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).
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.”
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 Deutschland 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).
46. Nachlass Stresemann, December 22, 1925, Reel 3113, Serial 7129, Band 272, doc. 148109–18.
47. For more on internal Bolshevik power politics, see Robert W. Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
48. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 37, pp. 90–93.
49. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 44, pp. 105–6.
50. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 64, p. 143.
51. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 80, p. 182.
52. Germany was permitted to maintain armament levels for self-defense, including an army of 100,000 men.
1. “German Royalists Accused of Raising Huge Secret Army,” Washington Post, December 17, 1926.
2. Truppenamt was the Army’s euphemism for the General Staff.
3. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.
4. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.
5. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.
6. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.
7. Perhaps part of Scheidemann’s anger can be traced to his personal grief. Only four months prior to this passionate address, Scheidemann’s wife had died of a stroke.
8. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.
9. “German Royalists Accused of Raising Huge Secret Army,” Washington Post, December 17, 1926.
10. “Germany’s Cabinet, Defeated, Resigns in Face of Charges,” Washington Post, December 18, 1926.
11. “Wild Scenes Mark Reichstag Session,” The New York Times, December 17, 1926. See also “Christmas Crisis,” Time, December 27, 1926.
12. “The Distrust of Herr Gessler,” Manchester Guardian, December 17, 1926, p. 11.
13. “German Gun-Running,” Manchester Guardian, December 18, 1926, p. 11.
14. “The Exposure of German Militarists,” Manchester Guardian, December 21, 1926, p. 7.
15. “German–Soviet Alliance?” Times (London), May 1, 1922, p. 11; “German Ascendancy in Russia,” Times (London), May 8, 1922, p. 9.
16. “Attack on Marx Cabinet,” Times (London), December 17, 1926.
17. Post, Civil-Military Fabric, p. 118. See Dirksen notes of meeting with Schubert, Wetzell, and Major Fischer, January 24, 1927. AA 4564/E163483.
18. “Summary of the Final Report of the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control into the General Inspection of German Armaments, February 15, 1925,” Documents on British Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers From the Foreign Office, Confidential Print, Part II, Series F, Vol. 36, pp. 61–65. The final sentence states: “All these infractions taken together are, in the opinion of the Commission, sufficiently important to require putting right, and the Commission will not, on its own initiative, be able to declare the military clauses fulfilled until these points are sufficiently advanced as to have attained the degree of disarmament required by the Treaty, which is now far from the case” (p. 63).
19. “World Statesmen Get Nobel Prizes,” The New York Times, December 11, 1926, p. 5.
20. “World Statesmen,” p. 5.
21. “A German Statesman,” The New York Times, July 4, 1927, p. 14.
22. For a useful biography see David Dutton, Austen Chamberlain: Gentleman in Politics (Bolton, UK: Ross Anderson Publications, 1985).
23. Minutes of the British Cabinet, CAB 23/53, Cabinet Office Papers, National Archive, London, December 1, 1926.
24. The total number of IMCC inspections stood at 33,381, at an average of 28 inspections per day. The total cost reached $38,713,976. Michael Salewski, Entwaffnung und Militaerkontrolle in Deutschland, 1919–1927 (Muenchen: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1966), p. 375.
25. Minutes of the British Cabinet, CAB 23/53, Cabinet Office Papers, National Archive, London, December 15, 1926
26. Minutes, December 15, 1926.
27. Minutes, December 15, 1926.
28. Richard Shuster has referred to Locarno as the “swan song of Allied efforts toward the enforcement of disarmament,” arguing that henceforth Chamberlain accepted German promises over proof of disarmament. See Richard Shuster, German Disarmament after World War I: The Diplomacy of International Arms Inspection, 1920–1931 (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 194. Another thorough work on disarmament is Thomas E. Boyle’s unpublished dissertation, “France, Great Britain, and German Disarmament,” State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1972. Available through University Microfilms of America Inc.
29. Gustav Hilger and Alfred Meyer, The Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations, 1918–1941 (New York: MacMillan, 1953), p. 207.
