this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Nation building is, apparently, difficult.
After watching it go wrong repeatedly, I think we need to professionalize the process.
I would start by putting a dedicated person in charge about 3 years before the invasion.
Day 1 is establish food, water, and safety. Flood the country with trained police (not soldiers). Deliver food and water to each individual (to prevent local warlords from taking it.) Take down dangerous buildings.
Day 2 would be housing and medical care. Build simple, but safe housing. Expect people will love in it for 50 years. Build and staff medical clinics and hospitals.
Day 3 remove rubble from roads.
Day 4 build prison and court systems. There will be some very bad people that need to be removed from society. Put them on public trial, but not show trials. Everyone will be watching, so don't fuck this up.
Day 10 or so, start schools for educating the children. Teach adults to read, write, and basic math. Educate with an open hand, few will trust the government at the start. These can start as glorified day cares, so adults can focus on fixing things.
Often, dictatorships split the population into groups to keep them from working together. A truth and reconciliation group will be needed, similar to in South Africa.
After it seems there will be no genocide, then fix the transportation system to allow easy and free movement of the people and goods.
Adjust plans for local conditions.
Do not put locals in charge until after things stabilize and they have been investigated.
Do not allow anyone connected to the dictator to run things. This includes their cleaning lady and caterer.
Get the local economy back to working. Very slowly reduce outside support for things that can be made locally after ensuring there is a local supply by the government buying the final needed amount. (Consume locally or export.)
Investigate and prosecute corruption.
After a couple months, setup free and fair elections at the local level. As things go well, expand to the next higher level of government. Keep the expansion slow (like every 10 years). This allows those not affiliated with the director to build skills and learn to not be corrupt. This will help locals express their needs and coordinate.
In 30 or 40 years, of all goes well, pull out and let them self govern. Invite them to join your country with unrestricted movement of people (so you better have done a good job.)
The 30 - 40 years part is key. You need to support them for a generation. You need to let the remnants of the old power structure get old and die. The country has to be full of people that were raised with the benefits of the new government.
You can look at Japan for a great example of this type of success.
Soldiers are generally disciplined and trained to a high standard.
Depending on the “Democracy” the police force may be a gang of fascist wife beating dog shooting thugs that flunked out of basic training or failed their psych test trying to become a soldier.
Perhaps military police are the answer as the best peacekeeping force? I dont know. I shudder to think how many war crimes some police forces could perform on foreign soil, unsupervised, if they don’t even have to pretend to be accountable as they do at home.
Those are some great points. Both police and soldiers have been both the best and the worst.
Some qualities I would like:
Isn't the issue of not allowing anyone connected to the dictator to run things is that you basically have absolutely nobody local who knows how to run things?
Shoe horning the way your country works into theirs could cause quite a few problems.
Correct. I attempt to resolve that issue by allowing local politicians to build skills at lower levels of government. It may not be sufficient, but I anticipate that will be obvious after opening one or two higher levels of government.