The Strategic Thought of John McCain

Ana Marie Cox tries to get John McCain to expand a bit on his vision for an indefinite occupation of Iraq:

His campaign insists that the reason he becomes so hyperbolic is to hammer home the point that our time in Iraq will stop being a controversy once the killing stops. Sure, he's right about that -- and that's why he mentions Japan, Germany and Kuwait when rebuffing criticism. (Though it's also a weirdly obvious conclusion: Other than the killings, America, how did you like the play?) What frustrated me yesterday was his refusal to engage on what it would take to make the transition from an occupying force in a country torn by civil war to something less intrusive... and also to address the mixed feelings that Iraqis greet the prospect of perpetual American presence.

I think this shows a real inability to grasp the basic dynamics of the situation. I can't speak to the details of the immediate postwar period in Germany and Japan, but it's clear that following the formal surrender of the Axis militaries the occupation forces were able to very quickly establish orderly and peaceful conditions. Within just a couple of years the dawn of the Cold War shifted the main purpose of US military personnel in Germany and Japan away from occupation work and toward defense of those countries from the Soviet threat. Meanwhile, there was never any serious doubt about the legitimacy of "Germany" or "Japan" as nation-states.

Four and a half years after the occupation of Iraq began, there's just nothing about Iraq 2008 that resembles Germany or Japan in 1950. To do what McCain does and simply assume that the natural evolution of the situation is into the sort of stability and uncontroversial presence of US troops that we see in those other countries is fatuous.

Comments

Meanwhile, there was never any serious doubt about the legitimacy of "Germany" or "Japan" as nation-states.

Do you remember East and West Germany? This has got to be one of the silliest things you have ever written.

Posted by Anonymous | January 8, 2008 11:32 AM

Might have something to do with that million-and-a-half man and woman second Army - the Army of Occupation - that George Marshall started preparing in 1942 and had available as the Allied forces advanced, eh?

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | January 8, 2008 11:37 AM

Doesn't Japan and Korea kind of, you know, hate our military occupying bases in their country? This is even with both countries being fairly prosperous, democratic states. And we have had bases in those countries for far less than 100, or even 50 years.

Posted by Joshua | January 8, 2008 11:39 AM

Oops, obviously my brain exploded - far less than 100 but not 50.

Posted by Joshua | January 8, 2008 11:41 AM

Err...what Anonymous said. There was serious thought given to breaking up Germany still further, and a lot of people thought up to the 4+2 Treaty in 1990 that keeping Germany divided was a better path than reuniting. This included many old school Christian Democrat types in the west, like Adenauer, who liked the idea of a Germany consisting only of the "third Germany" neither Prussian nor Austrian.

In the wake of WWII, then, there was a whole lot of dispute over the legitimacy of Germany as a nation-state. Well more, I think, than there is of Iraq - besides Joe Biden and the Kurds, does anyone want to actually break up Iraq?

Posted by John | January 8, 2008 11:42 AM

I agree that there are substantive differences between Iraq today on the one hand, and Japan and Germany after WW II. You don't mention most of them, but I would include:

1. Japan and Germany had unconditionally surrendered - there was no real doubt about the legitimacy of the occupation. Iraq's government had been conquered, but much of the populace - and even more importantly Iraq's neighbors - did not accept that Iraq had actually been conquered.
2. Germany had established itself as a single nation with essentially a single ethnicity in the previous century, as a result of a series of wars. It was the separation of Germany into East and West that was artificially imposed (by the Soviet Union). Japan had also created a single identity for itself. Iraq, by contrast, had been essentially tossed together by the British and French after WW I and was only held together by strong and often brutal governments.
3. Germany was always a Western nation, with Western values. In Japan, the Occupation specifically outlawed political expression of Shintoism, thus allowing Westernization of the country. In Iraq, political expression of Islam remains one of the greatest challenges, which the occupation has largely ignored.

That does not mean that Iraqi occupation has to fail - there are real signs of progress, however tentative. But it will take a lot more will and skill than the Bush administration has so far demonstrated to make it happen.

Posted by FuzzyFace | January 8, 2008 11:46 AM

John, the reason that various groups besides the Kurds don't want Iraq to break up is because of the oil, not a sense of the Iraqi nation. As Bill Maher put it, Iraq is a country younger than Paul Newman. Sunnis want the Shi'ites away from the oil and vice versa. In Japan, there was relatively little disagreement on what made up the Japanese nation and nation-state as opposed to Iraq today. The same goes for Germany, despite the caveats others have mentioned above. After all, both countries had a language that was indigenous to their respective countries to mark at least the core of each nation as it saw itself. What makes an Iraqi an Iraqi? I'm not sure if anyone can really answer that now. Also, the division between East and West Germany was simply where the Allies stopped marching. It didn't spring from decisions made by the Germans themselves.

