Nation building: the only way the USA will ever win another war

Over and over again, the USA wins the war but then loses the peace. In Japan after 1945 the USA did everything the right way. In Iraq after 2003 the USA did everything the wrong way.

This is a huge topic so in an effort to keep this to a reasonably sized essay, I’m just going to focus on a summary of this one book:

Japan - Land and Men

An Account of the Japanese Land Reform Program 1945-51

By Laurence I. Hewes, Jr.

Copyright © 1955 by The Iowa State College Press

Since the late 1800s the USA has had a foreign policy that has vacillated between two attitudes regarding our allies:

1. we have a natural affinity with liberal democracies, therefore all of our allies should be liberal democracies, and when we fight against a nation and defeat it, we should convert it into a liberal democracy

2. in most countries the public is too stupid to responsibly govern a democracy and also their culture and religion is opposed to democracy and also we don’t know how to teach people to love democracy, so it is often easier to install a dictator who is loyal to us.

But over and over again, the USA has been sabotaged by its tolerance of dictators. The Shah of Iran is an example: he used brutal methods of repression to stay in power and the USA supported him, so when the people finally rose up in revolution against that repression, they associated the USA with the brutality they had endured. Likewise in Guatemala, in Chile, in Indonesia — the USA has repeatedly damaged its reputation by supporting dictatorships. And every dictatorship eventually ends, so we should ask ourselves do we want the people of those nations to then hate us, when they finally gain their freedom? In the long run, the only sensible path forward for America is to support liberal democracies. This attitude might fail the “realism” test in the short-term, but this last century offers many examples of the fact that, given enough time, we must eventually live with the long-term, and in the long-term our support of dictatorships has amounted to recurring episodes of self-sabotage on the part of the USA. We weaken ourselves when we set ourselves up as the enemy of other people’s freedom.

When the USA defeats an enemy, it then needs to rebuild that society so that society becomes a successful liberal democracy. While re-engineering that society, it is the existing power structure, in the defeated nation, that is the enemy. Not just the government, but the various wealthy and elite factions that supported the previous regime. About these powerful factions, we must ask some questions:

1. Where does their power come from?

2. What assets do they own?

3. Can these assets be seized?

4. Should these assets be owned by the government or redistributed in a manner that might bring into existence a broad middle class consisting of small business owners?

5. When an election is held, what is needed to allow people to vote freely? Are elite factions able to blackmail people into voting a particular way? If yes, what gives them the power to enact that blackmail? How can the elite factions be stripped of the power to blackmail others into voting a certain way?

Here is how the situation looked in Japan in late 1945, once American forces had arrived and begun to take on the task of transforming Japan into a democracy:

Page 49-54

A reform of rural life was indispensable to sweeping away the structure of military rule which had made the Japanese a nation of obedient puppets. As long as agrarian Japan remained in thralldom, it would constitute a lever susceptible of domination by undemocratic leaders to coerce all other segments of society.

It was also clear that a key factor in the agrarian structure was the tenure system which subjugated toiling tenants to the will of the landlords. These nonproducers could enforce the feudal code of inequality through their grip on the vital element of land. Control of land equalled control of the peasants. This in turn meant control of food production. In a country where the margin of nutrition was so slender, control of food conveyed automatically the ability to dominate the entire society. Vested land control was therefore a political tool.

We need to generalize from the example of Japan. Here the control of land lead directly to political control. In other nations, different kinds of factors might allow the old elites to hold onto political power. For instance, in sea going cultures, it is often access to the sea, rather than access to land, that determines political control. And in desert societies, where most of the land is worthless sand, it is specifically access to water that matters. In urban environments, when their is a civil war, it is often an outbreak of cholera that brings the people to their knees and makes them desperate — in such societies, it is the maintenance of functioning infrastructure, especially sewage, that conveys meaningful power. Every society is different, but it is important to always ask the question, what are the levers of power? What might allow elite factions to blackmail or bribe voters?

The shock of the war itself often provides a brief moment in time when old symbols are in disrepute, and at such times the ordinary people of a country will be unusually receptive to trying something new. This is the best moment to implant the habits of democracy.

