1 mistake of the US and USSR in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is that they never planned to be permanent rulers and these were lands at the edge of the world that few people in Washington or Moscow cared about–world history and facts

There’s no secret formula to defeating an insurgency. What it takes is a commitment from the occupier to devote massive resources to the undertaking over a long span of time. The mistake of the US and USSR in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is that they never planned to be permanent rulers and these were lands at the edge of the world that few people in Washington or Moscow cared about. They had much less skin in the game than the Iraqis or Afghans. So the insurgents could just wait out the occupiers while sustaining low levels of violence.

One place where guerrillas were decisively defeated is Taiwan, where Japan successfully pacified the country over the long term with a carrot and stick approach. When Japan annexed the islands from Qing China in 1895, the locals were not happy about coming under foreign rule and predictably rose up. Japan responded with extreme violence.

Japanese troops made sure to kill every guerrilla they could find and all of their supporters. Sometimes they would simply massacre entire villages to make sure everyone knew they were serious. But in 1895 as in 2018, it’s not enough to just inflict some violence from time to time. Japan had to make sure it could ensure order across the island, so Tokyo brought in a massive occupying force of about 100,000 men to control a tiny island of less than 3 million people. There was a Japanese soldier for every 20–30 people on Taiwan. Meanwhile, even at the height of the Surge in Iraq, there was just one American for every 170 or so Iraqis. 

This was a problem Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki pointed out before the invasion, that it would take hundreds of thousands, not a single hundred thousand Americans to police Iraq after Saddam was defeated. He was fired for his inconvenient estimate but he proved to be right. Defeating insurgencies requires at least a certain number of boots on the ground as a baseline. However, there’s another element that the US missed which was even more key to Japan’s success. Not every problem can be solved with sticks. Carrots are even more important.

The Japanese gave huge incentives to collaborate. They literally brought modernity to Taiwan. Where before it was a marginal, rural region on the outskirts of the Chinese world, it became a place that Japan lavished attention on. The new administrators brought trains to link people, factories to bring new jobs, education and seemingly miraculous vaccines among other things. The most critical part to Japan’s success in Taiwan was this. If you stayed in your place and didn’t rebel, life got a whole lot better. And even then, the insurgency stayed strong for over 20 years. Guerrillas aren’t invincible, but it takes a huge commitment to defeat them.

By the time WWII rolled around after nearly 50 years of Japanese rule, most of Taiwan was a loyal core territory of the Empire. Large numbers of people from the island volunteered for service in the Imperial Japanese Army, and even the aboriginal Taiwanese, who resisted the longest, became noted as some of Japan’s fiercest and most loyal soldiers. The last Japanese holdout to surrender in 1974 was actually a Taiwanese aborigine from the Amis people.

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