US grand strategy and the origins of the developmental state

ABSTRACT

Scholars have credited a model of state-led capitalism called the ‘developmental state’ with producing the economic miracles of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This article examines how the developmental state was shaped by the Cold War. US grand strategy focused on accelerating economic development among allies that were under the greatest threat from Communist China and North Korea. American aid agencies became involved in the process of state-building in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan and supported economic planning. I verify this claim by contrasting US policies on Taiwan with US policies in the Philippines, which faced a weaker Communist threat.

KEYWORDS:

• Developmental state
• grand strategy
• United States
• Cold War
• East Asia

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Thomas Christensen, Christina Davis, Atul Kohli, and Helen Milner for their advice and guidance throughout the course of this research. Lawrence Broz, David Leheny, Stephan Haggard, Robert Wade, Ulrich Krotz, Richard Maher, Christopher Achen, Lynn White, Melissa Lee, Faisal Ahmed, Dalton Lin, Aaron Friedberg, Ethan Kapstein, Keren Yarhi-Milo, John Ikenberry, Alastair Iain Johnston, Doug Irwin, Michael Kim, Tai-chun Kuo, Hsiao-ting Lin, Jung-Hoon Lee, Chung-In Moon, and anonymous reviewers provided many helpful suggestions. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the East Asian Studies Program, and the Center for International Security Studies at Princeton University provided generous support for language study and archival research. Any errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press 1993).

² Chalmers Johnson, ‘Political Institutions and Economic Performance: the Government-Business Relationship in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan’, in Frederic C. Deyo (ed.), The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1987), 136–164; T. J. Pempel, ‘The Developmental Regime in a Changing World Economy’, in Meredith Woo-Cumings (ed.), The Developmental State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1999), 137–81.

³ Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1982).

⁴ A recent summary and analysis of this literature can be found in Stephan Haggard, Developmental States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018). Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle; Johnson, ‘Political Institutions and Economic Performance’; Atul Kohli, ‘Where Do High Growth Political Economies Come From? The Japanese Lineage of Korea’s Developmental State’, World Development 22/9 (1994) 1269–93; Atul Kohli, State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2004); Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995); Meredith Jung-en Woo-Cumings, ‘National security and the rise of the developmental state in South Korea and Taiwan’ in Henry S. Rowen (ed.), Behind East Asian Growth: The Political and Social Foundations of Prosperity (New York: Routledge 1998), 319–40; Robert Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization, Second Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2004).

⁵ Tuong Vu, ‘State Formation and the Origins of Developmental States in South Korea and Indonesia’, Studies in Comparative International Development 41/4 (2007) 27–56; Richard F. Doner, Bryan K. Ritchie, and Dan Slater, ‘Systemic Vulnerability and the Origins of Developmental States: Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective’, International Organization 59/2 (2005) 327–61; Bruce Cumings, ‘The Legacy of Japanese Colonialism in Korea’ in Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (eds.), The Japanese Colonial Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984), 478–96; Kohli, ‘Where Do High Growth Political Economies Come From? The Japanese Lineage of Korea’s Developmental State’, 1269–93; Kohli, State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery.

⁶ Stephan Haggard, Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1990); Anne O. Krueger, The Developmental Role of the Foreign Sector and Aid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1979); Neil H. Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan: A Study of Foreign Aid, Self-Help, and Development (New York: Frederick A. Praeger 1966); Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996); Richard Stubbs, ‘War and Economic Development: Export-Oriented Industrialization in East and Southeast Asia’, Journal of Comparative Politics 31(3) (1999): 337–55; Richard Stubbs, Rethinking Asia’s Economic Miracle: The Political Economy of War, Prosperity and Crisis (New York: Palgrave MacMillan 2005); T.J. Pempel, ‘The Developmental Regime in a Changing World Economy’,137–81; Richard Stubbs, ‘The Origins of East Asia’s Developmental States and the Pressures for Change’ in Toby Carol and Darryl S.L. Jarvis (eds.), Asia after the Developmental State: Disembedding Autonomy (New York: Cambridge University Press 2017), 51–71.

⁷ John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton and Company 1999); Gregg Andrew Brazinsky, ‘From Pupil to Model: South Korea and American Development Policy during the Early Park Chung Hee Era’, Diplomatic History 29/1 (2005), 83–115; Nick Cullather, ‘“Fuel for the Good Dragon”: The United States and Industrial Policy in Taiwan, 1950–1965’, Diplomatic History 20/1 (1996), 1–25.

