Külügyi Szemle - A Teleki László Intézet Külpolitikai Tanulmányok Központja folyóirata - 2006 (5. évfolyam)
2006 / 1-2. szám - TÁVOL-KELET - Gergely Attila: A "japán párhuzam" - amerikai nemzetépítés Japántól Irakig
Résumé The "Japanese Parallel" - American Nation-Building From Japan to Iraq Since the first administration of George W. Bush started immediate preparations for the occupation of Iraq, and the National Security Strategy of September 2002 stated that "America is now threatened less by conquering states than by failing ones", the opinion has come widely into circulation that American policies in post-war Japan could be taken as an "analogy", even as a "model", for legitimizing and guiding American nationbuilding endeavours across the globe. To support their stance, proponents have usually raised, or implied, four arguments: 1./ post-war American policies in Japan were eminently successful, therefore can be regarded as legitimizing and informing similar efforts in our days, 2./ it was a unilaterally American undertaking, 3./ it was implemented in a non-western context, 4./ it had nothing to do with the Clinton administration. As part of a research program launched by Teleki Institute and by Kodolanyi College in 2005 on "State Failure and Nation Building", the paper first explores how the "Japanese analogy" emerged in political and professional discourse, it analyzes the arguments for and against the analogy in historical terms, finally it examines how a reconsideration of the "Japanese analogy" and that of the debate around it could contribute to a broader agenda of research on state-failure and nation-building. The paper concludes by proposing three implications for further scrutiny: it is not necessarily and exclusively the "failure" or "success" of a state that may pose a threat to international order and security, and may justify nation-building or other kinds of intervention; criteria for the latter may be more relevantly derived from the inability of a state for renewal and for countervailing disruptive drifts (often masked as "success") by relying on internal resources; an ability for renewal and its assessment cannot be based solely on functional considerations, it cannot ignore normative criteria - without admitting the role and the autonomy of the latter eventually unavoidable interventions cannot be viable in the long run, and can be justified only insofar as they serve the recovery of an endogenous capability for renewal. Die „japanische Parallele" - amerikanischer Aufbau von Nationen von Japan bis zum Irak Danach, als die erste Regierung von George W. Bush die unmittelbaren Vorbereitungen zur Besetzung des Iraks begonnen hatte, und als in der Strategie von der Sicherheit der Nation, die im September 2002 veröffentlicht wurde, die These erschien, dass „Amerika heute nicht so sehr von den erobernden, sondern von den ein Fiasko erleidenden Staa110 Külügyi Szemle
