It may of course be, that only into those areas ever enough troops were deployed, in which there seemed to be potential for success. But against this speaks, that there was a study to find that out and otherwise it would have been common knowledge.

That there was a study is something I find entirely unimpressive. There's always 'a study' for everything. Some of them are good, some of them are hack jobs made by think tanks paid liars.

I would, however, propose that even if they did succeed in all the cases where they used enough troops, this may very well be because the only cases where they used enough troops were centralised countries - the Americans have an unfortunate tendency to not take military threats seriously unless they take the form of panzer divisions on an open field of battle.

If you first have to defeat the army of a modern state which has technological parity with yourself, on its own territory, you will already have enough troops at the start of the occupation, because otherwise you won't defeat them in the first place. The Americans' problem - well, one of their many problems - is that they think that they can transfer this logic to pre-modern states without technological parity. In other words, they think, based on their experience with modern states, that defeating the army is the hardest part, and if you can defeat the army, then you will have little trouble occupying the country.

This is silly, of course. And they really should know better, considering how badly they have gotten their asses kicked over the last half-century. But an integral part of their political culture seems to be an inability to admit mistakes - and the consequent inability to learn from them. That, by the way, is a feature of American democracy that Europe had better take care not to import.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.