Lancaster
INTRODUCTION
South African Greg Mills’ (2014) draws on personal life experiences to write about how to affect positive change – on the scale of “country” (p. 1). Traumatised societies are Mills’ primary targets for reform and he seeks to identify their “operations, drivers and symptoms” (p. 28). During his professional life Mills has identified “local politics, customs and rules” as any society’s most important factors and now, schooled by his high-level career, he sets the context for a new “common path” in our constantly-changing world.

Mills (2014) concentrates on three specific issues:
“why and how some states are fragile;
where and why reforms succeed and [how] some states recover
and the role of insiders and outsiders in this process” (p. 6).

KEY IDEA 1
Mills (2014) is determined to identify, develop and work in a “different and long-term operating system” ( p. ?). He asks why some efforts:

improve serious matters
are highly successful

Mills has decided his new system will require the “people, governance and infrastructure”, to have the same goals. To structure this system “strategy, institutions, policy and leadership” must all be fully incorporated within the recovery structure (p. 29).

KEY IDEA 2 – SINEK
Sinek contributes a vital idea to Mills’ fledgling system: that any participant motivation should emanate from places “beyond just the need to make money”. He emphasises how it is imperative participants appreciat[e] the real purpose of the organisation to keep uppermost the “people and social currency” (cited by Mills, 2014, pp. 28, 29).
KEY IDEA 3
Mills has seen the real power in Sinek’s “just-beyond profit” views – in some of the global arenas he worked are some of the still more than 1.1 billion very poor people, and has learned first-hand, in-situ, how most economically-constrained individuals live in countries that either do not or soon will not work properly (p. 1). Mills focusses on the lessening of poverty, which he maintains is “principally a result of economic growth”. In fragile and failing states, and recovering states, Mills saw, and now knows: the “underlying conditions” (p. xii) must first be identified. Only then is it possible to design and construct successful “different” reforms.

MILLS’ KEY IDEA 4
From his own experiences, Mills (2014) knows those underlying conditions will remain essential parts of “the road from state weakness to strength”. He illustrates this with quotes by Singapore’s elder statesman S. R. Nathan, who says: “low income countries cannot escape the low-income model in creating jobs”, and describes the “common faith” of the early American society, how its individuals did not instantly demand the type of democracy in existence in America today (Nathan, cited by Mills, 2014, p. 467).

Nathan describes those early American workers, how they started off with a “low-skills” base, and got into “the chain” (pp. 467, 468). Although it takes hard work, once in the chain, “as demand goes up, so pay goes up” (cited by Mills, 2014, p. 467). Since Singapore first began its rise to prosperity “increased productivity… [is] viewed as the key to job creation” (p. 464).

KEY IDEA 5 – NATHAN
Nathan emphasises: “security, labour relations, economic policy, foreign investment, promotion” are the essential building blocks (cited by Mills, 2014, p. 466), and Mills explains: improvement in local production, and thus quality of life, only follows along with the development of “better security, governance and policy” (p. 2).

KEY IDEA 6
While Mills (2014) says outsiders must be aware their engagement will, inevitably, fall within places that contain complicated “political circumstances” (p. xii), Mills encourages informed outsiders, says it is here informed, thoughtful and flexible “outsiders” can provide positive support to “insiders” (pp. xii, 1), and while slow in failed or fragile states, they assist in development, and provide gateways to improvements in economics and production.

KEY IDEA 7
Mills believes reforms should always be “problem-driven”, although in this Africa is very different in Singapore, where reform is ongoing and successful. In Singapore improvements begin when “someone identifyi[es] a “best practice” reform. Mills explains Singapore never stops there, but immediately goes through “a step-by-step process of experimentation and learning” (p. 464). His analyses show Singapore always uses a “broad engagement by myriad players… who ensure that the emergent solutions will actually work and who ulitmately owns the results”.

KEY IDEAS 8, 9, 10
Matt Andrews (2012), of Harvard, states there are three key lines of success:
prioritise
then identify and remove impediments
thereafter stick to the decided plan – & – maintain the will to succeed
(cited by Mills, 2014, p. 467).

KEY POINT 11
Andrews emphasises “accountability” (cited by Mills, 2014, p. 467), and Nathan says “you cannot protect the employed at the expense of the unemployed”. He describes his nation’s productivity and “growth as the essential glue and moderator of extremism” (cited by Mills, 2014, p. 466). Mills says this growth is hardly possible without valid government. He explains that today “political power is… easier to obtain… but… harder to retain and to use”. Mills calls this a “diffusion” of power, and emphasises this political failure has dangerous, powerful links to “asymetrical warfare”.

KEY POINT 12
Mills associates these dangers with a further factor he describes as an “absence of an over-riding plan by outsiders” (p. 4). Holland (June, July, 2016), in two recent articles obliquely provides analyses of this matter. He explores the horrifying results of outsider involvement in Syria. He discusses the enrichment of some traditional, established US-military components – supportive, pro-active activities, coming out of climate-change concerns. These aim to protect, and maintain peace, and are held in areas the military identified as soon to be at risk of conflict. The military actions may be encouraging actions in a critical arena, may be identified as types of “cultural templates and methods people use to organize their worlds and create their identifies” (Lull, 2007).