But this land tenure system could exist only in an atmosphere congenial to continued recognition of traditional authority. Basically the tenancy system was not well adapted to the natural land resources nor to the needs of the community. Fundamentally, therefore, its stability depended on extension of controls, not on adjustment between resources and needs. With the disasters of the war all these traditional sources of control were severely shaken.

In actual fact, a whole constellation of Japanese symbols had fallen into disrepute. Japanese villagers were, as a matter of sober thought, considering how the gods which had brought them to the brink of ruin might be replaced with others more harmonious with realities of defeat. So, too, with the traditional loyalties.

It is extremely important that one’s own troops behave well. Here in the USA we are blessed with an excellent and highly professional military. The discipline that wins battles is even more important to winning the peace. A single incident of rape or murder can tarnish the efforts of the whole military. A million soldiers who behave well are forgotten, but the one soldier who commits rape will be remembered among the populace of the defeated nation. In Japan, the American soldiers generally behaved well, which was essential to winning over the people of Japan.

Consider the inherent confusion and attendant insecurity which must have tortured the peasants of the Japanese village as they watched the long columns of Occupation troops roll by. Mingling sensations of fascination, curiosity, and terror must have shaken them. They beheld their youngsters in amiable relations with these large, confident young men who were patently friendly but openly unabashed in the presence of century-old traditions and constituted authority. They saw the headmen casually questioned and responding courteously, even obsequiously. There was no hint of violence or of hate but rather a careless disregard of established leaders, which was psychologically even more shattering to confidence. When the village policemen punctiliously rendered their best military salutes to the tall, casual young noncoms as they sauntered in the village streets, they were answered if at all, with a careless wave. Yet such indifference was a terrific shock to long-held sentiments of respect and awe.

The United States military is not a revolutionary organization, except in the old sense that our own revolution in the 1770s was a revolutionary struggle. But in the modern sense, the United States military does not partake of any ideology that commits it to the radical reconstruction of social relations in a defeated nation. And yet it is important to realize that there are some similarities between democratic transformations and the more radical kinds of transformation. At least for the first few steps, transforming a society towards democracy resembles transforming a society towards some wild revolutionary experiment.

In this light, the peasantry, with very little at stake, was slowly coming to an awareness that the forces which had confined them within a tight pattern of behavior were no longer so powerful. Obedience was a sort of involuntary reflex, but the compulsive authority which evoked it was waning fast. For want of a substitute, perhaps, the old ways continued to be observed. But it was clear that the situation was unstable. Some answer satisfactory to the needs and aspirations of agrarian life must be provided soon.

Rebuilding a nation’s culture and systems of economic relationships is a task that requires a supremely talented executive. We were lucky to have such a person in Japan:

General MacArthur’s prompt favourable response to these proposals was fortunate. The specific concern with the details of this work which the Supreme Commander displayed, his comprehension of technical problems of agriculture and particularly of the complex land tenure citation were refreshing. His enthusiasm was an essential factor in enabling his technical staff successfully to attack the formidable complex of problems, vested interest, and tradition which the Japanese rural economy presented. To those immediately concerned, the General’s interest in and support of their work will remain as an outstanding part of the Allied Occupation of Japan.

The difficulty of the task (of nation building) should never be underestimated. It needs to be put into the hands of someone who is both determined and talented. And also, above all else: incorruptible. Nothing is more likely to sabotage the effort than a casual acceptance of corruption. And this was the gravest mistake that the USA made in Iraq: casually accepting corruption in the USA’s sourcing and logistics process, allowing President Bush’s political appointees to hand out no-bid contracts to their friends, etc. This is the central reason that Japan went so well but Iraq was such a disaster: we did not tolerate corruption in Japan, but we encouraged it in Iraq.

Of course, it is easier to run a marathon if you have been in training — you need to build up a muscle if you then want to lift something heavy. Likewise, when a victorious nation wants to rebuild a defeated nation, the task of nation building is easier if the victorious nation has been engaged in self-nation-building. And so in Japan, our ability to reimagine the agricultural life of Japan was helped by the fact that we had just spent the 1930s rescuing and rebuilding the agricultural life of America. The strengths we built up at home were strengths that then helped in Japan.

Largely because of the perception of the Supreme Commander the reform of rural institutions of Japan was given a central position in Occupation policy. This attitude (of the key importance of agriculture and of farm people) gave a stature and renown to American policy that reached beyond the confines of Japan because of its profound significance to all of Asia.

