History, the White House and the Kremlin : statesmen as historians
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
History, the White House and the Kremlin : statesmen as historians
Pinter Publishers, 1991
Available at 14 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Historical knowledge is one of the principal intellectual resources of statesmen and politicians in formulating policy. However, the use of history can have a positive or negative impact. This collection of essays examines the various ways in which history has influenced statesmen and politicians and how this has contributed to domestic and foreign policy formulation in the United States and the Soviet Union. Rashid Khalidi argues that the United States has actually adopted an alternative version of history in order to justify its support for the Israelis in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Jonathan Haslam illustrates the long-term impact which traumatic events can have upon states and their policies; the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 continues to influence Soviet policy towards the Japanese and the two powers have yet to conclude a peace treaty. The emphasis of Diane Kunz's chapter on "The Re-emergence of the United States as a Debtor Nation", is that the United States should learn from history by examining Britain's solutions to a simular situation in 1931 and 1956. Dwain Mefford examines how and why politicians and statesmen formulate foreign policy on the basis of historical analogy.
Drawing upon insights from the cognitive sciences and artficial intelligence, he uses examples from Soviet Foreign Policy to illustrate the theory. This theme is continued by Alex Hybel, who discusses theories of how decision-makers develop and use analogical reasoning, and draws upon examples of US policy towards Latin America to explore the theories. There is a concluding chapter by Alan Henrikson to draw all the chapters together.
Table of Contents
- United States policy and the Palestine problem - historical dimensions and the creation of an "alternative narrative", Rashid Khalidi
- the boundaries of rational calculation in Soviet policy towards Japan, Jonathan Haslam
- the Cuban missile crisis 25 years later - the learning continues, Dwain Mefford
- the Soviet General Staff - an institution's history of response to changes in its environment, Condoleeza Rice
- British and American hegemony compared - lessons for the current era of decline, David Lake
- being a borrower - the re-emergence of the United States as a debtor nation, Diane Kunz
- the United States and inter-war money and finance - lessons for Japan's future from America's past, Jeffrey Frieden
- the politics of empire - a theory with an application to the Soviet case, Jack Snyder
- the power of historical analogies - Soviet intervention in Eastern Europe and US interventions in Central america, Dwain Mefford
- learning and reasoning by analogy, Alex Hybel
- conclusion, Alan Henrikson.
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