Winning the Peace

I was reading the most recent issue of Army Times today and there were some interesting articles on “nation building” and “winning the peace.” These specific articles focused mainly on Iraq but they got me thinking, how convince an enemy that they’ve lost? To answer that question, I want to look at two of the most successful “nation building” ventures as well as one of the biggest failures and the current circumstances in Iraq.

Two of the most successful nation building programs were initiated after the second World War on Germany (West Germany) and Japan. Within a matter of decades, the West German economy was the crown jewel of mainland Europe. There was eventually talk that the Japanese economy, so thoroughly crushed during the war, could surpass the United States.

In both of these cases, there was a formal surrender and clear evidence that the german/Japanese armies could not fight on indefinitely. This is in sharp contrast to the end of World War 1. Still there were hard feelings. German opinion of the Allies didn’t begin to change in a big way until the Berlin Blockade. It was then many West Germans realized that we were trying to help and the Russians were the main threat. We may have been the lesser evil at the time, but that was enough to get us a more objective, second thought. In the end, that’s all we needed to convince them we weren’t going to be a dominating occupation force. In Japan, the Emperor was left in his position, though now limited mainly to a figurehead. Enough of the old social structure was maintained as to avoid anarchy and the extreme ideologies that arise from that chaos. One common element in these two cases was the fact that we “rebuilt their economy” so to speak. We defeated and crushed them, and then we rebuilt them.

In Germany after World War 1, the Allies completely did away with the previous social structure in Germany, replacing it with one more suitable to our taste. Germany was forced to pay tremendous reparations in terms of money, resources, land and population. As a result, economy quickly went down in flames. The German army had spent most of the war on foreign soil and only in 1918 did it begin to suffer serious setbacks. Combined this with the fact they had just kicked Russia (one of the main belligerents) out of the war. It was hard for the average citizen to believe that they had lost, and lost so quickly just in 1918. Germany formally surrendered, that much is true. However, the government was in chaos, the Kaiser had abdicated and there was very little in terms of a legitimate government in existence at the time the peace treaty was signed. One of the German leaders at the time (I can’t remember his name) is quoted as saying, “If I had known the terms the Allies were going to demand, I never would have agreed to negotiate.” The resulting economic trouble was seen to be due to the incompetence of the new government. At the end of the war, the German army was also largely intact. Surrender may very well have been an effort to yield to an inevitable in order to save more lives, but it left the German people with the feeling that they hadn’t really lost. It is also important to note that Germany hadn’t lost a major conflict since the days of Napoleon. Pride made defeat all the more difficult to admit. Unlike after World War 2, there was no foreign threat which made the Allies appear friendlier.

Today in Iraq, we have a mixed bag. We are rebuilding their economy and taking great pains to remain on friendly terms with the civilian population. Unfortunately, there was no official surrender. Instead, we simply declared “we win, you lose, all your base are belong to us.” On the up side, the Iraqi army was defeated and defeated decisively. There can be little doubt that we did win, even though there was no official surrender. There is also no external threat with the exception, perhaps, of Iran. Unfortunately, I do not know if relations with Iran are in any way significant to the average Iraqi at the present time. Also going against us has been the total removal of the old Iraqi leadership hierarchy. In a sense, this was necessary. However, it has, and always does, lead to further instability. To compensate for this, the Iraqis must be given a sense that their new government is one that represents them. Iraqis must be convinced that the major problems in Iraq today are due to the hatred of the insurgents and not at the inability of the new government to cope with the situation.

Our current situation is not exactly ideal. Rarely are situations every ideal. However, we have enough positive points that we can be successful in our mission to create a self-sustaining, self-governing, self-defending Iraq. We have not been as incompetent in our winning of “the peace” as some ill-versed in history would have us believe.