39

Why hasn't the U.S. government paid war reparations to any country it attacked?

According to Wikipedia, the U.S. has never paid any war reparations to members of other countries. It has only paid damage to its Japanese citizens for interning them and unlawfully seizing their assets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_reparations#United_States

Considering other countries have paid reparations to countries they attacked, why hasn't the U.S. ever paid any reparations to a country or people from a different country?

JJJ
  • 39,094
  • 10
  • 121
  • 182
Sayaman
  • 40,192
  • 9
  • 139
  • 290
  • 13
    They certainly should not be labeled reparations (and the existing answers explain why), but consider the Marshall plan and UNRRA, and present-day aid to Iraq and Afghanistan. – Bryan Krause Jul 13 '19 at 15:55
  • 3
    @Bryan Krause: You might also consider that since WWII at least, it is (from the US POV: these things are of course subjective :-)) not so much a case of the US attacking countries, but of attacking the regime of evil dictator/clique that rules the country. So e.g. WWII liberated the Germans from Nazi rule, the Japanese from military/imperial rule, &c. And if the US then provides aid akin to the Marshall Plan to rebuild the country, that's lagniappe and/or enlightened self-interest :-) – jamesqf Jul 13 '19 at 17:54
  • 1
    Maybe in a hundred years, the US will pay reparations to for example Vietnamese people. Who knows. It might be too early yet. – NoDataDumpNoContribution Jul 13 '19 at 21:00
  • 38
    @jamesqf that's really just doublespeak. If the regime is actually in charge of the country, and you have to fight the country's forces and destroy their resources to get to the evil mastermind, you ARE attacking that country. Saying it's not really an attack because of the reason for the attack is disingenuous. – barbecue Jul 13 '19 at 21:28
  • 40
    Because they won. – Agent_L Jul 14 '19 at 07:36
  • 12
    Maybe they weren’t called “reparations” but USA has in the past provided benefits to their opponents who lost. – WGroleau Jul 14 '19 at 13:59
  • 2
    @barbecue: Not really. Say instead that it's entirely an internal revolution/civil war, (e.g. the overthrow of Ceaucescu, for the most recent example I can think off offhand), you still have the country's forces fighting, destruction of resources, &c. – jamesqf Jul 14 '19 at 17:01
  • 2
    @jamesqf I was responding to this specific statement: "...not so much a case of the US attacking countries, but of attacking the regime of evil dictator/clique that rules the country." That's ALL I was referring to. A civil war is not relevant, because that's not the US attacking someone else. What I'm saying is, you can't attack the regime without attacking the country the regime is in. You may not LIKE the regime, and may consider it illegitimate, but it's still PHYSICALLY IN the country. Attacking the regime IS attacking the country, because you can't do one without the other. – barbecue Jul 14 '19 at 17:22
  • 16
    @WGroleau the first thing I thought when reading this question was, The Mouse That Roared: "You must remember, the Americans are a very strange people. Whereas other countries rarely forgive anything, the Americans forgive anything. There isn't a more profitable undertaking for any country than to declare war on the United States and to be defeated." – RonJohn Jul 15 '19 at 00:20
  • Yes, that was in my mind as well. I chose not to mention it because it is fiction. – WGroleau Jul 15 '19 at 02:05
  • 1
    It's worth noting that the Wikipedia section linked in this question no longer exists, as a direct result of the question. – Will Jul 15 '19 at 10:45
  • 1
    Reparations are paid by the defeated to the winners. Period. – Danubian Sailor Jul 15 '19 at 19:15
  • 4
    Reparations are for losers. Who will force the winning side to pay them? – Salvador Dali Jul 15 '19 at 20:25
  • @barbecue: I do understand what you're saying. What I'm trying to do is to explain the US majority point of view, which obviously differs from yours. As I said, these things are subjective :-) – jamesqf Jul 15 '19 at 21:31
  • 2
    Because it is expensive and you don't do it if you don't have to – Falco Jul 16 '19 at 13:40

3 Answers3

102

The answer is right in the Wikipedia page you cited (emphasis added):

War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by the vanquished to the victors.

The United States has not been vanquished in a war, so it has not been in a situation where it would make a payment to a victor of a war.

Being “vanquished” implies not merely “losing” a war, but being defeated so totally that that the victor can impose their will on the loser with impunity. Although the United States has “lost” wars, it has not been “vanquished” like any of the countries listed on that page.

