Cooking with what you have

Robert Kaplan follows up his pre-Patraeus report analysis by widening his bottom-up tribalism theory to include Pakistan, Baluchistan and Afghanistan in his latest article in The Atlantic It’s the Tribes, Stupid!:

Where democratic governance does not exist, we must work with the material at hand. … Throughout the Arab world, old monarchial and authoritarian orders are now weakening. Keeping societies stable will depend largely on tribes, and the deals they are able to cut with one another. In the Middle East, an age of pathetic, fledgling democracies is also an age of tribes.

via Soob who also links to Adrian’s article How to attack an national identity as well as a pretty map.