POP QUIZ: Which did more for world peace, the Treaty of Versailles or the Marshall Plan? The winners of World War I, "the war to end all wars," dictated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles to punish the losers. The big winner of World War II - America, because our allies had mostly been bombed into poverty - created the Marshall Plan to help both our friends and enemies recover.
The time to answer correctly is ticking away. This is not just an academic question of what we have learned about the 20th century, but also a very practical test of what we have learned from it. The United States has faced the predicament of fighting a nation's government without destroying its people before. Although Afghanistan now is unique and requires specialized solutions, we can draw on past experience. By applying lessons of the two world wars, we may prevent a third.
Many who support harsh military action in Afghanistan think they are being good students of history when they compare the current situation to that of Europe in the 1930s. They note that an early policy of appeasing Germany only made the inevitable battles that much more difficult. They compare current calls for "justice without war" to Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time." Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has likened America's alliances with Arab nations to the Munich Pact, in which England and France unsuccessfully tried to appease Hitler by allowing him to occupy Sudetenland.
These people do not look back far enough. They see only a wicked nation which should have been crushed as quickly as possible. They fail to remember that being crushed after World War I, by a "peace" treaty that demanded crippling monetary payments and land cessations, turned Germany to the Nazi state. While the Treaty of Versailles was being written, English economist John Maynard Keynes warned that the excessive reparations would make it difficult for Germany to rebuild its economy.
Although nothing can excuse Germany's acceptance of Nazism, we can understand how Germans humiliated by Versailles became susceptible to Hitler's calls to recover lost glory through war. America learned a lesson from the disastrous Treaty of Versailles. After the war ended, the United States did not try to extract reparations from a Germany that was literally flattened by the consequences of its own wrongdoing. Instead, American tax dollars went to rebuild Europe under the Marshall Plan. Rather than humiliating its old enemy, France made a treaty with Germany, beginning the move toward the European Union.
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At the moment, many peoples are in the same position as the Germans after World War I. Their economic and sociopolitical vulnerability has made them susceptible to rhetoric about recovering glory through destroying others. But helping them with their political and economic institutions will generate feelings of friendship instead of hate; it will give them a hopeful future, not a bitter present, to consider.
President Bush comprehends this idea to some extent. With the humanitarian air-drops to Afghanistan, as well as looking to a post-Taliban reconstruction, Bush may be instituting a Marshall Plan for the people at the time when it will be most effective: during the military campaign against a bad government.
However, the United States certainly can do more. The mistakes of the Vietnam War, and related actions in Southeast Asia, come to mind in the policy of simply dropping bombs and food simultaneously. If civilian casualties truly are unavoidable - if a large red cross atop a warehouse for humanitarian aid just doesn't distinguish it from a military outpost - the United States should care for and compensate those affected as soon as possible.
To minimize the number of people who do require such care and compensation, the Pentagon should not be "scrambling to find appropriate targets in a country that has already suffered more than two decades of war" ("Four Killed in Airstrike Against Kabul Mine-Clearing Group," The New York Times, Oct. 10). This leads to pointless attacks on buildings abandoned by the Taliban that may house civilians and is the surest way to hurt those who have nothing to do with bin Laden. It also enrages Pakistanis and others with ethnic ties to Afghanistan and encourages the belief that the United States wants to kill all Muslims. A million leaflets claiming that America only wants to help will not counteract the deaths of dozens of non-combatants.
Oscar Wilde once said that experience is the name people give to their mistakes. Although a relatively young nation, America has made its share of mistakes, but we cannot afford for those errors to have been pointless. We must find wisdom in our experience; we need an answer on the question of how we will pursue lasting peace and stability.
(Pallavi Guniganti's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at pguniganti@cavalierdaily.com.)
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