Imperial Grunts; the American Military on the Ground(2005) by Robert D.Kaplan

Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts is an examination of life on the ground for the American military in faraway lands. Kaplan begins whit describing Yemeni from the point of U.S. military source. He illustrates Yemeni as a conveniently chaotic in the heart of the Arabia. In that stovepipe bureaucracy, all of the power was in the hand of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Americans was just tribe that Saleh trusted. Ali Muhsen Saleh was the second powerful man in Yemeni after Saleh, he controlled an armored division that protected the capital. Terrorism, in Yemeni was so common. People were aggressive, commercial-minded, and well-armed. Yemeni had more assault rifles and grenade in the world. Tribal kingdoms in Yemeni-in all cities- grew and created imperial and aristocracies.
The whole Yemeni summarized in four worlds:” family, village, tribe, guns-tinker, tailor, soldier, spy. By empowering aristocracies, internecine violence and civil wars grew and because of disorganization, soviet found Yemeni government easy to change and in 1990 south Yemeni state collapsed in the course of the worldwide dissolution. In any case something that existed in all Yemeni was tribal feuds and the problem was that how to manage such an emporium.
Also Kaplan gives a history of the role Special Forces have played in Colombia. The role of U.S. Army Special Forces expanded in Colombia. The army was better gauged in Colombia, which represented a severe form of social breakdown than Yemeni or anyplace in the Middle East. reliance on American techniques and weapons systems, and the relationships between American officers and their third world protégés, gave the U.S. the access it needed to train a third world army.
While the United States army special forces couldn’t reform the whole Colombia army, it could improve some of the host country’s elite units which could then project power into the FARC-controlled badlands. The training of foreign armies provided the green berets’ basic function. Yet military was the most respected institution in Colombia, a large percentage of Colombia than Yemeni was considered by American military to be injun country. Key here is the conclusion that American power can only be exercised in a sustained way through discreet relationships at provinces and tribes. Author explains about transparent humanitarian role for SF. The task that United States appeared to have in both Yemeni and Colombia was similar and it was similarly impossible to make countries out of places that were never meant to be countries.