In every nation, even the worst dictatorships, there are local people who have long dreamed of transforming that nation into a happy, prosperous, and successful democracy. It is crucial to work with them. To the extent they can be trusted, they should be given leading roles in rebuilding their nation. This applies to political tasks, but this also applies to highly technical tasks, such as reimagining agricultural policy.

Valuable assistance came from several Japanese agricultural scholars, veterans of the long struggle to reform Japanese agriculture who had barely escaped the attentions of the thought police and imprisonment. All had known hardships during the war and were in wretched circumstances. However, their qualifications and attitude were good. They had received sound graduate training in Europe and America. They knew where reliable information was located - or rather where it had been located, for of course libraries and statistical files like everything else had been bombed and burned.

A difficult question involves “purging” the defeated leadership. This has to be done carefully. In every nation the circumstances will be different. The goal is to set in place the basic processes of a civil society. This means freeing the newspapers and other media. It might mean encouraging new newspapers or media — there needs to be competition and diversity of viewpoints. Likewise in education, and in the colleges. Nationalists and religious fanatics need to be purged and education freed. But putting in place a professional class of teachers who are dedicated to democratic ideals might take a generation, so it is a task where careful judgement is necessary. One has to find compromises between what actually exists in the nation versus what can be created in a short time.

The disruption and destruction of dictatorship proceeded. On September 22, all censorship controls of newspapers and news agencies were removed. On October 4, a day to be remembered by many, the Supreme Commander ordered the liberation of all political prisoners. Abolition of the secret police and removal of the Home Minister in charge of all police activities, as well as abrogation and immediate suspension of wartime laws followed. On October 31, immediate dismissal from all educational work of militarists and ultra-nationalists was ordered. Thus, by the end of October informed Japanese could foresee that action in any direction by the Occupation was likely to be sweeping, drastic, and directed toward reform of existing inequities.

Even after all of the nationalists and religious fanatics have been purged, the USA leadership will still face resistance. The “reasonable” leadership of the defeated nation will still (most of the time) be from elite social classes and will have close ties to those who are economically powerful. As such, they will attempt to sabotage the USA’s efforts to rebuild their nation.

It was not hard for the Japanese leadership to detect the trend of Allied thought on agrarian affairs. The exhaustive interviews between American and Japanese agricultural specialists and the direction of the research concentrated on prevailing land tenure arrangements foretold sweeping demands for agrarian reform. Now, although the Shidehara government contained no war criminals, it did contain - both in the cabinet and the Diet - many individuals with close ties to land. In most instances these persons were closely allied with the landlord interest. These political leaders must have recognized that no reform to the land system could take place without greatly affecting the landlords. They could foresee the need for prompt action if sweeping changes were not to be imposed.

…The Japanese political leaders, aware that the Occupation would in all probability seek a major reform of the tenure system, set out to develop independent tenure reform legislation. Perhaps they hoped to produce their own legislation prior in the form issuance of Occupation demands. In that case, they may have anticipated that agrarian matters would possibly be left entirely in their hands. Perhaps they believed that, even if formal demands for reform were issued, their legislation might be accepted as satisfactory compliance. It is quite likely that some were motivated purely by national pride, preferring to have their own legislation, voluntarily enacted, rather than be forced to enact legislation under compulsion. The latter probability is strengthened by its very apparent appeal to face-saving.

Only a few years will be allowed. The window of opportunity closes fast. Other emergencies arise and will shift the attention of the American government. Therefore it is important to push for as much reform as quickly as possible. Whoever is put in charge of the nation building effort, they should assume they are only going to get 3 years at most, before priorities shift. In Japan, we are lucky that the agrarian reform was largely finished by the end of 1948. Once the Cold War began, the USA government shifted its focus, and frankly, “agrarian reform” sounds like a dangerous Communist idea.

Among the many factors that can sabotage the USA effort at nation building in a defeat nation, the most subtle issue is when “reasonable moderates” from the defeated nation step forward and suggest that a delicate political balance exists in the country, and therefore the USA must take a moderate course, otherwise they will face a backlash from the people. But if you are lost in a storm in the wilderness you’ll need to navigate by a compass, and when you are nation building the north star needs to be “What would enable free, fair, competitive elections?” This often means smashing the power relations that the moderates are warning you not to smash. Again, the USA military is not a revolutionary organization, but we should recognize that democratic transformation overlaps somewhat with the more radical kinds of transformation.