⁸ ‘A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary (Lay)’, 14 April 1950, FRUS: 1950, Volume I, 282.

⁹ See T.J. Pempel, ‘The Developmental Regime in a Changing World Economy’ on how the success of the developmental state was facilitated by the geopolitics of the Cold War. This essay focuses on the origins of the developmental state itself.

¹⁰ Alice Amsden, ‘The State in Taiwan’s Economic Development’, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol. Bringing the State Back In (New York: Cambridge University Press 1985), 78–106; Alice Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (New York: Oxford University Press 1992); Evans, Embedded Autonomy; Jung-En Woo, Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization (New York: Columbia University Press 1991).

¹¹ The studies that this definition draws on are Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle and Wade, Governing the Market.

¹² Pathways from the Periphery, 114-115.

¹³ Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, 311.

¹⁴ On domestic politics, see Doner, Ritchie, and Slater, ‘Systemic Vulnerability and the Origins of Developmental States’; Stubbs, ‘War and Economic Development’; Vu, ‘State Formation and the Origins of Developmental States’; Woo-Cumings, ‘National security and the rise of the developmental state in South Korea and Taiwan’; and Tianbiao Zhu, ‘Developmental states and threat perceptions in Northeast Asia’, Conflict, Security, and Development 2/1 (2002), 5–29. On colonial legacies, see Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Volume I: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947 (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1981); Cumings, ‘The Legacy of Japanese Colonialism in Korea’; Kohli, ‘Where Do High Growth Political Economies Come From?’; and Kohli, State-Directed Development.

¹⁵ Kohli, State-Directed Development, 63–4; Sang Sook Jeon, ‘U.S. Korean Policy and the Moderates’ in Bonnie B.C. Oh (ed.), Korea Under the American Military Government, 1945–1948 (Westport: Praeger Publishers 2002), 83; Chan-Pyo Park, ‘The American Military Government and the Framework for Democracy in South Korea’ in Bonnie B.C. Oh (ed.), Korea Under the American Military Government, 1945–1948 (Westport: Praeger Publishers 2002), 125–6; John Lie, Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1998), 6–7.

¹⁶ Stubbs, ‘War and Economic Development’; Stubbs, Rethinking Asia’s Economic Miracle; Stubbs, ‘The Origins of East Asia’s Developmental States and the Pressures for Change.’

¹⁷ Stubbs, Rethinking Asia’s Economic Miracle, 74–8. The quote appears on page 74.

¹⁸ Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 30, n.2, 60–1. On similar policies in the Marshall Plan, see Harry Bayard Price, The Marshall Plan and its Meaning (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 103–4.

¹⁹ See ‘Embassy in Taipei to the ECA Administrator,’ 10 Jun. 1950. United States Department of State and Michael C. Davis (ed.), Confidential U.S. State Department central files. Formosa, Republic of China, 1950–1954 internal affairs, decimal numbers 794A, 894A and 994A, and foreign affairs, decimal numbers 694A and 611.94A (Frederick: University Publications of America 1986), Reel 7.

²⁰ Christensen, Useful Adversaries, 133–7.

²¹ ‘Clubb to Rusk,’ 16 Jun 1950, Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files: Formosa, Republic of China, Reel 1.

²² Kohli, State-Directed Development, 63–8.

²³ For an account of the policies that the United States advocated in the case of Taiwan, see Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 129–49, 174–93.

²⁴ Doner, Ritchie, and Slater, ‘Systemic Vulnerability and the Origins of Developmental States,’ have portrayed these reforms as a domestic response to the exogenous shock of declining U.S. aid, but the historical evidence indicates that U.S. officials collaborated with officials on Taiwan and South Korea to develop those reforms. On Taiwan, see Tai-Chun Kuo and Ramon H. Myers, Taiwan’s Economic Transformation: Leadership, Property Rights and Institutional Change 1949–1965 (New York: Routledge 2012), 92–5. On South Korea, see Taehyun Kim and Chang Jae Baik, ‘Taming and Tamed by the United States’ in Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra Vogel (eds.), The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2011), 72–4.

²⁵ See The Postwar Development of the Republic of Vietnam: Policies and Programs, Volume One, (New York and Saigon: Joint Development Group 1969), x, 152–3, https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNABJ230.pdf, accessed 31 May 2018.

²⁶ This definition of threat therefore differs from that found in Walt’s The Origins of Alliances, which focuses exclusively on the policies and characteristics of the adversary – specifically, aggregate power, geographic proximity, offensive power, and aggressive intentions (Stephen M. Walt The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 21–6).

