Taking history as a mirror
“With bronze as a mirror one can correct one's appearance; with history as a mirror, one can understand the rise and fall of a state; with good men as a mirror, one can distinguish right from wrong”.
– Emperor Taizong of Tang (Shimin Li, 599-649)
As one of the most worshipped emperors in Chinese history, Emperor Taizong of Tang has made a strong case for why historical knowledge is important for understanding contemporary conflicts and crises. There is no doubt that taking history as a mirror is an effective way to shed light on the present. However, a mirror can reflect the same thing differently depending on the angle, which brings forward an intriguing question – how does the use of the “mirror” influence the decision-making in contemporary conflicts and crises?
When talking about contemporary conflicts, one can never avoid the War in Afghanistan which was ignited by the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and lasted 20 years. Unsurprisingly, historical analogies were not absent in this event either. William Inboden (2013), a former White House staffer demonstrated how the same historical analogy can serve as a pivot for competing opinions in 2009, when the Obama administration was reconsidering their strategies in Afghanistan. One of the opinions suggested that the lack of support for the military was one of the main reasons that the US lost the Vietnam War, and continuous military support was thus needed to avoid repeating history. On the other hand, the other party represented by the Senior White House Officials viewed the Vietnam War as a convincing argument for a “modest commitment in both troops and time” in Afghanistan. This latter perspective is based on the interpretation that the Vietnam War was an unnecessarily long commitment with an unclear purpose.
Another interesting example is the interpretations of the Continuation war (1941-1944) which happened during the Second World War with Nazi Germany and Finland fighting against the Soviet Union. As Erkki Tuomioja (2017), a Finnish politician, mentioned, the so-called driftwood theory was used by Finland as a justification to claim that the Finns were left with limited alternatives and they were hopelessly “drawn like a piece of driftwood into the Continuation war in 1941”. However, the Soviet Union presented a completely different interpretation which stated that the Continuation War was an agressive invasion conducted by the Nazi Germans and the pro-fascist Finns (Forster, 1979).
Of course, there are plenty of similar examples indicating how different a historical event can be interpreted if the “mirror” is placed at different angles; but the point made is evident – it is not enough to have a good knowledge of history, one must come to understand how history is used and deciphered by different actors. Without a sound analysis of the use of history, one may struggle to develop a deeper understanding for how policies are decided to address contemporary conflicts and crises. Therefore, the role of historians is to show how the “mirror” can be analysed from different angles, and try to ensure that it is devoid of filters when portraying a depiction of the past.
Sources:
Inboden, W., “Statecraft, Decision-Making, and the Varieties of Historical Experience: A Taxonomy”, Journal of Strategic Studies, 37:2, 291-318, DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2013.829402, 11 Nov, 2013. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390.2013.829402
Tuomioja, E., “History and conflict: how can historians contribute to conflict resolution and conflict prevention”, Historian without borders in Finland, 25 July, 2017.
Forster, K., “Finland’s foreign policy 1940-1941: an ongoing historiographic controversy”, Scandinavian Studies, vol. 51, no. 2, [Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, University of Illinois Press], 1979, pp. 109–23.