[dragonwriter]

> we have to admit the failure was the US changing its role there from hunting Bin Laden and the Taliban to "Nation building"

The cause of the failure was when, in 2003, the US decided to focus on an entirely unnecessary war of choice (aggression, really) in Iraq (and a whole bunch of propaganda own-goals scored in that war that affected the US particularly in the Islamic world reinforced that.) Nation building was always an element of fighting the Taliban, not mission drift, since having something stable and broadly supported in place was the key to prevent a resurgence.

[throwaway894345]

I don’t have a strong opinion, but “nation building” always sounds like this horrible thing and I don’t quite understand why. Charitably, bringing democracy to corrupt, oppressed countries seems eminently desirable. Maybe nation building has a bad rep because it’s immensely difficult and we always fail at it (presumably it takes many decades and we always think it will take 5 years?). Genuinely trying to understand.

[SpicyLemonZest]

It's just based on a flawed premise. Democracy functions based on the public's democratic beliefs about legitimacy and power, so you can't impose it on a country the way you can install a king or set up an occupational council. No matter how well you mimic the forms and functions of a democracy, if the fundamental root of power is "the Americans said this is how we're doing it", the government's gonna fall as soon as they stop saying that.

[throwaway894345]

I kind of agree, but culture is malleable and if you sustain democratic trappings for long enough the culture will adapt accordingly. I think this kind of culture change takes generations and our flaws have always been expecting the change to take place in a handful of years. Indeed, the Chinese and North Koreans have lived through the worst communism has to offer, but after a sustained period they have largely come to accept it as legitimate (although it requires a sustained investment in intense propaganda and isolationism because they are clearly stuck in a local optimum). Similarly Rome was pretty good at this sort of thing as it incorporated even backwater Britain into its empire.

If I were going to go about nation building, I would “export democratic values” some 20 years in advance of any military action by way of film, literature, etc. Cynics can think of this as propaganda, but really it’s just giving Afghans or whomever a more accurate taste of western life. When enough people had a good idea about what democracy was concretely and were ready to support it, I would then provide for military support with the expectation that the democrats would need sustained assistance for many decades.

Of course, there might be lots of reasons why this still isn’t a good idea, especially that we might be able to do more good per dollar elsewhere. But I don’t think “we tried it (poorly) for 20 years and it didn’t work out” is a good criticism—we shouldn’t expect the kind of requisite culture change to happen over a single generation.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I agree that it can in principle work over generations (and there's a solid argument that's precisely what happened in Germany and Japan after World War II). But this kind of explicit cultural imperialism is... frowned on, to say the least, in modern times. Can you imagine the controversy if the US had gotten up in 2002 and said "the goal of our occupation is to ensure that young Afghanis grow up American"?

[dragonwriter]

> agree that it can in principle work over generations (and there's a solid argument that's precisely what happened in Germany and Japan after World War

Germany and Japan were occupied (excluding the post-1955 nominal occupation of Germany because the Cold War prevented agreement on a formal end) for less time than Afghanistan when you add them together. To the extent something worked there but not in Afghanistan, it had nothing to do with it taking “generations”.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Political factors encouraged people to consider the “occupation” phase over quickly, but parts of Japan were under direct US civil administration until 1972, and both countries to this day have an order of magnitude more troops than Afghanistan did. If a German 20 years after World War II were plotting to restore the Nazi government, “the US might just shoot us all” would have to be part of the calculation.

Germany and Japan were also quite a bit more successful at actually ending the organizations occupying troops found unacceptable.

[throwaway894345]

Germany already had democratic values and Japan had been formally westernizing for a century prior.

[athrowaway3z]

https://youtu.be/sehmmzbi3UI (specificly ~2min starting from from 3:15 )