Also, to add to MY's point, both Germany and Japan had previously been democracies, however imperfect. Korea, which hadn't been a democracy except from 1960-1961, at least had a long history as a nation before the war, unlike Iraq. In fact, part of the conflict between the North and the South is that neither truly recognizes the other state yet sees the other's populace as part of the same nation.

Posted by Reality Man | January 8, 2008 11:49 AM

Not to mention eastern Germany was moved about a hundred miles to the west, people and all.

Posted by mad6798j | January 8, 2008 11:49 AM

Well, gotta give Cox credit for asking a question of the kewlest guy the press ever saw - her fellow Swamplander, Michael Scherer, sees to think that press questions should go like this: why are you just so awesome? And most press question do go like that. The height of McCain absurdity in the press was the headline article in the Post, yesterday, that McCain said he would win the election in 2008. So awesome, so newsworthy! This election should track the further gross deterioration of a press that has become a sort of cancer in our system, high school princes and princesses who know nothing and have a supreme belief in their entrenched right to act as beauty pageant judges.

Posted by roger | January 8, 2008 11:51 AM

The question of the legitimacy of a German state was not is there such thing as Germans, but whether a German state could ever be a member in good standing of the international and European communities. At the end of WWII Germany had started two major wars in the past 30 years and at least three other wars in the previous 80 years, all to expand their territory. There was no question that they thought of themselves as German, first, then Bavarian or Prussian later. In Iraq I think it's still an open question.
As for the bases much of that is a matter of the real estate selected. Would the British like US bases in their country if they took 20+ acres in downtown London.
Also, Germany and Japan were defeated countries at the time we occupied them. The Germans in particular were terrified of thought of the Soviets crossing the Elbe to exact revenge for the crimes committed on the Eastern front. Some Germans were so preoccupied by the Soviets that they believed the Western Allies would rearm the Wehrmacht and continue rolling east to fight the Soviet Union then and there.

Posted by jon | January 8, 2008 11:53 AM

I would point out that there were acts of terrorism in Germany for several years after the occupation began--but those were largely alleviated because:

1) the Germans as a people were sick of fighting
2) they hated the Soviets more than the Western Allies
3)Marshall plan and other economic aid to help Germans get back on their feet

Posted by MNPundit | January 8, 2008 11:56 AM

1 more thing: Don't forget the mass population movements after WW2 (which IMO were a good thing for long term stability) Poles got thrown out of Germany and Eastern Poland, Germans got thrown out of eastern France, etc. But these were movements of people to separate nation states, not within a single state imposed after WW1.

And it's not like the Turks or Iranians/Persians could control the area of Iraq very well either.

Posted by MNPundit | January 8, 2008 12:01 PM

Iraq is not Viet Nam, as was so hotly debated a few months back by pale and pudgy History-Channel-watchers of all political stripes . And despite how eager you nerds are to trot out your enormous collections of World War II trivia, Iraq is not Germany or Japan, either.

Posted by James Gary | January 8, 2008 12:06 PM

At the end of WWII Germany had started two major wars in the past 30 years and at least three other wars in the previous 80 years, all to expand their territory.

I think it's back to Modern European History 101.

It's pretty silly to claim Germany "started" WWI. It's decisions certainly played an important role, but so did the similar decisions of all the other Great Powers.

And while the three very short wars leading up to German Unification were "sort of" started by Bismark, I believe that Emperor Napoleon III was just as eager for war, since he had a much larger professional army and was widely believed to be the heavy favorite.

Then afterward, unless my memory is playing tricks on me, "warlike" Germany didn't fight another war for the next 40 years until WWI, while nearly every other major power including the U.S. did, in some cases several.

In fact, if we're looking at (say) the 150 years prior to WWII, you can make a strong case that France was by far the world's most militarily aggressive nation.

I'm no historian and its been many, many years since I've read a European history book, but even I know this much.

Posted by RKU | January 8, 2008 12:07 PM

Anonymous and John both miss the point entirely and MY is correct. There was no INTERNAL debate about the legitimacy of the German state, the division into East and West was completely artificial, imposed by occupying powers, and was perceived as completely artificial and arbitrary by German contemporaries. Note, if nothing else, how rapidly East Germany dissolved the second the Soviets made it clear they would no longer enforce its existence. Iraq is the complete opposite situation - outsiders are trying to hold a country together that many of the inhabitants no longer believe in.

