Sharon Burke, the director of Third Way's national security project, makes a useful distinction over at the Third Way blog. Responding to Bob Kerrey's disappointing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, she gently chides, "this nation does not have an honorable history of imposing democracy on other nations by military force; we have an honorable history of defeating our enemies by using military force (with the exception of the war the former Senator fought in). The creation of representative democracy was NOT OUR GOAL when we went to war with Germany or Japan. The goal was to protect our own democracy."
That's actually quite important: Had we destroyed the offensive capabilities of Germany and Japan but proven unable to establish liberal, pluralistic democracies in their countries, the war would have still been a success. The aim was limited to the neutralization of a genuinely existential threat . So neutralized, the reconstruction was a separate project, and its success a huge boon. But the end of their military dictatorship and spiritually-charged monarchy was not the point of the war, and nor should it have been.