Another factor prompting the Japanese to devise a land reform scheme was undoubtedly due to pressure from perfectly sincere agrarian reformers. These reform-minded men were genuinely unselfish. Possibly they were a little naive and unfamiliar with political maneuvering. They may have been prone, as loyal Japanese, to settle for less than the full price likely to be demanded by the Occupation. At any rate, some of these well-meaning men seem to have been persuaded of the need for moderation and for modification of a sweeping reform as a quid pro quo in securing necessary political support.

The effect of all these crosscurrents was a precipitate effort to forestall Occupation action on the land question. This action culminated in an announcement on November 23, 1945, by the Shidehara government of its intention to enact land reform legislation immediately. This announcement was prominently featured by the Japanese press. But it was an intention that had not been kept entirely secret from certain interests. This leakage of information was evidenced by a sudden increase in the number of evictions of tenants by absentee landlords just prior to the announcement. Motivation for these evictions, or course, lay in well-justified fears that any reform, whether originating from Japanese or Occupation sources, could hardly fail to make some adjustment in the status of absentee ownership. So a number of well-informed absentee landlords betook themselves to the site of their land, hoping by the maneuver to appear legally as genuine cultivators in the event of worse coming to worst.

This government maneuver in announcing a land reform program must be credited with cleverness. It was an adroit counterplay which clearly indicated that, although defeated, the Japanese were still capable adversaries. Perhaps if the Americans had been less zealous in assembling facts about rural conditions, or less intelligent in integrating them in cogent conclusions, or, indeed, if the Occupation as a whole had been less firmly devoted to the principles it advocated, the scheme might have been more successful. As it was, the work of documentation and preparation of necessary official action to reform the agrarian structure of Japan, particularly the land tenure system, proceeded steadily and without reference to the independent action of Shidehara. The completed study, a plan for action, and the draft of proposed orders to the Japanese government were transmitted to General MacArthur on December 5, 1945.

One of the great ironies of history is that one of the USA’s most famously conservative generals pushed through the most radical set of economic reforms that any USA official has ever overseen.

Four days later the General issued his famous Land Reform Directive, expressed in drastic language, admirable for its brevity. The order in effect canceled the existing tenancy system of Japan and ordered the substitution of a new system based on the ownership of land by those who had cultivated it. The government was required on or before March 15, 1946, to submit to the Headquarters a program of rural land reform which would remove obstacles to democracy and destroy economic bondage in rural areas. The Government plan must contain the following provisions: (1) transfer of land ownership from absentee land wonders to land operators, (2) purchase of farm lands from any non-operating owner at equitable rates, (3) sale of land to tenants at annual installments commensurate with tenant income, and (4) protection of former tenants who purchased land against reversion to tenancy status. The directive further warned that its purpose was to uproot and destroy the various evils which had for so long blighted the lives of the peasantry. Tenancy was to be destroyed and land-lordism must cease to exist.

Whenever the USA engages in nation building in a defeated nation, it will be dealing with a population that is mostly likely facing dire circumstances, due to the devastation of the recently ended war. There will be a call for humanitarian aid, some of which might be helpful to the situation (the Marshall Plan in Germany after 1945 is an example). But here as everywhere else, we have to be careful ensure that the humanitarian aid doesn’t undercut the efforts of local entrepreneurs. A democracy is typically a middle class society, in particular a middle class society full of small business owners, and so we should want to encourage small businesses as much as possible. Careful judgement is needed when it comes to striking the right balance between subsidizing immediate support versus encouraging local businesses to take over economic activity as soon as possible. Once again, the USA got this exactly right in Japan and exactly wrong in Iraq. In Iraq large contracts were given to American firms to rebuild Iraq. Had the same money gone to local Iraqi firms, then we would have been fostering the local business class, the very class that is often a bedrock of any democracy.

Runny-nosed children squatted apathetically in temple yards, occasionally smearing their oppressed noses on the sleeves of padded kimonos. Parents told the boys they were “from the wind” so were expected to endure cold. But older people were “from fire” so explaining the need to squat before smoky charcoal embers in the large earthenware pots (hibachi) comfortlessly warming their hands and torsos. The combination of cold, hunger, and early dark was now unrelieved by electric light. Sickness and the weakness of semi-starvation increased the insecurity resulting from impending changes in village relations now accented by announcement of impending reform of the land system.

