What's wrong with KONY 2012
I'm sure pretty much everyone on Facebook has heard of KONY2012 by this point. If you haven't, here's a short summary. Someone named Jason Russell wants to arrest someone named Joseph Kony. Jason made a (well put-together) movie to explain how to do so - essentially, by "crowdsourcing" military intervention. That's not how he describes it, of course, but that's pretty much what it is. The campaign's immediate goal (I'll get into the larger goal later) is to make Joseph Kony the global public enemy number one. Given how successful this viral marketing campaign has been, it's safe to say he's been successful at doing so.
For the record, I am not objecting to to Russell's description of Kony per se. I learned of Invisible Children several years back, shortly before entering college. There's no doubt Kony's the definition of "a bad guy". That said, I am extremely reluctant to endorse this campaign for several reasons.
(There has been some criticism of the Invisible Children group from various perspectives, such as financial or regarding transparency. That's another issue altogether, and I'm reserving judgment on it. As a political science nerd, this post will be analyzing the issue from purely a political/military science perspective.)
The Kony 2012 film uses a theme of hope. Its idea is simple: identify a person as global public enemy number one, make sure everyone in the world knows of him through viral marketing, and use that as leverage to get policy makers to bust him. The people speak, the governments listen, and Kony is captured and stands trial before the International Criminal Court. How? America gives Uganda the necessary equipment and resources to track him down. In short, the solution is to give Uganda more guns... and then get the arrest. (alternatively, if you don't want Uganda to become the Lone Ranger of the area, you have to arm all four of the countries in which Kony operates.) Again, I don't really have an issue with choosing Kony as public enemy. As mentioned above, he really is a "bad guy". But from a larger perspective, there are a multitude of serious problems with this setup.
As you can learn from the film, the LRA is not confined to a small area of Central Africa - Kony has historically been very good at staying alive for the past few decades, largely through moving between borders. As planners, let's assume he doesn't suddenly forget how to do so. If I remember correctly, the LRA currently operates between South Sudan, Congo, Uganda, and the Central African Republic. In a sense, he's pinned in this locations. A problem here is that pressure in one will compel him to move to another, and that's a tricky issue. We have four (weak) governments to consider, unless Kony 2012 plans on having state militaries trample all over borders to go after Kony. So, either arm all four of them, bringing up their operational capabilities, or you make one of them extremely powerful, strong enough to ignore the others. I'm not entirely comfortable with this, and it's something that needs to be taken into consideration. Giving one of the countries free reign to go after Kony is a bad idea, particularly given the fact that the four countries aren't exactly on good terms with each other. (Uganda invaded Congo in the 1990s, for example)
So that's the first problem. The second problem: suppose one of the governments, or perhaps all of them, are armed and trained, and then sent after Kony. I considered mentioning the fact that the millions of people who "like" the Kill Kony 2012 campaign would be indirectly responsible for the decision to go after the man, and his death might be on their heads. But then I realized at this point that it's entertainment for most of us so it's a moot point. We cheer on drone attacks, we celebrated when Usama Bin Laden was killed without trial. So okay.
A more sobering aspect is what happens afterwards, regardless of if Kony is killed or captured. Do you really think these African countries are going to return all these new military toys to the United States? Supposing we really do vastly improve the militaries of these countries to the point where they can conduct effective operations, enough to capture the man. Do keep in mind that state militaries in Africa are in no way comparable to state militaries in Western countries, and by that I mean the consequences of putting better guns and equipment in the hands of fairly undemocratic governments can have disastrous results for their citizens, long after Kony is gone.
The third and final issue is the fundamental problem with crowdsourcing - more precisely, crowdsourcing military intervention. Kony's an easy target. But do you really think it would stop here? If this is effective, why stop? Will long-running wars and complicated political issues be reduced to Facebook and Twitter-friendly soundbites? Can you really understand an issue in 140 characters or less? Can the nuances of informed decisionmaking really be reduced to "let's get the bad guy"? This is completely ignorant of the long-term and extended effects of our decisions, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects, and this can not end well. The gravity of a government's choice to fund an ambitious project like this will have a long-lasting effect on this region of Africa, and quite possibly for the worse. We would be once again arming the "3rd world" with advanced weapons, but worst of all, on the basis of the power of social media and a feeling of "hope" and "wanting to do something", and not on sound, pragmatic analysis.
In summary, Joseph Kony deserves to go before the International Criminal Court. I sympathize with the Kony 2012 movement a lot, and I know most of my friends who are sharing about the issue and "liking" it have the best of intentions. More awareness needs to be raised about this issue of Child Soldiers in Africa. But using popular opinion unleashed by viral marketing to induce foreign military intervention is a really fucking bad idea. As mentioned on Kings of War, "It is immoral to try and sell a sanitised version of foreign intervention that neglects the fact that people will die as a result."
