[lamontcg]

Has there been a regime which has collapsed due to an external strike like this where it hasn't resulted in some decades long civil war nightmare?

I can't think of any time when bombing the shit out of a country and killing their leader has actually worked.

All I can think of is examples of blowback.

[Jensson]

> I can't think of any time when bombing the shit out of a country and killing their leader has actually worked.

Japan? Although their leader wasn't killed, but same logic. The more civilized a country is the easier it is to reform them into a good state, and Iran is a pretty civilized and structured nation, the dictatorship is the main issue.

Most people in Iran want a democracy and are capable of running it, you just have to let them. That isn't the case in most of these dictatorships that lacks such structure, but it is there in Iran.

[mango7283]

The Americans had to occupy and place both Japan and West Germany under their military rule afterwards to make it stick, that's not a comparison

[p2detar]

I disagree. After the bombing, the Emperor himself broadcasted a surrender message [0] to the people of Japan. The occupation was also for more lighter than in Germany. Japan had full control of its administration and its government continued to operate. In that context whether we like or not, it very much worked.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast

[cplanas]

The American occupation of Japan may have been less punitive than Germany’s, but it was arguably more invasive: Japan’s postwar Constitution was largely drafted by Americans, with minimal Japanese input. By contrast, West Germany’s Basic Law was written by Germans themselves under Allied constraints.

[mikkupikku]

Japanese army officers stormed the emperor's palace and placed him under house arrest in an attempt to prevent him from broadcasting that surrender message. This was after the second bomb, a whole lot of them still had fight left in them.

[SR2Z]

The US did not have to occupy Japan and deal with rebels - the emperor surrendered unconditionally and the US fed the existing pro-democracy movement while rebuilding the country.

If you look at the US' history of interventions, the common thread is that nations with established pro-democracy movements tend to become stable democracies, and nations where democracy lacks popular support tend to turn into flimsy Republics that easily fall apart when American support is removed.

Occupation is so expensive that it's virtually unthinkable for even a medium-size country to be occupied. There are just too many civilians and too few soldiers.

[lamontcg]

Yeah, apparently I should have been explicit that I was talking about air strikes and not occupation.

We aren't going to occupy Iran.

Comparing this to defeated nations in WWII is also a massive stretch, I almost can't believe people seriously think that is a parallel situation.

There's a lot of propaganda out there to dissuade people from thinking that this looks a lot like Libya at best--and that is assuming that decapitation airstrikes can even make the regime fall (which I doubt).

[rayiner]

Yes, this is an underrated point and why I’m holding out hope for a positive outcome. I’m convinced that, before the revolution, Iran was on the same trajectory as European monarchies that had become democracies. At that point, countries like Denmark had been democracies for less than 75 years.

[IOT_Apprentice]

And then France sent Khomeini back to Iran on a chartered Air France 747 & stifled that. France also built Dimona nuclear plant in Israel in 1963 and then tested multiple times nuclear weapons in Algeria from 1960-1966 in the Algerian Sahara & mountains & allowed Israel to observe these explosions.

[bigthymer]

From my understanding, it wasn't the bombing that motivated Japan to surrender even though this is commonly taught, it was the recent Soviet declaration of war and fear of invasion/occupation.

[mr_toad]

> Has there been a regime which has collapsed due to an external strike like this where it hasn't resulted in some decades long civil war nightmare?

People have already mentioned the post WW2 occupation of Germany and Japan.

There’s also the Roman occupation of Greece (and other Hellenistic territories), and even perhaps the Norman occupation of England. Not that either of these didn’t cause some strife and rebellion in both cases, but still there was a concerted effort to build up both territories.

[ant6n]

The canonical example is WWii Germany. Denazification actually sort of worked. But it required a lot of effort, resources and special circumstances.

[greedo]

West Germany wasn't denazified. The process was started after the surrender, but quickly and quietly stopped.

[ant6n]

The party was forbidden, the symbols were forbidden. They hung the main leaders, quite publicly. It became a huge taboo, the ideology effectively died (for decades). A strong democracy was established, older democratic parties took over.

Yes a bunch of previous nazis made it back into power and politics, but they didn't call themselves nazis or acted like nazis. But also, the country as a whole took a very different path after wwii.

[greedo]

A lot of symbolic actions were taken, but the majority (not "a bunch") of Nazis continued to hold positions of power in both the GDR and FRG.

Justice was never served for what the Nazis did. Both the US and the USSR scooped up Nazi scientists (Operation Paperclip), and with the advent of the Cold War, the West quickly decided that it cared more about contesting Europe with the Soviets than seeking justice.

[UncleMeat]

Germany was also split in two for fifty years.

[hackandthink]

fourty

(1945 - 1949 it was split in 4 occupation zones)

[Someone]

If you ignore Berlin (which, I think, kept its four occupation zones) it were first four, three from January 1, 1947, and two from from August 1, 1948 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizone)

[hackandthink]

thanks

[exe34]

they brought the Nazis to the US and now hydra has taken over.

[oceanplexian]

> Has there been a regime which has collapsed due to an external strike like this where it hasn't resulted in some decades long civil war nightmare?

The US operation to depose the dictator of Panama in 1989 is one example.

[logicallee]

>I can't think of any time when bombing the shit out of a country and killing their leader has actually worked.

This happened just weeks ago in Venezuela, though in that case the removal was by abduction and foreign trial. (The U.S. struck Venezuela and abducted its President at the time, bringing him to trial in the United States. I've just now asked ChatGPT for a research report on his current status, you can read it here[1].)

This led to immediate and definitive regime change, the U.S. now has an excellent relationship with the new President of Venezuela.

[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/69a424b4-de38-800c-8699-cb95d25090...