²⁷ See Thomas J. Christensen, Worse than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2011).

²⁸ Robert A. Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press 1985), 182–3; Schaller, Altered States, 14–24.

²⁹ Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan Since the Occupation (New York: Oxford University Press 1997), 19–22; Nick Kapur, ‘Mending the “Broken Dialogue”: U.S.-Japan Alliance Diplomacy in the Aftermath of the 1960 Security Treaty Crisis’, Diplomatic History 41/3 (2017), 498–500.

³⁰ Leon Hollerman, ‘International Economic Controls in Occupied Japan’, The Journal of Asian Studies 38/4 (1979), 707. For more on Hollerman, the U.S. Occupation, and the Japanese economic bureaucracy, see Dower, Embracing Defeat, 525–40.

³¹ [College Park, MD, USA, National Archives], S[upreme] C[ommander] [for the] A[llied] P[owers], E[conomic and] S[cientific] S[ection], Foreign Trade and Commerce Division, R[ecord] G[roup] 331, Box 6418, Subject File 1947–1952, ‘Report on Exchange and Trade Controls in Japan,’ 18 Nov 1949, 3–4.

³² Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, 194–95.

³³ Kohli, State-Directed Development, 63–8.

³⁴ ‘National Security Council Report,’ 28 Nov 1960, FRUS: 1958–1960, Volume XVIII, 699–706. Although the document also highlighted the need for ‘eliminating excessive bureaucratic controls,’ it clearly recognized the need for some form of economic planning. The draft statement of policy was adopted with minor revisions (which did not affect the excerpts cited) on 20 Dec 1960; see ‘Memorandum of Discussion at the 470^th Meeting of the National Security Council,’ 20 Dec 1960, FRUS: 1958–1960, Volume XVIII, 713.

³⁵ [Boston, MA, USA, John F. Kennedy Library], Kennedy Papers, National Security Files, Box 127A, Korea Subjects: Park Briefing Book, 11/61–11/15/61, Part II, ‘Chairman Park’s Visit [to] Washington, Nov 14–15, 1961.’

³⁶ Thomas B. Gold, State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 1986), 45.

³⁷ Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry (New York: Wiley-Interscience 1970); Jack S. Levy, ‘Case Studies: Types, Designs, and Logics of Inference’, Conflict Management and Peace Science, 25 (2008), 10.

³⁸ See the data in Robert C. Feenstra, Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer, ‘The Next Generation of the Penn World Table’, American Economic Review 105/10 (2015), 3150–82, www.ggdc.net/pwt. Per capita output-side real GDP was calculated by dividing the variable ‘rgdpo’ by the variable ‘pop’ in the data set; human capital is the index captured by the ‘hc’ variable, which has a minimum value of approximately 1 and a maximum value of approximately 3.6 among the observations in the data set.

³⁹ See Alice Amsden, ‘The State in Taiwan’s Economic Development’.

⁴⁰ Paul Hutchcroft, Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1998), 62, 68.

⁴¹ Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 2011), 477–8, 495.

⁴² On the fear of subversion, see ‘Memorandum From the Director of Central Intelligence to the Secretary of State’, 16 Mar 1955, FRUS: 1955–1957, Volume II, 381–3; ‘National Intelligence Estimate,’ 19 Mar 1957, FRUS: 1955–1957, Volume III, 508; and ‘Special National Intelligence Estimate,’ Mar. 13 1959, FRUS: 1958–1960, Volume XIX, 550.

⁴³ ‘Operations Coordinating Board Report on Taiwan and the Government of the Republic of China,’ 16 Apr 1958, FRUS: 1958–1960, Volume XIX, Microfiche, China, xvi.

⁴⁴ Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992: Uncertain Friendships (New York: Twayne Publishers 1994), 54. Aid figures are from Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 38, which reports an average figure of approximately $80 million a year. Assuming that this figure in 1966 dollars, I adjust for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI inflation calculator (https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl) to arrive at a figure of approximately $600 million.

⁴⁵ Taylor, The Generalissimo, 221–2, 254–5, 379; Christensen, Useful Adversaries, 96.

⁴⁶ [College Park, MD, USA, National Archives] Central Decimal Files, Department of State, 1950–1954, R[ecord] G[roup] 59, Box 5637, Folder 893.00R/8-250, ‘Memorandum on Moyer’s Letter of July 12 to Cleveland on New Approach to Aid for Taiwan,’ 2 Aug 1950.

