In the section on North Vietnamese statesmen I employ a variety of newly available sources. The Vietnamese state has recently released a massive collection of Politburo and Central Committee directives, cables, and speeches (called the Van Kien Dang), providing the first official glimpse into Hanoi’s decision-making over several decades. This section also makes use of official Vietnamese histories of its military and diplomatic corps. These include histories of the Foreign Ministry, the People’s Army, the People’s Navy, the Sapper Forces, the Central Office of South Vietnam, histories of combat operations, histories of the Tonkin Gulf incident, memoirs of prominent military and diplomatic officials, records of the secret negotiations with the Johnson administration, and some Vietnamese newspapers.
I have engaged all of these sources in an effort to gain purchase on how strategic empathy shaped matters of war and peace. I selected these cases both for their significance to twentieth-century international history and their capacity to illuminate strategic empathy’s impact.
One of my goals in this book, as in my previous work, is to use history to help us understand how people think. Whereas the cognitive sciences can suggest much about our decision-making process in the lab, the study of historical decision-making can provide us with real-life subjects under genuine pressures. Historians must examine how people behaved not in the confines of controlled procedures but in the real world, where so much is beyond anyone’s control. If we want to understand how people think, it makes sense to probe historical cases for clues. In this way, studies of historical decision-making can greatly complement the cognitive sciences.
Ultimately, history must never be a mere recounting of facts, strewn together into a story about the past. Instead, it must be used to advance our understanding of why events occurred and why individuals acted as they did. Viewed in this way, historical scholarship holds enormous practical value for anyone who seeks to comprehend the world around us. As the international historian Marc Trachtenberg put it, the aim of historical analysis is to bring forth the logic underlying the course of events. “In working out that logic,” he writes, “you have to draw on your whole understanding of why states behave the way they do and why they sometimes go to war with each other.”29 Part of our understanding—our whole understanding—must come not only from assessing the structure of state relations at the systemic level, or by analyzing the domestic-level and organizational politics affecting state behavior, but also from a study of how individual leaders thought about the other side.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MY FIRST AND DEEPEST thanks must go to the staff and fellows of Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. The Center is a magnificent environment for any scholar, and I greatly benefitted from my interactions with academics across a wide range of disciplines. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided generous financial support during my stay there, enabling me to develop this project.
Many other colleagues and friends assisted me in this work, either by reading early drafts or by sharing their expertise. They include Nil Demirçubuk, Alison Gopnik, Christopher Goscha, Michael Hechter, Peter Hobson, Alec Holcombe, Dominic Hughes, Frances Hwang, Stephen Kosslyn, Robert Kurzban, Thomas R. Metcalf, Merle Pribbenow, Kristin Rebien, Sangeetha Santhanam, Arlene Saxonhouse, Stephen Schuker, James Sheehan, Marla Stone, Hanh Tran, Tuong Vu, Barbie Zellizer, and Peter Zinoman. I am also indebted to two reviewers for Oxford University Press who kindly waived their anonymity in order that we could discuss this manuscript. Both Robert Jervis and Aviel Roshwald provided incisive comments that have made this a much stronger book.
The staffs at Doe Library of the University of California at Berkeley and Knox Library of the Naval Postgraduate School were always exceedingly patient in helping me to locate occasionally obscure materials. At various stages in this project I received thoughtful and diligent research assistance from Anthony Le and Alfred Woodson. Toward the project’s close Diana Wueger tenaciously tracked down key records, exhibiting a “never give up” spirit that I greatly admire. Leslie Chang deserves special mention. She assisted me in this project for nearly two years, straining her eyes on barely legible microfilm, poring over dusty, out-of-print volumes, and working with me for hours at a stretch. I was especially lucky to have found her.
Naturally, I am thankful to my editor at Oxford University Press, David McBride, and my agent, Will Lippincott. To all these individuals, I am truly grateful.
Zachary Shore
Berkeley, California
November 2013
NOTES
Introduction
1. See Dexter Filkins and Carlotta Gall, “Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor,” The New York Times, November 2010. See also Joshua Partlow, “British Faulted for Taliban Impostor,” Washington Post, November 26, 2010.
2. Malcolm Gladwell graphically illustrated the dangers of choosing the wrong slice. See Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (New York: Back Bay Books, 2007).
3. Isaiah Berlin, “On Political Judgment,” New York Review of Books, October 3, 1996.
4. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us (New York: Crown, 2010), p. 38.
5. Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 11.
6. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us (New York: Crown, 2010), p. 157.
7. See for example the classic work on the pitfalls of analogical reasoning: Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).
8. Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 71.
9. For a short overview of the Chernobyl accident see W. Scott Ingram, The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster (New York: Facts on File, 2005).
