You're the president of a democracy and your army just deposed a dictator with a war. What's your plan to rebuild that country, and what's your exit strategy?

Invoke emergency legislation to gain more power and dissolve the government. Then, become the new de facto dictator.

Send your armed forces to the border areas for "military exercises" and slowly increase your national buffer zone. Coups are harder when the actual armed forces aren't in the capital.
Found the red hat

Since I'd firmly oppose such a war, I'm going to assume I was elected in a backlash against it.

So I'll just exit immediately, and instead make an agreement with another, non-invading, democratic country to help with rebuilding (using my country's money). I'll sign international treaties admitting the criminal nature of the invasion, pledge reparation, and agree never to do it again. Then start speed-signing disarmament treaties.

I assume I myself would get ousted at some point in this process though.

If cabbage will grow there: grow a bunch and make a really dope national dish out of it. I then create a network of people in every other country in the world and brutally enforce the secrecy of the recipe.

The entire world craves the cabbage dish. We have the cabbage dish and will kill you for making it.

I am eventually accused of high cabbage crimes by American sympathizers inside my ranks and deposed.

America takes over and immediately attempts to monetize the cabbage dish with tourism.

Capitalists cut costs far enough that the dish is no longer fire. People bore of it. America pulls out of the country citing mission accomplished.

If the country can’t grow cabbage: I wouldn’t have invaded it.

Occupy and commit war crimes in the name of "nation building." Do this until political winds change at home and force us to pull out.

What was the question, again?

Make sure your homies' corporations can extract as much wealth as possible before that happens. Blame your domestic political opponents for any negative consequences whatsoever.

Set up a provisional government made up of the people who made the coup possible and "negotiate" exclusive resources rights.

Pull a Norway and make a national sovereign fund from the resources.

Use the money from the resources to fund "national education systems" to make the next generation of people more like your native country.

Begin implementing laws that match my laws almost exactly.

After a couple years quietly begin a campaign to make the people of both nations believe the conquerored country wants to join my country.

ITT: people that didn’t read the question properly and don’t understand it’s about a second country, and not your own.

Occupy it, commit war crimes, take its oil, then leave when it's politically/financially advantageous.

/s

Just fucking leave, but tell them no dictatorships this time or I'll come back and fuck them up again.

"Just like, you know, behave and whatnot, or we'll invade again. K, byeeeee!"

-President Fartswithanaccent

If the invaded country is developed and already has similar values to my culture: copy/paste what was done with Japan and Germany. Write them a new constitution, invest in development.

Else: oh fuck I don’t know. You probably need a strong dictatorship because otherwise the people will vote for their own dictator. Force education, instill modern (yes that’s pejorative) values. 20 years later maybe they can have democracy.

Military parade in my capital. Compel my legislature to grant me lifetime tenure as First Citizen. Annex the country. No exit strategy.

Peace in our time.

hi ultron

I think it’s ultron

Nation building is, apparently, difficult.

After watching it go wrong repeatedly, I think we need to professionalize the process.

I would start by putting a dedicated person in charge about 3 years before the invasion.

Day 1 is establish food, water, and safety. Flood the country with trained police (not soldiers). Deliver food and water to each individual (to prevent local warlords from taking it.) Take down dangerous buildings.

Day 2 would be housing and medical care. Build simple, but safe housing. Expect people will love in it for 50 years. Build and staff medical clinics and hospitals.

Day 3 remove rubble from roads.

Day 4 build prison and court systems. There will be some very bad people that need to be removed from society. Put them on public trial, but not show trials. Everyone will be watching, so don't fuck this up.

Day 10 or so, start schools for educating the children. Teach adults to read, write, and basic math. Educate with an open hand, few will trust the government at the start. These can start as glorified day cares, so adults can focus on fixing things.

Often, dictatorships split the population into groups to keep them from working together. A truth and reconciliation group will be needed, similar to in South Africa.

After it seems there will be no genocide, then fix the transportation system to allow easy and free movement of the people and goods.

Adjust plans for local conditions.

Do not put locals in charge until after things stabilize and they have been investigated.

Do not allow anyone connected to the dictator to run things. This includes their cleaning lady and caterer.

Get the local economy back to working. Very slowly reduce outside support for things that can be made locally after ensuring there is a local supply by the government buying the final needed amount. (Consume locally or export.)

