Quote Originally Posted by zenpundit View Post
...The door is also open for using thought provoking counterfactuals for further reflection and discussion.
So true, counterfactuals, or "what ifs" are great ways to break down complex historical problems by removing certain causes or conditions for the milieu which thereby allows to see a bit more clearly the actual historical problem at hand.

My favorite one when teaching ante-bellum American History is to pose the simple counterfactual that if slavery never existed in America, or at least had gone away in the early 1800s, can you imagine the north and south fighting a Civil War on the scale of the one that actually occurred?

Another favorite counterfactual of mine when thinking about Iraq and gauging the success of the Surge and considering why violence has dropped so precipitously is to consider three conditions for the lowering of violence: 1) the Surge with its so-called new Coin methods and increased number of troops; 2) Sadr's cease-fire; 3) The key decision to pay our former enemies the non-alqueda sunni insurgents to stop attacking us and co-opt them to become our allies in fighting alqueda. If you take the first condition out of the mix in this counterfactual, does violence still drop precipitously? I think yes. If you remove either of the latter two conditions then in my mind the answer is no. Understanding the true causes of the lowering of violence in Iraq is important as we consider paths for the future and force structure for the American military.

Hence the value of counterfactual analysis both in looking back at the past, considering the present, and speculating about the future.

gg