| Abstract: | Abstract The American occupations of Germany and Japan have many lessons to offer the United States today as it contemplates creating new political orders in Afghanistan and Iraq. The lessons that are to be drawn are not, however, the ones that are usually drawn by the current administration and others. First and foremost, a systematic comparison with the German and Japanese experiences clearly shows that the preconditions for democratization are not present in the contemporary cases, suggesting that the United States needs to recalibrate its objectives. Instead of seeking democratization, the United States should try first to create stability, even as it creates at least the institutional forms on which a more pluralistic political system can eventually be erected. The U.S. experience with state building in the Philippines and South Korea may be more relevant today than the German and Japanese cases. Other lessons that can be drawn from the German and Japanese as well as other past U.S. experiences with occupying countries include: the importance of finding a common threat that can unite enough indigenous elites that order can be established; integrating the new states into regional systems; and perhaps most importantly, using the instruments of transitional justice (trials, purges, censorship, etc.) in a fashion calculated to rehabilitate and incorporate supporters of the old regimes while delivering a modicum of justice. |