Posted by vanya | January 8, 2008 12:16 PM

One thing people never seem to mention - while the occupation of Western Germany went fairly smoothly, the Soviet occupation of Eastern Germany was far more troubled, including a massive nationwide uprising in 1953 that had to be put down by the Soviet military. East Germany, like Iraq today, also suffered from massive emigration of hundreds of thousands of professionals and qualified workers. So there may some truth that the US situation in Iraq is analogous to occupied Germany post WWII, but with the US playing the role of the Soviets, not the Western powers.

Posted by vanya | January 8, 2008 12:23 PM

McCain does not appreciate that it was the presence of American troops on Saudi soil that seems to have motivated bin Laden to pull 9/11. A long presence of Americans in Iraq would be viewed similarly.

I think more and more that this is not just tone-deafness but indication of a kind of rigid, cranky, presenility.

Posted by bob h | January 8, 2008 12:36 PM

Comparing occupied Iraq to occupied Germany and Japan is misguided because in contrast to Germany and Japan which had surrendered, radical Islamists have not surrended, and indeed their ranks are swelling due to the presence of foreign troops occupying Muslim lands: Iraq, Afghanistan, and especially US-backed Israeli troops occupying Palestine.

Posted by Eleanor Lamberson | January 8, 2008 12:54 PM

"And while the three very short wars leading up to German Unification were "sort of" started by Bismark, I believe that Emperor Napoleon III was just as eager for war, since he had a much larger professional army and was widely believed to be the heavy favorite."

As for the three wars, these were

1) The War against Denmark in 1864, which brought a region to Germany (Schleswig-Holstein) which was predominantly settled by ethnic Germans who felt suppressed by Denmark's move to abolish their internal autonomy.

2) The Austrian-Prussian of 1866 war which was, by all accounts, an intra-German war (and therefore is called "the German war" in Germany) since at that time Austria was still seen as part of Germany (at least the German-speaking part), and was allied with most of the other German states. The war ended without any territorial concessions by Austria (though Prussia annexed a couple of German states which had been allied with Austria).

2) The Franco-German war of 1871 which was solely started to remove the last obstacle to Germany's unification (something the French opposed simply because they saw it as ending the French hegemony on the continent) and not to annex French territory (it can be assumed that the French would have started this war anyway) . The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine (ethnically predominantly German, as it should be noted) had not be planned beforehand and happened against Bismarck's better judgment; he correctly feared that a revanchist France would become unnecessarily the arch-enemy of the united Germany, unlike Austria which he had intentionally treated so mildly after its defeat, simply had resigned to the new facts and later became Germany's staunchest (well, only) ally.

Posted by Patrick | January 8, 2008 1:07 PM

Vanya, I completely agree with your first post. The second one is funny and it would be great if someone asked McCain if he's talking about the Russian occupation. Still, the 1953 uprising lasted only two days and hostility towards the Russian occupation/power projection was much stronger in other countries of the eastern bloc.

Posted by novakant | January 8, 2008 1:18 PM

Vanya, your second post is excellent. The analogy should definitely be with the Soviet Union - it is like the neo-con world lives by the slogan, what would Brezhnev do? The best analogy is still the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, down to the soviet attempt to integrate women into public life, something the Islamist and their American backers opposed with might and main - before we turned on a dime and became a gal's best friend in the Middle East. Ah, and we are back to the Reagan position of gal's worst enemy in the Middle East, given our our new coziness with Sunni militias and Shi'ite paramilitaries.

Unfortunately, Americans really don't give a damn about Iraqi lives lost, or even American casualties - the soldiers have been thoroughly ghettoized, and, as the rightwinger like to point out, their casualties are like traffic accidents - in other words, they are dog food. That is, in fact, the general american attitude - which is why supporting the soldiers is such a sick joke in this country. So, the Dems need to pick up on what Americans care passionately about - money. At current prices, McCain's 100 year plan will cost about 14 to 20 trillion dollars. As bad economic times loom, the 200 billion that Bush demands we spend on Iraq should be wrapped around every Republicans neck. That is going to look less and less like party money we can just waste in tips and lap dances to give the Republicans their viagra enhanced woodies as the year progresses, I'd bet.

Posted by Roger | January 8, 2008 1:49 PM

I can't speak to the details of the immediate postwar period in Germany and Japan, but it's clear that following the formal surrender of the Axis militaries the occupation forces were able to very quickly establish orderly and peaceful conditions.

Neither details nor generalities, it seems.

Oh, and Tony Judt, please call your office.

