezzlement, useless projects which are built and then don't get used, and general waste with no important long term result. In other words, it would go about the way that most of the aid to Africa in the 1960's and 1970's went, rather than the way the aid to Europe in the late 1940's and 1950's went. Senator Biden's heart is in the right place, but this program would need to be very carefully considered to make sure up front that it actually accomplished anything useful. Those nations unquestionably need infrastructure, but they need a lot of other things which we can't really give them without which that infrastructure would mostly be useless. They need a culture change which really has to come from within. The Marshall plan was rebuilding; what Biden is proposing is building. That's not as easy. (discussion in progress)
