After WWII, Germany considered the occupying Allied powers to be, well, occupiers. You know what really changed West Germany’s attitude and shifted them from resentment to better cooperation? The Berlin Airlift. They saw that the West was determined to not-abandon then to the Russians, which gave the Western powers massive credibility with the people. It’s just a shame that the West has so readily abandoned all credibility with the Arab world.
I don’t think it’s that straightforward. The Soviet Union also successfully pacified East Germany and turned it into an ally. The USA spent twenty years and two trillion dollars trying to build credibility in Afghanistan, and that was all for nothing.
The USA spent twenty years and two trillion dollars trying to build credibility in Afghanistan, and that was all for nothing.
Because they were doing it while supporting a corrupt government and bombing people willy nilly. There’s a reason the US is known for bombing weddings.
Yeah, they built credibility by checks notes giving positions of power to literal child molestors and war lords. The US spent two trillion bombing Afghanistan into the ground.
Yes, that’s my point. Credibility-building worked, and so did brutal repression. This leads me to think that there was some underlying cultural factor present in post-WWII Germany that made it governable by occupiers, by whatever means. The presence of radical Islamist movements appears to correspond to the absence of such a factor. (Sufficiently brutal repression might still work, the way it did for Putin in Chechnya, but it’s not an option for Israel.)
There are articles about what went wrong, but mostly they weren’t even trying to “nation build”. They often supported the worst kind of monsters. Like people cheered for the taliban because they removed them, the worst kind of warlords, the USA put them back in charge.
What does work is prosperity, education and peace. Only then can you have democracy. Israel had 70 years to help build up Palestine, they could have had like 3 TV channels with propaganda to build bridges and give them a life worth living. The terrorism would have made that very hard, but if you occupy a country that would have been the way to go.
After WWII, Germany considered the occupying Allied powers to be, well, occupiers. You know what really changed West Germany’s attitude and shifted them from resentment to better cooperation? The Berlin Airlift. They saw that the West was determined to not-abandon then to the Russians, which gave the Western powers massive credibility with the people. It’s just a shame that the West has so readily abandoned all credibility with the Arab world.
I don’t think it’s that straightforward. The Soviet Union also successfully pacified East Germany and turned it into an ally. The USA spent twenty years and two trillion dollars trying to build credibility in Afghanistan, and that was all for nothing.
Because they were doing it while supporting a corrupt government and bombing people willy nilly. There’s a reason the US is known for bombing weddings.
Yeah, they built credibility by checks notes giving positions of power to literal child molestors and war lords. The US spent two trillion bombing Afghanistan into the ground.
By executing anyone who didn’t want to get along. Remember the 1953 uprising?
Yes, that’s my point. Credibility-building worked, and so did brutal repression. This leads me to think that there was some underlying cultural factor present in post-WWII Germany that made it governable by occupiers, by whatever means. The presence of radical Islamist movements appears to correspond to the absence of such a factor. (Sufficiently brutal repression might still work, the way it did for Putin in Chechnya, but it’s not an option for Israel.)
There are articles about what went wrong, but mostly they weren’t even trying to “nation build”. They often supported the worst kind of monsters. Like people cheered for the taliban because they removed them, the worst kind of warlords, the USA put them back in charge.
What does work is prosperity, education and peace. Only then can you have democracy. Israel had 70 years to help build up Palestine, they could have had like 3 TV channels with propaganda to build bridges and give them a life worth living. The terrorism would have made that very hard, but if you occupy a country that would have been the way to go.