In Japan, there were some prefectures with a long history of peasant rebellions. In these prefectures, the peasants had a long history of hating the feudal lords. These areas were the easiest to convert to democracy. But there were other prefectures where the peasants had a long tradition of docility. These cultures were sometimes held back by strong religious convictions, other times they were held back by such a history of violence from the feudal lords that the idea of rebellion had been beaten out of the peasants. Such places were difficult to convert to democracy. In such a country one has to start with the people who most eagerly want democracy, and to use such people and such areas to build momentum for a broader adoption of democracy.

But if the landless tenants felt any joy at the prospective change in their fortunes, they kept it to themselves. The matter went far too deep for any idle or casual expression. A tenant farmer with a family of ten in Kyoto Fu, whose total harvest was 75 bushels of rice and whose rent was 45 bushels, professed no personal interest in the matter of land reform. There was 66-year-old Sakuichi Fukuda of Bofu Shi in Yamaguchi ken in southwest Honshu. Fukuda, a grandfather with a son lost in the South Pacific, was now responsible for a family of eight. He cultivated about two and a quarter acres, giving 60 per cent of his crops as rent. When questioned about land reform, this elderly tenant expressed only the kindest sentiments toward his landlord saying he was “a very nice man” and that he would be “very sorry” for him if he lost his land.

Another delicate issue is that the USA, in these situations, must set up some kind of transitional government, to help with the process of running the country till a real democracy can be established. Two options are available, both difficult:

1. rely on leaders who have been in exile. This is what the USA did when it took over Afghanistan in 2002. The problem with exiles is that they’ve been out of the country and therefore they have no more of a political base in the country than the Americans do.

2. rely on people who’ve been in the country during the previous authoritarian regime. Here the problem is that these people have no experience taking responsibility for decisions and demonstrating accountability to the public, as they previously deferred entirely to the dictator. To the extent that some previous bureaucrat was an active decision maker, then typically they are among the complicit who need to be purged.

In fact, in the situation which was rapidly developing, these men of the Shidehara government were finding it more and more necessary to look to themselves for guidance and judgement. It seems never to have occurred to most of these statesmen to seek support from the only remaining element in the political situation - the people. Indeed, to some Americans at the time, it seemed that the government feared, with almost superstitious terror, the concept of a constituency to which they might be considered responsible.

Thus there was real danger that, unless very gently handled, the government, feeling the burden of responsibility too great, might refuse to act at all except on explicit detailed instructions from the Occupation. The implications of such an abdication entailed the subsequent assumption of full responsibility for all government by the Supreme Commander. Such a development would have marked a distinct failure of the Occupation objective of creating a responsible representative Japanese government. Consequently, a seriously embarrassing contretemps as between the Japanese government and the Occupation had to be avoided. In short, the job of the Occupation was to prod and push the government into becoming responsible. But the approach must be such that the Japanese were not thrown into a tailspin or overburdened beyond their capacity.

Still, when setting up a transitional government, the USA needs to start somewhere. What seems to be crucial is seeking people with integrity. Integrity is more important than technical skill. Again, any hint of corruption will cause the public to distrust this new thing called “democracy.” Often people in authoritarian regimes support that regime to the extent that the regime can limit corruption, and likewise they hate the regime exactly to the extent that the regime allows (or fosters) corruption. It is vital that democracy immediately prove itself as offering more accountability than authoritarian regimes. And again, the USA made a terrible mistake in Afghanistan by bringing in Hamid Karzai. He ran a government that was notoriously corrupt, and as such, he alienated the public. The people of Afghanistan did not think the new system was an improvement on the old system, because the new system was so deeply corrupt. (I have previously reviewed Sarah Chayes book and her argument that the USA has repeatedly sabotaged its own foreign policy by tolerating corruption in some of the client states that we set up. She points out that “We are not corrupt” is the most popular claim that terrorists such as the Taliban make, and the promise of eliminating corruption is what causes the public to support these terrorist movements.)

