Foreign powers either did not know or did not care what sectarian demons they were releasing in these countries by disrupting the old status quo.
 

Originally conceived by Bernard Lewis as a traditional British plan to "divide and rule" an "arc of crisis" from Nigeria to Pakistan, the plan was adapted by Zbigniew Brzezinski as a means to sow discontent in the Muslim SSRs and Chechnya, thus weakening the USSR. Implementation began in the late '70s, with covert support for the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. This is now acknowledged to have occurred 6 months before the Soviet effort to stabilize the situation by invading. At the same time, the US abandoned the Shah of Iran and attempted to forge an alliance with Ayatollah Khomeini, but was unsuccessful when the more angry elements of the revolution attacked the US embassy and took hostages, ushering in the current hostility between Iran and the US.

While Brzezinski's plan does not seem to have been very effective in splitting Central Asia from Russia and China, it did help to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union and probably contributed to the civil war in Chechnya. However, another important effect was the establishment of a sectarian regime in Iran, the outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq (encouraged by Sunni elites in the Gulf fearful of their Shia underclass), and the opportunity to sell arms to both sides. With the collapse of the entire Warsaw Pact in 1989-90 and widespread talk of a "peace dividend" threatening the livelihood of the entire MIC, I recall much talk about an "arc of instability" stretching from Pakistan through northern Africa that might require continued or even increased military expenditures.

However, before the US could deal with this "arc of instability," it needed to deal with the "Vietnam syndrome." Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait -- to solve what April Glaspie had told him was an internal Arab problem in which the US government had little interest -- gave Bush 41 the opportunity the MIC needed to dispel that syndrome by destroying Iraq's Army. The US has been on a decidedly interventionist path ever since in Somalia, Sudan, the Balkans and culminating in Bush 43's dumb war and Obama's "smart" interventions in Libya, Yemen, Syria and Ukraine.

These interventions of the last 35 years have never achieved America's "exceptional" goals to quell instability, protect human rights or establish democracies, nor have they even achieved less widely published but avowed goals to protect the "international community's" access to resources or establish US hegemony. Oil exports always fall during war, and nobody has control in places like Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan, Libya, Syria or Ukraine. On the contrary, our interventions and those of our allies have created failed states or civil war in all these countries. However, sane people do not repeat the same actions over and over expecting different results. Then why are these policies continued?

US policies have done wonders to justify the institutional imperatives of the MIC: 1) profits for arms manufacturers and other military contractors, 2) career enhancement for military brass, civilian employees of the CIA, Pentagon, State Department, and militarist thinktanks, 3) blockbuster movies and sensational headlines to sell media (and also contribute to the necessary fear and jingoism), 4) pork for politicians and 5) attendant high paying jobs guaranteed by ITAR (International Traffick in Arms Regulations) for "US persons" that keep those employees loyal to the system. Thus, we see that these policies are wildly successful and will be continued until the US is totally isolated and the sheeple rebel.

I might also add that Somalia,

where the state collapsed in 1991 and has never been rebuilt
 

Replies: @IMHO, @Astuteobservor II

I can't a good comparison of the two. A NPR interview backs the idea that Lee wrote TKAM by herself based on a private Capote letter and that TKAM's writing style matches her college lit magazine writings. Comparing TKAM and In Cold Blood probably wouldn't work due to the fiction/nonfiction aspect and

I have no personal knowledge of how the publishing industry works, but going from a mishmash of short stories by an unknown author to the Great American Novel and then to research assistant on another book just seems odd.

Replies: @IMHO