Boomerang Effect

Aashish Mishra

There is a very popular saying: What goes around comes around. This is the core philosophy of karma, basically meaning that what you do to others will happen to you as well – a sort of boomerang, if you will. Whatever you throw out into the world is sure to make its way back to you – a boomerang effect. For the spiritual among us, this effect would hold true in any discipline but scholarly speaking, the boomerang effect holds particular relevance in the field of international relations where it refers to how government policies and actions initially focused outside one’s country have a tendency to come around and significantly impact governance back home. 

This boomerang happens in three ways – through people, through technology and equipment and the changing of administrative dynamics of organisations. 

Foreign policies require governments to train people and provide them with specific skills. However, the people that gain these skills do not only use them for their jobs and also utilise them in the societies they live in, thus affecting the countries themselves. An example of this can be the deployment of soldiers during wars. During times of conflict, soldiers are taught to kill and dominate. This mentality does not go away even after the conflict is over and may lead to violence and trouble in the country.

On the other hand, people working in foreign ministries may be taught foreign languages, etiquette and high levels of professional behaviour as part of their jobs. Once they retire though, they may take these skills to the other jobs they get involved in or teach them to their peers and family members, thus instilling professionalism in the society.

So, the impact of the boomerang effect, when analysed through the lens of human resources, can be both good and bad.

Concerning technology, countries may develop or acquire various equipment to advance their foreign interests but there is no stopping them from using them on their own citizens. A great example of this is the National Security Agency of the United States which developed surveillance technology to spy on people in other countries but then turned to acquiring and analysing the private data of American citizens.

Again though, this is not always bad as a country may, let’s say, to help poorer nations, develop agricultural advancements only to then realise that it can help farmers back home. Israel’s “More crop per drop” programme can be a great example of this as the country developed and refined this agricultural technique for itself while using it to help the agriculture sector of other countries.

In the case of administrative dynamics, when people involved in foreign actions return home, they work in other capacities or other organisations where they implement the skills and use the technology as discussed in the paragraphs above. They also bring with them new values. This influences the organisation’s culture and things once considered normal become undesirable and vice versa.

For instance, a person stationed in Japan may enforce punctuality on his juniors back in his country, getting rid of tardiness.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are major players in the field of foreign policy and actions and hence, hold great relevance when discussing the boomerang pattern. When discussing the role of NGOs, international scholars often state that when domestic avenues of influence are closed off to local advocacy groups, they mobilise international allies who then lobby their own government to put pressure on the target state.

Basically, this means that when NGOs are not given a say in a country’s policy, they will seek the help of their partners in other, more powerful countries who will in turn lobby their government to force the first nation to do as the NGO desires. The impact of this is that a country becomes vulnerable to foreign interference and its policies get drafted, not by elected representatives, but by unelected, often foreign-funded, individuals who do not have to be accountable to the public. This can have a positive impact too, such as pushing state governments to uphold principles of human rights and maintain transparency but it also opens avenues for abuse.

Lastly, we also have to look at this effect from the perspective of colonisation. Back when they were colonial powers, the Western nations used violent oppression, discrimination, stigmatisation, economic exploitation, division, etc. to keep their subjugated colonies “in line.” Now that they do not have any colonies, we see them using these techniques against particular groups or classes of people in their own countries. The appetite they developed with the foreign endeavours in the past is not forcing them to cannibalise themselves.