GUMBYLIKE:

A Foreign Policy of Try, Try Again (STEVEN R. WEISMAN, January 18, 2004, NY Times)

"It's nice to think that when there is a challenge, the United States goes in with a well-formulated plan and sticks to it," said John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale. But "there is no historical precedent for that happening. Germany and Japan after World War II were textbook examples of successful occupations, but they did not proceed according to a predetermined, consistently applied blueprint. Far from it."

Indeed, American rule in both Germany and Japan were bedeviled by a problem that now faces American authorities in Iraq. Both postwar occupations began with the idea of purging the leaders of the old regimes, just as the United States set out in Iraq with a plan to remove top members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. The initial plan in both Japan and Germany was to prevent the re-emergence of an industrial state that could nurture a new generation of Nazis and militarists.

Quickly, however, American anxiety shifted from resurgent Nazism to the spread of Communism in Europe and Asia. Reversing themselves, American authorities began working with former Nazis, especially in the intelligence services, who knew where the Communists were lurking. Even more important, the plan envisioned by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau to turn Germany into a pastoral state was dropped, replaced by a decision to restore its economic strength to block Russian ambitions west of the Iron Curtain.

In Japan, the beginning of the Korean War "ushered in a new world," writes John W. Dower, a professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in his book about the American occupation, "Embracing Defeat." Citing a popular movie about a man arrested for stealing who confesses by saying, "Oh, mistake!" Mr. Dower writes that "Oh, mistake!" became a famously sarcastic phrase applied to the occupation as it sought to remilitarize Japan, work with members of the old regime and re-establish its economic power.

In Iraq, the occupation administrators have had shifting policies about whether or not to block from power anyone associated with Mr. Hussein. There is now pressure to ease that stand and bring leaders of the Sunni minority back into power to help defuse the insurgency in Sunni areas.

Despite misgivings, the United States is also reconciled to having Islam play a role in the new Iraqi government. Last week, the United States sought to placate Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is demanding direct elections to choose an interim government, though many fear this will give too much power to religious leaders..

"At every stage in Iraq, ideological predispositions of those who advocated the war in Iraq have given way to pragmatism," said Noah Feldman, an assistant professor of law at New York University who served as a legal adviser to the American occupation in its first months. "The initial idea that Iraq was and must be made secular quickly is now being tempered by the reality of Islamic democratic politics."

The current problems mirror some of those faced by the United States during its occupation of the Philippines and Cuba, after the Spanish-American War of 1898.

While the critics look at the Administration and see rigid ideologues, policy towards Iraq--from waiting until after Afghanistan was done to seeking UN approval to attacking without Turkish bases to ditching Shock and Awe in favor of a decapitation strike to changes in the way the handover of power will be accomplished--has been characterized by a flexibility and realism rarely seen in any government, anywhere, anytime.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 23, 2004 3:11 PM