Fires Burning and Desks Flipping

Max Hastings’ opinion article of 31Jan21: “American Universities Declare War on Military History” found me plunging headlong in an unfocused free-fall down the digital rabbit hole tonight… but this is usually where some of the best ideas come from. At the same time, a discussion in the comment section for another post found me correlating ideas on the relevance of one of my favorite ideas: the National Will to Fight.

I have come across Hastings’ work in passing, but his opinion piece posed several interesting perspectives…

The revulsion from war history may derive not so much from students’ unwillingness to explore the violent past, but from academics’ reluctance to teach, or even allow their universities to host, such courses.

Some concepts immediately force profane anger, and this would be one of them. The idea that, warfare – the one constant in human history which needs to be studied the most in order to work towards prevention and mitigation – can be so deliberately avoided in academia… well, that just boggles my mind. In the cause to protect the minds of their students, administrators who feel that open discussion of the causes, initiation, conduct, resolution, and long-term effects of conflict might be too emotionally damaging, those same administrators are severely handicapping the development of an understanding of the elements which lead to war and – more than likely – will lead to the exact same future conflicts caused and carried out with what could be best described as “unrecognized familiarity.”  

Kennedy notes that war studies are highly popular with students, alumni and donors, “but the sticking point is with the faculty — where perhaps only a small group are openly hostile, but a larger group don’t think the area is important enough.”

Again, this would be an example of the ideas of those who have thrived in the shelter of academia deciding what may or may not be applicable to a perceived reality which is more theory than practice. This is not to disparage all who have devoted the time and effort towards gaining answers to the questions which compels them for a greater understanding; however, I remain skeptical of anyone who believes in absolutes of knowledge as much as I am critical of those whose operational experience is rooted in rote rather than reevaluation (alliteration accidentally achieved).

It is extraordinary that so many major U.S. universities renounce, for instance, study of the Indochina experience, which might assist a new generation not to do it again. 

This is far from a phenomenon isolated to academia. I have experienced it directly in Afghanistan and, later, in Iraq with the sneaking suspicion that some of the tactics employed by both sides were hauntingly familiar. Recently, I briefly touched on the disconcerting lack of attention given to events leading to the Soviet-Afghan War in “Untenable” and while that particular angle could be expanded upon more, the conclusion would be the same: that we ignore history for the sport of being surprised when the patterns become familiar.

Many, indeed most, academic institutions across the continent are infected with an intellectual virus that causes them to reject study of subjects that seem to some faculty members distasteful. This represents a betrayal of the principles of curiosity, rigor and courage that must underpin all worthwhile scholarship.

And this is where the desk begs to be flipped… again. To emphasize one point: “a betrayal of the principles of curiosity, rigor, and courage that must underpin all worthwhile scholarship.” A gross injustice is being meted out to the next few generations, all “for the sake of the children” – the very same kids who will grow up oblivious that the conflicts they will have to participate in could have been prevented or, at least, mitigated from the catastrophes they are sure to be.

Which brings me back to the much-highlighted RAND report and how this is relevant to the topic of the slow death of academic research described by Hastings.

The authors of this report come from substantial backgrounds:

“M.A. in international relations…”

“Ph.D. in war studies…”

“B.S. in journalism with a dual major in political science…”

“Ph.D. in sociology […] and an M.A. and B.A. in political science…”

“Ph.D. in computational social science, […] M.A. in national security studies […] B.A. in political science…”

While I am painfully aware of my previous position on prolonged exposure to academia, it is important to reiterate my disdain for absolutes in this matter. For the point made by all contributors is one of brutal simplicity: that the study of history – the conflicts, people, motivations, contexts, and repercussions – will always be incomplete but a worthwhile consideration for those who strive to avoid the pointless losses involved.

Within, we find examples of the problems of ineffective authoritarianism:

The people of Tsarist Russia would not endure great pain indefinitely. Instead, the longer the war seemed to continue without an end in sight, the more fragile the country’s cohesion and expectation of victory became. As failures stacked up abroad, domestic strife increased under the antiquated and unresponsive Tsarist government.

Pg. 85

The worrisome societal trends which resonate within Hastings’ article as well as within the digital echo chambers of social media:

We found that the effective use of engagement and of indoctrination and messaging can greatly influence will to fight and thus should improve the chances of victory. While our research focused on states in conflict, an important finding in several of our cases was that these mechanisms are most effective before a conflict begins.

Pg. 115

Again, the problems of selective presentation and censorship – both direct and indirect – when it comes to the official “justifications” for entering into a conflict:

During the heyday of global communism, communist countries used a combination of indoctrination and population control to strong effect. Loyalty training in schools and in compulsory meetings for adults, backed by censorship to remove competing voices and points of view, and reinforced by commissars and other forms of internal supervision to impose consequences on the disloyal can add up to a strong set of core perceptions, the belief that these perceptions are both true and widely shared (even if neither is the case), and fear of even appearing to deviate from those perceptions.

Pg 117.

What does this all mean? Why is it important?

You have made it this far… you can extrapolate freely what it means to you. After all, the individual motivation for appreciating the stories of the past vary as much as what those lessons teach. This is the great thing about history which it seems most folks seem to miss: it is difficult to simplify, complex to successfully interpret, imperfect in its entirety, and always threatened by the evolution of the societies it anchors… yet it is addictive and the thirst for more never is fully quenched.

To me, that is enough to keep the fire burning, the mind racing, and the desk in a perpetual state of suspended longitudinal rotation… and it will never be enough.