Statecraft, Decision-Making, and the Varieties of Historical Experience: A Taxonomy

Abstract

This article constructs a taxonomy of the various ways that national security policy-makers attempt to use history. It identifies four types of history: experience, memory, tradition, and study. It then defines and describes three categories of how history is used in national security policy: predictive, prescriptive, and existential. Each category is distilled further into specific manifestations. The article agrees with existing scholarship that policy-makers often misuse history, but argues that nevertheless policy-makers engage with history in more diverse and complex ways than are commonly understood. Thus before scholars attempt to critique and improve the manner in which policy-makers use history, we should first employ a more sophisticated understanding of the multiple ways that policy-makers approach history in the first place.

Key Words:

• History
• Decision-Making
• Statecraft
• Policy

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Frank Gavin, Peter Feaver, Jeremi Suri, Celeste Ward Gventer, Jeffrey Engel, Sean Lynn-Jones, Eugene Gholz, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful input on this article.

Notes

1. ¹ Robert Hutchings, American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War: An Insider’s Account of US Diplomacy in Europe, 1989–1992 (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press 1998), 228–229.

2. ² Cited in Jeffrey Goldberg, ‘Letter from Washington: Breaking Ranks’, New Yorker, 31 October 2005, <www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/31/051031fa_fact2?currentPage=all>.

3. ³ George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1998), 483–4.

4. ⁴ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, ‘The Inscrutability of History’, in War and the American Presidency (New York: W.W. Norton 2004), 133.

5. ⁵ Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton UP 1976), 275.

6. ⁶ Ernest May and Richard Neustadt, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: Free Press 1988); Margaret McMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (New York: Modern Library 2010).

7. ⁷ John Lukacs, At the End of An Age (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2002), 50.

8. ⁸ See, for example, John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: OUP 2004) and Edward Hallett Carr, What is History? (New York: Vintage 1967).

9. ⁹ Lukacs, At the End of An Age, 52.

10. ¹⁰ See James Lee Ray, ‘Historical Analogies, Military Surges, and Economic Crises: Who Should be Consulted?,’ The Forum 9/2 (2011) Article 1.

11. ¹¹ Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 2007).

12. ¹² Roert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (New York: Vintage 2003), 164, 180.

13. ¹³ Richard Holbrooke, ‘The United Nations: Flawed but Indispensable,’ reprinted in Derek Chollet and Samantha Power (eds), The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke and the World (New York: Public Affairs 2011), 251–6.

14. ¹⁴ Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton UP 1992).

15. ¹⁵ Woodrow Wilson, ‘The Reconstruction of the Southern States’, The Atlantic (Jan. 1901), 11; Gideon Rose, How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle (New York: Simon & Schuster 2010), 32. Rose also cites Wilson’s Atlantic article.

16. ¹⁶ May and Neustadt, Thinking in Time, 91; Francis Gavin, ‘History and Policy’, International Journal (Winter 2007–08), 166–7.

17. ¹⁷ Condoleezza Rice and Philip Zelikow, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1995), 366–7.

18. ¹⁸ H.W. Brands, ‘The Age of Vulnerability: Eisenhower and the National Insecurity State,’ American Historical Review 94/4 (Oct. 1989), 963–89.

19. ¹⁹ Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton UP 1991), 135.

20. ²⁰ One of the most authoritative treatments of the Project Solarium exercise is Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (New York: OUP 1998).

21. ²¹ Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman, ‘Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages’, Wall Street Journal, 7 Oct. 2009, <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125487333320069331.html>. See also Marvin Kalb, ‘The Other War Haunting Obama,’ New York Times, 8 Oct. 2011, <www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/the-vietnam-war-still-haunting-obama.html?pagewanted=all> and Gordon Goldstein, ‘Lessons in Disaster: Why is the Obama Administration Reading up on its Vietnam History?’, ForeignPolicy.com, 6 Oct. 2009, <www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/06/lessons_in_disaster?page=full>.

22. ²² George W. Bush, Commencement Address at the United States Military Academy at West Point, 27 May 2006, West Point, New York, <www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/05.27.06.html>.

23. ²³ Christopher Hemmer, Which Lessons Matter? American Foreign Policy Decision Making in the Middle East, 1979–1987 (Albany: State University of New York Press 2000), 36–45.

24. ²⁴ John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: The Penguin Press 2011), 275.

25. ²⁵ Gaddis, George F. Kennan, 259–61, 278; George Kennan, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs 25 (July 1947), 566–82.

26. ²⁶ The literature on worldview and operational code is vast. Two foundational articles are Alexander George, ‘The “Operational Code”: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision Making’, International Studies Quarterly 13/2 (June 1969), 190–222, and Ole Holsti, ‘The “Operational Code” Approach to the Study of Political Leaders: John Foster Dulles’ Philosophical and Instrumental Beliefs’, Canadian Journal of Political Science 3/1 (March 1970), 123–57.

27. ²⁷ Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown 1979), 54–5.

28. ²⁸ Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, 38, 270.

29. ²⁹ The White House, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, Feb. 1995, 2–4.

30. ³⁰ Gavin, ‘History and Policy’, 170, 172.

31. ³¹ Michael Abramowitz, ‘Truman’s Trials Resonate for Bush’, Washington Post, 15 Dec. 15, 2006; Timothy J. Lynch and Robert S. Singh, After Bush: The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy (New York: Cambridge UP 2008), 2–3, 291–92; George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown 2010), 174-5. The author also worked on the National Security Council staff from 2005–2007, and responded to Bush’s interest in Truman by writing multiple memos drawing on the lessons of the Truman presidency.

32. ³² Cited in William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (New York: Cambridge UP 2008), 105–6.

33. ³³ Ronald Reagan, ‘We Will be a City Upon a Hill’, 25 Jan. 1974, <http://reagan2020.us/speeches/City_Upon_A_Hill.asp>. See also Ronald Reagan, ‘Remarks Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Republican National Convention’, 23 Aug. 1984, Dallas, Texas, <www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/82384f.htm> and ‘Farewell Address to the Nation’ 11 Jan. 1989, <www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1989/011189i.htm>.

34. ³⁴ Rose, How Wars End, 142.

35. ³⁵ See Paul Charles Merkley, American Presidents, Religion, and Israel: The Heirs of Cyrus (Westport, CT: Praeger 2006).

36. ³⁶ Wilfred McClay, interview, Mars Hill Audio Journal 31 (March/April 1998).

37. ³⁷ Robert Draper, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Free Press 2007), 388. The author also worked on the National Security Council staff in the Bush White House and had multiple conversations with Bush about this aspect of history.

38. ³⁸ Jeffrey A. Engel, ‘Bush, Germany, and the Power of Time,’ Diplomatic History 37/4 (Nov. 2013), advance copy in author’s possession and cited by permission.

39. ³⁹ Michael Scriven, ‘Causes, Connections, and Conditions in History,’ in William H. Dray (ed.), Philosophical Analysis and History (New York: Harper & Row 1966), 250. I am indebted to Philip Zelikow for introducing me to the insights in this essay.

40. ⁴⁰ Burk quoted in Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Univ. of Chicago Press 1965), 306.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

William Inboden

William Inboden is Executive Director of the Clements Center for History, Strategy, and Statecraft, and Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, both at the University of Texas-Austin. He has previously served on the National Security Council staff, at the US Department of State, and as a Congressional staff member.