> The U.S. put its thumb heavily on the scale

More than a thumb. The Constitution of Japan was written by Americans. America stomped on the scale, and that time it seems to have worked.

isn't it cultural ? japanese seems to be ok struggling under american control and keep reaching higher. People say US money made Japan thrive but so many time throwing money at a large problem fails.. I think the population was just more mentally compatible.

Or maybe the post soviet Russia was dealt a bad hand. Hard to know (just like here, you can find infinite streams of contradictory arguments)

Hard to say. I suspect the horrific bombing of Japanese cities probably had something to do with their willingness to submit. Leaving their Emperor intact as a figurehead probably helped a lot. Perhaps American willingness to help Japan rebuild immediately after such a bitter war also played a role.

There were probably innumerable factors that went into it. But there are a lot of differences between that situation and the fall of the Soviet Union.

WW2 was the culmination of Japan's semi-conscious effort to speed run the transition from feudal backwater to first rate world power. Considering all the stuff they had pulled off up until that point and that they exited WW2 with their national identity and power structures intact I don't think it's that surprising that they pulled off the transition from imperial government to constitutional democracy with an imperial figurehead.

Chief among them is, the US did not conquer or occupy the USSR. We had definite say in Japan (and West Germany). We didn't in the USSR.

That's a good point. America had some influence and backed Yeltsin to the hilt but he outflanked Gorbachev in the end and I'm not sure if that could've been changed.

Korean war is a big reason why Japanese industries revived, and the US don't want let Japan poor

> isn't it cultural ?

On the one hand, in the scale of brutality, every nation in history is at least 1 level below the Imperial Japan in WWII.

On the other hand, after the decisive show of force, beaconed by the nuclear bomb, Japan realized that brutality is going to cause the doom of that nation. So they naturally bowed down. After that brutality is no longer necessary, like a beaten dog that would not really need a leash.

It's one way to see that. But after such brutal events it's easy for a people to fall into despair or hate but Japan bounce back better than a lot of country. They rapidly absorbed and mastered electronics better than a lot of country. I always find it rare.

> They rapidly absorbed and mastered electronics better than a lot of country.

I believe this is something they started doing before/during the war. Specifically I've heard that they started reverse engineering and producing copies of allied radio equipment during the war.

That part thanks to confuscious tradition

Look at China, Confucius is the God of Asia....

But it ironically worked a lot because they pushed a constitution which looked nothing like their own.

The US military defeated Japan and was an occupying power.

The US had the power to dictate whatever terms.

Japan was on it's back.

Russia in 1992 was it's own entity. Still a nuclear power. Making it's own decisions.

Not only would Russia not have tolerated US intervention, I'm extremely doubtful there could have been such a thing on any terms.

As it stands, much of the money used by Oligarchs to buy up Natural Resources firms was from the US private banking system.

Russia is Russia, they are 100% responsible for their own problems, and those have been roiling through history for 100's of years.

This is true, the question is, what was the difference between the occupation of japan and germany and the occupation of afganistan, iraq or vietnam. The lesson of the latter is that all it takes is 20 years of low level combat until the occupying country gets tired and leaves. the lesson of the former is that defeated countries can become your greatest allies. As to what leads a nation to choose one path or the other... That is complicated. as a interesting special case consider korea

Japan and Germany were extremely well organized and coherent states before the war. They had both civic and long established cultural basis to rebuild to.

'Afghanistan' is barely a state, it never really was a nation. It's a 'border' around a chaotic gaggle of tribes living in the past. They'll ebb and flow given different kinds of leadership, most of which won't have anything to do with anything happening outside urban limits anyhow.

Iraq was a deeply corrupted and broken state, again, difficult to rebuild to, but possible. Absent ethnic tensions it probably would have gone a little bit better, and paradoxically, US forces were more of a stabilizing factor than not. Literally the day that US forces withdrew and US lost it's leverage in Iraqi politics, PM malaki basically launched a kind of political civil war. That scared the Sunnis who 'allowed' ISIL to come in, believing they were a better option than the Shia dominate government, unrestrained from American influence.

S. Vietnam was a bit incoherent, but it could have worked fine were the US to have been able to provide security. They did not, largely due to the historical insanity of refusing to attack the North. As Op. Linebacker I and II eventually demonstrated (but way too late), North Vietnam could be handily decimated at will with direct strategic bombing. Were those ops to have happened in 1965 instead of 1972, the war would have had a different outcome. It's unlikely that S. Vietnam would quite look like S. Korea, but it would be more like it. Instead, we have an ultra authoritarian entity that did some vastly horrible things in the past, but which has settled down a bit in subsequent decades.

'Marshall Plan' works where the Marshall Plan can be taken advantage of.

