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.
A case study ripe for further assessment given how pointedly it stands out among the other examples of American nation-building, which has undoubtedly been the conspicuous weak-point of a century of foreign policy that has varied widely in its success.
The point of markets-before-votes seems to constantly be neglected in the calculus as to how you prepare a nation unused to democracy for that form of government, and was obviously well-highlighted here. Land reform was obviously pretty well handled by the Occupation but it's also true that Japan had been embracing Western political, judicial, and military institutions for a century before WWII and had undergone considerable urbanisation before the war had started. The Japanese were infrastructurally and, where the urban middle class at least was concerned, economically well prepared for the change.
Absolutely. This is a complex issue. But this is something the USA needs to get better at. In the future, the USA will fight many wars, and it will likely win the fighting, because it always wins the fighting. But then the USA has a bad habit of losing the peace. And there, we need to get better. We need to sharpen our expertise at real nation building and real democracy building.
A case study ripe for further assessment given how pointedly it stands out among the other examples of American nation-building, which has undoubtedly been the conspicuous weak-point of a century of foreign policy that has varied widely in its success.
The point of markets-before-votes seems to constantly be neglected in the calculus as to how you prepare a nation unused to democracy for that form of government, and was obviously well-highlighted here. Land reform was obviously pretty well handled by the Occupation but it's also true that Japan had been embracing Western political, judicial, and military institutions for a century before WWII and had undergone considerable urbanisation before the war had started. The Japanese were infrastructurally and, where the urban middle class at least was concerned, economically well prepared for the change.
Absolutely. This is a complex issue. But this is something the USA needs to get better at. In the future, the USA will fight many wars, and it will likely win the fighting, because it always wins the fighting. But then the USA has a bad habit of losing the peace. And there, we need to get better. We need to sharpen our expertise at real nation building and real democracy building.