WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU ALREADY HAD A NATION?
Judging from past experience, creating a new nation by force usually fails. We generally call this activity "nation-building" even though it usually does not build a nation. In May 2003, two scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a study of past U.S. attempts at nation building, examining -- in chronological order -- Cuba, Panama, Cuba again, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba yet again, the Dominican Republic, West Germany, Japan, the Dominican Republic again, South Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama again, Haiti again, and Afghanistan. Of these 16 attempts at nation building, in only four, the authors concluded, was a democracy sustained as long as 10 years after the departure of U.S. forces.
By "departure" of U.S. forces, the authors of the above study clearly meant reduction, since U.S. forces have never actually departed. Two of the four countries were the completely destroyed and defeated Japan and Germany. The other two were U.S. neighbors -- tiny Grenada and Panama. The so-called nation building in Panama is considered to have taken 23 years. That same length of time would carry the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq to 2024 and 2026 respectively.
Never, the authors found, has a surrogate regime supported by the United States, such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, made the transition to democracy. The authors of this study, Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper, also found that creating lasting democracies had never been the primary goal:
"The primary goal of early U.S. nation-building efforts was in most cases strategic. In its first efforts, Washington decided to replace or support a regime in a foreign land to defend its core security and economic interests, not to build a democracy. Only later did America's political ideals and its need to sustain domestic support for nation building impel it to try to establish democratic rule in target nations."
Do you think an endowment for peace might be biased against war? Surely the Pentagon-created RAND Corporation must be biased in favor of war. And yet a RAND study of occupations and insurgencies in 2010, a study produced for the U.S. Marine Corps, found that 90 percent of insurgencies against weak governments, like Afghanistan's, succeed. In other words, the nation-building, whether or not imposed from abroad, fails.
In fact, even as war supporters were telling us to escalate and "stay the course" in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, experts from across the political spectrum were in agreement that doing so couldn't accomplish anything, much less bestow generous benefits on Afghans. Our ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, opposed an escalation in leaked cables. Numerous former officials in the military and the CIA favored withdrawal. Matthew Hoh, a senior U.S. civilian diplomat in Zabul Province and former marine captain, resigned and backed withdrawal. So did former diplomat Ann Wright who had helped reopen the embassy in Afghanistan in 2001. The National Security Advisor thought more troops would "just be swallowed up." A majority of the U.S. public opposed the war, and the opposition was even stronger among the Afghan people, especially in Kandahar, where a U.S. Army-funded survey found that 94 percent of Kandaharis wanted negotiations, not assault, and 85 percent said they viewed the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers."
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and funder of the escalation, John Kerry noted that an assault on Marja that had been a test run for a larger assault on Kandahar had failed miserably. Kerry also noted that Taliban assassinations in Kandahar had begun when the United States announced a coming assault there. How then, he asked, could the assault stop the killings? Kerry and his colleagues, just before dumping another $33.5 billion into the Afghanistan escalation in 2010, pointed out that terrorism had been increasing globally during the "Global War on Terror." The 2009 escalation in Afghanistan had been followed by an 87 percent increase in violence, according to the Pentagon.
The military had developed, or rather revived from Vietnam days, a strategy for Iraq four years into that war that was also applied to Afghanistan, a kind-hearted strategy known as Counter-Insurgency. On paper, this required an 80 percent investment in civilian efforts at "winning hearts and minds" and 20 percent in military operations. But in both countries, this strategy was only applied to rhetoric, not reality. Actual investment in non-military operations in Afghanistan never topped 5 percent, and the man in charge of it, Richard Holbrooke, described the civilian mission as "supporting the military."
Rather than "spreading freedom" with bombs and guns, what would have been wrong with spreading knowledge? If learning leads to the development of democracy, why not spread education? Why not provide funding for children's health and schools, instead of melting the skin off children with white phosphorous? Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi proposed, following the September 11, 2001, terrorism, that instead of bombing Afghanistan, the United States could build schools in Afghanistan, each named for and honoring someone killed in the World Trade Center, thus building appreciation for generous aid and understanding of the damage done by violence. Whatever you think of such an approach, it's hard to argue it wouldn't have been generous and perhaps even in line with the principle of loving one's enemies.
