Hickel has some very interesting ideas, and I really enjoyed your writeup. I find plausible the central claim that neocolonialist foreign and economic policy has put hundreds of millions of people into poverty. I’m a bit unsure of his arguments about the harms of debt and trade terms (hopefully will return later), but the case that foreign-imposed regime change has been harmful seems really strong.
So, question: Might it be highly impactful to prevent governments from harmfully overthrowing foreign regimes?
Governments overthrow each other all the time. The United States has overthrown dozens of foreign governments over the last century, including recent interventions in Libya, Yemen, Palestine, and Iraq. The Soviet Union did the same, and modern day Russia aggressively interferes in foreign democratic elections, including the 2016 US election. China might do the same, but I can’t find great evidence. I don’t know about the UK and EU, I can’t find obvious recent examples that weren’t primarily US-led (e.g. Iraq, Libya). Official histories probably understate the number of overthrows because successful attempts can remain secret, at least for the years immediately following the overthrow.
Toppling governments can be extremely harmful. After 5 minutes of Googling, it seems foreign imposed regime changes might increase the likelihood of civil wars (“in roughly 40 percent of the cases of covert regime change undertaken during the Cold War, a civil war occurred within 10 years of the operation.”) and human rights abuses (“In more than 55 percent of the cases of covert regime-change missions undertaken during the Cold War, the targeted states experienced a government-sponsored mass killing episode within 10 years of the regime-change attempt.”). I’d also expect to find strong evidence of increased poverty, decreased economic growth, and worse health and education outcomes.
Clearly there’s much more to be discussed here, but I’ll post now and come back later. A few questions:
How tractable is changing the foreign policy of major governments? How does one do it? What are some examples of historical successes or failures?
Is this “neglected”? The concept doesn’t apply super cleanly here, but my hunch might be that few people involved in foreign policy have EA values, meaning EA might have the “competitive edge” of pursuing an uncommon goal.
What are the risks to EA here? Government is generally contentious and polarized, and regime change is an extremely controversial issue. What specific ways could EA attempts to work on regime change or other foreign policy causes end up backfiring?
Hickel has some very interesting ideas, and I really enjoyed your writeup. I find plausible the central claim that neocolonialist foreign and economic policy has put hundreds of millions of people into poverty. I’m a bit unsure of his arguments about the harms of debt and trade terms (hopefully will return later), but the case that foreign-imposed regime change has been harmful seems really strong.
So, question: Might it be highly impactful to prevent governments from harmfully overthrowing foreign regimes?
Governments overthrow each other all the time. The United States has overthrown dozens of foreign governments over the last century, including recent interventions in Libya, Yemen, Palestine, and Iraq. The Soviet Union did the same, and modern day Russia aggressively interferes in foreign democratic elections, including the 2016 US election. China might do the same, but I can’t find great evidence. I don’t know about the UK and EU, I can’t find obvious recent examples that weren’t primarily US-led (e.g. Iraq, Libya). Official histories probably understate the number of overthrows because successful attempts can remain secret, at least for the years immediately following the overthrow.
Toppling governments can be extremely harmful. After 5 minutes of Googling, it seems foreign imposed regime changes might increase the likelihood of civil wars (“in roughly 40 percent of the cases of covert regime change undertaken during the Cold War, a civil war occurred within 10 years of the operation.”) and human rights abuses (“In more than 55 percent of the cases of covert regime-change missions undertaken during the Cold War, the targeted states experienced a government-sponsored mass killing episode within 10 years of the regime-change attempt.”). I’d also expect to find strong evidence of increased poverty, decreased economic growth, and worse health and education outcomes.
Clearly there’s much more to be discussed here, but I’ll post now and come back later. A few questions:
How tractable is changing the foreign policy of major governments? How does one do it? What are some examples of historical successes or failures?
Is this “neglected”? The concept doesn’t apply super cleanly here, but my hunch might be that few people involved in foreign policy have EA values, meaning EA might have the “competitive edge” of pursuing an uncommon goal.
What are the risks to EA here? Government is generally contentious and polarized, and regime change is an extremely controversial issue. What specific ways could EA attempts to work on regime change or other foreign policy causes end up backfiring?
Some related conversation:
Promoting liberal democracy might be a worthwhile EA cause area (80K agrees).
The longtermist value of reducing poverty by improving institutions
Thank you! Lots of food for thought—need to get back to my internship, but I look forward to thinking and reading more about the things you mention.