By Todd Lassa
Search “nation building” and you’ll turn up an article reposted all over the Internet, including newly minted Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Maria Ressa’s website, Rappler, as well as a number of left-leaning outlets, that cite an interview former National Security Advisor John Bolton gave shortly before the fall late last summer of Afghanistan to the Taliban, in which he blames the U.S. failure there after 20 years on the “change in our mission from anti-terrorism to nation building.”
Bolton’s comments might surprise supporters of both ex-President Trump, who employed Bolton as his national security advisor from April 2018 to September 2019, and supporters of President Biden, who has sided with his predecessor on a couple of key policy issues, including the need to completely extract the U.S. military from Afghanistan. In this case, both Trump and Biden should be at odds with Bolton, who is known more for his push while working for the George W. Bush administration to invade Iraq after the September 11, 2001 attacks in order to remove Saddam Hussein despite no evidence he had anything to do with the terrorism, or had a secret stash of nuclear warheads.
That brings us back to the present day. On Sunday, October 10, Iraqis held an election for its parliament, but turnout according to myriad news reports was low, Politico reports, with some voters simply vandalizing their own ballots in protest. Like Afghanistan, Iraq’s democratically elected government has been rife with corruption and incompetency, even with six such parliaments following the 2003 eradication of Hussein.
While our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are vastly different in the details – especially the post-U.S. fate of the Afghanis -- they raise the same key question: Was it a mistake to try and remake both these nations in our own image? One prevalent post-mortem on Afghanistan is that we fought not one 20-year war, but instead, 20 one-year wars. How did Iraq get to six national elections in 18 years?
Conversely, advocates of American nation building counter that the U.S. has the responsibility to spread freedom and democracy among countries that suppress their citizens, or are suppressed by bigger, more powerful countries. In the much-repeated op-ed cited at the beginning of this column, author Waldon Bello, a senior analyst for Focus on the Global South and international adjunct professor of sociology at State University of New York at Binghamton, writes that American nation building did not begin with Vietnam, but instead with the Philippines in the late 19th century, and worked in rare occasions, such as the rebuilding of Japan after its World War II defeat. He concludes, however, that nation building does not work.
On October 28, Braver Angels will hold a national debate, Resolved: America Should Stop Nation Building.
In the left and the right columns, you’ll find but two perspectives in preview of some of the points of view to be expressed. Go to braverangels.org for details on how to participate in the debate.