History and the History Wars Strike Back
The Army and how Americans study and apply history. Part III.
“The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”
Samuel Huntington opened his June 1993 essay, The Clash of Civilizations?, with a challenge to the prevailing “end of history” narrative: while the world was growing more interconnected, the immediate impact would not be a harmonizing of cultures but a clash. Civilization identity, which he described as “highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have” would be the new fault lines of conflict. These conflicts would require the West “to develop a more profound understanding of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see their interests.” History, in other words, would be essential to navigate and succeed in these coming conflicts.
Less than a decade later, Huntington’s words felt prescient. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 brought an acute focus on what seemed like a “clash of civilizations”, the battle between a “fringe form of Islamic extremism” and liberal democracy. As President Bush put it in his address to Congress following the attacks, “[t]his is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.” A crucial asset in this fight would be Americans’ understanding of history—our own history as well as that of both our adversaries and new allies.
In order to cultivate these assets, the Army directed greater institutional attention to the study of history than, arguably, any point since World War II. The process was messy and imperfect, and in keeping with the shift to a much smaller, all-volunteer force, had considerably less impact on the field of history than the broad mobilization in the 1940s and 1950s. But for the first decade following 9/11, the Army was an active player in channeling resources and attention towards Americans’ engagement with history as an essential tool in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations.
This situation did not last long, however. The second decade of the 21st century was a different story, one where the Army played a much smaller role in the field of history. It became more of a receiver rather than driver of Americans’ relationship with history, as the history wars, long a feature of American culture and politics, returned with new force. For many it felt as if a clash of civilizations better described America’s internal tensions than its foreign engagements.
Strykers in Mosul, Iraq. Source: DVIDS.
History Strikes Back
As the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, history itself seemed to transform. It was a time “When the World Seemed New” to quote the title of historian Jeffrey Engel’s book on George H.W. Bush’s presidency. Liberal democracy, capitalism, and globalization all seemed not just ascendant, but triumphant in a way that led many to dream of a world where peace and commerce reigned.
Not everyone held such a view. As noted earlier, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (first as an article, then a book) came out in the 1990s. There were brutal wars in the Balkans, genocide in Rwanda, and protests against the World Trade Organization to name just a few of the many departures from the idea that history came to an end with the fall of the Soviet Union. But these and other examples notwithstanding, a reasonable summary of global institutional opinion (leaders in business, government, civil society, etc.) was expressed in Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat (which while published in 2005, downplayed the War on Terror relative to the impact of globalization). Global supply chains and capital flows, the internet and digital revolution, and capitalism—or as Friedman put it, “technology and geoeconomics”—were the forces that mattered.
The first decade of the 21st century shattered any illusions about a global convergence and demonstrated the world was far spikier than smooth. The attacks of 9/11 and the War on Terror underscored that the historical forces of religion and tribalism remained as strong as ever; the Great Recession of 2008 showed how the financial pipes of globalization could spread financial contagion just as easily as they could facilitate trade and commerce; and, the 2008 Russo-Georgian war took the wind out of any notion that great power conflict was a relic of the past. As historian Robert Kagan put it in 2007, “The world has become normal again. The years immediately following the end of the Cold War offered a tantalizing glimpse at a new kind of international order, with nations growing together or disappearing altogether, ideological conflicts melting away, cultures intermingling through increasingly free commerce and communications. But that was a mirage…”1
Initially, the Army was unprepared for the return of history, in particular how it manifested with the insurgency in Iraq and a reinvigorated Taliban in Afghanistan.2 As Army officer John Nagl wrote in his foreword to FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, published in 2006, “[i]t is not unfair to say that in 2003 most Army officers knew more about the U.S. Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency.” But starting in 2005, the Army began in earnest to embed greater historical proficiency, centered primarily on counterinsurgency, among the force.
In September of that year, then-Lieutenant General David Petraeus assumed command of Fort Leavenworth and the Combined Arms Center (CAC). Petraeus had previously served as the first Commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq and the NATO Training Mission-Iraq and had led the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) during the invasion and first year of Operation Iraqi Freedom. One of Petraeus’s first actions was to bring in his classmate and historian, Conrad Crane, to update counterinsurgency doctrine.
The process which led to FM 3-24, a joint publication between the Army and the Marines, was distinct in how heavily in drew in civilian expertise, including that of historians. But it was not the only time the Army called on historians. In 2009 General Martin Dempsey, at the time the commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), commissioned Colonel Matthew Moten of the West Point History Department to produce a book on how America has ended its wars throughout history. The resulting book, Between War and Peace: How America Ends Its Wars, drew on the expertise of a range of historians.3
The Army’s efforts to improve historical knowledge among the force were not perfect. A 2014 study, for example, found that only 6.3 percent of soldiers received history instruction prior to deployment. And relative to the catalytic role the Army played for the field of history post-Civil War and during World War II, the War on Terror efforts had much less impact on the broader field.4 But within the Army, it was a seismic change in the doctrinal importance of history relative to what had been the case with AirLand Battle.
