Charles W. King

History is useful in policy-making for two reasons. First, it allows policy makers to better empathize with others and understand what and how they think, facilitating better assessments and strategies. Second, history can be predictive. Understanding how and why events happened in the past can allow historians and policy-makers to predict how events might play out in the future, to a limited extent. However this predictive value is dangerous, at its simplest it can lead to erroneous conclusions; that because events are similar they will produce the same results. At its worst it results in what the historical profession calls ‘Determinism’.

The two most famous examples of Determinism are Karl Marx’s works:  The Manifesto of the Communist Party and Das Kapital, and Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man. While these works argue for differing end states for history, they both purport there to be an specific end point for human history. The dictatorship of the proletariat in Marx’s case, Western liberal democracy in Fukuyama’s.  In Marx’s case such a dictatorship of the proletariat did not exist when he died in 1883, making his work almost purely predictive. Not only was it predictive, but Marx argued that his historical materialist approach showed that there was only one single possible outcome of human history: communism. That Western liberal democracies existed when Fukuyama published The End of History does not change the fact that he makes a similar argument: that the only possible outcome of human history is Western liberal democracy. Both authors have taken a step beyond using history as a method for understanding the human condition and current events or predict possible outcomes, and are claiming that there is only a single possible result of the human experience. This is determinism, and it is dangerous.

The craft of history relies on the concept that by investigating past events through primary and secondary sources, oral histories and other artifacts historians can better understand the past and present. It is much harder to do such investigations with a mind open to all the possibilities when the author believes in a specific outcome. In science this is the reason why double-blind studies are the norm for good scholarship. Both Marx and Fukuyama’s works have been examined by other scholars since their publication, and have been rightfully criticized for failures of scholarship.

When using history for policy-making determinism must be at the forefront of policy-maker’s minds. Belief in an inevitable result will result in an assessment of past and present events that is unduly colored. It is important to have a policy objective in mind when establishing policy and strategy. Ignoring historical events and how history affects the perspectives and motivations of others will result in policy that fails to accomplish its objective and weakens American standing. History has tremendous predictive utility—particularly some disciplines of history such as environmental and cliometric history. A historical work does not have to attempt to be predictive to be deterministic, but only to demonstrate a belief that history has a single possible result. Determinism leads to tunnel vision at best, willful ignorance at worst, and it results in bad history and worse policy.

Further Reading

Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997).

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, (London, UK: Workers' Educational Association, 1848).

Karl Marx , Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I. The Process of Capitalist Production, (Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1906).

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, (New York, NY: Free Press, 1992).

Charles W. King

In recent decades historians have increasingly made a distinction between the events as they happened and what people at the time remember about these events, termed “Historical Memory”. As scholars have diversified from event and biography based narratives of history to social and cultural narratives, historical memory has become increasingly important in the academic history profession. This raises the question of whether or not policy-makers need to make such a consideration towards historical memory as well. It is tempting to shrug off historical memory and insist that policy can be made solely based upon the facts on the ground but this ignores two important realities; first, that policy and diplomacy is done by people, and second, that people make such decisions not based upon what may have actually happened (which they may not know) but upon their perception of what happened. Historical memory is a significant part of this perception.

While the effect of public opinion is most pronounced in democracies, authoritarian regimes are neither immune from nor unaware of its importance. The provide some of the clearest examples of its use in policy-making. The creation of the “Stab in the Back” narrative that helped propel Adolf Hitler and he Nazis to power in post-World War One Germany. More recently, both the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin have demonstrated skill at using their population’s historical memory, frequently as victims of fascism, to turn their population against foreign powers and in favor of strengthening the powers or influence of their respective governments. The propagandist nature of these manipulations makes them appear crude to outsiders, but they frequently ignore how deep things like the ‘Great Patriotic War’ and ‘Hundred Years of Humiliation’ are to national identities.

Just as policy-makers, appointed or elected, cannot ignore the political realities their own country, they cannot ignore the political realities of others. It would be a grievous error to suggest that the Holocaust be ignored when considering how Israel interacts with its neighbors, allies, and the Palestinians today. Israel’s perception of existential threat is a significant factor in things as wide ranging as the position of political parties on settlements to the emphasis on crew survivability in the design of I.D.F.  armored vehicles. Historical memory has a clear effect on the Israeli people and state, and policy makers cannot afford to be ignorant of how this affects Israeli policy.

After the U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898 newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearts was alleged to have telegrammed a journalist in Havana, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” That there is no evidence of such a telegram is not even beside the point but a demonstration of it. It did not matter if the Spanish had sunk the Maine and it only matters to a few historians that Hearst never said such a thing. it remains one his most famous attributions. This is because of the primacy of historical memory over historical fact. President McKinley could not stop the public call for war, Hearst is forever the man who fabricated a war to sell newspapers, and policy-makers need to recognize that memory and perception are frequently more important to making good decisions. Facts contrary to the dominant narrative while true are irrelevant, and hewing to them will not produce effective policy.

Further Reading

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried, (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1990).

Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1991).

Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History. (New York, NY: The Modern Library, 2010).

Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998).

Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1983).

Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997)

Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2000).