Source: Carnegie

For Immediate Release: April 11, 2003
Contact: Jayne Brady, 202-939-2372, jbrady@ceip.org
OR Carmen MacDougall, 202-939-2319, cmacdougall@ceip.org

Unilateral Nation-Building and Surrogate Regimes Spell Failure

Democratic nation-building is among the most ambitious and difficult of foreign policy undertakings for the United States, notes a new policy brief, "Lessons from the Past: The American Record in Nation-Building," by Carnegie Endowment Senior Associate Minxin Pei and Junior Fellow Sara Kasper. The policy brief gives an overview of U.S. attempts at nation-building-then analyzes the critical variables for success, based on the results.

The United States made 16 attempts at nation-building over the past century. But ten years after the departure of American forces, democracy was sustained in only four countries. Two of these followed total defeat and surrender (Japan and West Germany), and two were in tiny countries (Grenada and Panama).

The record also reveals that unilateral nation-building by the United States has an even lower success rate. Following American military intervention, targeted nations are usually governed by American-supported surrogate regimes or direct American administration. The use of interim surrogate regimes has produced a record of complete failure. No American-supported regime made the transition to democracy, and only one case of direct American administration (in Japan) succeeded in ushering-in democracy.

The policy brief concludes that in Iraq the Bush administration should support a multilateral reconstruction strategy centered on bolstering political legitimacy and economic burden-sharing under the auspices of the United Nations.

Minxin Pei, senior associate and codirector of the China Program, specializes in Chinese domestic politics. His research covers a range of subjects, including economic reform, U.S. relations with Asia, and democratization in developing countries.

Sara Kasper is a junior fellow in the China Program. She received her B.A. in politics from Messiah College in Pennsylvania.

The policy brief is available only on the web, in draft form at www.ceip.org/iraq.

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