KEY POINT 13
As Lull (2007) explains, now templates and methods fluctuate: “to such an extent that the very meaning of culture is changing” (Lull, 2007), and a big difference is these military pro-active initiatives are prior to conflict. Like Singapore’s model they are “problem driven”, are borne out of a will and determination to reduce conflict. For many reasons these military decisions sync with Mills, wrestling with problems such as revealed by Oxfam: “conflict shrinks the economies of affected African countries by at least 15 per cent per year” (2014, p. 2).

KEY POINT 14 – ANDREWS
Andrews provides a summary of most of the above when he states:
“An improved reform approach takes shape after the analysis of interventions that have yielded more functional governments. This approach, called problem-driven iterative adaptation (PDIA),7 is akin to the way one imagines carpenters craft pegs to fit real holes – where the process is as important as the product. This process begins with problem identification, given the argument that reforms are more likely to fit their contexts when crafted as responses to locally defined problems. Relevant solutions – those that are politically acceptable and practically possible – emerge through a gradual process of step-by-step experimentation to solve such problems. This process yields solutions that resemble bricolaged hybrids blending external and internal ideas. The solutions arise through engagements between many agents playing multiple functional roles, and not solitary champions (Andrews, 2012).

KEY POINT 15 – HOLLAND
Holland discusses initiatives good for both insiders and outsiders, which are not reactive engagements via negative conflict. They may exemplify “global integration, modernity, risk, and progress” (Friedman, cited by Lull, 2007), become positive, global aspects of Lull’s views that; “today the scope, speed and consequences… stand out from any other historical period” (2007). While these military initiatives are planned to, and will ultimately, and in many ways, probably protect Western futures (Holland, 2016), these activities will also positively assist less-fortunate “insiders” (Mills, 2014).

Mills (2014) reminds readers terrorism acts in Western countries can emanate from these “fragile” societies (p. xii). He explains how “unfairness and alienation” imposed on individuals who originate in failed societies (p. xii). These individuals, he says, can generate tragic acts in the West (p. 1), as terrorism may originate in these “loser” societies, but is “unlikely to remain at home” (p. 1).

Holland’s July 2016 describes the American military, a most important subject in Western society though it seems various strange, contradictory nexus exist. For example, today (in Australia) “Western-society”, members generally seem to reserve deep admiration those who protect ‘our’ society, culture – and our children’s future. Furthermore, ‘we’ remember, revere, and very often grieve and regret sincerely, and deeply respect, the military’s countless numbers who perish.

Yet, in tandem with the above solidarity many Western citizens now consider warfare unacceptable, entirely alien, and as spectre. Today much of the Western populace’s thinking about the military is difficult and complicated: honour mixed with revulsion, admiration with grief, respect with confusion, joy with sadness. In these current 4-year planning cycle of the US Department of Defence, the new direction, climate-change-directed programmes may also help resolve these very complicated, (and extraordinarily valuable), Western social and cultural binary values.

KEY POINT 16 – PERKINS
Mills calls essential the “domestic learning processes, and the necessity for space to be left for these processes to take effect” (p. xii). Mills views on education in this environment seem to be similar to holistic education, the value of which: ” lies in its responsiveness to the diverse learning styles and needs of evolving human beings… [and is] the art of cultivating the moral, emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions (2016). Perkins (2016) echoes each of these when he says he learned early in his Peace Corp years, and thereafter, over many years, one positive and useful technique to empower ‘insiders’ is to encourage and assist them to set up their own structures, (such as co-ops), slowly, learning as they go, and thus provide strength and support to each other (p. 30).

KEY POINT 17 – OBAMA
On 20 July, 2016 President Obama addressed “a lot of do-gooders in one room”. He explained he’s seen the substantial benefits in local and global capacity-building.
The President states: global development is not “charity. [He says:] In an increasingly interconnected world, it’s a crucial investment in the security and prosperity of us all.
When children cannot go to school, or businesses lack reliable roads or electricity, that holds back entire economies. Where poverty and despair take root, conflict, instability, and violent extremism can flourish. Fragile and failing states can incubate or exacerbate a wide range of threats that spill across borders — from pandemics to nuclear proliferation, human trafficking to climate change” (The White House, 20 July, 2016).

The President’s 2016 speech followed from 2010 in the United Nations, when President Obama said: “In our global economy, progress in even the poorest countries can advance the prosperity and security of people far beyond their borders, including my fellow Americans” (The White House, 20 July, 2016). Perhaps these positive actions will recall ‘the Americans’ actions – in earlier world theatres of war when that military was viewed more positively by others’ communities with whom they engaged.

Reference
Andrews, M. (2012). The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Holland, A. (July, 2016). Preventing Tomorrow’s Climate Wars. Scientific American. Volume 314, Number 6. 53-57.
New York, NY: Nature America Inc.

Infed. (2016). A brief introduction to holistic education.
from: http://infed.org/mobi/a-brief-introduction-to-holistic-education/

Perkins, J. (2016). The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
London, UK: Random House.

Mills (2014). Why States Recover: Changing walking societies into winning nations – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Johanneburg: Picador Africa (Pan MacMillan).

The White House, 20 July, 2016.
from: https://www.whitehouse.gov/campaign/globaldevelopment