I agree with you on the different approaches to history. Because of these different approaches, I don't think that using history to "prove" why one contemporaneous policy preference should be supported over another is politically or intellectually sustainable.
Here's why. Those, such as yourself, who study history for utilitarian purposes (that is, for the "lessons" of history) are likely to have a drastically different approach to the past than those who study history largely for its own sake. For example, professional academic historians are driven by a different set of sensibilities. These sensibilities allow for the reinterpretation of historical events over time as more primary source materials come available and as questions and answers are debated.
In contrast, those who take a "lessons of history" based approach to the past do not have the same flexibility because they're basing their policy preferences upon the "lessons" of the past. If the "lessons" end up being unsustainable, then the intellectual foundation of the preference is compromised.
This current thread provides two good examples of this dynamic in action. While you and carl are on different sides of the issue you've raised, you both use of anachronistic (and/or ahistoric) interpretations of the past to support your positions. A moderately-well trained historian could play serve and volley to raise enough doubts about the "lessons" you two have presented and to raise doubts on your respective views on contemporaneous military policy.With respect, I believe you're misreading my posts. I offering any totalizing generalizations about what the United States should do "at all times." I'm merely taking issue with your use of history to support your central argument, not with your central argument.
In regards to the Second World War, I believe that you're conflating two separate counterpoints to two points that you made.By my reading, you offered a historical interpretation of military history and a historical interpretation of American military history. In my reply, the use of the Eastern front was in reply to your first interpretation to provide an example of how the shape and tone of a war's initial battles does matter even if the victor in those initial engagements ends up losing the war.
Neither that point and the historiographically sustainable interpretation that the U.S.'s military effectiveness was undermined in World War II because it did not maintain a large (enough) standing army during the 1930s do not mean that there's a "lesson" to be learned for the present and near future. The two points simply mean that you're using interpretations of the past to support your policy preferences, that these interpretations are historiographically controversial, and that by using such controversial interpretations, you shift the focal point of debate from the present to the past. And by making this shift, you weaken unnecessarily an otherwise eloquent argument.
Another, and perhaps more problematic, example of your use of historical interpretations is your discussion of "containment." In a number of posts, you characterize American policy towards the PRC of "containment" without differentiating among different interpretations of that word. (For example, George Kennan's vision of containment was strikingly different than John Foster Dulles's.) Nor do you square your interpretation "containment" with America's pre-existing (and continuing) support for the Open Door, or America's post World War II aim of maintaining a "preponderance of power" that predated the Cold War against the USSR and re-emerged after the Soviet Union's collapse.
Consequently, when you say: You raise as many questions about your perception of what "it is" as you do of the "many senior leaders."
MOO, these points--not a collection of highly controversial interpretations of the past-- should be the foundation of your argument.
My $0.02
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