History can repeat itself

IT’S undeniable - the coverage of American foreign policy makes for grim reading. The lack of an exit strategy, the ongoing violence and the failure to build a credible administration are common themes. "Americans are losing the victory", "How we botched the occupation" and "Bin Laden has exceeded even his wildest dreams" are three headlines that stand out.

You’re probably unsurprised, but two of these are not what they seem. "Americans are losing the victory in Europe" was the message of Life magazine in January 7, 1945, and "How we botched the German occupation" was the leader in the Saturday Evening Post of 26 January, 1946. The Bin Laden article, by Simon Jenkins, appeared in the Times on 19 May 2004.

"Never has American prestige in Europe been lower", continued John Dos Passos’ Life article, which highlighted the unrest and disorder that followed the allied victory in Western Europe.

The Saturday Evening Post article concentrated on the apparent lack of a strategy to extricate American troops from Europe. "We have got into this German job without understanding what we were tackling or why", wrote the journalist, Demaree Bess.

Jenkins’ sentiments in the Times are similar. "The victors are enduring the most appalling hangover. They can smash nations but not rebuild them... [They] cannot walk and chew gum at the same time."

That article, and those from the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, give great emphasis to the here and now, and are less interested in taking the long view. In 1946 the Americans were facing twin tasks of rebuilding Japan and Germany without any track record in nation-building, save their own. In 2004 American policy makers can look back to the lessons learned in Europe and Asia over the past half-century. Iraq is not Germany, but neither is it Vietnam. There may be resistance to the coalition occupation, but it isn’t the Vietcong.

As Robert Kagan wrote in 2002, the invasion of Iraq "is a historical pivot. Whether a post-Hussein Iraq succeeds or fails will shape the course of Middle Eastern politics, and therefore world politics, both now and for the remainder of this century." Looking back to American involvement in other post-war settlements Kagan reminded his readers about the need for a long-term commitment to the Middle East. "American policy in Japan, as in Germany, was ‘nation-building’ on a grand scale, and with no exit strategy. Almost six decades later there are still American troops on Japanese soil."

Completing an assessment of the Coalition Provisional Authority and its success at nation-building in Iraq cannot be done today, nor on July 1, nor next year. If Kagan is correct we have both to be optimistic about the eventual outcome and realistic about the timescale.

While it is facile to claim that sentiments expressed in the immediate aftermath of the liberation of Europe are transferable to today’s situation in Iraq, it is undeniable that in both cases impatient critics and war-weary commentators began to pick apart the post-conflict reconstruction within months of the cessation of hostilities.

Reconstruction, as the Allies found in Germany and Japan, is painfully slow and fraught with risk. Back then if they had failed, the prospects would have been bleak. Allen Dulles wrote: "Any settlement has its risks. No hazards are greater, however, than a continuance of the present process of disintegration in Germany - political, material, social and spiritual.

"From the outset of occupation, the United States has sought to introduce democracy at the ‘grass roots’… Probably the best achievement of our occupation has been the development of local self-government, and the help given to Germans in the setting up of their own Lander governments. Encouragement has properly been given to the free play of party organisations of all political complexions, and to the formation of labour unions."

Looking at the current situation in Iraq it is clear that the challenges that the Allies faced in 1946 are broadly similar to those before the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the incoming Interim Administration. Scratch the surface of the broadcast news headlines from Iraq and it is apparent that real progress is being made on the ground in each of the areas identified by Dulles in post-war Germany.

There is considerable material and social rehabilitation. Neighbouring governments, including that of the United Arab Emirates, are working with the new Iraqi Ministry of Labour on employment and social work issues, with a report in May of the opening of 28 training and jobs centres across the country. The ministry hopes to be providing social work care for some 300,000 families by the end of the year, up from the 80,000 families and elderly folk that it is already looking after.

There are encouraging signs of the creation of new political structures. There are regular reports of successful elections to new local councils. Rather than wait for the creation of an electoral register, coalition officials have had to improvise, in some areas using Hussein era ration cards. This has had various effects, including the rapid enfranchisement of women. Votes for women may no longer be a novelty in the West, but they are in Iraq and in its neighbours. The Kuwaiti Cabinet last week approved a bill that would allow women to stand and vote in elections.

Even in the chaos of the West Bank there are tentative steps being taken towards democracy. The Palestinian Authority announced on May 10 that it would roll out a series of ballots for local councils, starting later this summer in Jericho. Local elections have not been held for 30 years in the West Bank. This may not be dramatic change, but it is real and sustainable, and will enable other structures of civil society to be built on the foundations that are now being laid.

Whatever the merits of George Bush’s military strategy before, during or after the invasion of Iraq, and whatever the shortcomings of the Coalition Provisional Authority, it is clear that the number of states in the Middle East with democratic institutions, the rule of law and viable and representative civic institutions will be greater next year and the year after, than last year and the year before.

It is also clear that with a US presidential election in November there are many people, who oppose this trend, who will use every available opportunity to cause America to wobble and withdraw. The consequences of such an event would be as calamitous for the Middle East today as it would have been for Western Europe in 1946. Robert Kagan was absolutely correct when he warned in 2002 that: "If the United States goes into Iraq, it better be ready to stay there for as long as it takes."