Is military invasion/occupation of foreign countries no longer feasible?

Great Debates
1

I was thinking about all the wars and conflicts which occurred in the 20th and 21st century. It seemed like a lot of territory conquered over this 100-odd years was only briefly held.

In WWII in particular, even though Germany and Japan took large amounts of territory relative to their size, neither was able to hold it for longer than a few years at most.

I know that the US played a big part in the latter part of WWII, but I’m wondering if the inherent challenges of occupying conquered (as opposed to liberated) territory was a bigger factor. Obviously if you are going to have your country gobble up your neighbor, you are going to need:

1.) A military force which is strong/organized enough to quickly overwhelm them
2.) Popular support at home
3.) Good intelligenge and counterintelligence to know when/where to fight
4.) Forcing the conquered nation into some alliegance with your own

Before someone beats me to it and mentions the Soviet Union, I will also say that they seemed to demonstrate the only feasable way to take and hold another coutnry for some time- wait for it to get beaten by some other nation/alliance in a previous war. That, and the newly established nuclear deterrent seem to allow them to pull it off for as long as they did. Though the US had a head start on nukes, so I’m wondering why they didn’t put more pressure on the Soviet Union when they had the chance…

2

Don’t forget the obvious one :
5) Don’t take more than you can absorb.

If Germany had only conquered Poland, and spent the time consolidating its conquest instead, it is probable that it would have been to keep it (of course, they wouldn’t have been the Nazis that everybody loves to hate then).

3

Nuclear weapons aren’t as overwhelming as people think. If we had dropped our entire nuclear arsenal on the Soviet Union in 1947, we’d have blown up a few cities and killed a couple of million people. Germany did a lot worse than that to the Soviet Union and it survived and won the war.

4

The really big powerful countries today have a vested interest in stable national borders- no one wants to open that particular can of worms. And the smaller countries really can’t do much that the bigger countries don’t let them do. The US coalition had broad if unhappy support from the Arab world during Gulf War 1 because if Iraq had annexed Kuwait then the whole region would have been up for grabs. Even the USSR’s post WW2 annexations were basically a return to the pre-WW1 status quo, which had only been in effect for ~25 years.

5

It is entirely feasible, but if you are going to do it, you can’t attempt to do so “humanely.” Think Timur, etc. At some point, for most people simple existence will trump nationalism, freedom, etc. Getting to that point though will take some stones by the invader.

6

How about Tibet? Occupied for almost 50 years now and no end in sight, plus plenty of Chinese ‘colonists.’

7

If in WW2 Germany hadn’t attacked Russia and Japan hadn’t attacked the US, I expect they would have held their territory.

8

The old USSR absorbed quite a bit of Real estate, so even though the Op mentions it, it still counts.

wevets is right about Tibet, too.

9

Unsurprisingly, Wiki has a list of military occupations since the Hague Convention of 1907 defined the concept in international law.

One ongoing occupation with no end in site is the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara since 1976. It’s a good lesson in how a smaller state can gobble up a neighbor – pick on a neighbor without much population, and that no bigger power really cares about.

10

This is a hoary meme that isn’t bearing fruit anymore.

All that the US has prevented North Korea from doing in the last half-century is physically take over South Korea. It’s done pretty much as it pleases otherwise.

Despite our active efforts otherwise, Cuba remains a dictatorship.

North Viet Nam wanted to drive us out and take over the south, and did.

Iran held our citizens for 444 days, and not one kidnapper has paid for that crime. There have been rumors that one of them is president of that country now.

It’s enough to give a bunch of pissed off Arabs the idea that they could probably get away with hijacking four planes and smacking them into landmarks, and what do you know, they were more or less right.

The small countries know that they are not at the mercy of the larger nations, and we ignore this fact at our peril.

11

I thought that was what kept the USSR out of Afghanistan in 1946?

12

This thread seems to be headed for GD.

There is nothing on your list of action which was a serious threat to the US from a nation.

13

That might be a point well-taken if I had been talking about threats. I was talking about small nations doing things that large nations would rather not “let” them do.

North Korea has nukes. There are several large antions that would rather it did not have nukes. If “smaller countries really can’t do much that the bigger countries don’t let them do”, then either many large countries made a conscious decision to let it have nukes, or the statement is not true.

Castro has controlled Cuba through ten presidential administrations, three of them after the end of the Soviet Union. We, a large country, have recognized his control of the country as something we would rather not allow for nearly half a century. If “smaller countries really can’t do much that the bigger countries don’t let them do”, then either someone has made a conscious decision to let him remain in power, or the statement is not true.

We would rather not have allowed the fall of Saigon. Yet it happened. We would rather the Iran hostage crisis had come to a swift resolution in our favor, or had not occurred in the first place. That’s not what happened.

The distinction between something you allow to happen and what you can’t do anything about is tested when smaller countries do something like the 11th of September attacks. Now, in 2007, The Taliban is growing again, and bin Laden is still at large. If we were really able to make things otherwise, we would have. They got away with it.

There is the story that we nuked Japan because the alternate route of defeating that nation island by island across the Pacific would have been too costly, although we still would have won handily. Watching America’s lack of ability to hold sway over smaller nations (even now, nearly nearly two decades after the Soviet Union crumbled and could offer them no support any longer if they wished to oppose us) suggests to me that that story is not true. We nuked Japan because threatening total annihilation with nukes they we hoped they would presume we had after Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the only way for us to win.

There are so many resources available to smaller nations now that our only really effective trump card is the nuclear option. To answer the OP, no, it really isn’t feasible to invade and hold or dominate a foreign nation anymore. We have seen that fact again and again over the last half century. We can allow them to do as they please, or we can bomb them back to the Stone Age, rendering their resources as unavailable to us as to them.

14

…would seem to prove that occupation and “nation building” isn’t such a graet idea. So far, this war has cost us any modicum of respect we once had in the muslim world. It has alienated our allies, and looks to become a major economic disaster. But heck, don’t say we were not warned what might happen.

15

While there may be narrow factual answers to the OP, it’s probably more suited to something like Great Debates, where we now take you.

samclem GQ moderator