30. Sir Ronald Lindsay to Sir Austen Chamberlain, December 18, 1926, British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part II, Series F, vol. 37, Germany, 1926, Doc. 317, “Nationalist Associations,” pp. 313–17.
31. Hans Gatzke, Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954), ch. 2, “The End of Military Control.”
32. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 173, pp. 439–40.
33. Nachlass Stresemann. Aufzeichnung, January 5, 1927. Reel 3167, Series 7337, Band 48, doc. 163495–6.
34. ADAP, Series B, vol. IV, doc. 169, pp. 365–66.
35. ADAP, Series B, vol. IV, doc. 174, pp. 378–79.
36. ADAP, Series B, vol. VI, doc. 108, pp. 229–30.
37. See for example Hans Gatzke, Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1954).
38. See for example Jonathan Wright, Gustav Stresemann: Weimar’s Greatest Statesman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), and Patrick Cohrs, The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain, and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
39. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Touchstone, 1995), p. 284.
40. Hans Gatzke’s bibliographical note summarizes the early literature on the Foreign Minister. Among others, he cites the following as especially sympathetic to their subject: Walter Görlitz, Gustav Stresemann (Heidelberg: Ähren-Verlag, 1947); Prinz zu Löwenstein, Stresemann: das deutsche Schicksal im Spiegel seines Lebens (Frankfurt am Main: H. Scheffler, 1952).
41. Hans Gatzke, Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954). See also Henry L. Bretton, Stresemann and the Revision of Versailles (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1953), p. 38. Bretton cited Edgar Stern-Rubarth, one of Stresemann’s aides, as follows: “Stresemann’s ultimate hope, as he once confessed to me, was: To free the Rhineland, to recover Eupen-Malmedy, and the Saar, to perfect Austria’s Anschluss, and to have, under mandate or otherwise an African colony where essential tropical raw materials could be secured and an outlet created for the surplus energy of the younger generation.” Peter Krüger addressed the Stresemann problem by arguing that the Foreign Minister’s aims were less important than his style of seizing opportunities as they arose. See Peter Krüger, Die Aussenpolitik der Republik von Weimar (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985). Other useful works on Weimar era foreign and military policy include John Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918–1945 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1954); F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics, 1918–1933 (New York: Clarendon Press, 1966); Gaines Post, The Civil-Military Fabric of Weimar Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973).
42. Jonathan Wright, Gustav Stresemann: Weimar’s Greatest Statesman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
43. Cohrs, Unfinished Peace.
44. Stephen A. Schuker, “Review of Patrick Cohrs, The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain, and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932,” Journal of American History, vol. 94 (2007), p. 319.
45. In a much earlier work, Schuker observed that Stresemann had no intention of going to war while Germany was still weak. Stephen Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), p. 267.
46. Cohrs, Unfinished Peace, p. 229.
47. Wright, Stresemann, p. 508. Wright does note that because Stresemann also believed firmly in restoring Germany’s equal rights among the states of Europe, the revision of Versailles would ultimately leave Germany as the strongest power on the continent, save for Russia. These two aims had an inherent contradiction, but Wright concludes that Stresemann remained increasingly wedded to achieving strength through peace.
48. Wright, Stresemann, p. 386.
49. One could argue that Stresemann’s refusal to agree to fixed borders in the east represented a break in the pattern of cooperation commensurate with the Spirit of Locarno. However, this would only indicate his intention to revise those borders; it would not have been evidence of an intention to redraw those borders by military means.
50. MID, “Stresemann’s Speech Before the Reichstag,” U.S. Military Intelligence Reports, Germany, 1919–1941, NA RG 165, microfilm, University Publications of America, February 24, 1928, 2.418. The full sentence read: “We are disarmed, we have concluded the Locarno treaties, we have subjected ourselves to the jurisdiction of the Hague World Court by signing the optional clause for all international conflicts of a legal nature and we have created an almost complete system of arbitration and adjustment treaties.”
51. Schuker, End of French Predominance, p. 267.
52. Robert Kurzban, Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 170. For a separate discussion of cognitive psychology and the modular view, see Timothy Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.)