⁴⁷ Central Decimal File, Department of State, 1955–1959, RG 59, Box 5073, Folder 893.00-Four Year/4–1756, ‘Transmitting Memorandum Commenting on ‘Four Year Plan for Economic Development of Taiwan,’ 17 Apr 1956.

⁴⁸ Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 60–1.

⁴⁹ See Tai-Chun Kuo and Ramon H. Myers, Taiwan’s Economic Transformation, 87 and Wade, Governing the Market, 202.

⁵⁰ Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 59.

⁵¹ Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 59–60.

⁵² ‘Embassy in Taipei to the ECA Administrator,’ 10 Jun 1950, Confidential U.S. State Department central files. Formosa, Republic of China, Reel 7.

⁵³ Wade, Governing the Market, 388.

⁵⁴ Kuo and Myers, Taiwan’s Economic Transformation, 115–7.

⁵⁵ See Johnson, ‘Political Institutions and Economic Performance’.

⁵⁶ Wade, Governing the Market, 196–7.

⁵⁷ See Johnson, ‘Political Institutions and Economic Performance,’ 156 for a discussion of the significance of land reform in the case of Japan.

⁵⁸ Taylor, The Generalissimo 413–4, 484–5; Gold, State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle, 71.

⁵⁹ Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 60–1.

⁶⁰ Wade, Governing the Market, 198–201.

⁶¹ Gold, State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle, 71–2.

⁶² Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 189–92; Tucker, Uncertain Friendships, 57.

⁶³ Wade, Governing the Market, 83.

⁶⁴ Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan 282.

⁶⁵ Cullather, ‘Fuel for the Good Dragon’, 20–1.

⁶⁶ Bruce Cumings, ‘The Origins and Development of the Northeast Asian Political Economy: Industrial Sectors, Product Cycles, and Political Consequences,’ International Organization 38/1 (Winter 1984), 27.

⁶⁷ Kunio Yoshihara, The Nation and Economic Growth: The Philippines and Thailand (New York: Oxford University Press 1994), 157–9.

⁶⁸ See ‘The Chargé in the Philippines to the Secretary of State,’ 7 Apr 1950, FRUS: 1950, Volume VI, 1433–34, 1437; and ‘The Ambassador in the Philippines to the Secretary of State,’ 25 Oct 1951, FRUS: 1951, Volume VI, 1575. See also Nick Cullather, Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippines Relations, 1942–1960 (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1994), 75, 80.

⁶⁹ Cullather, Illusions of Influence, 89–91; Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1977), 217–8. See also ‘The Ambassador in the Philippines to the Department of State,’ 15 Feb 1951, FRUS: 1951, Volume VI, 1505–12.

⁷⁰ ‘Report Prepared by the Office of the Director of Mutual Security,’ 18 Aug 1952, FRUS: 1952–1954, Vol. I, 553.

⁷¹ The CPP-NPA insurgency severed its ties with the Soviet Union in 1969. It received material support from Communist China for only a five-year period from 1972–1976, a time when the United States ceased to consider Beijing a geopolitical adversary and instead pursued rapprochement. See Amy Blitz, The Contested State: American Foreign Policy and Regime Change in the Philippines (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers 2000), 163. and ‘Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army,’ Mapping Militant Organizations, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, 24 Aug 2015, https://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/pages/about, accessed 7 May 2017.

⁷² ‘Memorandum of Agreement, Between the Administrator of the Economic Cooperation Administration and the President of the Philippine Republic,’ FRUS: 1950, Volume VI, 1522.

⁷³ Cullather, Illusions of Influence, 91–2. See also ‘The ECA Acting Administrator to the Embassy in the Philippines,’ 10 Nov 1951, FRUS: 1951, Volume VI, 1582.

⁷⁴ See ‘Memorandum by the Deputy Director of the Office of Philippine and Southeast Asian Affairs to the Staff Assistant for Regional Programs in the Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs’, 15 Mar 1951, FRUS: 1951, Volume VI, 1516, 1517; and ‘Memorandum by the Deputy Director of the Office of Philippine and Southeast Asian Affairs to the Staff Assistant for Regional Programs in the Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs’, 15 Mar 1951, FRUS: 1951, Volume VI, 1516.

⁷⁵ Central Decimal File, Department of State, 1950–1954, RG 59, Box 4323, ‘Mutual Security Agency Priority Objectives,’ 15 Nov 1952.

