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0 pointscryptonector7y ago0 comments

The U.S. has no patience for nation-building. Like it or not, that's the truth. That leaves us with three options in cases like 9/11:

     - do nothing
     - go in, do what you can to get the bad guys and deter future attachs
     - go in and attempt nation-building for as long as the public will stand it, then skip town

The third option is the one we always try. It also always fails. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Intervention in the Balkans did work in the 90s, but we didn't occupy, so that wasn't a long-term nation-building warfare effort. Somalia we abandoned early on in the 90s -- there was no reason to be there, much less stay, and President Clinton was smart enough to figure that out. The three biggies went badly. Vietnam and Iraq would have gone better with more patience, but I can't blame the American public for not having that much patience. In any case, the limited patience (regarding war) of the American public is a fact.

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dragonwriter7y ago· 2 in thread

> That leaves us with three options in cases like 9/11:

There are no other cases like 9/11, except maybe Pearl Harbor.

The third option worked pretty well there.

> The third option is the one we always try. It also always fails. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Vietnam was actually an example of the second option failing. While there was some effort at nation-building, it was as a means to defeating the “bad guys” (the so-called “hearts and minds” campaign), not rebuilding after taking care of the “bad guys”.

The third option also isn't what we tried in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It was more the second: get the Russians out, and don't worry about what happens after. There's a pretty direct line from that to the development of al-Qaeda (though the US option-2 intervention in the Middle East in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait also contributed. Notably, the idea that “the third option is what we always try” is completely false.)

> Intervention in the Balkans did work in the 90s, but we didn't occupy

The US was deeply involved in post-conflict peacekeeping and nation-building in the Balkans. In fact, it was still involved in that well into the time of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

cryptonectorOP7y ago

> > That leaves us with three options in cases like 9/11:

> There are no other cases like 9/11, except maybe Pearl Harbor.

> The third option worked pretty well there.

That was total war, with existential threats all around. 9/11 did not lead to total war.

> Vietnam was actually an example of the second option failing. While there was some effort at nation-building, it was as a means to defeating the “bad guys” (the so-called “hearts and minds” campaign), not rebuilding after taking care of the “bad guys”.

A distinction without much difference. Also true of Iraq (we engaged in nation-building both, for its own sake and to help pacify the place). We didn't stay very long after pacifying Iraq, and some would argue we never did pacify it.

> > Intervention in the Balkans did work in the 90s, but we didn't occupy

> The US was deeply involved in post-conflict peacekeeping and nation-building in the Balkans. In fact, it was still involved in that well into the time of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Yeah, but there once the Serbians lost, and once a deal was reached with Russia, there was no source of further conflict, and this all happened fairly early on after U.S. intervention began, so the American public's patience was never tried, and we did not occupy either. That's not the case in Afghanistan.

If anything the Balkans experience shows when we can nation-build: when the conflict ends decisively. (We didn't end the conflict. The Croats and Bosnians did, with our help, yes, but they did the heavy fighting.)

dragonwriter7y ago

> Also true of Iraq (we engaged in nation-building both, for its own sake and to help pacify the place)

No, in Vietnam the nation-building effort was a strategy to defeat the original enemy we intervened to defeat; pure option-2 get the bad guy.

In Iraq, the completely bungled attempt at nation-building was an attempt to acheive a new objective that followed defeat of the original targeted enemy (part of that, sure, was targeting the enemies that emerged in the power vacuum created when we defeated the original target and disbanded the military and security services—a mistake we did not make in the post-WWII occupations and which was immediately and roundly denounced by experts across the political spectrum when it was done in Iraq—but just because it was defeating an enemy doesn't change that it was not part of the original “get the bad guy” effort.)

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