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I think you’re mostly right. One thing about “nation building” though is that the US has only been successful (broadly defined) when we occupy the country compl

I think you’re mostly right. One thing about “nation building” though is that the US has only been successful (broadly defined) when we occupy the country completely, like a colony, for a generation and essentially administer their government for them for a long time. Now, there’s obviously a lot of warts involved in doing that but Germany, Japan, and South Korea are the last times we really went “all in” (South Korea is a much more murky example as you’ve pointed out). To be clear, Iraq and Afghanistan are very different for reasons that should be obvious (OEF 12-13, here), and while I’m not saying that treating those places like a colony would’ve worked better (I don’t think it would have, for enough reasons to fill a PhD thesis) it’s an interesting historical thought experiment. Back to the actual topic, I share the skepticism of tech Uber alles expressed like others, and trying to predict the future of warfare is mostly a futile exercise. Probably best to index on flexibility and tight training regimens and make some informed inferences about how to structure the force.

paganel 6y ago
Another major difference between nation-building in Germany post-WW2 and nation-building in Iraq post-Saddam was that the occupying forces (mostly the Americans) left most of the Nazis in place (with a few notable exceptions at the top), while in Iraq almost the entire Baath Party structure was obliterated. One of my favourite examples is Hans Speidel [1], a Wehrmacht lieutenant-general by the time the war ended, who got to be "Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe from 1957 to 1963", plus the major shareholder of Mercedes in the 1960s who had been a big Nazi sympathiser during the war (his name escapes me right now, and I can't google him easily, the official Mercedes history does not mention him), to say northing of how the infamous IG Farben was split between BASF and Bayer (among others), and not immediately raised to the ground and liquidated. I don't think the Americans that occupied Iraq in 2003 were as friendly with the company that stood behind Saddam's chemical attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel
- patrickk 6y ago
  Fanta also has an interesting history: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-nazi-germany https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-naz... Also overlooked in the post WWII analysis (apart from historians) is the influence of the Adenauer government: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating. This type of government action (included devaluation of citizens money but allowing companies to retain their value, cheap, highly motivated and educated labour force) likely had a much great impact than the Marshall Plan which is what you always hear about today. The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany, and created a split in the East/West “world”.
  - paganel 6y ago
    > There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating. Do you happen to have an easy link to it? Sounds really interesting. > The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany Just a couple of hours ago I was looking for a .kml or .geojson file of the Roman "limes", I was trying to prove its relationship to some toponymy-data from the Carpathians. It's crazy how influential the Romans were.
    - patrickk 6y ago
      Sure, its this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34757960-the-shortest-history-of-germany https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34757960-the-shortest-hi...
- jacobush 6y ago
  Thank you, my pet peeve is how the entire Iraqi Army was fired. Was it morally the right thing to do, even considering ISIS was basically boosted from obscurity to a decades long pain in the ass from that move alone?
- iudqnolq 6y ago
  According to the wikipedia article you link to, your summary of Spiedel's life misses an important point. I think the US did recruit Iraqi defectors. > Speidel joined the German Army in 1914, fought in the First World War, and stayed with the Army as a career soldier after the war. He served as chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the Second World War and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1944. Speidel participated in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, and he was tasked with recruiting Rommel for the resistance. After the plot failed he was arrested by the Gestapo. At the end of the war, he escaped from Nazi prison and went into hiding. He was the only major member of the 20 July Plot to survive the war.
  - paganel 6y ago
    I saw that, but by July 1944 the Wehrmacht had been directly responsible for millions of civilian deaths on the Eastern Front (less so in the West because the Allies had just landed in Normandy), this guy (and his other coup colleagues) were just unlucky because they went for the king and missed him. That doesn't absolve any of them of the war's atrocities of which the institution they worked for was directly responsible (among many others in the Nazi regime, of course).
    - iudqnolq 6y ago
      I agree he's morally reprehensible. I was just saying that similar people in Iraq (Iraqis who participated in the Iraqi govt while it committed war crimes) who defected were treated similarly.

paganel 6y ago

Another major difference between nation-building in Germany post-WW2 and nation-building in Iraq post-Saddam was that the occupying forces (mostly the Americans) left most of the Nazis in place (with a few notable exceptions at the top), while in Iraq almost the entire Baath Party structure was obliterated. One of my favourite examples is Hans Speidel [1], a Wehrmacht lieutenant-general by the time the war ended, who got to be "Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe from 1957 to 1963", plus the major shareholder of Mercedes in the 1960s who had been a big Nazi sympathiser during the war (his name escapes me right now, and I can't google him easily, the official Mercedes history does not mention him), to say northing of how the infamous IG Farben was split between BASF and Bayer (among others), and not immediately raised to the ground and liquidated. I don't think the Americans that occupied Iraq in 2003 were as friendly with the company that stood behind Saddam's chemical attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Speidel

patrickk 6y ago
Fanta also has an interesting history: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-nazi-germany https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fanta-soda-origins-naz... Also overlooked in the post WWII analysis (apart from historians) is the influence of the Adenauer government: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirtschaftswunder There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating. This type of government action (included devaluation of citizens money but allowing companies to retain their value, cheap, highly motivated and educated labour force) likely had a much great impact than the Marshall Plan which is what you always hear about today. The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany, and created a split in the East/West “world”.
- paganel 6y ago
  > There’s a great book called “the shortest history of Germany” that covers it nicely. It’s fascinating. Do you happen to have an easy link to it? Sounds really interesting. > The book also goes into details on how the border of the Roman world still today predicts the richest regions of Germany Just a couple of hours ago I was looking for a .kml or .geojson file of the Roman "limes", I was trying to prove its relationship to some toponymy-data from the Carpathians. It's crazy how influential the Romans were.
  - patrickk 6y ago
    Sure, its this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34757960-the-shortest-history-of-germany https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34757960-the-shortest-hi...
jacobush 6y ago
Thank you, my pet peeve is how the entire Iraqi Army was fired. Was it morally the right thing to do, even considering ISIS was basically boosted from obscurity to a decades long pain in the ass from that move alone?
iudqnolq 6y ago
According to the wikipedia article you link to, your summary of Spiedel's life misses an important point. I think the US did recruit Iraqi defectors. > Speidel joined the German Army in 1914, fought in the First World War, and stayed with the Army as a career soldier after the war. He served as chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the Second World War and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1944. Speidel participated in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, and he was tasked with recruiting Rommel for the resistance. After the plot failed he was arrested by the Gestapo. At the end of the war, he escaped from Nazi prison and went into hiding. He was the only major member of the 20 July Plot to survive the war.
- paganel 6y ago
  I saw that, but by July 1944 the Wehrmacht had been directly responsible for millions of civilian deaths on the Eastern Front (less so in the West because the Allies had just landed in Normandy), this guy (and his other coup colleagues) were just unlucky because they went for the king and missed him. That doesn't absolve any of them of the war's atrocities of which the institution they worked for was directly responsible (among many others in the Nazi regime, of course).
  - iudqnolq 6y ago
    I agree he's morally reprehensible. I was just saying that similar people in Iraq (Iraqis who participated in the Iraqi govt while it committed war crimes) who defected were treated similarly.