The IMF has tried similar things elsewhere after WW2, it didn't work out so well, because, well, Nigeria and Indonesia are not at all like Germany or Japan.

Russia has been 'backwards' forever, it's like part of their identity to be 50 years behind everyone but still antagonist about it i.e. aggressors and victims at the same time. I can't see how it will change.

Russians will happily exchange their own prosperity to save face to themselves, and live in a kind of delusion of their own making. They will literally lose the war in Ukraine, but believe they have 'won'. They will declare Ukraine 'denazified', have a parade about it, and 50% of the population will fully believe it, the other 50% will know the truth and go about their daily business, unable to really speak publicly about it.

> Nigeria and Indonesia are not at all like Germany

South Korea has recieved as much ecobomic aid as all of Africa combined in the 20 years after its formation.

Agree with most except South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese government was corrupt to the core. And if you don't have the support of the populace there was nothing that the USA could do to make it work (Linebacker or otherwise). You would only prolonged the conflict.

The South Korean government was corrupt and largely only staid in power because they were willing to commit extreme atrocities (and obviously due to US support). However it still worked out in the end. Not sure Vietnam is that difference, however Korea seems to be much more ethnically and religiously homogenous so that probably played a part.

I wonder - when was the last time you were in Russia to speak so decisively about the country and Russians?

FWIW, Vietnam and Iraq can be considered as US allies (or at least "partners").

maybe the difference is a culture you understand vs a culture you don't. Many observers have said for years that middle east statebuildibg efforts were doomed - we left iraq worse off than we found it

Middle East never had proper states. 100 years ago it was just a bunch of Ottoman administrative divisions. Since then it's been chaos and strong men. Iraq is better off now but maybe not by much.

Arguably Kurds should get their own territory.

Japanese culture was and is very foreign to Americans.

The difference is that the machinery of governance existed and could be operated.

Afghanistan and Iraq are weak states dominated by sectarian violence. Vietnam is and was a strong state.

Completely agree. Why would have Russia agreed to a Marshall plan? It makes little sense.

Correct. It's an "apples to oranges" comparison.

Thanks for the suggestion about learning about the occupation. To be clear: my statement wasn't that the U.S. did nothing, but that there is no amount they could have done which would force Japan to succeed against their will, or their own ability. There are many examples of the U.S. putting its thumb on the scale, so to speak, in countries where there was not a subsequent, successful democratic transition. The difference between these cases, I'm suggesting, is not the weight of U.S. involvement, but factors external to U.S. foreign policy, such as the people in the countries affected.

I see what you mean.

I guess we'll never know. Because there was a remaking of Japanese society after the war in a democratic image. That just doesn't even appear as though it was attempted in post Soviet Russia.

I don't kmow the origins of why America departed from its usual course of propping up the traditional land owning and wealthy bourgeoisie classes in it' s occupation of Japan. I know FDR personally held very pro democracy and anti colonialist views. He had ambitions to remake America's relations with the developing world after the war though how far he would've progressed on that front is unknown. And of course he was dead by the end of the war and Japan was in the more conservative hands of Truman.

Perhaps the Japanese people ran with this program because of their cultural tenacity. Or perhaps because their defeat had been so total that they truly considered themselves defeated and simply wished to move on whatever with whatever power structure was presented.

Ultimately though, America began a campaign to turn the "subjects" of the Japanese Empire into "citizens" of a Japanese constitutional state. They did not undertake a similar project to turn "comrades" of the Soviet Union into "citizens" of a Russian Republic.

The US never invaded Russia, so they didn’t have the kind of power they had over post WW2 Japan.

Anyways even with that kind of power, the prevailing economic ideology at the time the Soviet Union fell was of extreme neoliberalism, so I doubt it would have helped anyway.

We do know what the US wanted though, because they were quite open about it, and they got it: in particular the neoliberal shock therapy reforms which were such a distaster.

Today, we also know that they were backing Yeltsin for a long time, and supported his 1993 attack on parliament which decisively turned Russia into the dictatorship it is now.

Japanese militarist imperial culture has mostly remained intact in the corporate workplace. Other than brief political forays Japan has had one party rule at the national level for long stretches of time. They recognized their strategic position and adapted. When the convenience of a US umbrella fades the old face will re-emerge.

The difference is you had MacArthur, who was a better demi-emperor than general.

The idea of a democratic Japan is itself interesting as for the most part it actually is a one party state. Outside of brief breaks, one party has held power in post war Japan.

So even with the US stomping the scale, it still didn’t make it some kind of European multi partisan parliamentary democracy.

I think US encouraged current only one party is strong situation as a result. LDP was encouraged by the US to against communists/socialists.