I don't pretend to offer any simple solution to this, because I'm not an expert on these kinds of issues. But not being able to think of a good way to solve a problem doesn't mean you can't recognize a really bad idea when you see one.
For the record, I am not objecting to to Russell's description of Kony per se. I learned of Invisible Children several years back, shortly before entering college. There's no doubt Kony's the definition of "a bad guy". That said, I am extremely reluctant to endorse this campaign for several reasons.
(There has been some criticism of the Invisible Children group from various perspectives, such as financial or regarding transparency. That's another issue altogether, and I'm reserving judgment on it. As a political science nerd, this post will be analyzing the issue from purely a political/military science perspective.)
The Kony 2012 film uses a theme of hope. Its idea is simple: identify a person as global public enemy number one, make sure everyone in the world knows of him through viral marketing, and use that as leverage to get policy makers to bust him. The people speak, the governments listen, and Kony is captured and stands trial before the International Criminal Court. How? America gives Uganda the necessary equipment and resources to track him down. In short, the solution is to give Uganda more guns... and then get the arrest. (alternatively, if you don't want Uganda to become the Lone Ranger of the area, you have to arm all four of the countries in which Kony operates.) Again, I don't really have an issue with choosing Kony as public enemy. As mentioned above, he really is a "bad guy". But from a larger perspective, there are a multitude of serious problems with this setup.
As you can learn from the film, the LRA is not confined to a small area of Central Africa - Kony has historically been very good at staying alive for the past few decades, largely through moving between borders. As planners, let's assume he doesn't suddenly forget how to do so. If I remember correctly, the LRA currently operates between South Sudan, Congo, Uganda, and the Central African Republic. In a sense, he's pinned in this locations. A problem here is that pressure in one will compel him to move to another, and that's a tricky issue. We have four (weak) governments to consider, unless Kony 2012 plans on having state militaries trample all over borders to go after Kony. So, either arm all four of them, bringing up their operational capabilities, or you make one of them extremely powerful, strong enough to ignore the others. I'm not entirely comfortable with this, and it's something that needs to be taken into consideration. Giving one of the countries free reign to go after Kony is a bad idea, particularly given the fact that the four countries aren't exactly on good terms with each other. (Uganda invaded Congo in the 1990s, for example)
So that's the first problem. The second problem: suppose one of the governments, or perhaps all of them, are armed and trained, and then sent after Kony. I considered mentioning the fact that the millions of people who "like" the Kill Kony 2012 campaign would be indirectly responsible for the decision to go after the man, and his death might be on their heads. But then I realized at this point that it's entertainment for most of us so it's a moot point. We cheer on drone attacks, we celebrated when Usama Bin Laden was killed without trial. So okay.
A more sobering aspect is what happens afterwards, regardless of if Kony is killed or captured. Do you really think these African countries are going to return all these new military toys to the United States? Supposing we really do vastly improve the militaries of these countries to the point where they can conduct effective operations, enough to capture the man. Do keep in mind that state militaries in Africa are in no way comparable to state militaries in Western countries, and by that I mean the consequences of putting better guns and equipment in the hands of fairly undemocratic governments can have disastrous results for their citizens, long after Kony is gone.
The third and final issue is the fundamental problem with crowdsourcing - more precisely, crowdsourcing military intervention. Kony's an easy target. But do you really think it would stop here? If this is effective, why stop? Will long-running wars and complicated political issues be reduced to Facebook and Twitter-friendly soundbites? Can you really understand an issue in 140 characters or less? Can the nuances of informed decisionmaking really be reduced to "let's get the bad guy"? This is completely ignorant of the long-term and extended effects of our decisions, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects, and this can not end well. The gravity of a government's choice to fund an ambitious project like this will have a long-lasting effect on this region of Africa, and quite possibly for the worse. We would be once again arming the "3rd world" with advanced weapons, but worst of all, on the basis of the power of social media and a feeling of "hope" and "wanting to do something", and not on sound, pragmatic analysis.
In summary, Joseph Kony deserves to go before the International Criminal Court. I sympathize with the Kony 2012 movement a lot, and I know most of my friends who are sharing about the issue and "liking" it have the best of intentions. More awareness needs to be raised about this issue of Child Soldiers in Africa. But using popular opinion unleashed by viral marketing to induce foreign military intervention is a really fucking bad idea. As mentioned on Kings of War, "It is immoral to try and sell a sanitised version of foreign intervention that neglects the fact that people will die as a result."
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