American Nation Building

Brazinsky explains why South Korea was one of the few postcolonial nations that achieved rapid economic development and democratization by the end of the twentieth century. He contends that a distinctive combination of American initiatives and Korean agency enabled South Korea's stunning transformation. Expanding the framework of traditional diplomatic history, Brazinsky examines not only state-to-state relations, but also the social and cultural interactions between Americans and South Koreans. He shows how Koreans adapted, resisted, and transformed American influence and promoted socioeconomic change that suited their own aspirations. Ultimately, Brazinsky argues, Koreans' capacity to tailor American institutions and ideas to their own purposes was the most important factor in the making of a democratic South Korea.

The post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan set standards for postconflict nation-building that have not since been matched. Only in recent years has the United States has felt the need to participate in similar transformations, but it is now facing one of the most challenging prospects since the 1940s: Iraq. The authors review seven case studies--Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan--and seek lessons about what worked well and what did not. Then, they examine the Iraq situation in light of these lessons. Success in Iraq will require an extensive commitment of financial, military, and political resources for a long time. The United States cannot afford to contemplate early exit strategies and cannot afford to leave the job half completed.

For years, the so-called better-war school of thought has argued that the United States built a legitimate and viable non-Communist state in South Vietnam in the latter years of the Vietnam War and that it was only the military abandonment of this state that brought down the Republic of Vietnam. But Andrew J. Gawthorpe, through a detailed and incisive analysis, shows that, in fact, the United States failed in its efforts at nation building and had not established a durable state in South Vietnam. Drawing on newly opened archival collections and previously unexamined oral histories with dozens of U.S. military officers and government officials, To Build as Well as Destroy demonstrates that the United States never came close to achieving victory in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Gawthorpe tells a story of policy aspirations and practical failures that stretches from Washington, D.C., to the Vietnamese villages in which the United States implemented its nationbuilding strategy through the Office of Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support known as CORDS. Structural factors that could not have been overcome by the further application of military power thwarted U.S. efforts to build a viable set of non-Communist political, economic, and social institutions in South Vietnam. To Build as Well as Destroy provides the most comprehensive account yet of the largest and best-resourced nation-building program in U.S. history. Gawthorpe's analysis helps contemporary policy makers, diplomats, and military officers understand the reasons for this failure. At a moment in time when American strategists are grappling with military and political challenges in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, revisiting the historical lessons of Vietnam is a worthy endeavor.

The American nation-building creed -- Reconstruction after civil war -- Reconstruction after empire -- Reconstruction after fascism -- Reconstruction after Communist revolution -- Reconstruction after September 11 -- Conclusion: The future of nation-building.

Independence and Nation-Building in Latin America: Race and Identity in the Crucible of War reconceptualizes the history of the break-up of colonial empires in Spanish and Portuguese America. In doing so, the authors critically examine competing interpretations and bring to light the most recent scholarship on social, cultural, and political aspects of the period. Did American rebels clearly push for independence, or did others truly advocate autonomy within weakened monarchical systems? Rather than glorify rebellions and "patriots," the authors begin by emphasizing patterns of popular loyalism in the midst of a fracturing Spanish state. In contrast, a slave-based economy and a relocated imperial court provided for relative stability in Portuguese Brazil. Chapters pay attention to the competing claims of a variety of social and political figures at the time across the variegated regions of Central and South America and the Caribbean. Furthermore, while elections and the rise of a new political culture are explored in some depth, questions are raised over whether or not a new liberal consensus had taken hold. Through translated primary sources and cogent analysis, the text provides an update to conventional accounts that focus on politics, the military, and an older paradigm of Creole-peninsular friction and division. Previously marginalized actors, from Indigenous peoples to free people of color, often take center-stage. This concise and accessible text will appeal to scholars, students, and all those interested in Latin American History and Revolutionary History.

Why has the US so dramatically failed in Afghanistan since 2001? Dominant explanations have ignored the bureaucratic divisions and personality conflicts inside the US state. This book rectifies this weakness in commentary on Afghanistan by exploring the significant role of these divisions in the US’s difficulties in the country that meant the battle was virtually lost before it even began. The main objective of the book is to deepen readers understanding of the impact of bureaucratic politics on nation-building in Afghanistan, focusing primarily on the Bush Administration. It rejects the ’rational actor’ model, according to which the US functions as a coherent, monolithic agent. Instead, internal divisions within the foreign policy bureaucracy are explored, to build up a picture of the internal tensions and contradictions that bedevilled US nation-building efforts. The book also contributes to the vexed issue of whether or not the US should engage in nation-building at all, and if so under what conditions.

Why Nation-Building Matters establishes a framework for building security forces, economic development, and political consolidation that blends soft and hard power into a deployable and effective package.

A new and comprehensive look at the reasons behind successful or failed nation building Nation Building presents bold new answers to an age-old question. Why is national integration achieved in some diverse countries, while others are destabilized by political inequality between ethnic groups, contentious politics, or even separatism and ethnic war? Traversing centuries and continents from early nineteenth-century Europe and Asia to Africa from the turn of the twenty-first century to today, Andreas Wimmer delves into the slow-moving forces that encourage political alliances to stretch across ethnic divides and build national unity. Using datasets that cover the entire world and three pairs of case studies, Wimmer’s theory of nation building focuses on slow-moving, generational processes: the spread of civil society organizations, linguistic assimilation, and the states’ capacity to provide public goods. Wimmer contrasts Switzerland and Belgium to demonstrate how the early development of voluntary organizations enhanced nation building; he examines Botswana and Somalia to illustrate how providing public goods can bring diverse political constituencies together; and he shows that the differences between China and Russia indicate how a shared linguistic space may help build political alliances across ethnic boundaries. Wimmer then reveals, based on the statistical analysis of large-scale datasets, that these mechanisms are at work around the world and explain nation building better than competing arguments such as democratic governance or colonial legacies. He also shows that when political alliances crosscut ethnic divides and when most ethnic communities are represented at the highest levels of government, the general populace will identify with the nation and its symbols, further deepening national political integration. Offering a long-term historical perspective and global outlook, Nation Building sheds important new light on the challenges of political integration in diverse countries.