[dmurray]

> What are the examples of successful withdrawals?

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean territories. Arguably Hong Kong.

You could also make a reasonable case for Egypt, Ghana, India/Pakistan... The withdrawal itself was peaceful and didn't leave the state in immediate civil war, even if it wasn't stable in the medium term.

[Wowfunhappy]

I’d say the difference is that those territories were more or less “at peace”. The colonists had “won” the war, at least per some definition of winning.

Afghanistan was a barely held together mess even before we withdrew.

I’m not arguing one way or the other for Taiwan—I don’t want to go to war with China for all sorts of obvious reasons—but we would have the backing of the Taiwanese people, and that’s a major difference versus Afghanistan.

[qiqing]

The British Empire also left Afghanistan. And the US also left Japan and South Korea.

It depends on which data points you pick.

[ekianjo]

> And the US also left Japan and South Korea.

You don't leave the country when you have tens of thousands of military troops still on land with major military equipment stationed there. The US never left Japan and certainly never left Germany.

[chiph]

Given what it costs to station troops outside the country (including an aircraft carrier with its air wing), there has to be a strong reason to keep them there for 70+ years. And it's not because we needed to maintain an occupying force [0] - it was to have bases with pre-positioned equipment near likely foes where troops could be quickly sent and move-out.

The REFORGER exercises [1] went on for nearly 30 years, testing the ability to rapidly move troops to Germany in the event of a Soviet attack. Not only was this expensive in monetary terms, it was expensive in human lives - each year people died from various causes associated with being around heavy equipment. Such as sleeping under vehicles that would roll over them in the night. Or crossing rail lines with their antenna still up and getting electrocuted.

The US didn't do this for any imperial reasons. It was to keep commitments made to those governments in the post-war years.

[0] Disclaimers: Dad crossed into Germany at the Remagen bridge before it fell, and I was stationed in Germany during the Cold War.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Reforger

[ekianjo]

> The US didn't do this for any imperial reasons

I'm not even claiming that. The US has clear strategic reasons to be positioned in many places around the world (like at Okinawa, for example). And Japanese people, despite wanting these troops out, are not going to see them leave anytime soon. So Japan has about no say in it.

[throw0101a]

> The US never left Japan and certainly never left Germany.

It left the the running of their governments. The US military is/was not needed to keep order and prevent a collapse of civil society in either of those two countries. Contra Afghanistan.

[rjsw]

Withdrawal from Malaysia and Singapore went well.

[kamaal]

>>India/Pakistan... The withdrawal itself was peaceful and didn't leave the state in immediate civil war, even if it wasn't stable in the medium term.

The partition of India was a very bloody event in History. The mess left behind by British, doesn't just include partition, it also includes the Kashmir problem over which wars have happened till date.

Not to mention the horrible economic and social conditions that British left behind in the then Indian subcontinent.

[bawolff]

Also its a pretty slow process for canada. Depending on your definition, canada became independent in 1867, 1982 or somewhere in between.

A withdrawl over 115 years is a very slow withdrawl.

[mandevil]

Egypt? The British left in June 1956 and immediately tried to invade their way back in, October 1956. There is a reason that for a generation, "Suez" was a trigger for humiliation.

India/Pakistan? Do you mean the event that caused the death of somewhere between 200,000 and 2 million people? And the displacement of another 10-20 million people? That was much, much more catastrophic than what just happened in Afghanistan.

Ghana did have a somewhat smoother path to independence than either of those.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand were always a separate category: settler colonies where the new arrivals almost completely displaced the natives. Ireland shows the difficulty when you try and send settlers but don't genocide the natives first.

[seanmcdirmid]

The dissolution of the Soviet Union and Russia leaving the former soviet constituent countries in Europe (e.g. Ukraine) and Central Asia (e.g. Kazakistan) turned out OK in the end, tension didn't flare up until this decade.

[908B64B197]

> Canada, Australia

Ask the natives about it.

[mc32]

That's a non-sequitur. Did the British leave Canada & Australia in a peaceful state? As far as I know, there were no civil wars or disarray in those countries, whether ex British subjects or original stock of native populations.

[908B64B197]

> As far as I know, there were no civil wars or disarray in those countries

Sure helps to have wiped out any dissenters during the colonial period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Wars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Canada_Rebellion

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/24/americas/canada-unmarked-grav...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_Buil...

[mc32]

That may be so. But was it governable when they left?

Whether or not we wiped out the masterminds of 9/11 or not, when we left Afghanistan, despite all the military activity up and till August 31, we left them in disarray. Most of the blame goes to the utterly corrupt and despised Ghani government but it’s quite clear we left it ungovernable.

[danielheath]

Australian here.

Firstly, the monarch of England is still our head of state.

Secondly, the genocide was so thorough that there weren't enough indigenous inhabitants left (outside of those enslaved) to hold a war.

So yeah - after the British pulled out (except they didn't), we had peace between the living and the dead.

[mc32]

I think that's an altogether different question. The original question was if left governable? I think the answer is yes.

Did The Romans leave England governable when they pulled out? I think yes. Did the Romans do shit, sure, but that's not the question.

Pullout from Afghanistan regardless of military actions and who was killed was left Ungovernable. Australia it appears to me was left governable when they left.

The British left Jamaica probably with few Tainos, but the question isn't were Tainos treated fairly, was Jamaica governable by the new government when they left?

[jcranmer]

> Did The Romans leave England governable when they pulled out? I think yes.

Would knowing that pretty much all trace of Roman rule, down to the material cultures and currency, completely vanished within a generation change your mind? Of all of the the Roman Empire, England saw the most severe, and most abrupt, fall in living conditions. And this is centuries before the Vikings wreaked yet more havoc on the region.

And, for what it's worth, while we don't know that much about what the remnant Breton polities looked like, the Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms that replaced them were a variety of small kingdoms that constantly jostled each other for power, until the Vikings destroyed several of them outright and the Wessex King Albert conquered the rest. That's pretty damn close to the notion of an array of warlords jostling for power that you seem to be categorizing as ungovernable.

[_carbyau_]

I agree with you that this looks like it has diverged into two separate questions.

But I think it is the view from the majority compared to the minority.

The majority see things as peaceful, quiet, fine. After the original slaughter, it was a peaceful federation of states (at a time where killing a native was 50/50 to come with any consequences) and no large scale civil wars.

The minority - the original inhabitants of this land - the war never stopped. Just changed in nature. Instead of outright killing, it was disenfranchisement/segregation, then blatant racism, now subtle/systemic racism. There is no peace.

And that can carry through generations. As the recent riots in the US show - which had similar sentiment here in Australia - even the killing on basis of race hasn't really stopped 100%.

Ask the minority, if the withdrawal was peaceful? YeahNah...

[908B64B197]

I'm not sure, but this longing for British rule and colonialism and the "good old days" sounds more and more like a dog whistle to me...

Maybe mc32 can enlighten us.