A Criticism of Nation Building
It seems that the latest trendy thing in foreign policy (especially in the U.S.) is the idea of "nation building." That's what's going in Iraq and Afghanistan, apparently. A nation is being built, or so I'm told. But I want to take an opportunity to review the historical track-record of this nation building phenomenon.
As I see it, there are four ways that imperial powers extend their influence. The first three are colonization, occupation, and economic domination. Though most former or present "colonial" states are some combination of these three, there are many clear-cut examples of each. Canada, the United States, Australia, etc. are products of colonization. Settlers (from Europe) simply plopped themselves down in a virtually unoccupied part of the world (unoccupied, of course, because the people who used to live there were wiped out, mostly by disease). Almost every country in Africa and South Asia once fell into the "occupation" crowd (there were colonists, but they were the minority), while Latin America falls somewhere in between (there were lots of colonists, but also lots of surviving indigenous people). The third category, imperial treaty, was the most common in the last half of the 20th century. It basically accounts for many of the alliances of the Cold War, and survives in the many client states of the U.S. today.
Nation building is the fourth path. When empire cannot be extended by those other means, nation building is an attempt to simply destroy an uncooperative state and rebuild it as a cleint state. This is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there is talk of applying the nation building paradigm to North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, etc. There are other less public examples too, like Haiti. These are states which refused to be cowed economically into serving the Empire (these days, the main empire I'm thinking of is that of the U.S.), and for political reasons, permanent occupation is impossible, as is completely wiping out the population so they can be colonized.
There are many examples of the first three leading to successful nations. I've already mentioned some examples of colonization. There are many examples of countries that have fluorished after occupiers left--indeed, all of Europe falls into this category, following the Roman Empire. Successful outcomes of of economic domination are a bit harder to think of, but there are many marginal examples--I suspect the difficulty here is more that we tend to forget that such places were ever a part of empire, since they were not colonized in one of the ways we usually think of. You might say in all these cases that those lands would have been better off without ever having been a part of empire, and I'd probably agree with you, but you can't deny that the end results weren't too awful.
On the other hand, it's very hard to come up with historical instances of successful nation building. Indeed, most of the nations that apparently need to rebuilt now have arisen due to previous disastrous attempts at nation building. The Middle East, for example, was created by quite arbitrarily drawing lines on a map after WWI (before which time, it had all been part of the Ottoman Empire). The only good ones I can think of are West Germany and Japan after WWII. It's no surprise that when talking about the plan to rebuild Iraq, the Marshall Plan is often mentioned. I don't think this is a fair comparison though. Germany had a centuries-long tradition of Western Liberalism, and Nazism seems only to have been an anomaly, so it's no real surprise that a Western Liberal state quickly thrived there. Japan (as I've said before) is something of the great exception, although it is important to note that Japan was already well on its way towards emulating many aspects of Western culture leading up to the war.
So with maybe that one exception, nation building has been a failure. What does this say about Iraq and Afghanistan? I think they are futile vetures. If we can't get them to cooperate with us (the way we sort of have with Saudi Arabia, for example), and we're not prepared to permanently (at least until the oil runs out) occupy them with a lot more military force than we currently have there, and we're not prepared to simply wipe those countries out (and I'm certainly not prepared to do either of the last two), then we might as well get out now. Note that I say "we" because although Canada doesn't have troops in Iraq, I won't pretend we aren't part of the same empire, and we are conducting an aggresive war in Afghanistan.
As I see it, there are four ways that imperial powers extend their influence. The first three are colonization, occupation, and economic domination. Though most former or present "colonial" states are some combination of these three, there are many clear-cut examples of each. Canada, the United States, Australia, etc. are products of colonization. Settlers (from Europe) simply plopped themselves down in a virtually unoccupied part of the world (unoccupied, of course, because the people who used to live there were wiped out, mostly by disease). Almost every country in Africa and South Asia once fell into the "occupation" crowd (there were colonists, but they were the minority), while Latin America falls somewhere in between (there were lots of colonists, but also lots of surviving indigenous people). The third category, imperial treaty, was the most common in the last half of the 20th century. It basically accounts for many of the alliances of the Cold War, and survives in the many client states of the U.S. today.
Nation building is the fourth path. When empire cannot be extended by those other means, nation building is an attempt to simply destroy an uncooperative state and rebuild it as a cleint state. This is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there is talk of applying the nation building paradigm to North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, etc. There are other less public examples too, like Haiti. These are states which refused to be cowed economically into serving the Empire (these days, the main empire I'm thinking of is that of the U.S.), and for political reasons, permanent occupation is impossible, as is completely wiping out the population so they can be colonized.
There are many examples of the first three leading to successful nations. I've already mentioned some examples of colonization. There are many examples of countries that have fluorished after occupiers left--indeed, all of Europe falls into this category, following the Roman Empire. Successful outcomes of of economic domination are a bit harder to think of, but there are many marginal examples--I suspect the difficulty here is more that we tend to forget that such places were ever a part of empire, since they were not colonized in one of the ways we usually think of. You might say in all these cases that those lands would have been better off without ever having been a part of empire, and I'd probably agree with you, but you can't deny that the end results weren't too awful.
On the other hand, it's very hard to come up with historical instances of successful nation building. Indeed, most of the nations that apparently need to rebuilt now have arisen due to previous disastrous attempts at nation building. The Middle East, for example, was created by quite arbitrarily drawing lines on a map after WWI (before which time, it had all been part of the Ottoman Empire). The only good ones I can think of are West Germany and Japan after WWII. It's no surprise that when talking about the plan to rebuild Iraq, the Marshall Plan is often mentioned. I don't think this is a fair comparison though. Germany had a centuries-long tradition of Western Liberalism, and Nazism seems only to have been an anomaly, so it's no real surprise that a Western Liberal state quickly thrived there. Japan (as I've said before) is something of the great exception, although it is important to note that Japan was already well on its way towards emulating many aspects of Western culture leading up to the war.
So with maybe that one exception, nation building has been a failure. What does this say about Iraq and Afghanistan? I think they are futile vetures. If we can't get them to cooperate with us (the way we sort of have with Saudi Arabia, for example), and we're not prepared to permanently (at least until the oil runs out) occupy them with a lot more military force than we currently have there, and we're not prepared to simply wipe those countries out (and I'm certainly not prepared to do either of the last two), then we might as well get out now. Note that I say "we" because although Canada doesn't have troops in Iraq, I won't pretend we aren't part of the same empire, and we are conducting an aggresive war in Afghanistan.
PERMALINK Posted at 11:13 AM
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