As much as possible, if you want to create a functioning democracy, you need to achieve two things:

1. create as many small business owners as possible (including farmers, so long as the farm is economically viable)

2. create labor unions for the people who cannot be set up as business owners

More specifically it was the Occupation’s firm intent to bring land ownership status to as many as possible of the more than four million farm families who cultivated wholly or partly land which they did not own. A considerable number of these farmers owned a little portion of the land they farmed but more than one and a half million of them were landless. Thus any approach to complete abolition of tenancy - in other words, any approach to a social and economic change of wide significance - necessitated transfer of ownership of a very large amount of land. A big fraction of the seven million acres of farm land farmed by tenants had to change hands if tenants were to become landowners.

However, these lands represented a principal source of income to a whole class of rent receivers. Many landlords had come to depend on this highly profitable form of investment as a principal means of support. Consequently, such a transfer was bound to be extremely painful to this large group of rentiers. But it should be recalled also that the significance of landlord ownership lay in the benefit to him of a harvest which could be assured only through the toil of some tenant. Thus the economics of land investment for landlords entailed a close-working control of the life and labor of tenants. So the proposed reform signified not only a large transfer of land but also a complete reorientation of the cultivator’s motivation.

Again, one of the odd facts of this land reform in Japan is that it was overseen by one of the most conservative generals the USA military has ever seen. He had been convinced that land reform was a practical need for Japan to become a functioning democracy: after all, if the old system remained, then the feudal lords would simply blackmail their tenants and force them to vote the way the feudal lords wanted. So the land reform was necessary. But having someone conservative in charge meant that it was carried out in a practical manner, with the goal being independent voters who could participate as free citizens in a meaningful democracy. The goal was not some kind of socialist wealth distribution.

The rationalization of attitude by Japanese politicians, statesmen, and government administrators was interesting. They seem to have felt that somehow the purpose of the Occupation vis-à-vis tenancy had a moral objective. They conceived that this purpose was really to punish landlordism. This led them to confuse the democratic aims of the reform with the purposes of socialism. In this oversimplified interpretation they assumed that since the Occupation regarded landlordism as bad, then they must view landlords as bad people. From this standpoint they appear to have concluded that the degree of badness was derived from the size of the holding. Thus bugger landlords were more culpable than smaller. This kind of thinking caused them to derive a land reform policy which had a predominant soak-the-rich overtone. Owners of more than 12.25 acres in their law were to be forced to dispose of their holding while owners of less than that amount went scot free.

From the Occupation viewpoint two things were wrong with this proposal. First, the conversion of the program into an attack on wealth with its class conflict implications was a perversion and a distortion of the central purpose of stabilizing and democratizing the agrarian structure. Second, such an approach made only about 3.3 million acres available for transfer to tenants while 49 per cent of the rented land remained in tenancy.

The Japanese position was, of course, a misconception of the real purpose of the reform. It was necessary to repeat over and over that the objective was to abolish tenancy, not to punish property owners who happened to be landlords. Occupation specialists went into the countryside making studies of actual situations to determine the effect of the Japanese proposals if applied. In several villages where tenancy rates were high, these tests made it plain that the proposals would have had no effect at all, since all landlords owned less than the proposed Japanese limit of 12.25 acres.

In areas that are deeply religious the formerly oppressed social classes may believe that their oppression was chosen by God and is therefore a moral social order which they should not question. And even if they don’t feel this way strongly, it is certain that the previously dominant social classes are going to try to hang onto power by any means necessary, and if they think appeals to religion will help them, then they will invoke religion, as well other traditional customs. To introduce democracy into such a situation takes careful engineering, and at first it might be necessary to have each social class vote separately, and then only later combine their representatives together into a kind of local Estates General.

Although the first election is often thought of as the inauguration of democracy, we now have hundreds of historical examples, across several centuries, that show that the democracy will fail unless democratic processes are under development before the election happens. And therefore, as the USA redistributes productive capacity, and so brings into existence a new class of business owners, it is important that this very distribution itself be done as democratically as possible, so that the formerly oppressed lower classes can begin to imagine themselves as citizens who are equal to all other citizens.

The administrative pattern was deliberately planned so that the initial action would take place in the villages. The dynamic element was therefore the Village Land Commission. The action of these bodies set in motion the whole machinery up through the gun and prefectural governments and into the ministry at Tokyo. The whole structure was to receive all its important energizing impulses from actions by the people, thus completely reversing the entire historical trend of relations between the Japanese government and the Japanese people.

