Review: United States: “Lessons” of the Past
| Published date | 01 December 1974 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207402900424 |
| Author | Stephen J. Randall |
| Date | 01 December 1974 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
674
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
author
demonstrates
a
remarkable
realism
in
search
of
the
truth,
and
would
serve
the
public
interest
with publication
of
a
companion
volume
on
the
mythology
of
revisionism.
Stephen
D.
Kertesz/University
of
Notre
Dame
"LESSONS"
OF
THE
PAST
The
Use
and
Misuse of
History
in American
Foreign Policy
Ernest
R.
May
New
York:
Toronto:
Oxford
University
Press,
1973,
xiv,
22opp,
$7.65
The
utility
of
the
historian
to
the
policy-maker
is
the
expressed
hope
of
this
wide-ranging
book
by
one
of
the
leading
American
writers
on
foreign
policy.
May
challenges
the
historical
aphorisms
of
Hegel
and
Santayana
that
we
learn
from
history
only
that
we
do
not
learn
from
history,
and
that
those
who
do
not
know
history are
condemned
to
repeat
it.
He
posits
as
an alternative
Arthur
Schlesinger
Jr's
conten-
tion
that
Santayana
be
turned
on
his
head:
'too
often
it
is
those
who
can
remember
the
past
who
are condemned
to
repeat it.'
The
author
shifts
easily
from
historical
analysis
to
history
by
con-
jecture.
He
first
examines
the
way
in
which
policy-makers
used
and
abused
historical
understanding
in
World
War
ii,
the
Cold
War,
Korea,
and
Vietnam;
he
then
re-directs
his
attention
to
'how
the
past
might
be
used,'
a
methodology which
he
labels
'speculative
sociology,'
and
which
places
him
in the
camp
of
the futurists.
Early
chapters
are
excessively
ddja vu, in
spite
of
the
'novel'
per-
spective.
It
is
scarcely
enlightening
to
learn
that
Americans
constructed
a false
historical
analogy
between
Stalinist
Russia
and
Hitler's
Ger-
many;
that
the
prejudices
of
American
leaders
and
the bureaucracy's
interpretation
of
international
events
hardened
the
Cold
War; that
the
Truman
administration
saw
Korea
through
the
eyes
of
the
193os;
or
that
the
Kennedy-Johnson
administrations
came
to
view
Vietnam
as
another
Greece,
another
Korea.
More
insightful
is
May's
examination
of
the
process
of decision-
making,
applying
a
sophisticated
understanding
of
contemporary
in-
stitutional
history.
Yet
his
closing
plea
for
a
closer
working
relationship
To continue reading
Request your trial