In Defense of a Useful History
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.
Don’t know katz and i agree with your point. But if katz has never heard of Mussolini or Czar Nicky then he has some cranial rectal compaction. (i could think of other examples but i don’t feel like it and they will do) No those dudes didn’t claim they could obliterate the world. But that is what having nukes will do and they would have loved to have nukes if they had been invented. Both those schmucks threw their largely incompetent though often brave militaries at smaller weaker countries assuming they would win and got a destroyed army/navy, their regimes ended and a dirt nap for their troubles. (To be fair both of those guys earned their deaths)
Maybe he doesn’t understand how history is useful because he is ignorant of history.Report
Having a bad army and threatening everyone around you has been Russia’s thing since at least the First Northern War.Report
I would say the primary problem with respect to the Discourse in the United States is that most people, and in particular, the media and journalist world, do not know anything about history they didn’t learn from Saving Private Ryan. I would expect that there are lots of retired suburban dads that have read more actual history than the average correspondent or pundit. And that includes on relatively recent and quite relevant history like what went on in the Balkans in the 90s.
I know the OP links to some writers looking to the Prague Spring (which would not be my go to but at least it’s something) but the reality is most commentator’s understanding of world history spans roughly 1933-1945, as recounted by Hollywood, including via space alien allegories.
While I agree with the conclusion of the OP it still includes a really inaccurate assertion, namely:
The country has been an essential part of eastern European military and political history for centuries.
Maybe the OP means ‘country’ as in the territory in question but this isn’t remotely true about the modern political entity. Which I clarify, before a bunch of people come squealing at me, is certainly not remotely dispositive of that political entity’s claims or the rightness of its cause. These details matter if we want to look to the past for guidance.Report
I read Mr. Katz’s piece and Mr. Medlin’s response, and I suspect that their disagreement is largely one of emphasis. They seem to agree on the primary point that historical context is important but not an accurate predictor of outcomes.
And a hard disagree on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine being somehow unprecedented. If you want to compare and contrast situational elements, you can argue that everything that happens is technically unprecedented.Report
Putin’s actions in Ukraine are indeed full of precedent – hell he started rolling in in 2014.Report
I wrote about this overall concept here: https://ordinary-times.com/2020/11/17/on-history-and-being-doomed-to-repeat-it/
But I think we need to be very cautious in minimizing Russia’s military capability. There seems to be a big push to make the Russian Army look weak, stupid, easily defeated, and I must question the motives of why this might be. To con people into thinking a war against Russia would be easily won or desirable? Is that our endgame here? If so, that doesn’t seem like a very wise move to make on the part of our chattering class.Report
Can you cite a single example — anywhere from the mangiest of the mainstream press to wackiest of whacked-out websites — of anyone advocating that the US go to war with Russia? I can’t.Report
Advocacy for US or NATO enforced no fly zones in Ukraine?Report
Biden’s gaffe about Putin needing to go is itself the kind of provocative comment that is very unhelpful.Report
Along with telling US troops what they’d see when they get to Ukraine, and saying that if Russia uses chemical weapons the US would respond in kind.Report
I think there’s a fairly low ceiling on the amount of damage a Kinsley Gaffe can do in a situation like this, but it’s still pretty hair-raising to have an Administration that does not have its shit together this badly in this situation.
And it would have been a pretty good issue for literally any imaginable GOP opponent except the one Biden faced to hammer him on.
(FP was too low salience in the Dem primaries, alas.)Report
Yeah I swore floridly when I heard about it. Fortunately the Administration walked it back which made it just a gaffe but God(ess) damn it Joe, you’ve been doing well on this subject so far; don’t sleepwalk us into a war.Report
It was pretty bad. Other than that though I think the administration has performed about as well as could have been hoped. My only wish is that they would be more straightforward about conditions for ending the sanctions to incentivize a settlement. I give them a solid B.Report
Most of the advocacy for this seems to be in niche defense and foreign policy publications. there is not yet a groundswell in the MSM.Report
And by people who seem to think that a no-fly zone means putting up signs and issuing tickets.Report
For all the saber-rattling done for this, Biden has clearly made it clear that it is a very stupid idea. I saw polling over the weekend that dinged Biden’s response on Ukraine but if you dug in the cross-tabs, it was for not being aggressive enough (though people do like that he has not started WWIII)Report
I would say that Russia has shown itself as being less conventionally capable than anticipated and the Ukranians have shown themselves far more willing to fight than anyone imagined. But to your point this actually makes the situation much more dangerous. It could increase the temptation of Russia to use nuclear weapons if things took a dramatically negative turn for them on the battlefield.