53. In this book I observe two common heuristics among foreign policy analysts: one helpful to the decision-maker—the pattern-break heuristic—and one harmful to the decision-maker—the continuity heuristic. Unlike a psychologist, I make no claims regarding how most people think. Instead, I assess how particular historical figures thought and how their thinking influenced historical events. I do, however, relate some of the findings from fields beyond history in order to provide alternative ways of conceptualizing historical problems. Whenever I relate such findings, I do so with considerable caution. For example, some psychologists dispute the validity of much of the scholarship on heuristics and biases. They correctly observe that scholars have identified countless biases and their opposites, making it impossible to conclude how people typically think. Other critics, Gerd Gigerenzer primary among them, note that heuristics need not always be seen as flaws in rational decision-making. Instead, they suggest that heuristics can also make us smart by simplifying our decision-making processes with helpful rules of thumb. In the Afterword I say more about the risks of being seduced by science. For one thoughtful challenge to mainstream notions in social psychology see Joachim I. Krueger and David C. Funder, “Towards a balanced social psychology: Causes, consequences, and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 27, no. 3 (2004), pp. 313–27.
54. Hitler’s own strategic empathy proved far less sound than Stresemann’s. It was long believed that Hitler possessed an innate knack for divining the weakness of his enemies, but this view has not withstood closer scrutiny. See Zachary Shore, What Hitler Knew: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), particularly ch. 3, “Risk in the Rhineland.”
1. David Murphy, What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 87.
2. Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).
3. Murphy, What Stalin Knew.
4. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991).
5. Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).
6. David Holloway, “Stalin and Intelligence: Two Cases,” forthcoming. Stanford Professor David Holloway kindly shared his unpublished article with me.
7. John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 126.
8. Norman Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 82. Naimark writes: “The vulnerability of the Soviet borders is a matter of historical dispute. But one might suggest that in an environment in which railway accidents, shortfalls in mining production, and grain spoilage were routinely attributed to Trotskyite subversion and Japanese-German spies, resulting in tens of thousands of arrests, torture and forced confessions and thousands of executions, the war scares and spy mania in the borderlands were part of the same process of inventing enemies and destroying people ultimately for no other reason except to maintain the suspicious and vengeful dictator in power.”
9. One can debate whether “genocide” is the proper term for Stalin’s crimes. At the very least we can consider them as mass murder.
10. Roberts, Stalin’s Wars, p. 48.
11. For details on the origins of this pact see Zachary Shore, What Hitler Knew: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), ch. 1, “Hitler’s Opening Gambit: Intelligence, Fear, and the German–Polish Agreement.”
12. Robert O’Neill, The German Army and the Nazi Party, 1933–1939 (London: Cassell, 1966), p. 38.
13. Anastas Mikoyan, Tak bylo (Moscow: AST, 2000), p. 534.
14. For more on both theory-theory and simulation theory see Jason P. Mitchell, “The False Dichotomy Between Simulation and Theory-Theory,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 9 (August 8, 2005). See also Rebecca Saxe, “Against Simulation: The Argument from Error,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 9 (April 4, 2005).
15. Mikoyan, Tak bylo, p. 534. See also Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Knopf, 2004), p. 376.
16. Mikoyan, Tak bylo, p. 376.
17. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943; Boston: Mariner Books, 1999), p. 654. Citations refer to the Mariner edition.
18. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 655.
19. Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 660–661.
20. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 661.
21. Montefiore, Stalin, p. 272.
22. Montefiore, Stalin, p. 298.
23. Montefiore, Stalin, pp. 309–310.
24. Some scholars still maintain that the Welles Mission of 1940 represented a genuine effort for peace. See Christopher O’Sullivan, Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1937–1943 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), ch. 3.
1. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, Collection: Grace Tully Archive, Series: Marguerite (“Missy”), LeHand Papers, Box 10; Folder = Correspondence: Roosevelt, Franklin D.: Transcripts of Longhand, 1934. Sunday July 1, 1934.
2. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1934, Vol. II: Europe, Near East and Africa (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934), pp. 241–43. Letter 1072 from William E. Dodd, the Ambassador in Germany, to Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State, July 24, 1934.
3. FRUS, Volume II: Europe, Near East and Africa. Memorandum from Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State, July 13, 1934, p. 238–39.