This principle of citizen participation was elaborated by other commissions made up of rural people at the prefectural and national level. These prefectural and national commissions paralleled the prefectural and national agencies of government. Prefectural Land Commissions worked directly as a reviewing agency of the Village Land Commission decision. However, approval by the Prefectural Commissions of local commission recommendations constituted an official order on the prefectural government for finalizing the action. Another body of citizens, the Central Agricultural Land Commission, acted as an advisor to the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.

Since the structure was designed to be set in motion from below, an important item in the business of setting it up was a nationwide election of Village Land Commissioners. But before an election could be held, it was necessary to instruct the rural citizenry in conducting such an election. The first step was to register in each village all tenants, landlords, and owner-farmers in their separate categories. One imagines after the long period of waiting and tension in the villages that the impact of this formal procedure was an excruciating experience — like putting a dentist’s drill on an exposed nerve.

For with this action, the die was cast; a tenant was a tenant, officially classified as such and subject to the rights and obligations which the new law established for him. There would be, after registration, no chance for him to seek the comfort of anonymity and ambiguity by voting for or combining with feudal superiors or in making other gestures which would in effect say, “Let’s forget the whole thing.” Indeed to these humble people, this first freshening breeze of the air of freedom must have seemed a chilly draught indeed. The realization that they must be registered as tenants and as tenants must vote only for tenant representatives came as a distinct shock. At this point it is quite probably that the entire village would gladly have accepted the hand of the paternal authority and returned to the status quo ante.

Probably with similar reservations, landlords learned that they could vote only for landlord representatives and owner-farmers were informed that they too would place in nomination only candidates legally qualified as owner-farmers.

The Commissions were ten-man bodies with five tenant, two owner-farmer, and three landlord representatives. The distribution of membership was based on the assumption that owner-farmers would generally act in conjunction with landlords, an assumption later found to be completely accurate. The arrangement originally proposed by the Japanese government for having equal representation for each category would have meant almost always that tenants would have been in the minority.

When the villagers realized the full significance of the impending elections there were many secret caucuses among the folk who had traditionally held the reins of social control. Buraku elders met together and sat late, gravely pondering the situation. Tenants became exceedingly shy and skittish. They went about the village quietly and as unobtrusively as possible, perhaps feeling somewhat like overgrown adolescents at their first party. At least that’s how they behaved. Landlords adopted a benign and paternal demeanor and paid their tenants seemingly innocent visits whose principal objective was to call attention to the beauties of old Japanese traditions and the sacredness of feudal obligations. Sometimes they called up poignant memories of bygone days and of ancestral ties which had held the two families together over the centuries.

A billionaire will feel poor if they ever lose most of their money and become a millionaire. Objectively, a millionaire is wealthy, but it is a great fall from the august heights of being a billionaire. No matter what, a billionaire will fight to keep their billions. But will they resort to violence? Will they organize others to commit violence for them? One way to limit the scale of the pushback from the wealthy is to ensure that after all of the reforms, they are still wealthy. They will be angry if they move from the category of “very wealthy” to the category of “wealthy” but they may be willing to obey the law if they are certain that, in the end, they will at least be “wealthy.” By contrast, we know that during a Communist revolution, when the “very wealthy” are faced with the complete loss of all wealth, they will resort to violence and they will fight to the bitter end. In Japan, the USA pushed through an aggressive land reform, and yet the powerful feudal lords were still left with enough land that they could still be considered above average in wealth, even though they were no longer as powerful or prosperous as before.

Could the surgery of land transfer be accomplished without leaving permanent scars? Would the dispossessed landlord group foment strife, producing a cleavage to rip the social fabric? These and many other problems had been analyzed, and while many calculated risks were inherent in the final plan, yet specific allowance had been made for all the more important problems.