⁷⁶ Agency for International Development, Statistics and Reports Division, 1962, U.S. Foreign Assistance and Assistance from International Organizations: Obligations and Loan Authorizations, Jul 1945–30 Jun 1961. USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse, https://dec.usaid.gov/dec/content/Detail.aspx?ctID=ODVhZjk4NWQtM2YyMi00YjRmLTkxNjktZTcxMjM2NDBmY2Uy&rID=Mjc3ODE5, accessed 26 Jan 2019. Assuming the figures are in 1962 dollars, I adjust for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI inflation calculator (https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl). On the Mutual Security Program and how it ‘gives us overseas military bases for use in the common effort,’ see U.S. Mutual Security Agency, 1951, ‘First report to Congress on the mutual security program’, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, https://dec.usaid.gov/dec/content/Detail_Presto.aspx?vID=47&ctID=ODVhZjk4NWQtM2YyMi00YjRmLTkxNjktZTcxMjM2NDBmY2Uy&rID=MjI5MjUz, 5, accessed 26 Jan 2019.

⁷⁷ Agency for International Development, Bureau for the Far East, 1966, United States Aid to the Philippines, USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse, https://dec.usaid.gov/dec/content/Detail_Presto.aspx?vID=47&ctID=ODVhZjk4NWQtM2YyMi00YjRmLTkxNjktZTcxMjM2NDBmY2Uy&rID=MTUzNDEw, accessed 26 Jan 2019.

⁷⁸ In 1953 (the first year in which data for all three cases are available), the population of the Philippines was 21.2 million, the population of Taiwan was 8.3 million, and the population of South Korea was 20.5 million; in 1961, those figures were 27 for the Philippines, 11 for Taiwan, and 25 for South Korea. Per capita output-side real GDP in 1953 was $1,419 in the Philippines, $1,751 on Taiwan, and $957 in South Korea; in 1961, it was $1,730 in the Philippines, $2,334 on Taiwan, and $1,124 in South Korea. These data can be found in Robert C. Feenstra, Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer, ‘The Next Generation of the Penn World Table’, American Economic Review 105/10 (2015), 3150–82, www.ggdc.net/pwt.

⁷⁹ On how geopolitics favoured the economic development of Northeast Asia, see T.J. Pempel, ‘The Developmental Regime in a Changing World Economy’.

⁸⁰ ‘Letter from Secretary of State Dulles to President Magsaysay’, 25 Apr 1956. FRUS: 1955–1957, Volume XXII, 645–7.

⁸¹ Johnson, ‘Political Institutions and Economic Performance’, 156.

⁸² On the importance of rural support for state autonomy, see Johnson, ‘Political Institutions and Economic Performance’, 156–7.

⁸³ Paul Monk, Truth and Power: Robert S. Hardie and Land Reform Debates in the Philippines, 1950–1987 (Victoria, Australia: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University 1990), 11, 14.

⁸⁴ Ethan B Kapstein, The Seeds of Stability: Land and Developing World Conflict in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press 2017), 173–4.

⁸⁵ Kapstein, The Seeds of Stability, 174; Gary L. Olson, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Third World Peasant: Land Reform in Asia and Latin America (New York: Praeger 1974), 71.

⁸⁶ Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 33–4.

⁸⁷ ‘The Ambassador in the Philippines to the Secretary of State’, 8 Sep 1952, FRUS: 1952–1954, Volume XII, 497–502.

⁸⁸ James F. Dobbins, ‘America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq’, Survival 45/4 (Winter 2003–2004), 88.

⁸⁹ On the repressive results of U.S. efforts at nation-building, see Jeremy Kuzmarov, ‘Modernizing Repression: Police Training, Political Violence, and Nation-Building in the “American Century”’, Diplomatic History 33/2 (2009), 191–221. On how the social sciences influenced the U.S. approach to nation-building in South Vietnam, see Jefferson P. Marquis, ‘The Other Warriors: American Social Science and Nation Building in Vietnam’, Diplomatic History 24/1 (2000), 79–105 and Mark T. Berger, ‘Decolonisation, Modernisation, and Nation-Building: Political Development Theory and the Appeal of Communism in Southeast Asia, 1945–1975’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34/3 (October 2003), 421–48.

⁹⁰ On authoritarianism in Taiwan, South Korea, and even Japan, see Johnson, ‘Political Institutions and Economic Performance’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

Notes on contributors

James Lee

James Lee is a fellow in the Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies at the European University Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2018.