10. Writing about U.S. strategy in the nuclear age, the historian Marc Trachtenberg makes a similar observation, namely that few people ever extend their reasoning processes to third- and fourth-order calculations. Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
Chapter 1
1. For a thorough account of the massacre, see Nigel Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer (London: Palgrave, 2005).
2. “Congress Report on the Punjab Disturbances,” The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) (hereafter Collected Works), vol. 17, pp. 114–292.
3. For a thoughtful essay on Gandhi’s interactions with the British see George Orwell, “Reflections on Gandhi,” in A Collection of Essays (New York: Harcourt, 1946).
4. Collected Works, vol. 18, pp. 89–90. From Young India, July 28, 1920.
5. Guha Chāruchandra (Khrishnadas), Seven Months With Mahatma Gandhi: Being an Inside View of the Non-Co-Operation Movement (Madras, India: Ganesan, 1928).
6. Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad, India: Navajivan Publishing House, 1927), p. 439.
7. William L. Shirer, Gandhi: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), p. 31.
8. Judith Brown argues that Gandhi used the massacre as a political issue to advance the cause of Indian self-rule. See Judith M. Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics, 1915–1922 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 244–47.
9. Collected Works, vol. 18, pp. 89–90. From Young India, July 28, 1920.
10. Collected Works, vol. 17, p. 23–26. Before February 11, 1920.
11. Collected Works, vol. 17, p. 38. From Young India, February 18, 1920.
12. For other useful syntheses of Gandhi’s actions and thinking at this time see Stanley Wolpert, Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Barbara D. Metcalf
and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of India (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Louis Fischer, ed., The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas (New York: Vintage Books, 2002); Judith M. Brown, ed., Mahatma Gandhi: The Essential Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Gene Sharp, Gandhi as a Political Strategist: With Essays on Ethics and Politics (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1979); Norman G. Finkelstein, What Gandhi Says About Violence, Resistance, and Courage (New York: OR Books, 2012). Finkelstein argues, as do many others, that Gandhi in part sought to strike at the conscience of the British people in order to make them see the wrong they had done to India.
13. Collected Works, vol. 16, p. 330. December 7, 1919.
14. Collected Works, vol. 16, p. 361. From Young India, December 31, 1919.
15. Collett, Butcher, p. 283.
16. Collett, Butcher, pp. 405–6.
17. “Amritsar Debate,” Times of London, July 9, 1920. See also “Commons Scenes in Amritsar Debate,” Manchester Guardian, July 9, 1920.
18. Arthur Herman, Gandhi and Churchill: The Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age (New York: Bantam Books, 2008), p. 254.
19. “Army Council and General Dyer,” Hansard, July 8, 1920, pp. 1719–34. Available at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1920/jul/08/army-council-and-general-dyer.
20. “Army Council and General Dyer,” pp. 1719–34.
21. “Army Council and General Dyer,” pp. 1719–34.
22. Herman, Gandhi and Churchill, pp. 393–98.
23. “Army Council and General Dyer,” pp. 1719–34.
24. “Army Council and General Dyer,” pp. 1719–34.
25. Collett, Butcher, p. 386.
26. Even in his later years, Gandhi remained attuned to the evolution of British attitudes. After the Second World War, he noted that a new type of Briton had come into being, “burning to make reparation for what his forefathers did.” Collected Works, vol. 82, p. 155, on or after December 1, 1945.
27. Judith M. Brown, The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), ch. 12, “Gandhi’s Global Impact.”
Chapter 2
1. Gustav Stresemann, The Stresemann Diaries (New York: MacMillan, 1935), preface.
2. The Nobel Foundation did not award a Peace Prize in 1925. In 1926 it retroactively awarded the Peace Prize of 1925 to Charles Dawes and Austen Chamberlain while simultaneously awarding the Peace Prize of 1926 to Stresemann and Briand.
3. Antonina Vallentin, Stresemann (London: Constable & Co., 1931), Foreword by Albert Einstein, pp. v–vi.
4. For an early important work on Locarno see Jon Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy: Germany and the West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971).
5. Vallentin, Stresemann, p. 26.
6. For a thorough overview of Chicherin’s background, see Timothy E. O’Connor, Diplomacy and Revolution: G. V. Chicherin and Soviet Foreign Affairs, 1918–1930 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988).
7. Stephen White, The Origins of Détente: The Genoa Conference and Soviet Western Relations, 1921–1922 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
8. White, Origins of Détente, p. 181.
9. Philipp Scheidemann, The Making of New Germany: The Memoirs of Philipp Scheidemann, vol. 2, trans. J. E. Mitchell (New York: D. Appleton, 1929), p. 355. According to Scheidemann, the Kassel police repeatedly warned him of threats to his life.
10. For a more recent account of Stresemann’s anti-inflation policies, see Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (New York: Penguin, 2009).
