Nations, like men, learn most from the wounds they survive. Japan learned twice. The first lesson nearly destroyed it. The second rebuilt it. Iraq has yet to learn either. Whether it still has time to internalize the hard lesson is the question this moment forces us to ask. The black ships and the first lesson On 8 July 1853, four American warships under Commodore Matthew Perry entered Uraga harbor. They trained their guns on the town. Perry refused Japanese demands that he sail on to Nagasaki, the only port then open to foreigners. He did not fire. He did not need to. The threat alone was enough. The Tokugawa shogunate, having watched China humiliated in the Opium War a decade […]