Comment by adam_arthur | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adam_arthur | Hacker News Reader

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The US nuked Japan in the 1940s and only a short few years later were close allies.

Similarly, Germany was the de facto enemy of the Ally aligned world in the 40s and only a few short decades later best friends with most.

You can identify countless similar atrocities in US history after which relations stabilized within a few years.

Most in life are short term oriented and it's rare that these things produce lasting effects on perception.

Does anyone care or even remotely think about what Bush did as president 20 years ago? Some politically oriented and historically minded folks yes, 99% no.

They really have to be long lasting and persistent transgressions to produce generational distrust e.g. Japan invading China/Korea many times over the last few hundred years.

However the new gen seems far less concerned about this too.

Given Trump's larger than life character/ego/presence, it's more likely that anything he does will be attributed to him instead of the country as a whole. Which makes his actions perhaps even less impactful than a more neutral presenting president doing the same.

> The US nuked Japan in the 1940s and only a short few years later were close allies.

I don't think that's a great example. A few years after the bombs, Douglas MacArthur was ruling Japan. They didn't have much of a choice. Japan was occupied for almost 7 years, had their constitution rewritten to make them essentially reliant on the US for security.

I'm talking about the sentiment of the populace toward the US, not which legislators or leaders were in charge.

It's undeniable that by and large Japanese sentiment towards the US bounced back quickly, despite a traumatic and expansive war

I don't think Japan after WW2 is the right comparison here.

My understanding is that generally they expected a MUCH more severe set of penalties and occupation after losing - especially given the unconditional surrender, and instead got a stable and functional provisional government for the next 7 years.

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Basically - Japanese sentiment is not a parallel to this. That time:

1. Japan started hostilities with a surprise attack

2. Lost, complete with unconditional surrender

3. Was then occupied by a government that was more stable, left much of the existing civilian infrastructure in place, and forgave many key figures (not the least of which was the emperor)

4. Then that government helped them roll out "new deal" style social reforms.

That is absolutely, utterly at odds with the current situation. There - the Allied powers were relatively graceful, culturally aware, and interested in a stable, functional government.

Here - We're insulting our friends, from a position where there's no moral high ground to stand on. Personally, I don't think they'll forget so quickly, and I think things will get much worse if the US continues down this path.

Can we rebuild those relationships? Sure, seems likely on a long enough timespan, but it takes a hell of a lot more effort to get it back than it does to throw away.

That goodwill is almost entirely due to the US' need to rebuild the Japanese economy rapidly to counter threats from China, North Korea and the Soviet Union. That happened through favourable trade deals and mass outsourcing of automotive and electronics jobs and diverting capital away from domestic military as per the US-written constitution of Japan.

Western and Japanese companies alike started moving production outside Japan once wages started eating into profit margins. Today, underemployment is common in Japan and the low birth rate is one of several symptoms of the economic stagnation that began in the early '90s. Populist governments won't be far behind.

Those two examples relied on heavy investment over many years by the worlds sole superpower to bounce back. See the Marshall Plan and MacArthur’s reconstruction of Japan. These things do not happen automatically, and unlike those examples, there doesn’t seem to be a rich, well-run superpower waiting in the wings to lift anyone back up. I’m sure some relations will normalize post-47 but economic might and attractiveness to the world may not.

The US military physically occupied and restructured the governments of Japan and Germany. A better example might be Vietnam, which has become a US partner but it took a couple generations.

It took about 50 years before India started to trust that relations with America could be positive. Then it took a lot of trust and concessions on both sides to strengthen that over the next 20 years under Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden - all of whom went out of their way to court India as an ally and a counterweight to China.

Then Trump decided his shitty Nobel Prize mattered more and threw 20 years of hard work in the dump.

The consensus in India is that America is perfidious. You claim that countries have goldfish memories, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Indo-American relations. It was immensely hard to build this relationship and easy to burn it.

But who knows? Maybe you have an insight into how Indian people think.

I think it's important to note that they were friends after a regime change.

Like the US presidential elections every four years?

Going from an empire/reich to a democracy ain't quite the same thing as a presidential election. The USA will have a hard time recovering from institutional damage being done to it right now.

It's irrelevant whether change in policy is due to losing a war, revolution, or democratic election.

If the numbers swing 5%, the US may suddenly have a radical change in foreign policy and governorship.

Seen as recently as the 2024 election.

Regardless, I'm discussing the opinion of the populace, not the political leadership.

You can't endear a country's people to you by installing a puppet government

There's a regime change like "the second TV debate was a clown show, most swing states saw +5% move away from the incumbent, with the usual stronghold states still holding their established positions, and the latest poll listed inflation as voters' top concern."

...and then there's a regime change like "your capital city and every industrial center is firebombed to oblivion, kindergarteners are begging on streets, soldiers are coming back from POW camps to find their home burnt to ground and their whole family dead, and the occupying forces are executing high ranking officers of the previous regime for war crimes, just to drive the point home that their ideology will never be tolerated ever again."

> Does anyone care or even remotely think about what Bush did as president 20 years ago?

If they don't they are idiots. To name a few things: 9/11, the foreign policy disaster and money pit of the Iraq War/GWOT, the easily-avoidable GFC.

Those were both significant events in their own right and fundamental causes of the Trump presidencies.

No, uncertainty and stability matter in business, a lot. Not that Trump is the reason we lack political stability. It’s the two party system Washington warned us about, boaz and jachin. But that lack of stability is arguably pretty stable itself. American dynamism has pros and cons. Much of today’s context goes back to political and trade decisions made back in the 90s.

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