RangerDave wrote:
That's a clever turn of phrase, but I don't think modern history supports that idea. Quite the contrary in fact. Among the European colonial powers of the 18th and 19th century, Britain was very keen on leading by example - establishing British-style governing institutions in its colonial holdings and seeking to deepen their control over those holdings through assimilation and integration - whereas the French and Spanish were much more inclined to extend control through brutalization and autocracy. In the end, it was the Brits who ended up as the dominant global power of those eras. Then in the 20th century, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, for all their ruthless brutality, couldn't defeat the more humane British and US forces and societies (the Soviets were key to Allied victory in Europe, of course, but the US and Britain wouldn't have lost without the Soviets and may well have been able to win eventually anyway). And the Cold War, in particular, is a great example of surviving by setting an example yourself rather than making one of others. The US didn't win by force of arms, but by virtue of its obviously greater economic success and personal/political freedom. Now, I'm not saying that military strength wasn't a crucial component of the British and American successes of the last few centuries. However, I am saying that there's a fairly clear pattern here that the winning combination is to lead by example and have the strength to back it up when necessary (but even then to exercise restraint and magnanimity), whereas ruthless brutality seems to lose time and time again.
You're not understanding the phrase then.
Leading by example works as long as other nations are willing to be led, and aren't a serious threat to you.
When dealing with equal nations with their own interests, there is no leading by example. Neither the Axis nor the Allies were an example to the other. The Allies did, however, make an example of the Axis in that if you overextend yourself with conquests you can't manage, invading countries that can swallow you up in their size, pissing off island nations that can hold out indefinitely when you have no capacity to force entry, and antagonize nations with indistrial might you can't counter.. you're going to lose. The Axis were made an example of.
In the cold war, the greater economic success and political freedom was example-making. Setting an example for third world countries didn't win the U.S. the cold war, and its allies didn't need the example; they were already allies.
Rather, the example was made of the Warsaw Pact that despite its much greater proportional defense spending, it could not keep up technologically either in terms of its military or otherwise, it could not keep up economically, and its massive nuclear arsenal was of no help because the only thing it could do was deter an invasion by NATO that wasn't a realistic probability anyhow.
China learned from the example of the USSR; they've made efforts to (in politically acceptable ways) divest themselves of many economic hindrances, they've made a conscious decision to focus more on technology and less on numbers in terms of their military, and develop real sea power. Most importantly, they learned not to make neighboring nations into blatant puppets that become expensive liabilities, and instead rely on the cheaper and more subtle method of just being nearby, large, and menacing. Russia learned that too, as well as to more cleverly disguise its strongarming; witness the invasion of Georgia; they saw that Serbia was made an example of by NATO and copied that into their playbook.
There's no doubt that the western Allies were more humane than the Axis, overall, but they weren't humane in the normal meaning of the term. War is not about being humane. We've forgotten that the intent of having rules for warfare is to prevent suffering that serves no military purpose, or is out of all proportion to the value of it to the side doing it; not to legalize war out of existence or make war into a football game. That can't be done. It's a sign of privilege that people can stand there and handwring that the good guys were still very far from perfect.
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