11. See Patrick Cohrs, The Unfinished Peace After World War I: America, Britain, and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 112–13.
12. For more on the Buchrucker affair, see John Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918–1945 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005).
13. Jon Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
14. Werner Angress, Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921–1923 (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1972).
15. Akten zur Deutschen Auswaertigen Politik, 1918–1945 (hereafter ADAP), Series A, vol. 8, doc. 161, pp. 410–11.
16. ADAP, Series A, vol. 8, doc. 165, pp. 419–21.
17. ADAP, Series A, vol. 9, doc. 32, pp. 74–76. See also Stresemann, The Stresemann Diaries, Stresemann to Brockdorf-Rantzau, December 1, 1923.
18. ADAP, Series A, vol. 9, doc. 76, pp. 193–94. December 29, 1923, Schubert to Brockdorff-Rantzau.
19. ADAP, Series A, vol. 8, doc. 137, pp. 354–57.
20. ADAP, Series A, vol. 9, doc. 170, pp. 451–58.
21. ADAP, Series A, vol. 10, doc. 50, pp. 129–30.
22. ADAP, Series a, vol. 10, doc. 59, pp. 144–45. See also ADAP, Series A, vol. 10, doc. 65, pp. 162–63.
23. ADAP, Series A, vol. 10, doc. 112, pp. 274–75.
24. ADAP, Series A, vol. 10, doc. 131, pp. 319–22.
25. In fact, as historians now know, Trotsky’s fortunes were already in decline and Stalin was in ascendance, having managed to suppress Lenin’s scathing written criticism of the coarse Georgian. Nonetheless, Stresemann and other outsiders, of course, could not have known for certain the actual state of power politics inside the Kremlin at this time.
26. ADAP, Series A, vol. 10, doc. 213, pp. 534–38.
27. ADAP, Series A, vol. 11, doc. 93, pp. 219–20.
28. Nachlass Stresemann, Reel 3120, Serial 7178, Band 17, doc. 157411–19.
29. Nachlass Stresemann, Politische Akten, October 29, 1924, reel 3111, pp. 147173–76.
30. ADAP, Series A, vol. 11, doc. 265, pp. 661–62.
31. Nachlass Stresemann, Stresemann to Houghton, June 4, 1925, reel 3114, pp. 148780–93.
32. Nachlass Stresemann, June 11, 1925, Reel 3113, Serial 7129, Band 272, doc. 147850.
33. Gaines Post, The Civil-Military Fabric of Weimar Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 114, fn. 60.
34. Gustav Stresemann, Gustav Stresemann: His Diaries, Letters, and Papers, vol. 1, trans. Eric Sutton (New York: MacMillan, 1935), p. 489.
35. Nachlass Stresemann, undated entry by Stresemann, Reel 3112, p. 147736.
36. Although Locarno was a Western-oriented policy, the foreign ministry’s overall approach throughout the 1920s was one of Schaukelpolitik, a balancing between East and West while steadily regaining strength through revision of Versailles.
37. The Serbian official represented the country then known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The country’s name was later changed to Yugoslavia in 1929.
38. Military Intelligence Division, “German Soviet Relations,” U.S. Military Intelligence Reports, Germany, 1919–1941, NA RG 165, microfilm, University Publications of America, August 9, 1925, 2: 207.
39. Wright, Stresemann, p. 324.
40. ADAP, Series A, vol. 14, doc. 109, pp. 284–91.
41. ADAP, Series A, vol. 14, doc. 109.
42. ADAP, Series A, vol. 14, doc. 110.
43. Peter Krüger, Die Aussenpolitik der Republik von Weimar (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985), p. 209. Krüger writes: “Der deutschen Aussenpolitik kamen Stresemanns Realismus, seine rasche Auffassungsgabe und Intelligenz ebenso zugute wie die so dringend benoetigte Klarheit und Konsequenz seiner Poltik und vor alllem seine Besonnenheit, die . . . stets das uebergeordnete, wesentliche Kennzeichen seiner Aussenpolitik blieb.” [Author’s translation: “German foreign policy benefited from Stresemann’s realism, quick-wittedness and intelligence and from the urgently needed clarity and forthrightness of his politics, and especially from his caution which always remained the overriding, essential hallmark of his foreign policy.”]
44. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/I, doc. 112, pp. 280–83. “Wir haetten aber die Erfahrung gemacht, wir den in Deut
schland immernoch sehr gefaehrlichen Kommunismus, der von Russland genaehrt wuerde, dann besser bekaepfen koennten, wenn wir mit Russland gut staenden.”
45. Mary Habeck, Storm of Steel: The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 81. For a much earlier work on Russo–German cooperation in this period see Gerald Freund, Unholy Alliance: Russian–German Relations from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the Treaty of Berlin (London: Harcourt, Brace, 1957).
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