Extremism Provokes Extremism
History may not repeat, but historical patterns do. Although the future cannot be foreseen, rigorous analytical methods can systematically reveal forces that will form the future and help us form logical judgments about how those forces can be expected to interact under specified circumstances.
* When the battle against extremism is fought with military means, governance suffers.
* Garrison states and hegemony provoke resistance.
* Injustice not only radicalizes the desperate but begs for exploitation by those who are already radical.
* Isolation provokes military buildup, and that provokes everyone else to do the same.
* Treating bilateral ties as a zero-sum game is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
* Refusing to talk to opponents is self-defeating.
* Failure to define a coherent policy leads to loss of control.
* Hostility empowers hardliners.
Historical patterns exist. The key to analyzing the future is identification of dominant patterns, and one starting point to understanding which patterns will dominate is the identification of a manageable number of drivers. In between these two goals is a world of analytical detail designed to expose and analyze causal dynamics. Taken together, these steps can reveal something about how the future will be formed.
This basic pattern, in which extremism on one side provokes extremism on the other, may work in numerous ways:
· Popular demand from a humbled population, e.g., one just victimized by terrorism, may compel a regime to strike out even if it is not sure who the enemy is or whether its own violence will reduce future violence from its opponents with the result that its revenge attacks will engender sympathy for and support of the terrorists.
· Politicians may take advantage of popular anger to carry out their own agenda and attack other countries (who may happen to have coveted resources or present an obstacle to expansionist plans), thus radicalizing enemies who had no desire to destroy the system.
· Establishment politicians may take advantage of the fear of extremism to tar their domestic opponents with that brush, radicalizing opposition that otherwise would have been content to work within the system.
· Extremists who agree to work within the system, e.g., by participating in elections, may be attacked if they win, thus forcing them back to violence.
· Moderate, domestic political opponents may be charged with treachery or lack of patriotism for disputing details of policy and thereby be pushed either to turn mute or become radical.
· Conservative, establishment enemies may be lumped together with radical enemies bent on destroying the system, resulting in all of them working to destroy the system.
These are some of the detailed dynamics that require analysis, an analysis that is far more important to analyzing the future that imagining the detailed sequence of events that might occur. Dynamics are more important for the analysis of a specific system or country's future because they are explanatory. Dynamics are also more important because they are generic: their identification supplies an analytical tool that can be applied to multiple situations.
See:
Reference 1
Reference 2