Review: Occupational Hazards

Abstract

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS Success and Failure in Military Occupation David M. Edelstein Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. 235Pp7 US$35.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0-8014-4615-3)As new US administration officials inherit the daunting task of managing reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, they would do well to read David Edelstein's thought -provoking book on the comparative political dynamics of military occupations. In this timely and well-written study, the author reminds us that successful military occupations have been relatively rare occurrences in the history of international relations and that the oftencited model cases of the US postwar occupations of Japan and Germany succeeded for very specific, yet rarely specified, reasons.The author explores the circumstances in which military occupations are likely to succeed, which he judges by looking at the short- and long-term accomplishments of an relative to the expense ofthe occupation (8). Drawing upon concepts from classic realist international relations theory, Edelstein argues that the presence of an external security threat makes an occupied society more likely to comply with the demands and directives issued by the occupying power than in cases where such an external threat is absent. Of the 26 cases that the author identifies as the universe of historical military occupations, seven are classified as successes, 14 as failures, and five as displaying mixed results (28). Tellingly, in five out ofthe seven success cases, the occupied state faced a threatening external security environment. And it is precisely the presence of such an external threat - the Soviet Union - that contributed to the relative success ofthe United Statesled postwar occupations of Germany and Japan.The book's chapters are helpfully organized by analytical theme and blend both theoretical discussion and case studies. Within each chapter, Edelstein addresses a specific question related to occupations - when and how to occupy (chapters 1 and 2), when to leave (chapter 3), and the effectiveness of multilateral vs. unilateral occupations (chapter 4) - and then fleshes out his analytical expectations. He illustrates these expectations with an instructive set of case comparisons, drawing upon both better-known and more obscure historical cases. The most compelling of these, and a fascinating natural social science experiment in its own right, is his comparison in chapter 2 ofthe United States' mixed success in South Korea with the Soviet Union's relatively more successful of North Korea. In chapter 3, which addresses timing, Edelstein's discussion ofthe US's premature departure from Cuba in 1902 also makes for an effective comparison with the well-judged duration ofthe US of Japan, as well as Great Britain's 72 -year imbroglio in Egypt.Edelstein's explanatory logic is straightforward and clear, but the approach invites three concerns. First, his focus on the realist concepts of external security threats sits uneasily with the arguments he subsequently advances in chapter 2 about the strategies of accommodation and inducement that occupiers adopt, in addition to coercion, when dealing with local intermediaries in the occupied polity. The problem of aligning incentives between occupier and intermediary agents is a critically important and frequently noted problem amongst scholars of empire, but such control problems are rooted in the challenges brought by the delegation inherent in all hierarchical relationships, not in the external environment that the author privileges. …