The Clash of Histories
“Perhaps every generation lives with illusions, different ones for each generation. And that is how history moves from one generation to another, exploding the previous generation’s illusions and conjuring up its own.” - Gordon Wood, The Idea of America
There has never been a perfect national consensus on how to teach history in America, but in the second decade of the 21st century, the political disagreement over this subject intensified. Curricular initiatives, such as the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission, seemed to regularly make front-page news. At all levels of education, from K-12 to colleges and universities, the question of how to teach history became fraught with political overtones.
Much of this division turned out to be fueled by misperceptions. A public opinion study conducted in 2021 and 2022 by the nonprofit More in Common US (disclosure: I was the Executive Director for More in Common US and helped conduct and write up this study) found that Americans actually held many similar attitudes towards teaching history, but were convinced there was no common ground. There were enormous “perception gaps” dominating perspectives on this issue. For example, Republicans, on average, believed that only 42 percent of Democrats supported the idea that “All students should learn about how the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution advanced freedom and equality”; in fact, 92 percent of Democrats agreed with this statement. Similarly, Democrats, on average, believed that only 32 percent of Republicans believed that “It’s important that every American student learn about slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation”; in fact, 83 percent of Republicans agreed with this statement. The presence of such large inaccuracies in how we understand the views of other Americans obscured common ground and made the heat from the history wars that much stronger.
This is not to say there were not significant and intense agreements across Americans over how to best teach history. There were and are real conflicts. And more broadly, the polarization in America is more cultural in nature than it is policy-oriented, which make national history a central part of the political dynamics. But perception caused Americans to focus only on the areas of division without considering their many shared beliefs.
This broader polarization rippled through the Army, or at least through Americans’ perceptions of the Army, as well. This meant that while institutionally during the 2010s and early 2020s the Army continued to engage historians, it became more of a receiver of this wider cultural trend than a catalyst for the field of history. Consider a 2023 public opinion study fielded by the Veterans and Citizens Initiative (disclosure: I helped conduct and write up this study) that found while 71 percent of Americans agreed with the statement, “The US military should be separate from politics”, only 42 percent felt that it actually was separate from politics. Arguably America and the Army are still experiencing this polarization and so its ultimate trajectory remains unknown.
But an interesting and relevant development is that, as the history wars set in, they did not dampen Americans’ enthusiasm for historical content. In fact, America entered a sort of golden era for history as entertainment, both fiction and non-fiction. Tens of millions of Americans viewed Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary series, The Vietnam War; Taylor Sheridan’s universe of shows, from Yellowstone to 1923 and Lioness are both unusually historical in nature and among the most popular shows on television; and history books, podcasts, newsletters, and other outputs have flourished. Arguably more Americans are consuming more history than ever before.
Does this make our society more historically-minded? Are we better prepared now to apply the lessons of history to our present and future?
“Thinking In Time”5
“Second, don’t forget that those who invented military history were not well-educated consultants sprouting the latest classroom theories but were as tough, practical, and successful practitioners of the soldierly trade as anyone today.” - Brian Linn and Brian Donlon, Learning or Confirming? History and the Military Professional
The short answer is I don’t know. It’s easy to scan today’s headlines and feel like we are either entering the greatest period in our history or descending into a civilizational collapse. What I focus on are the signs, beneath the headlines, that more Americans are working at the local and institutional level to engage with history. This includes new civics and history education initiatives at schools, as well as institutional efforts in the Army, such as the
. Focused on strengthening professional writing in the Army, the Harding Project—launched in 2023—has already prompted a more intentional and widespread use of the Army’s institutional history.How this plays out remains to be seen. My hope is that more Americans will see themselves not just as consumers of history, but as practitioners. As articulated in the quote from Linn and Donlon, practitioners have long been the driving force in wrestling from history hard-earned lessons to make our society a better version of itself. That task remains as necessary and important as ever.
Additional Resources:
An interesting source on teaching military history can be found at The Center for Military, War, and Society Studies
TRADOC provides a military history instructor course. You can learn more here.
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Kagan published a book on this theme in 2008 called, appropriately, The Return of History and the End of Dreams.
Both these insurgencies involved a myriad of actors that often fought against each other, but shared common goals in undermining the US-backed local governments and waging war against US and coalition forces. There are many exceptional analyses of these insurgencies and many other authors far better positioned to describe their complex organizational dynamics.
These two instances were not the only time the Army called on historians to help with operational efforts. In 2004, for example, TRADOC sponsored a seminar titled “Turning Victory into Success.” Military historians were also on the ground to chronicle operations in the War on Terror.
Though outside the focus of this piece, the Army might have had a broader impact on how Americans engage with certain parts of history and philosophy. I don’t have data to support this, but I think the War on Terror and the focus on history as part of counterinsurgency played some part in driving a renewed interest in stoicism and the philosophies of antiquity. American forces deployed across much of the terrain that ancient civilizations such as the Greeks, Romans, and Persians, had clashed over at various times. As such, many service-members found it both useful operationally and intellectually engaging to explore the writings from the ancient thinkers.
I benefitted from reading Thinking in Time: The Uses Of History For Decision Makers by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest May. While geared towards policy-makers and national security professionals, Neustadt and May’s work is a useful description of the many advantages thinking historically can bring, and of the many pitfalls humans often encounter when we try to bring the lessons of history to bear on the present.