The Rise and Fall of American Nation Building

The Rise and Fall of American Nation Building: From Germany and Japan to Afghanistan and Iraq?

Ambassador James Dobbins, Senior Fellow, Rand Corporation.

Ambassador James Dobbins is a senior fellow and distinguished chair in Diplomacy and Security at the RAND Corporation. He has held State Department and White House posts including assistant secretary of State for Europe, special assistant to the president for the Western Hemisphere, special adviser to the president, secretary of State for the Balkans, and ambassador to the European Community. Dobbins has served on numerous crisis management and diplomatic troubleshooting assignments as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia for the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. In 2013 he returned to the State Department to become the Obama administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, returning to RAND in 2014. Dobbins is author of the memoir, Foreign Service: Five Decades on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy.

Sponsored by the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding

Recorded October 11, 2018

[garretttedeman]

Fascinating talk on U.S. strategies in post-conflict rebuilding of Germany and Japan, as well as how later efforts were not quite up to that initial high standard.

[achekzaishukria]

Nations are build by helping the people of that nation, not by destroying and demolition of it

[donn]

He completely ignores the differences between countries that the US intervened in. It is constantly me me me, US failed because they didn't do this this and this. Does he really think that the internal aspect of each individual countries does not matter? does he think that all countries are the same? Take a step back, dude