Why reconstruction shaped four very different occupations

Why did the occupations of Germany and Japan produce more durable outcomes than those of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Germany and Japan combined complete defeat with large-scale reconstruction and economic integration, while Iraq and Afghanistan did not receive the same kind of infrastructure-led settlement.

Germany and Japan had been comprehensively beaten before occupation and reconstruction began. Positive infrastructure investment, including the Marshall Plan and Japan's rebuilding, helped reconnect populations to functioning economies. Afghanistan is contrasted as a state left without major transport links such as railways and made dependent on a military system, while Iraq was treated as wealthy enough not to need equivalent rebuilding. This compact strategic comparison makes postwar infrastructure central to the question of durable political outcomes without claiming to provide a complete causal history of four occupations.