Already the American specialists had discouraged initial Japanese concepts of the reform as a punitive measure. The program as finally designed accented destruction of the institution of tenancy but explicitly discouraged any fomentation of class conflict. Again and Again, Occupation personnel had pounded home the point that the program must bring about a release but not a revolution. The purpose was adjustment, not disruption. Pent-up forces of change and progress must be freed, but the essentially stable qualities of village life must be preserved. Ideals of justice and individual liberty must replace the mythical unreality of the “bright village.” Conditions of growth and development both for the group and for individuals must be sought through a more equitable distribution of private property. Dislocation and the disordering of life must be avoided. The conduct of the reform through the agencies of government should, under no conditions, result in a strengthening of the power of the state over the individual.

Compared to these complex considerations, woven into the basic plan of the Japanese Land Reform Program, Communistic agrarian doctrines appear crude, simple, quick, and spurious. Such revolutionary reforms are almost instantaneous in their effectiveness. One day the landlords are in - the next day they are out. Former landowners are lucky to escape the turnover with their lives. All values of the old order are swept away in a roaring torrent of revolution and disorder. Individual rights and cultural heritage alike appear to be forgotten beside the irresistible novelty of collectivist doctrines. No time is lost in planning either legislation, administration, or program. Since, by Communist doctrine, the old order has no positive virtues, nothing of it need be saved and anything new is good - at least for the time being. Such programs result in chaos and continue in disorder over decades, until the state in despair expropriates irrevocably the whole national lands, or until a counterrevolution restores the old order with all its original injustices. Indeed from the cultivator’s standpoint, the final outcome is merely trading one set of reactionary landlords for another.

The whole production and distribution process is disordered, with widespread starvation not an infrequent accompaniment. As production problems become more and more acute, quick and easy solutions, mostly of a violent nature, are sought. Peasants whose only crime is bewilderment are shot, banished, or imprisoned in vast numbers. Compared to the promptness of Communist land reforms, the type of reform undertaken in Japan appears to suffer by contrast because of the slow rate of its initial progress.

The genius of what America achieved in Japan cannot be doubted. This the most successful case of nation-building, of a defeated country, in history (indeed, almost every social injustice in the USA could have been fixed long ago if the USA had implemented a similar program in the South after the end of the Civil War. Had Radical Reconstruction gone for a few more years, and had it focused more on redistribution of property to make every African American a farmer, then the USA could have achieved a just social order in the late 1800s. So our nation building effort in Japan was, in a sense, even more successful than our nation building effort at home).

What should the USA do when it conquers a nation that is mostly industrial? The example in this essay focuses on the agricultural sector in Japan. We can’t also cover industrial examples without writing a whole book, but the short version is this: labor unions are an important step towards grass-roots local level democracy. In a society dominated by large scale industrial concerns, merely pushing through a land reform in the agricultural sector will not be enough to bring real democracy. But strong labor unions can help bring some of the same benefits, in particular, they can help the workers advocate for their own interests, rather than being blackmailed into supporting the interests of whatever oligarch owns that large industrial concern.

Operation always proceeded within the confines of the law and of judicial process. In a little more than three years (1947, 1948, 1949) a far-reaching social and economic change of the greatest importance, not alone for the people of the Japanese islands but for all the farmers of Asia as well, was brought about. Doubtless, critics of the accomplishment are to be found. But in spite of all these, the fact that several million people, formerly without the slightest stake in private property, have been enabled to obtain possession of the land they cultivate and to obtain some voice in the design and pattern of their own destiny, cannot be obscured.

The Japanese villages have undergone a thoroughly disturbing experience. Many old social inequities based on land ownership have completely disappeared. Landlordism has disappeared, but the individual landlords still remain in the village and still retain their dignity. Likewise the tenant class, as formerly constituted, has completely disappeared. The individuals who comprised the tenant group have attained a new stature possessing the dignity of free men. Thus the two former classes are replaced by a greatly enlarged body of owner-cultivators, now the most significant social influence in the village.

In short, the USA did everything correct in Japan in the late 1940s. By contrast, we did everything incorrectly in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. So it is the model of nation building that we did in Japan that needs to be further studied. Our efforts in Japan should be the template that guides all of our future efforts at nation building.

Even more important: we need to realize that we face a long future of nation building. The USA has repeatedly won a war and then lost the peace. The only way to win the peace is to engage in successful nation building. We cannot know if the era of American greatness will last another 50 years or another 500 years, but for as long as American greatness lasts, America will be fighting wars against illiberal autocracies, and America will keep winning those wars. So it is urgent that America also improve its ability to win the resulting peace.