LET ME HELP YOU OUT OF THAT
The hypocrisy of generously imposed occupations is perhaps most apparent when done in the name of uprooting previous occupations. When Japan kicked European colonialists out of Asian nations only to occupy them itself, or when the United States liberated Cuba or the Philippines in order to dominate those countries itself, the contrast between word and deed jumped out at you. In both of these examples, Japan and the United States offered civilization, culture, modernization, leadership, and mentoring, but they offered them at the barrel of a gun whether anyone wanted them or not. And if anyone did, well, their story got top play back home. When Americans were hearing tales of German barbarity in Belgium and France during World War I, Germans were reading accounts of how dearly the occupied French loved their benevolent German occupiers. And when can you not count on the New York Times to locate an Iraqi or an Afghan who's worried that the Americans might leave too soon?
Any occupation must work with some elite group of natives, who in turn will of course support the occupation. But the occupier should not mistake such support for majority opinion, as the United States has been in the habit of doing since at least 1899. Nor should a "native face" on a foreign occupation be expected to fool people:
"The British, like the Americans,"believed that native troops would be less unpopular than foreigners. That proposition is"dubious: if native troops are perceived to be puppets of foreigners, they may be even more violently opposed than the foreigners themselves." Native troops may also be less loyal to the occupier's mission and less trained in the ways of the occupying army. This soon leads to blaming the same deserving people on whose behalf we've attacked their country for our inability to leave it. They are now "violent, incompetent, and untrustworthy," as the McKinley White House portrayed the Filipinos, and as the Bush and Obama White Houses portrayed Iraqis and Afghans.
In an occupied nation with its own internal divisions, minority groups may truly fear mistreatment at the hands of the majority should the foreign occupation end. That problem is a reason for future Bushes to heed the advice of future Powells and not invade in the first place. It's a reason not to inflame internal divisions, as occupiers tend to do, much preferring that the people kill each other than that they unite against foreign forces. And it's a reason to encourage international diplomacy and positive influence on the nation while withdrawing and paying reparations.
The feared post-occupation violence is not, however, usually a persuasive argument for extending the occupation. For one thing, it's an argument for permanent occupation. For another, the bulk of the violence that is depicted back in the imperial nation as a civil war is still usually violence directed against the occupiers and their collaborators. When the occupation ends, so does much of the violence. This has been demonstrated in Iraq as troops have reduced their presence; the violence has decreased accordingly.
Judging from past experience, creating a new nation by force usually fails. We generally call this activity "nation-building" even though it usually does not build a nation. In May 2003, two scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a study of past U.S. attempts at nation building, examining -- in chronological order -- Cuba, Panama, Cuba again, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba yet again, the Dominican Republic, West Germany, Japan, the Dominican Republic again, South Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama again, Haiti again, and Afghanistan. Of these 16 attempts at nation building, in only four, the authors concluded, was a democracy sustained as long as 10 years after the departure of U.S. forces.
By "departure" of U.S. forces, the authors of the above study clearly meant reduction, since U.S. forces have never actually departed. Two of the four countries were the completely destroyed and defeated Japan and Germany. The other two were U.S. neighbors -- tiny Grenada and Panama. The so-called nation building in Panama is considered to have taken 23 years. That same length of time would carry the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq to 2024 and 2026 respectively.
Never, the authors found, has a surrogate regime supported by the United States, such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, made the transition to democracy. The authors of this study, Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper, also found that creating lasting democracies had never been the primary goal:
Do you think an endowment for peace might be biased against war? Surely the Pentagon-created RAND Corporation must be biased in favor of war. And yet a RAND study of occupations and insurgencies in 2010, a study produced for the U.S. Marine Corps, found that 90 percent of insurgencies against weak governments, like Afghanistan's, succeed. In other words, the nation-building, whether or not imposed from abroad, fails.
In fact, even as war supporters were telling us to escalate and "stay the course" in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, experts from across the political spectrum were in agreement that doing so couldn't accomplish anything, much less bestow generous benefits on Afghans. Our ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, opposed an escalation in leaked cables. Numerous former officials in the military and the CIA favored withdrawal. Matthew Hoh, a senior U.S. civilian diplomat in Zabul Province and former marine captain, resigned and backed withdrawal. So did former diplomat Ann Wright who had helped reopen the embassy in Afghanistan in 2001. The National Security Advisor thought more troops would "just be swallowed up." A majority of the U.S. public opposed the war, and the opposition was even stronger among the Afghan people, especially in Kandahar, where a U.S. Army-funded survey found that 94 percent of Kandaharis wanted negotiations, not assault, and 85 percent said they viewed the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers."
