Proper occupation can be and has been done many times in history, but it takes a force at least somewhat proportional to the population; which the west doesn't really want to afford.
Controlling a territory has been done many times with a very small force. The key is set up a hierarchy and have locals do the door-to-door ground work. Flying in the imperial marines to patrol every village street in backcountry Afghanistan is completely insane.
Historically, the way to control a territory is as follows: you go to each region and you find the local strongman with the best combination of reliability and strength available. You say: "We will support your control of this region, if you provide security and support our imperial policies [those policies could be anything, depending on the desires of the imperialist. It could be providing natural resources, converting people to a certain religion or even spreading woman's rights]. If you support our policies, you will otherwise have freedom to rule according to local custom. We will provide you money and resources. If you fail to support our policies, we will violently remove you."
Under such a policy, you do not need hundreds of thousands of imperial soldiers patrolling the lands, you just need enough soldiers to remove any local warlords that get out of line.
This raises the question: why hasn't the U.S. done the above? My theory is that the U.S. leadership are actually True Believers in democracy. The above method of rule makes it impossible to spread democracy, because the occupying power must choose the strongman - the locals cannot choose the leader via elections. Since the U.S. wishes to spread democracy, it cannot use this method of rule. Furthermore, such overt imperialism contradicts the U.S.'s founding myth as being born out of resistance to imperialism. Few states can overtly contradict their founding myths. So instead, the U.S. has chosen to maintain security with its own forces, so that the locals can have elections and choose local leaders, as part of a transition to democracy.
Most of the mid-to-high level leaders I met who were in positions to influence policy (CIA, some civilian advisors to military, some military) were true believers in both western-style democracy and, more strikingly, Christianity. There was a distressingly high level of some combination of "white man's burden" and "bring them the light of the lord" going on. Decisions and plans were presented using other language, but when you actually talked to them about their real motivations and what they thought should happen, Jesus came up more than anything else. Kind of terrifying IMO.
> My theory is that the U.S. leadership are actually True Believers in democracy. The above method of rule makes it impossible to spread democracy, because the occupying power must choose the strongman - the locals cannot choose the leader via elections. Since the U.S. wishes to spread democracy, it cannot use this method of rule.
Actually the U.S. has done this many times before. We know this because the U.S. has been reviled by people around the world for installing preferred puppet dictators (the "strongman") in other countries.
So I believe an additional constraint to your theory is that the U.S. leadership may have felt compelled to actually go on a path towards a democracy this time to avoid having that complaint levied against them.
True Believers == ideologues. Even then, if they truly believed, they'd have no trouble describing the democratic paradise they think they are installing.
You have never heard such pronouncements? Pretty much every foreign policy speech by an American president involves talk of spreading freedom and democracy. Here for example is President Bush in 2005: 'Bush, putting Mubarak on the spot, delineated what he would consider acceptable conditions for elections in Egypt: "freedom of assembly, multiple candidates, free access by those candidates to the media and the right to form political parties."' http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16510-2005Mar...
Here are some Obama quotes from recent State of the Union speeches: "We will reward good governance, work to reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans -- men and women alike." (2010) "In the Middle East, we will stand with citizens as they demand their universal rights, and support stable transitions to democracy." (2013)
Sure, but the U.S. could not decide to install the Taliban as their preferred strongman. The proximate cause to invading in the first place was to break up the Taliban who had hosted and provided the breeding ground for Al Qaeda operations against the U.S.
Given that the idea is to stamp out terrorism against the U.S. they can hardly decide to have the terrorist-friendly strongmen back in charge.
The US hasn't "done the above" because they tried and failed. The Afghan Army were supposed to be the US's local stooges.
Why the US failed was because US troops were true believers in massacring innocent Afghan civilians. Their relatives sought revenge by joining the Afghan Army then turning their guns on their "team mates" - US troops - even if it meant their own deaths.
You will find that cynical Machiavellian policies of the sort you mentioned above depend to a great degree on deterrence, which doesn't work when your enemy no longer has anything to live for and decides to go kamikaze.
Controlling a territory has been done many times with a very small force. The key is set up a hierarchy and have locals do the door-to-door ground work. Flying in the imperial marines to patrol every village street in backcountry Afghanistan is completely insane.
Historically, the way to control a territory is as follows: you go to each region and you find the local strongman with the best combination of reliability and strength available. You say: "We will support your control of this region, if you provide security and support our imperial policies [those policies could be anything, depending on the desires of the imperialist. It could be providing natural resources, converting people to a certain religion or even spreading woman's rights]. If you support our policies, you will otherwise have freedom to rule according to local custom. We will provide you money and resources. If you fail to support our policies, we will violently remove you."
Under such a policy, you do not need hundreds of thousands of imperial soldiers patrolling the lands, you just need enough soldiers to remove any local warlords that get out of line.
This raises the question: why hasn't the U.S. done the above? My theory is that the U.S. leadership are actually True Believers in democracy. The above method of rule makes it impossible to spread democracy, because the occupying power must choose the strongman - the locals cannot choose the leader via elections. Since the U.S. wishes to spread democracy, it cannot use this method of rule. Furthermore, such overt imperialism contradicts the U.S.'s founding myth as being born out of resistance to imperialism. Few states can overtly contradict their founding myths. So instead, the U.S. has chosen to maintain security with its own forces, so that the locals can have elections and choose local leaders, as part of a transition to democracy.