Bryan Caplan: commitment

Transcript context

…So what do you think? Are you of the opinion that it had to be done, or was it inevitable at some point? How could it have been done so that it had the optimal outcome? First of all, with really high credibility, this is where you say, “Look, here's the timetable. We are going to be partitioning India over the course of 20 years. We are staying there.” Even tying your hand saying, “Look, we are issuing a pile of government securities where you have to pay us money unless we go and just give up in the middle of the game.” Basically, you've got to pre-commit stating your goal: Our goal is going to be a peaceful, free rich India. We have a plan for how we're going to do this, and we're going to stick to it, and we are ready to lose a whole lot of our soldiers in order to do this, and then we are going to go and find people that we are going to very gradually transition power to. They have to be reasonable people. If these are people that are inciting pogroms, we are going to get rid of them. We are not going to tolerate that kind of thing here. This is going to be an orderly transition where all of her majesty's subjects can anticipate survival and a future where they are in peace. Now, again, probably a lot of people don't realize how badly the partition of India was botched in decolonization. The chaos makes it hard to get accurate numbers, but there are a lot of people saying that millions of people died in pogroms in the end. So as some of you say, “Oh, maybe it was only 500 or 1000.” That was a complete disaster. It came down to the British saying they were never going to leave until they did (really quickly). That's not what you do. What made the denazification and the US occupation of Japan successful?…

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