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and funder of the escalation, John Kerry noted that an assault on Marja that had been a test run for a larger assault on Kandahar had failed miserably. Kerry also noted that Taliban assassinations in Kandahar had begun when the United States announced a coming assault there. How then, he asked, could the assault stop the killings? Kerry and his colleagues, just before dumping another $33.5 billion into the Afghanistan escalation in 2010, pointed out that terrorism had been increasing globally during the "Global War on Terror." The 2009 escalation in Afghanistan had been followed by an 87 percent increase in violence, according to the Pentagon.
The military had developed, or rather revived from Vietnam days, a strategy for Iraq four years into that war that was also applied to Afghanistan, a kind-hearted strategy known as Counter-Insurgency. On paper, this required an 80 percent investment in civilian efforts at "winning hearts and minds" and 20 percent in military operations. But in both countries, this strategy was only applied to rhetoric, not reality. Actual investment in non-military operations in Afghanistan never topped 5 percent, and the man in charge of it, Richard Holbrooke, described the civilian mission as "supporting the military."
Rather than "spreading freedom" with bombs and guns, what would have been wrong with spreading knowledge? If learning leads to the development of democracy, why not spread education? Why not provide funding for children's health and schools, instead of melting the skin off children with white phosphorous? Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi proposed, following the September 11, 2001, terrorism, that instead of bombing Afghanistan, the United States could build schools in Afghanistan, each named for and honoring someone killed in the World Trade Center, thus building appreciation for generous aid and understanding of the damage done by violence. Whatever you think of such an approach, it's hard to argue it wouldn't have been generous and perhaps even in line with the principle of loving one's enemies.
LET ME HELP YOU OUT OF THAT
The hypocrisy of generously imposed occupations is perhaps most apparent when done in the name of uprooting previous occupations. When Japan kicked European colonialists out of Asian nations only to occupy them itself, or when the United States liberated Cuba or the Philippines in order to dominate those countries itself, the contrast between word and deed jumped out at you. In both of these examples, Japan and the United States offered civilization, culture, modernization, leadership, and mentoring, but they offered them at the barrel of a gun whether anyone wanted them or not. And if anyone did, well, their story got top play back home. When Americans were hearing tales of German barbarity in Belgium and France during World War I, Germans were reading accounts of how dearly the occupied French loved their benevolent German occupiers. And when can you not count on the New York Times to locate an Iraqi or an Afghan who's worried that the Americans might leave too soon?
Any occupation must work with some elite group of natives, who in turn will of course support the occupation. But the occupier should not mistake such support for majority opinion, as the United States has been in the habit of doing since at least 1899. Nor should a "native face" on a foreign occupation be expected to fool people:
"The British, like the Americans,"believed that native troops would be less unpopular than foreigners. That proposition is"dubious: if native troops are perceived to be puppets of foreigners, they may be even more violently opposed than the foreigners themselves." Native troops may also be less loyal to the occupier's mission and less trained in the ways of the occupying army. This soon leads to blaming the same deserving people on whose behalf we've attacked their country for our inability to leave it. They are now "violent, incompetent, and untrustworthy," as the McKinley White House portrayed the Filipinos, and as the Bush and Obama White Houses portrayed Iraqis and Afghans.
In an occupied nation with its own internal divisions, minority groups may truly fear mistreatment at the hands of the majority should the foreign occupation end. That problem is a reason for future Bushes to heed the advice of future Powells and not invade in the first place. It's a reason not to inflame internal divisions, as occupiers tend to do, much preferring that the people kill each other than that they unite against foreign forces. And it's a reason to encourage international diplomacy and positive influence on the nation while withdrawing and paying reparations.
The feared post-occupation violence is not, however, usually a persuasive argument for extending the occupation. For one thing, it's an argument for permanent occupation. For another, the bulk of the violence that is depicted back in the imperial nation as a civil war is still usually violence directed against the occupiers and their collaborators. When the occupation ends, so does much of the violence. This has been demonstrated in Iraq as troops have reduced their presence; the violence has decreased accordingly.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
