What Nineteenth-Century Europeans Can Teach America About Peacekeeping Occupations
Rather Than Rendering a Defeated Post-Napoleonic France Dependent, Victorious Allies Sought to Create Lasting Stability
How do you win the peace?
The recent American military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq highlight the risks of “winning the war, but losing the peace,” to borrow the subtitle of Ali A. Alawi’s book on Iraq. Failed occupations have tremendous costs in money and lives, while exacerbating political instability in occupied nations.
Those seeking to do occupation right often look to the post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan. But the challenge of making peace after war was most successfully addressed by the first modern peacekeeping occupation, more than …
