This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 6, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown. Military occupations usually fail.

Author David Edelstein has tried to explain what Military Occupations usually fail.

Author David Edelstein has tried to explain why most occupations failed and others succeeded

in his book Occupational Hazards.

We spoke following a Cato book forum, May 29th.

You say that threat environment is a key variable in being able to predict success of an occupation.

What does that mean?

Well, when I talk about threat environment,

I'm talking about the situation

that an occupied territory faces.

So is there an external threat to their security? Is there some

internal threat that threatens to tear the society or state apart or is there

no threat at all? And the essential argument I make is that military

occupations have been most successful when there is in fact an external threat

that is perceived to be greater than the threat of the occupying power itself.

And the occupying power can thereby provide protection to the occupied population that they actually welcome and are therefore willing to

tolerate being being occupied. You said in the forum that Japan and Germany

would be exceptions rather than the rule. Why is that? A lot of people point to

Japan and Germany and say you know if we just had a million boots on the ground

everything would be hunky-dory in Iraq. Why are they the exception and not the rule?

Well, I think the difference again goes to this threat environment variable, which is that in Germany you

had the threat of the Soviet Union, which was marching westward across Central and

...