Could the American culture be a greater weapon against the terrorists & the radical Islam they represent, than any Nuclear Bomb could ever be? I was arguing with someone about a "peaceful" path to liberalize the Middle-East today & thought I would get the blog's opinion. Many people believe the division between "us & them" is religious, but it isn't. It's economic. An absence of a middle-class & noninvolvement with the global culture is the problem.
I believe in my heart of hearts that most people (maybe not all but most), whether here or in Iran, China, Cuba, or anywhere, want to come home at night & sit in front of a 60 inch television, eat hamburgers, and drive a nice car if given the chance. One of the fascinating proofs of this is Thomas Friedman's Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention. It states:
"No two countries that both had McDonald's have fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's"
Friedman argues in
The Lexus & The Olive Tree that when a country or region has a middle class, that instead of fighting wars & killing each other, they would rather stand in line at McDonalds for hamburgers & drink
Coca-Cola...
...People have argued whether the McDonalds example is true or not. There are about 4 examples used to argue that it's false, but it all depends on how you define "war". However, 4 times in the 65 years of McDonalds' existence isn't anything to sneeze at. I also know some people will say that our culture is one of the problems, and globalization is something dangerous. I've never exactly seen it that way.
Globalization definitely has its problems that I'm sure many people will comment on below, but I think it has its advantages as well. It creates a World Culture that makes conflict harder to occur, by giving us a common basis of understanding. In all of the nations in the western world, we all buy CDs & rent movies that people in any of those countries would recognize. Look at the cultures & countries we have problems with, and you see that kind of lifestyle is almost totally foreign. If we ever developed that "common ground" it makes it harder to fester the hate between two peoples. That might be the reason Iran doesn't want people listening to Kenny G...
George Michael, Eric Clapton and Kenny G. will no longer be heard on Iranian airwaves after hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a decree banning Western music from the country's radio and TV stations.
..."This is terrible," said Iranian guitarist Babak Riahipour whose music was occasionally played on state radio and television. "The decision shows a lack of knowledge and experience."
Songs such as George Michael's "Careless Whisper," Eric Clapton's "Rush" and "Hotel California" by the Eagles regularly accompany Iranian TV and programs, as do tunes by saxophonist Kenny G.
Our culture is a lot of things, both good & bad, but it is also "
infectious". That's part of why you see kids in a dorm room in China doing this...
So, should we be fighting "The War On Terror" with kindness & economics? Would exporting our culture & economics do more to help stabalize our place in the world than dropping bombs? Or would it just create different problems?