So the goal needs to be to help broker a settlement. To the extent our actions help get there they are good. To the extent they prolong the violence and the chances of some sort of escalation they are not.Report
I think this is one area where people are mostly saying it because then believe it.
That doesn’t make it even a tiny bit less of a legitimate concern.
A leading reason that the Russian Army currently looks weak, stupid, and easily defeated is that Putin believed that Ukraine’s army was weak, stupid, and easily defeated.Report
I think the motivation for those not simply reacting to unexpected evidence that Russia’s military is not what it has been portrayed to be is not to con us, but to use information warfare against them, or more specifically against Putin.
There is one thing that is fairly consistent in Russian history and that is that leaders who look weak, especially after a military campaign gone badly, tend to not remain in power for long. Even if Putin has managed to consolidate enough power to survive this, the loss of respect on the world stage hits him and by association all Russians. “The world opposes us” is something you can use to rally the people behind you (which is big part of why NATO and the US are avoiding any involvement beyond sanctions and aid) but “The world is laughing at us” is not sustainable.Report
I don’t think we need to over think this, the push to see the Russians as not “12 feet tall” is to show that despite Russia’s size, Ukraine has a puncher’s chance of winning. This makes the Ukrainians look like an excellent value for resources spent investment for Western security rather than a lost cause.Report
The real point of my reply to Kristin was to push back against the assumption, applied reflexively on both the right and the left to any report by every news outlet, that all reporting is dominated by an agenda. In the case of Ukraine, it appears to me that by and large reporters are reporting what they see.Report
To the extent that there’s an agenda, I think it’s that Americans sympathize with a democracy invaded by a dictatorship and a medium-sized country invaded by a huge one, so Russia’s failures are viscerally satisfying to read about. Putin being a well-known murderer helps too.Report
That was a good essay.
One thing I remember reading a long time ago was how China was looking at us being in Iraq for a couple of decades and us being in Afghanistan for a couple of decades as being a real threat.
Not because of a quagmire or anything like that but the best way to train for war is to be in a war. It’s the best way to make sure that the trucks get their tires changed. It’s the best way to make sure that the guns are oiled. It’s the best way to make sure that everybody goes to the refresher training.
They saw Iraq and Afghanistan as proof that, if it came to that, the US would have an army that wasn’t running around like the keystone cops and had equipment that worked (more or less).
Compare to tires that popped within hours of the truck being driven for the first time in a decade.
Now, I don’t notice these things to say “we totes need to go to war against Russia!” but to say “I didn’t expect the corruption and rot in the Russian army to go quite *THIS* deep and be *THAT* bad.” I’m not saying “they’re a paper bear!” but “most of the reasons that I was scared poopless turned out to be ill-founded.”
And China had a point.Report
I have read theories that this was the ‘real’ purpose of the long term occupation of Afghanistan, or at least it became the purpose after it was clear the political goals were never going to be achieved.Report
Heard an expert on the region say “Ukraine is winning this war on Twitter only,” and I think that’s a pretty good description of the phenomenon you describe.Report
Counter, Putin is not achieving is goals in Ukraine: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23003689/putin-ukraine-russia-donbas-energy-feintReport
This article and the Katz article are both interesting reading.
I think there’s a sense of security to be found in having a prediction. Historians aren’t in the business of predicting the future, but of studying the past. History can provide reasonable analogies, but none of them carry guarantees.
We moderns can barely remember watching TV shows one episode per week. We want to binge-watch the war and see what happens. We want to have the best takes on every subject on the internet. We’ve just been through two years of ambiguity, during which we tried to make up comforting rules and judged people who got sick the way Job’s friends did. We can turn to history for perspective and insight on Ukraine but it won’t help us make accurate predictions.Report
In terms of predictions, I remember that just before Russia invaded Georgia, a poll of international relations scholars predicted Russia would not invade Georgia that year. This was true across all major schools of international relations (realist, liberal, constructivism), but not true for those who identified as Russian specific IR scholars. At least in those one example, it seems like country-specific knowledge, presumably its history, led to better predictions.Report
Yeah, that goes beyond the question of historians-as-forecasters. I have to wonder what kind of international expert would bother answering a poll like that, at least if it was a yes/no kind of question. Experts are typically aware of the limits of their field.Report
“As Katz notes, history should never be viewed as an unimpeachable oracle for the future.”
Well said. There is a tendency to view history as unfolding in some series of inevitable causations, A leading to B to C and so on.
So like, getting involved in a land war in Asia is always a boondoggle becomes axiomatic wisdom.
But in truth, there are an infinite number of ways history could have unfolded, with only the slightest of changes.
There is an alternate timeline in which diplomacy stopped Hitler, or in which Vietnam was a smashing success or any other variation, leading to some person declaring that it is just a fact that getting involved in a land war in Europe is always madness.Report