I’m putting this here rather than in GQ, because I don’t think there’s a clear-cut answer.
As I understand it, the U.S. plan in Iraq and Afghanistan, as stated by our government, is:
Oust the oppressive, unfriendly and/or dangerous regime currently in place.
Occupy the country with troops.
Help install a new, democratically elected regime.
Withdraw once the new government is stable enough to maintain order on its own.
I’m not arguing the validity of the invasions of the two countries, and I’m not really here to grind any particular axe about the current state of the occupations. My question is, has this strategy *ever * worked? In Central America? Africa? Asia? The Middle East?
Yes. It worked in Germany and Japan after World War II.
The reason it worked was because the Allies soundly defeated the military from those nations and then occupied the country with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. We then speant billions rebuilding their infrastructure and acting as the local government. Once things were stable, we allowed them to put their government in place. And even then the process still took over thirty years to complete (starting from the surrender of Germany to the fall of the Berlin Wall).
The reason it doesn’t work now is that we don’t fight wars the right way anymore. We think that all it takes is air power and a minimal presence on the ground and the country will naturally fall into place. Since Vietnam we start with the minimum number of troops and then slowly escalate the number of troops on the ground as the situation grows out of control.
These were the most recent examples I coud think of, and as msmith noted upthread, it was because we spared no expense. I also get the feeling that the locals in defeated Germany and Japan did not hate us like the ones in the ME evidently do.
I believe it also worked because they started it. The people in those countries knew that they and/or their governments were, depending on their viewpoints, complete failures or outright evil. They knew that we wouldn’t have invaded, except we were provoked into it.
In places like Vietnam and Iraq and all the other Third World countries we’ve tried to reshape, that’s not true. We attacked them unprovoked, for profit or ideology, and they knew it. That cost us the moral high ground, and meant that the local people didn’t blame their government for the invasion; it’s our fault, not theirs. It also meant that any regime that got in would be regarded as our puppet, since no one would believe we had any other than selfish motivations.
:dubious: What do you base this impression on? Especially with the Japan example I think you are WAY off base here.
As to the OP, yes, it worked in the past. I believe it worked in the cases of Germany and Japan because basically those countries were done fighting by the time the war was over. They had the fight pretty much completely beat out of them from years of constant bombardment, privation and hardship. Their entire nations were basically unraveling. In the case of Japan, there is also the factor that it was the Japanese Emperor who called for surrender. I think had the Emperor instead called for the Japanese citizens to fight to the death a large number of them would have…regardless of how futile this would have been in the end.
Couple all this with the points made by other posters (i.e. we spent MASSIVE amounts of money on reconstruction, we deployed LOTS of troops to quell any thought of insurgency, and we were in it for the long haul, etc etc) and you have why it worked in Germany and Japan…and why it hasn’t worked in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Also, my history is a little hazy, but didn’t Italy hold a referendum and establish its own constitution and democracy rather then having the allies do it for them, as was the case in Japan.
I disagree about it not working in Afghanistan. I think it has worked somewhat there, at least compared to Iraq (which arguably isn’t saying much). The main difference is that in Iraq went in and unilaterially removed the government and put a new one it it’s place. In Afghanistan, we facilitated the overthrow of the oppressive Taliban by the less oppresive Northern Alliance who were native to the country. That right there lends a degree of legetimacy and is probably the reason there is much less trouble in Afghanistan.
One of the biggest challenges in Afghanistan (and Iraq as well) that makes it different from Germany or Japan is that Afghanistan never had strong unity as a nation. Taking out the strong central government caused those nations to fragment.
There probably is an element of truth to that, at least with Germany. It’s a tough sell to get people to fight for an insurgency that supports genocide. But also those nations were resoundly beaten. There was no CNN in 1944. There was no such thing as public outcry or political pressure to avoid killing civilians. They did not make a distinction between the Nazis or Imperial Japanese Army and the civilian population. War meant going to war with the entire nation. Entire cities were demolished and burned to the ground.
And remember Japan was as tenacious and committed as they come. They pretty much INVENTED smashing airplanes into things and other suicide tactics. A couple of atomic bombs and several thousand incendiary bombs finally made them realize this was not a war that was going to end well for them.
By the time Germany and Japan surrendered, those people pretty much knew they had been defeated and most were probably sick of fighting anyway.
The other thing is that air power alone doesn’t win wars. It just pisses people off. When you see a foreign soldier standing with his rifle at the end of your street, you know you’ve basically lost.