Why Study History?

Thucydides
A friend of mine recently said that the most “useless” course he took in college was history.

Let’s start with Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War. This was a war that took place over 2,400 years ago. What possible relevance could it have?

In this war, Athens and Sparta, the two “superpowers” of Greece, were locked into a long war for the dominance of Greece. The climax to the story in Thucydides was that Athens decided to send its formidable fleet and much of its army to attack Syracuse, an ally of Sparta far away across the Mediterranean Sea in Sicily (still there). The campaign was a disaster, leading to political instability at home and weakening Athens’ military position in Greece. Sound familiar? Remind you of our involvement in Vietnam?

This is not a direct analogy but suggestive of some of the consequences of the Vietnam War. These potential consequences were not factored into the decision to make a major commitment in Vietnam.

Fortunately, Soviet leaders also didn’t read history and a few years later became bogged down in a similar war in Afghanistan. The consequences were more severe; Russia suffered the same fate as Athens. Arrogant people in power seldom seem to learn from the mistakes of others.

There was another historical analogy to the war in Vietnam, one we should have known about. The American Revolution.

The British were a global superpower, having just defeated France for global imperial rule. But France was still a formidable enemy in the main theater of war, Europe. Then the far-away Americans revolted. On paper, the British should have won easily. And they did. After the embarrassment of Boston, England sent a large part of its navy and regular army to deal with the rebels. In the key battle for New York, the British almost annihilated the American Continental Army. Washington barely escaped to Valley Forge with a remnant of his army. Eventually, however, Washington realized a strategic truth. This was not a traditional war. He didn’t have to win battles to win American independence, the goal of the revolt. What he had to do was keep the Continental Army together, if only as a symbol that the revolt was still alive.

This was essential because for the Americans, as for the Viet Minh, they were not fighting to get a negotiated settlement. This was an "existential" war; either the Americans were going to be free on their own territory or they would suffer under harsh English colonial rule.

Time was on Washington's side. There was opposition to the war in England from merchants, manufacturers like Wedgwood, intellectuals (Adam Smith), powerful Whig politicians and even from some top military leaders, including General Lord Cornwallis. The head of the British army in America wrote in his private diary that the war could not be won.  The war was expensive, as most of the navy had to protect long-distance logistic and supply lanes across the Atlantic in addition to blockading the American coast and ferrying the British army around. The longer the American army was in the field, tying down large British military assets, the better the chance that France would deliver the promised aid to the Americans, increasing the chances the American army could survive and become stronger.

In the end, the British realized that they would never have enough resources to defeat the Americans or even occupy American territory outside of a few major cities. And there was the strategic danger that major military resources would not available in case of renewed hostilities with France.

By 1781, the war had dragged on for six years. An ill-conceived attempt to reestablish British presence in the southern colonies was met with a brilliant campaign of skirmishes and battles where a part of the Continental Army and local militias (and disease) ground down the British force. A classic campaign of guerrilla warfare and attrition. The British goal failed; even if the defeated and diseased remnant of Cornwallis’ army had been successfully sea-lifted out of Yorktown, the war was probably over for the Brits. There was no reason to continue since it was obvious to almost everyone that England didn’t have the will or the resources to put down the revolt. The only move left was to negotiate a peace treaty giving the Americans their independence and refocus on the French.

If American political leaders in 1964/65 had read Thucydides and understood the historical lessons of the American Revolution better, would they still have made a major commitment in Vietnam? I don’t know. But they might have had a more realistic internal debate on the dynamics and possible outcome of the war.

Maybe as citizens of the United States we should spend some time tomorrow, the Fourth of July, thinking about or reading some history.
___________________________________________________________________________

Related Posts:

Rethinking the 1920s and the Great Depression

Also see the five posts comparing the U.S. and Rome, starting with

Pax America I:  Washington as an Imperial City

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