How to Use and Misuse History in Cold War II With China
Eight examples — from the triumphs of populism to failures of economics — show how analyzing past experience can improve your forecasting and decision-making.
Herodotus knew how to use history.
Source: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
“Men learn from history only how to make new mistakes.” That line by the great English historian A.J.P. Taylor once very much depressed me. In 1981, I applied to study modern history at Oxford precisely to learn lessons from the past. It was rather crushing to be advised by a scholar whom I idolized that this was a futile enterprise.
Taylor was only half right. Yes, most of those policymakers who purport to be learning from history are doing so in such a slapdash way that they are almost guaranteed to make new mistakes. A good illustration of this was the jumble of terrible historical analogies bandied about between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the invasion of Iraq. Nevertheless, by applying historical knowledge rigorously to contemporary problems, we can do better. The devil is in the details of how exactly one goes about this.