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Daniel_Burfoot comments on Open thread, 9-15 June 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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To be clear, I am definitely not advocating large scale military invasion and occupation. The external power would take over a tiny bit of land - say 1000 km2 - to set up a city.
Let's do a quick comparison between Yemen and Singapore:
The point is that Singaporean institutions are vastly more efficient at turning land area (an intrinsically scarce commodity) into liveable and economically viable polity.
One way to formulate the goal of political development is to attempt to maximize the number of people living under good, efficient, non-corrupt governments. The thalassocracy concept is a way of implementing that goal without major political upheaval (e.g. revolution, war, massive immigration, etc).
So, a small-scale military invasion and occupation??
The issue isn't land you will be taking over, the issue is people. Some of them (probably a lot) will not want your thalassocracy. Some of them (and in Yemen, pretty much all of them) will be adept with weapons.
You want to come into the Middle East, set up an enclave completely different (politically, culturally, etc.) from anything around it and you don't expect war? Um, may I suggest you ask the Israelis about how well it works X-/