Joe
  • 15,690
  • 5
  • 48
  • 70
  • 3
    And the payments were in response to the Civil Liberties Act signed by Reagan, and not the result of losing a war. They shouldn't be listed wiki page, but that's Wikipedia...no time to get in an edit war. – jmoreno Jul 13 '19 at 20:36
  • 3
    @jmoreno I checked the edit history and there doesn't look to be a lot of back and forth, so I just went ahead and fixed it. That clearly doesn't belong because it doesn't fit the definition given at the top of the page. – mattdm Jul 13 '19 at 21:31
  • 4
    It's also been a long time since the US won any war. – Eric Duminil Jul 13 '19 at 21:47
  • 37
    "It's also been a long time since the US won any war" It depends on your definitions. ISIS has been wiped out thx to a coalition effort but featuring US forces. The war against Iraq was over in a few weeks, with capitulation by Saddam's govt. Then began a very different phase that I'll agree is troubling and hasn't been "won" but also really isn't a war per se, though I can see why some would consider it part of "the Iraq War." Cold War was won, clearly. Vietnam by itself was "lost" but can also be seen as a single front in the Cold War. Afghanistan is policing, which isn't to be "won." – Swiss Frank Jul 13 '19 at 22:06
  • 1
    @Joe While your answer is technically correct (which is the best kind) I don't think that's what the OP meant. In a post-war world would the "winners" ever consider paying reparations for the awful collateral damage done to innocent people? I think that's more on the right track with the OP's intent. Personally I'm not sure how you judge that kind of thing but I'd like to read experts talk about it. – some_guy632 Jul 14 '19 at 00:59
  • 3
    @some_guy632 OP should clarify their intention then. However, if that were the intention, you could argue about the reconstructions of Germany and Japan, as other commenters have observed. But... those were not done out of a sense of guilt... which I gathered was OPs main intention to ask about – Joe Jul 14 '19 at 04:40
  • 3
    In the novel The Mouse that Roared, the plot centered around a tiny European country declaring war upon the United States because the ruler had come to realize that the best possible thing you could do for your homeland's faltering economy was to lose a war with the USA. Afterwards, the soft-hearted Americans would feel so sorry for you that they would pour huge amounts of capital into your nation to help you "rebuild." (Unfortunately, they failed to tell their army's commanding officer about the real plan, and so he won the war instead!) – Lorendiac Jul 15 '19 at 13:35
  • @SwissFrank : Even Vietnam wasn't "lost" in the way other countries usually lose wars. US territory was never threatened. It was an expeditionary force which was withdrawn because the war started to get too costly and the USA decided they don't want to invest even more resources and even more men. That's not the same loss as being conquered, or being forced into a very unfavorable peace deal on the threat of being invaded. – vsz Jul 16 '19 at 06:29
  • by the vanquished This is false--and indeed the Wikipedia page has since been updated to delete this phrase. For example, in 2021, Germany agreed to pay Namibia €1.1B for the 1904–08 Herero Wars/genocide. This was widely considered to be and reported as "reparations" (though the official agreements omit any such word). But Germany won those wars and was certainly never vanquished in those wars. – user103496 Feb 11 '24 at 05:46
  • @user103496 The fact that common colloquial use of the word "reparations" is broader than what "war reparations" are doesn't change the correctness of the definition as I gave it, nor does Wikipedia editing their page. The Herero case is also quite different, considering that the 2021 agreement was the product of a class action lawsuit from ancestors of those people, suing a successor state for actions of a country that doesn't actually exist anymore (that is, the German Empire). – Joe Feb 11 '24 at 15:04
54

The agreement to pay war reparations is usually part of a peace treaty. It is usually a demand the superior party makes from the inferior party in exchange for peace.

In any wars where the United States "lost" in the past 100 years, the United States simply gave up on occupying the other parties' territory and withdrew their troops. The "winning" side was in no position to make any more demands from the United States, because they posed no serious threat to any US assets outside of the country. So the United States were never in a situation where they were forced to pay to end a war. They were always in a position where they could unilaterally decide to end the war without any danger to their own sovereignty or territorial integrity.

Philipp
  • 76,766
  • 22
  • 234
  • 272
3

Through the Indian Claims Commission, the US has paid "over $800 million" in compensation to Native American nations (today officially "domestic, dependent nations" of the US, but certainly independent and sovereign nations prior to their defeats by the US and other colonial powers).

For example, in 1980, the Sioux were awarded $105M (Washington Post, Wikipedia) for the US's 1876 seizure of their land during the Sioux Wars.

So, the premise of this question is false: The US has paid reparations to many nations it attacked.

user103496
  • 5,530
  • 20
  • 36