To be fair to the once axis powers, Japan & Germany, they were behemoths and already had the culture/etc to kick ass on the world stage. Not so much for say Iraq ....but SK's rise vs NK is all you need to know to see how long it takes for nations to develop. Used to be NK who was the more industrial/technological nation....now (or decades ago actually) SK is one of the top economic powers around. The threat of cold war nuclear holocaust was one hell of a thing
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What successful democracies has US established abroad?
- Thread starter wild wild rice
- Start date
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Yet somehow a country's propensity for oil exports does not correlate very well with democracy.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=oil+and+democracy&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart
One of the great mysteries of the world, I guess.
Megalosaro
Banned
Was the Hawaiian government a legitimate democracy, though? I was always under the impression it was a puppet government
indigo lily
Member
I knew this would come up and cringed.
As a Grenadian, what Reagan did during the Grenadian Revolution was extremely problematic... I'd encourage people to watch the documentary The House on Coco Road for less of a "Ronald Reagan Library" account of what actually happened.
TestOfTide
Banned
So what was the big OIL motive in the Iran Nuclear Deal?
First, Germany and Japan issued unconditional surrenders.
There was no way hardliners could admit anything but that they had been defeated. And with their infrastructures destroyed, rebuilding efforts allowed the countries to be remade from dictatorships into representative governments.
Also, time, money, and the will to make a dedicated change.
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
aside from obvious answer of Germany and Japan, more boring answer is that the United States has used soft power to help spread liberal democracy as a normative good and promote it abroad, at least when it also aligns with other interests.
TDLink
Member
Sure. My larger point is America overthrew their government. They ultimately became a part of the US and its Democratic system after briefly pretending to keep it separate with its own Democratic government. I think it applies as them successfully bringing Hawaii under democracy even if Hawaii didn't maintain itself as its own separate country and it was in essence conquered.
TomWaitsForNoMan
Banned
Until the US dropped more bombs on them than were used in the entire Pacific theatre of World War 2, destroying not only almost their entire industrial capacity but levelling almost every significant building in the north and killing over 1.5 million civilians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Bombing_of_North_Korea
Or Iran in 1953... and countless others.
The US doesn't export democracy, but an economic system. The form of government doesn't matter as long as the system supports trade and profits for actors within the system, especially for actors from the US side. That's also why the US was way more aggressive in fighting communism than communism was in fighting capitalism - communism doesn't need new markets to survive, capitalism does. What it doesn't need is democracies, therefore you see a lot of semi-stable dictatorships and others
Japan is the only straightforward one I can think of. They did a great job too.
Aside from that....eh, well....Germany was already democratic before Hitler took over, so it was more a return to normalcy for the East, while West Germany was a reintegration effort.
Aside from that...welp, nothing.
Aside from that....eh, well....Germany was already democratic before Hitler took over, so it was more a return to normalcy for the East, while West Germany was a reintegration effort.
Aside from that...welp, nothing.
titiklabingapat
Member
The Philippines is a shit show but you can't deny that it's a vibrant and pretty successful democracy. Especially as the economy finally gets better.
Frankfurter
Member
Only for 14 years, though, and many of those were quite unstable (hyperinflation in parts of the 1920s, 1929-33).
I was talking about postwar Koreas, NK recovered relatively quickly and did better than the south until the mid 70's. Fast forward to today and SK is one of the top economies around meanwhile NK is struggling for scraps from their overlords
Dictator93
Member
It was a functioning democracy in terms of representation - more so than post-war BRD. It was marred though with political violence and a lack of consensus building around centrist politics. It was heavily factioned and split along extreme ideological lines (SD against KDP for example not uniting against the NSDAP). It also had a flawed constitutional state of emergency as the Machtergreifung shows.
It was functioning in its structure, but the society occupying that governmenal structure and forming the day-to-day politics in the floor of the parliament was full of blockading and upheaval. IMO, I find it wonderful though that there could be such diverse representation in the party landscape back then - such a shame of course that the fucking nazis were a part of that diverse landscape.
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Regarding the topic at hand though, it out to be noted that there were defacto single party rule and authoritarian politics in a lot of the post-war federal republics or democracies set up by the US: Japan, South Korea, and to an extent the Federal Republic of Germany. It took decades for their politics to diversify to actually represent the diversity of political opinions in their respective electorates - not being able to vote red or be red in a democracy IMO shows how it was disenfranchising.
Yes. Current events should not wipe out decades of post and pre Marcos democracy. Hell... At least they've had two women presidents. We cant even vouch for one ;p
Germany was divided into two separate countries, West and East, with one side becoming democratic under US control and the other falling under Soviet control. Germany didn't become fully democratic until the Soviet Union collapsed in the 90s.
US wrote a new constitution for Japan (still used to this day) which specifically forbade war for non-defensive purposes. Instead, the US would take care of their security concerns. Japan was pretty much under control of the Pacific Army General MacArthur while the US maintained a heavy military presence up to the early 50s, but after that there were no puppet leaders that I'm aware of.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
You're missing the point. That doesn't refute what I said.
TestOfTide
Banned
You haven't had a point other than "we shouldn't trust the US to ever help the Middle East, because Oil".
My point has always been that there can be numerous motivations that could supersede any nefarious Oil-based motives, especially as the western world is moving away from Oil.
I know goddamnit. Quit reminding.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Did you miss the part where I cited some of the times in history where that hasn't happened? Our terrible track record this far? Or the studies that suggest it just doesn't work out that way despite our so called best intentions?
There could be. But history tells a different story. We are nowhere near weaned off of oil yet.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
It's not so much the unconditional surrender thing, it's more that there weren't organized forces of resistance to the new government with external support. If the Germans had surrendered, but were surrounded by other fascist countries on all sides who were spilling across the borders with cash, guns and foreign volunteer fighters, then the occupation of Germany would have involved years of insurgency, just like Afghanistan and Iraq.
The second main difference is the absence of a strong ideological component. Nazi ideology was a flash in the pan. It appeared and was snuffed out inside of 20 years. Now all you have is trace remnants from people who don't really understand it and people who get called Nazis but are actually just racists. There was no Japanese imperial cult that took firm root in other countries, there were no Nazi states outside of Germany. There was nobody else to look to for a sense of legitimacy and kinship. When the Emperor of Japan was going along with the occupation, that was all she wrote. There weren't foreign imperial Japanese priests calling for a holy war and condemning the invaders. The Nazi allies, loosely considered Fascists, were ideologically divergent and flocked together only out of political opportunism. Even they had also been occupied with the exception of Franco's Spain. Nazism had promised the world and had instead been thoroughly discredited and crushed.
The third main difference is that all of these countries were utterly devastated and their population of able bodied young (and also old) men were severely depleted. These sorts of people would have been the lifeblood of any resistance but the most ideologically fanatical had already gone to war six years earlier huge numbers of them had died or been wounded. The people were physically and psychologically exhausted and needed to fully rely on their occupying forces for basic necessities like food and shelter.
The reconstruction you mention is also part of it, but there's a difference in scale here too. Germany and Japan were smashed to pieces and had to be put back together. Iraq and Afghanistan were comparatively less devastated, but also comparatively less prosperous to begin with.