Investigate and prosecute corruption.

After a couple months, setup free and fair elections at the local level. As things go well, expand to the next higher level of government. Keep the expansion slow (like every 10 years). This allows those not affiliated with the director to build skills and learn to not be corrupt. This will help locals express their needs and coordinate.

In 30 or 40 years, of all goes well, pull out and let them self govern. Invite them to join your country with unrestricted movement of people (so you better have done a good job.)

The 30 - 40 years part is key. You need to support them for a generation. You need to let the remnants of the old power structure get old and die. The country has to be full of people that were raised with the benefits of the new government.

You can look at Japan for a great example of this type of success.
Soldiers are generally disciplined and trained to a high standard.

Depending on the “Democracy” the police force may be a gang of fascist wife beating dog shooting thugs that flunked out of basic training or failed their psych test trying to become a soldier.

Perhaps military police are the answer as the best peacekeeping force? I dont know. I shudder to think how many war crimes some police forces could perform on foreign soil, unsupervised, if they don’t even have to pretend to be accountable as they do at home.
- Those are some great points. Both police and soldiers have been both the best and the worst.
  
  Some qualities I would like:
  
  Ability to integrate locals over time.
  
  Ability and initiative to investigate crimes.
  
  Less armed to avoid being off-putting.
  
  Ability to call in more forces as needed.
  
  Part of the population, and not wholly separate.
  
  Not abusive.
  
  Not fascist.
  
  Highly trained.
  
  Highly disciplined.
Isn't the issue of not allowing anyone connected to the dictator to run things is that you basically have absolutely nobody local who knows how to run things?

Shoe horning the way your country works into theirs could cause quite a few problems.
- have absolutely nobody local who knows how to run things?
  
  Correct. I attempt to resolve that issue by allowing local politicians to build skills at lower levels of government. It may not be sufficient, but I anticipate that will be obvious after opening one or two higher levels of government.

I've played Rebel Inc, so I know how to do it.

Don't bribe too many people. Build infrastructure and social programmes. Train local forces to destroy all insurrections.

In my experience it takes more funding than you have to keep the population at ease.

nuke it until there is no one left and the radiation turn it into a de facto natural reserve like Chernobyl

Turn the country into glass

First of all 1 free coffee for everyone, to make everyone happy. Then increase taxes to a very ridiculous rate.

If it doesn't work out. Steal the money and do it again somewhere else.

Don’t give up so easily! At least throw a pizza party. That always works.

Spend what little money the treasury has left encouraging it to be this years instagram trend for rich white kids to come help my country rebuild.

Use my nationalised phone networks to videocall back home and stay in touch and share all their good works... while stealing all their logins and personal data so I can absolutely fleece them like 6 months after they head home.

Depends...

Is it a country that doesn't pose any danger to my country like for example Haiti/Afghanistan? Just leave immediately. Why would I be there in the first place?

Is it a country that does present some danger? Obliterate their military and leave. Let them figure it out. If they try rebuilding their military obliterate it again.

Put the former dictator and their government officials to a fair war tribunal/trial for whatever war crimes/human rights violations they preformed. Have the jury/etc composed of people of the occupied country. Televise, live stream it, etc as much as possible to make sure it’s transparent to the people so they know it’s being fairly run and so that all former supporters of the original regime see all the atrocities they committed
Provide economic/humanitarian aide to help rebuild country, create jobs/economy for people
Begin rebuilding government as democracy, use occasional voting referendums on specifics of new constitution (on bill of rights, parliamentary vs representative democracy, etc) to allow people some participation and act as dry runs for electing political officials. Maybe throw some ranked choice voting in there for fun
Run elections for political offices, for the first few elections ensure that the former dictator’s supporters and regime is disqualified so they do not retake power
After elections are successful and government seems stabilized, begin de-occupying and giving the country it’s independence

You're the president of a democracy and your army just deposed a dictator with a war. What's your plan to rebuild that country, and what's your exit strategy?

Exit Strategy: None. Why would we exit?
Rebuild: annex the country that lost as a subdivision of my winning country (e.g. like a USA state or whatever the fuck Wales's relationship to the UK is). Treat said subdivision like any other when it comes to dealing with problems.

Ah, the "France" approach...

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.