Posted by JA | January 8, 2008 1:59 PM

In the past I've had enormous doubts about the cute redheaded assfucking lady's qualifications to be a serious commentator, but in the major media she's far better than average.

Perhaps "Better than the Cute Redheaded Ass-fucking Lady" awards should be given every year for eminence in commentating. Krugman makes the cut, but only a few others on the major newspapers, and no one at Time or Newsweek or the TV talk shows or news shows that I can think of. Olbermann is on a par with Cox at best.

It sounds like the Mendoza line, but it really isn't. More like the ready-for-prime-time line.

I still think that Time should have hired Digby as as their token uterus-person, but thank the Lord for small favors.

Posted by John Emerson | January 8, 2008 2:08 PM

yikes, was that really necessary, John?

Posted by novakant | January 8, 2008 2:29 PM

Ana Marie's unique path to the major media left her with some baggage, don't you think? But note that what I actually said about her was entirely positive -- though I only compared her with her actual MSM peers, which is sort of insulting.

It's not possible to be too cynical about the American media. If you think I'm wrong about that, tell me how.

Posted by John Emerson | January 8, 2008 2:33 PM

Well John, I am shocked. Shocked at what you have written. Because I always thought Ana Marie was blonde. Live and learn, I guess.

Posted by vanya | January 8, 2008 3:08 PM

Within just a couple of years the dawn of the Cold War shifted the main purpose of US military personnel in Germany and Japan away from occupation work and toward defense of those countries from the Soviet threat.

Within a couple of years? Try within a couple of months.

Posted by Stefan | January 8, 2008 3:44 PM

I would point out that there were acts of terrorism in Germany for several years after the occupation began

No, there weren't. This is a complete myth. There was simply no campaign of resistance to the Allied occupation in Germany after the surrender. As historian Daniel Benjamin pointed out in Slate a few years back:

There was no major campaign of sabotage. There was no destruction of water mains or energy plants worth noting....The Army history records that while there were the occasional anti-occupation leaflets and graffiti, the GIs had reason to feel safe. When an officer in Hesse was asked to investigate rumors that troops were being attacked and castrated, he reported back that there had not been a single attack against an American soldier in four months of occupation. As the distinguished German historian Golo Mann summed it up in The History of Germany Since 1789, "The [Germans'] readiness to work with the victors, to carry out their orders, to accept their advice and their help was genuine; of the resistance which the Allies had expected in the way of 'werewolf' units and nocturnal guerrilla activities, there was no sign."

....According to America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, a new study by former Ambassador James Dobbins, who had a lead role in the Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo reconstruction efforts, and a team of RAND Corporation researchers, the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germany—and Japan, Haiti, and the two Balkan cases—was zero.

www.slate.com/id/2087768

Posted by Stefan | January 8, 2008 4:05 PM

besides Joe Biden and the Kurds, does anyone want to actually break up Iraq?

Well, a few million Kurds. But they don't count, do they, John?

Posted by lemuel pitkin | January 8, 2008 4:48 PM

I will reinforce Stefan on the resistance to the US occupations. In the run up to the Iraq invasion several administration spokesmen -- including the Sectary of State -- talked about the werewolves in post WW II Germany. But according to the official US army history of the occupation there was not a single documented case of US troops being killed by the werewolves.

the story I loved to tell about the occupation of Germany at the start of the Iraq war was personal.
I was an Army brat in Germany in 1955 when the occupation ended. One of the jokes going around the US bases at that time was what do you think the first thing the Germans will do after the end of the occupation. The answer was take the chlorine out of the town water because it ruined the taste of the beer. In reality the local breweries used their own water supply to avoid the chlorine. But it demonstrated how complete the occupation of Germany was and how the problem was obvious in Iraq that the US was not going to have enough troops in Iraq to assure a peaceful occupation.

Posted by spencer | January 8, 2008 5:22 PM

"also to address the mixed feelings that Iraqis greet the prospect of perpetual American presence."

Mixed feelings?

Mixed feelings?

WTF?

Get a clue, girl! At least eighty percent of the Iraqi population HATE the US and probably sixty percent would like every US soldier in Iraq dead!

Is that "mixed" enough for you?

If these media clowns can see advanced senility when it's in their faces, it's no surprise the rest of the US population can't, either.

If McCain wants us to stay in Iraq, send him over there and have him walk through Fallujah, Basra, and a few other places with no armor, no support gunships, and no company of Marines around him.

That will stop that talk fast, for no better reason than he'd be dead in thirty minutes.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 8, 2008 10:34 PM

s/b "can't see advanced senility" (like I have).

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 8, 2008 10:35 PM