The Development Of Freedom In Germany And Japan

After the Allies conquered Germany and Japan at the end of the Second World War they were able to administer and rebuild both countries peacefully, within a few years allowing each to resume independent and stable self-government and economic progress.

The example thus set is rare in history. Almost every other documented precedent, from Roman Britain to today's Central Asia and Iraq, teaches a woefully different lesson: that when strong governmental control -even, in the limit, dictatorial control -is removed, chaos ensues.

In AD410 the Roman emperor Honorarius told the Romano-British aristocracy that he could no longer maintain government in their island, and then withdrew the remainder of his army for service on his empire's crumbling German borders. The result was a collapse in Britain into fragmentation and anarchy, bringing 300 years of violent instability. The cities built by the Romans fell into decay; Londinium, today's City of London, was an abandoned ruin, outside the weed hung walls of which sprang the mud-hut squatter camps of waves of immigrants from recently flooded lands in Saxony and Denmark.

Some historians now try to claim that there was no"Dark Age" after Rome's demise, but the truth is that a typical historical dynamic had occurred: once a strong organising and policing hand had been lifted, familiar forces of human nature reasserted themselves. According to Thomas Hobbes; moral and civil restraints"without the terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like . . . if there be no power erected, or not great enough for our security, every man will and may lawfully rely on his own strength and art for caution against all other men."

This view -pessimistic or realistic, according to how you take it -appears to be borne out to the letter by Britain in the 5th century as by Afghanistan, the Caucasus and Iraq today. The collapse of Soviet control over its southern territories has lifted the lid from a mass of frictions and rivalries based on man's usual grounds for strife, namely ethnicity and religion. The removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq reveals that country for what it is: an artificially constructed entity in which tribal, ethnic and religious differences have explosive potential, at present mainly directed at a temporary larger enemy, the" coalition", but doubtless waiting their time to turn attention inwards.

Why were Germany and Japan different in the late 1940s? Because the defeat and devastation they suffered was total, and included the paralysis of the civilian population along with the obliteration of any capacity for resistance. In Iraq the invading coalition took great care to leave as much of the country intact as was consistent with the defeat of Saddam's military, but this merely aided the latter in its clever ploy of hiding weapons and melting into the civilian population to effect an insurgency once the invaders' guard had dropped. (This is not to say that Saddam's army is the only insurgent force in Iraq, but the liberal supply of guns and explosives directed at coalition forces suggests that it is a major part of it.) Such are the harsh facts that history teaches: anarchy will ensue unless the agency that destroys a government -of whatever kidney -can render further trouble impossible by overwhelming power, and can then swiftly impose a better alternative to what was destroyed.