Followup 2: Nationbuilding on the Cheap
Two months ago I wrote a piece entitled Nation Building on the Cheap. Last week the CS Monitor ran the article Rebuilding Iraq on the cheap?. It focuses on historical parallels: the occupation of Japan lasted 7 years and involved half a million troops. The rebuilding of Germany amounted to 3% of US GDP for several years (roughly the equivalent of the entire current defense budget). And in neither country did we have to contend with an active resistance. We do not have the political will to make anything like that kind of commitment in Iraq, but that’s something we should have thought about before going in. Anyway, I’ve become interested enough in all this that I’ve started reading Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japanese State Under MacArthur.
