In Defense of a Useful History

Photo by Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The crisis in Ukraine has ebbed and flowed over the past two weeks. As Eric Levitz notes, news out of the conflict fluctuates between hope and abject despair. Every Ukrainian victory brings with it a reminder that the Russians still have the more powerful army and are able to prolong the conflict for years. Every peace entreaty brings with it another poll showing that both sides remain hopelessly divided. The conflict seems to have reached a new, grinding phase which is even more uncertain than the first month after troops rolled across the Ukrainian border.

With an event as unprecedented as Ukraine, many commentators have looked towards history as a guide. But that popular approach is receiving some pushback. Jonathan M. Katz, journalist and public intellectual, is emblematic of the skepticism of history in public intellectual debates over Ukraine. In “The Past Is No Country At All,” Katz makes the argument that history is not particularly helpful for understanding what is happening in Ukraine. He notes that unlike other leaders of the 20th century, “Putin is to my knowledge the only example of a leader whose army can barely take or hold new territory yet loudly and confidently keeps reminding everyone of his ability to obliterate much of the inhabited world.” Katz also makes sure to dismiss the lazy comparisons that have been made to Munich, Hitler, and the Second World War over the past month and to analyze the myths of Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill in the process.

Katz’s piece is a tidy argument for skepticism in historical analysis by public intellectuals. But he fails to properly appreciate the role history can play outside of the most popular and visible examples that he has found. In fact, using history can help to lessen the impact of the wayward trends that he has identified in public discourse.

As Katz notes, history should never be viewed as an unimpeachable oracle for the future. It is impossible to know which historical events are most influential or prescient for any given situation. Periods and countries differ and people change. Actors behave rationally and then introduce a series of irrational, personality-based, and downright inexplicable calculations into their planning. The system of world events is a chaotic one that can change with even the smallest shift in an environment.

All of these factors are applicable in Ukraine. The country has been an essential part of eastern European military and political history for centuries. It has been invaded and influenced global events dozens of times. Just in the past century, there are several Russian invasions of territory and European military occupations of hostile territory that may be applicable historical precedents. These historical precedents can easily be cherry-picked to bolster one ideological assumption or another.

Using history to understand political events is to accept those limitations. Historians and public intellectuals have to remain humble and reject the lure of predictions that could be falsified in a matter of weeks, if not days. But with these restrictions in mind, they can fulfill a number of important roles that political scientists and other observers cannot do on their own.

The historian is able to provide a level of context and grounding that political scientists and armchair psychologists cannot. A political scientist wedded to statistics will often reach for a model to explain future events. The model can easily predict the outlandish, such as a nuclear strike or an attempted invasion of Finland. Such a model will then be picked up and spread like wildfire on social media, which does a fantastic job of amplifying the most extreme viewpoints on any subject. Historical precedent can be a calming force in these debates. The fact that a prediction or observation can be backed up by numbers gives it currency and relevance to the public, but a prediction or observation reinforced by accurate historical details has similar power.

The case that the invasion of Ukraine is not a historical outlier, that such events have happened before and not led to disastrous outcomes, is essential for present discourse on the topic. It lengthens our attention span and extends our historical gaze past the current year or the current generation. In fact, we need more of this kind of historical analysis, even if some of it is sloppy and guided by the worst instincts of the present period. Historical analysis has the possibility to fight back against the fever-pitched nature of current discourse and slow down debate in general. A more thoughtful understanding of events has the possibility to give better credence to experts and analysts, not those who are simply experts in soliciting clicks and fanning outrage.

Katz mentions several times that the use of history to explain Ukraine leads directly to pessimism over its outcome. He argues that the most famous historical parallel is that “Vladimir Putin is Hitler, Ukraine is either Czechoslovakia or Poland — and thus that World War III is already upon us.” This encapsulation of the historical approach to Ukraine is a criticism more of people on Twitter than of historians or those who take history seriously, voices that are often drowned out by viral trends and influencers on TikTok. The more helpful frame would be that nuclear war would be avoided because the world has been down this path multiple times and found a way to overcome each and every time.

Using the phrase “World War III” in reference to Ukraine ignores the many times that essential parts of the American sphere of influence, from Berlin to Miami, were threatened during the Cold War and how a combination of diplomacy and statecraft brought the nation from the brink time and again. Many thoughtful commentators, such as Fred Kaplan at Slate and Elena Lappin at the Wall Street Journal, have focused more on the Prague Spring as a helpful earlier precedent. I used an earlier post in Arc Digital to discuss the connections between Ukraine and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a time in which great powers routinely threatened nuclear war and still did not destroy the world. Instead of predicting doom, these precedents may help current leaders learn the tools and approaches that prevented war in the past. If we were more interested in what history and historians had to say, I would argue that we would have fewer references to Hitler and World War III.

Contrary to the assertions of Katz and others, historical analysis is necessary in an unprecedented time. Every nation undergoing upheaval feels as though it is the first to ever experience trouble. If they are able to avoid one mistake, save one conflict, or fix one recession due to the influence of past events, then the use of history in public debates is certainly worthwhile. We need more history in the public sphere, not less, if we hope to use all of the tools at our disposal to fix the myriad of problems that society currently faces.