Invade, kill their leaders, and convert them to Libertarianism

Jeffrey Gettleman's article in today's New York Times suggests that what corrupt, war-torn, 14-governments-in-17-years, Somalia needs is some good, old-fashioned localism.

Many Somali intellectuals and Western academics are pushing an alternative form of government that might be better suited to Somalia’s fluid, fragmented and decentralized society. The new idea, which is actually an old idea that seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance because of the transitional government’s shortcomings, is to rebuild Somalia from the bottom up.

It is called the building block approach. The first blocks would be small governments at the lowest levels, in villages and towns. These would be stacked to form district and regional governments. The last step would be uniting the regional governments in a loose national federation that controlled, say, currency issues and the pirate-infested shoreline, but did not sideline local leaders.

“It’s the only way viable,” said Ali Doy, a Somali analyst who works closely with the United Nations. “Local government is where the actual governance is. It’s more realistic, it’s more sustainable and it’s more secure.”

Sounds good, but I look forward to a follow-up article where someone explains how you implement a bottom-up strategy from the top down.