As we should have learned in Iraq especially, “defeating” another country in the sense of putting the whole existing power structure out of commission is sometimes relatively easy, but “taking over” another country is devilishly difficult. If the country was orderly to begin with, and recently invaded by a vicious enemy, they may abide your trying to restore them to orderliness. If they have recently allowed a vicious government to take over, and you bomb them back into the stone age and much of the population is shocked to realize that their government was far more awful than they realized (Germany post-WWII, and very partially applicable to Afghanistan), and you go in with massive resources and treat them really well (done in Germany, but not Afghanistan), then you might encounter some degree of humility for long enough to leave them with a decent government of law.
The biggest problem with nation building and attempting to bootstrap new countries is that nobody seems to stick with it long enough. It seems like at least one full generation (20+ years) of support and management is required; certainly the halfway measures taken over the course of ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq were insufficient.
The biggest problem with nation building and attempting to bootstrap new countries is that nobody seems to stick with it long enough. It seems like at least one full generation (20+ years) of support and management is require
Classic colonialism “stuck with it” for much more than a full generation. And the poster children of “fixed” countries—post-WW2 Germany and Japan—certainly had less than 20+ years of outside management.
As we should have learned in Iraq especially, “defeating” another country in the sense of putting the whole existing power structure out of commission is sometimes relatively easy, but “taking over” another country is devilishly difficult. If the country was orderly to begin with, and recently invaded by a vicious enemy, they may abide your trying to restore them to orderliness. If they have recently allowed a vicious government to take over, and you bomb them back into the stone age and much of the population is shocked to realize that their government was far more awful than they realized (Germany post-WWII, and very partially applicable to Afghanistan), and you go in with massive resources and treat them really well (done in Germany, but not Afghanistan), then you might encounter some degree of humility for long enough to leave them with a decent government of law.
The biggest problem with nation building and attempting to bootstrap new countries is that nobody seems to stick with it long enough. It seems like at least one full generation (20+ years) of support and management is required; certainly the halfway measures taken over the course of ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq were insufficient.
Classic colonialism “stuck with it” for much more than a full generation. And the poster children of “fixed” countries—post-WW2 Germany and Japan—certainly had less than 20+ years of outside management.