Here is an interesting perspective on the problems the U.S. faces carrying out the reconstruction of Iraq:
theglobeandmail.com
Six months before, the world had cheered as the statues of the dictator came crashing down. The Americans had seemed heroic. But now things were going very badly. The occupation was chaotic, the American soldiers were hated and they were facing threats from the surviving supporters of the dictator, whose whereabouts were uncertain.
Washington seemed unwilling to pay the enormous bill for reconstruction, and the president didn't appear to have any kind of workable plan to manage the transition to democracy. European allies, distrustful of the arrogant American outlook, were wary of co-operating. To many, it looked like the victory had been betrayed, since the American values of democracy, equality and well-being seemed unlikely ever to emerge.
That's how it looked in Germany in November, 1945. In our memories, history tends to become compressed: There was V-E Day, then the American soldiers were cheered by the people of Berlin, then the president announced that hundreds of millions would be spent on the Marshall Plan, then Germany became the prosperous and democratic place it is today.
That is not how things unfolded. The United States has always been good at removing dictators from power, but the tedious, dirty work we now call "nation building" has never come naturally, or quickly. The enormous success of European and Japanese reconstruction did not even begin to emerge until long years of pain and disorder had passed.
Six months after V-E Day, The New York Times reported that Germany was awash in "unrest and lawlessness." More than a million "displaced persons" roamed the country, many of them subsisting on criminal activities. The heavy-handed presence of American soldiers was deeply resented by many Germans, especially young men, who had come to believe that the G.I.s were stealing their women.
There were still a lot of rogue Nazis causing trouble. It took months for British investigators to determine that Adolf Hitler had killed himself, and many thought his hand could be detected behind the crime and violence. Worse, the attacks on soldiers, General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned, revealed a deeper resentment of the occupation: "The sentiments below them may provide popular rallying points for activities which might grow into organized resistance directed against the occupation forces."
Nobody in the army had expected to be thrust into the position of running a country, certainly not for months after the war ended. The army is "ill-fitted by training, experience and organization for civil government," wrote The New York Times, describing "confusion and chaos" in the leadership. Berlin still didn't have even its most rudimentary infrastructure running in its American-occupied quarter. "It is impossible to plan for the future and a little less difficult to act in the present," one senior U.S. officer complained.
The army wanted out, and the Germans wanted the American army out. But the White House was not prepared to let Germans run their own country, lest the terrorists take charge. "It is apparent that a long period of political organization and political education will be necessary before the German people can safely be entrusted with the complete control of their own government," Gen. Eisenhower said. It would be almost a year before any governing structure was established.
The Americans, desperate, asked allies to help. The French refused to get involved. The British, barely able to feed their own people, angrily accused Washington of being stingy, of enriching its own people while Germans starved.
Meanwhile, the world was outraged by the scenes of suffering and disorder coming from Germany. The people were going hungry: A report conducted in November,1945, indicated that 60 per cent of them weren't getting the bare ration of 1,550 calories per day (2,000 calories is generally considered a healthy minimum). The world waited for the president of the United States to announce a plan.
The wait would be long. The Marshall Plan, in which the United States spent the equivalent of 100 billion of today's dollars rebuilding Europe, was not passed until late in 1947, more than two years after the war's end, and did not deliver a penny to Germany until 1949. It faced harsh political opposition from Republicans in the United States. The other great instrument of postwar reconstruction, the World Bank, did not begin handing out money until 1947 either.
It took two years for the United States to begin taking its nation-building responsibilities seriously. Those two years hadn't passed well. By 1947, Germans were dying of starvation. In some cities, the ration had dropped to 750 calories. And the aid may never have arrived had it not been for the threat of communism and the promise of profits: The Marshall Plan was sold to Americans as a trade and marketing opportunity for U.S. business, and as a firewall against the Soviets. But whatever the motives, it was the cornerstone of today's Europe, a stunning success.
History never really does fully repeat itself. An American president has just announced almost a Marshall Plan's worth of spending on a country far poorer than Germany, two years earlier than Harry Truman did. But Iraq is far less stable and far more menacing, and the world is less willing to help. This week, it looks as if the Americans have won the war and lost the peace -- but we ought to remember that it's looked that way before. |
