What Should the U.S. Army Learn From History? - Determining the Strategy of the Future through Understanding the Past: Persisting Concerns and Threats, Parallels and Analogies With the Present Days (What Changes and What Does Not), Recommendations for the U.S. Army…

INTRODUCTION: SHOULD THE U.S. ARMY LEARN FROM HISTORY?

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It is my contention that the late British author and dramatist, L. P. Hartley, was substantially in error when he offered audiences the potent thought that the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.¹ It is an assumption for this monograph that history offers much from which the U.S. Army could learn. However, this analysis approaches the injunction in the title principally as a hypothesis to be tested, rather than as a great and solemnly reliable truth. The trouble is that there is no such thing as history. History is what historians write, and historians are part of the process they are writing about as well.² The Hartley quote is particularly instructive for two reasons. First, it offers a very plausible common thought that today approaches the status of being an all but revealed truth that speaks sense to a common error. Second, in the opinion of this scholar, Hartley is seriously mistaken in his understanding of history, at least in the level of his understanding, which I deem to be somewhat shallow. That said, the facts remain that Hartley’s striking thought and particularly his choice of words merits our serious attention and even much respect. There is a notable plausibility about Hartley’s phrase-making that commands attention. In short, he expresses what reads like a well-considered conviction resting upon an impressive pile of historical evidence! However, we ought to ask: Is it true?—notwithstanding its apparent