Nation Building Was Hard in 1945, too

Adam Bruce, in the Scotsman (May 23, 2004):

IT’S undeniable - the coverage of American foreign policy makes for grim reading. The lack of an exit strategy, the ongoing violence and the failure to build a credible administration are common themes. "Americans are losing the victory", "How we botched the occupation" and "Bin Laden has exceeded even his wildest dreams" are three headlines that stand out.

You’re probably unsurprised, but two of these are not what they seem. "Americans are losing the victory in Europe" was the message of Life magazine in January 7, 1945, and "How we botched the German occupation" was the leader in the Saturday Evening Post of 26 January, 1946. The Bin Laden article, by Simon Jenkins, appeared in the Times on 19 May 2004.

"Never has American prestige in Europe been lower", continued John Dos Passos’ Life article, which highlighted the unrest and disorder that followed the allied victory in Western Europe.

The Saturday Evening Post article concentrated on the apparent lack of a strategy to extricate American troops from Europe. "We have got into this German job without understanding what we were tackling or why", wrote the journalist, Demaree Bess.

Jenkins’ sentiments in the Times are similar. "The victors are enduring the most appalling hangover. They can smash nations but not rebuild them... [They] cannot walk and chew gum at the same time."

That article, and those from the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, give great emphasis to the here and now, and are less interested in taking the long view. In 1946 the Americans were facing twin tasks of rebuilding Japan and Germany without any track record in nation-building, save their own. In 2004 American policy makers can look back to the lessons learned in Europe and Asia over the past half-century. Iraq is not Germany, but neither is it Vietnam. There may be resistance to the coalition occupation, but it isn’t the Vietcong.

As Robert Kagan wrote in 2002, the invasion of Iraq "is a historical pivot. Whether a post-Hussein Iraq succeeds or fails will shape the course of Middle Eastern politics, and therefore world politics, both now and for the remainder of this century." Looking back to American involvement in other post-war settlements Kagan reminded his readers about the need for a long-term commitment to the Middle East. "American policy in Japan, as in Germany, was ‘nation-building’ on a grand scale, and with no exit strategy. Almost six decades later there are still American troops on Japanese soil."