By David Iwinski

While many claim the United States has never successfully engaged in the process of nation building and, thus, should swear off this process forever, it turns out that's not exactly the case. We don't have to go all the way back to the beginning of the Republic to find at least two superb examples of how the influence, funding and process of American engagement led directly to significant changes in political orientation and global cooperative participation.

At the end of World War II, Germany was not only in financial shambles but with the shattering of the dominant Nazi party and their ideology, they faced a crisis of identity and national meaning. One of their allies, Japan, was in even more catastrophic shape. Clobbered by two atomic bombs designed to rapidly end the war and stop both the deaths of American soldiers and Japanese civilians, they also faced the utter shock of coming to the reality that perhaps the Emperor was not directly connected to God and could not be considered omnipotent. They also had a long history of hyper-aggressive militant behavior that manifested itself in their outward relations with the world.

The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. American money helped rebuild the cities, factories, railroads and other modes of transportation while simultaneously engaging in the reconstruction of governmental entities and policies with a focus on cooperative behavior and economic development. In short order, Germany became one of the leading manufacturers in Europe – it is the continent’s leader today, providing German citizens with not only a wealthy lifestyle but also a safe one promoting cooperation and peaceful engagement with its neighbors.

In Asia, General MacArthur went into Japan and after writing them a new Constitution, essentially restructured and rebuilt the nation from the ground up. He instituted such radical reforms as universal suffrage and other changes designed to not only modernize the landscape of Japan but also the thinking of the people. Japan embraced these changes to such an extent that within a couple decades it became a successful manufacturing colossus and is now one of the world’s leading economies.

What's interesting are the preconditions for these extraordinarily successful nation-building efforts. The first is that the aggressive and dysfunctional existing governments had to offer complete surrender and capitulation, not only being rejected by outside nations but the good citizens of their own country as well. The second is that the American efforts were direct and structural, going to the heart of what needed to be done and doing it fast.

As I see it, the major problem with nation building in the modern era is that dysfunctional governments we have attempted to reform may have been militarily conquered or humbled, but they have never surrendered nor acknowledged defeat. They have remained in a state of semi-power and, as a result, the people in these nations have not had the ability to fully embrace a new regime or a new way of thinking.  Peace was maintained by virtue of American troops, guns and money but there was no fundamental change of heart from people living in these nations on the ground.

Modern nation building, as it seems to exist today, tries (and fails) because we strive to be "kinder and gentler" and think of wholesale social change can be accomplished via soft persuasion and sweet slogans. We desire to change hearts and minds while leaving in place those negative elements that created the problem in the first place. We think if we can just be a good example and plant a few crops that the people who were brutally dominated under the old regime will have the intestinal fortitude to fight them off once we walk out the door. With that in mind, I would say that our post-World War II nation building efforts have had this fundamental flaw, making them a terrible waste of blood and money.

If we desire to truly help the beleaguered people of a nation run by tyrannical despots who shower brutality upon their own people, the rules of engagement must allow us to go in hard and fast to root them out and completely dominate the terrain of both the land and the political landscape so that they have nowhere to hide and either face, as the Japanese did in 1945 the decision to capitulate or be completely destroyed. Under those circumstances, we would have a chance of a successful effort in the participative democracy and the establishment of successful republics.

Is this vision likely to occur? Honestly, I think not. When we try to run wars based on calling back home for legal advice before we decide which terrorist we can shoot, we are so far away from helping the people we claim to be trying to save that we might simply be better off staying home.