4. Edgar B. Nixon, Franklin D.Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1969), vol. II, pp. 180–81.
5. Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, vol. II, pp. 186–87.
6. Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, September 7, 1934, pp. 207–8.
7. Dodd was far from the only foreign observer to be distressed by the heightened militarism suffusing German daily life at this time. One young American who was studying at Oxford travelled to Germany in 1934. While there he attended a Hitler Youth camp outing and was startled to see how much it resembled military exercises, complete with drills, calisthenics, and instruction in the dismantling and reassembling of weapons. Later, Dean Rusk would write, “This was no Explorer Scout outing or weekend in the fresh air of the countryside.” Rusk could not then recognize the direction in which Germany was headed. In a speech to the World Affairs Council of Riverside, California, he adopted a wait-and-see attitude about Hitler’s regime. He would look back on his myopia with regret. We can only speculate that this experience was a meaningful episode that shaped his worldview and influenced his decision-making while Secretary of State during the Vietnam War. Dean Rusk, As I Saw It, as told to Richard Rusk, edited by Daniel S. Papp (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 79.
8. Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, November 5, 1934, Dodd to Moore, pp. 274–77.
9. Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, May 9, 1935, Dodd to FDR, pp. 499–503.
10. Memorandum by Mr. S. R. Fuller, Jr., of a Conversation With Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank of Germany, Berlin, September 23, 1935, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1935. Volume II: The British Commonwealth, Europe (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1935), pp. 282–86.
11. Memorandum, FRUS 1935, pp. 282–86.
12. President’s Secretary’s File (Dodd), Part 2, Reel 11. FDR to Dodd, December 2, 1935. Roosevelt reiterated his concern over media control in Germany in a letter to Dodd on August 5, 1936, going so far as to liken the Nazi’s media control to the Republicans’ control over American media. “The election this year has, in a sense, a German parallel. If the Republicans should win or make enormous gains, it would prove that an 85% control of the Press and a very definite campaign of misinformation can be effective here just as it was in the early days of the Hitler rise to power. Democracy is verily on trial. I am inclined to say something a little later on about the great need for freedom of the press in this country, i.e., freedom to confine itself to actual facts in its news columns and freedom to express editorially any old opinion it wants to.” PSF Dodd, Part 2, Reel 11, August 5, 1936.
13. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, Nemesis (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 141.
14. Draft Statement on Kristallnacht, November 15, 1938, President’s Secretary’s Files: Diplomatic Correspondence, Germany 1933–1938 (Box 31).
15. Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today (New York: Penguin, 2012), p. 27.
16. The political scientist Barbara Farnham has argued that the Munich Crisis of September 1938 convinced Roosevelt that Hitler represented a genuine threat to the Western democracies, America included. Barbara Farnham, Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision-Making (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). In contrast, I have suggested that FDR grasped the nature of Hitler’s regime and its dangers long before Munich. I have not focused on the Munich crisis here because it did not represent a pattern break but was instead the continuation of a pattern in Hitler’s diplomatic style.
17. Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, p. 153.
18. The historian David Irving has argued that Hitler was unaware of the plans for Kristallnacht, and once he learned of it, he sought quickly to end it. This claim is exceedingly hard to support, given, among other issues, Hitler’s close collaboration and personal friendship with Josef Goebbels, who orchestrated the pogrom. Irving subsequently went to prison in Austria for denying the Holocaust.
19. Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945 (hereafter DGFP), Series D, Memorandum by the Führer, “Directive for the Conversations with Mr. Sumner Welles,” February 29, 1940, doc. 637, pp. 817–19.
20. Montefiore, Stalin, p. 312.
21. DGFP, Series D, Supplement to Memorandum of the Conversation between the Foreign Minister and Sumner Welles on March 1, 1940, doc. 641, p. 829.
22. Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 1, 1940. Memorandum by Under-Secretary of State Welles, March 1, 1940.
23. DGFP, Series D, “Directive by the Führer and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht,” March 1, 1940, doc. 644, pp. 831–33.
24. DGFP, Series D, “Conversation Between the Führer and Chancellor and American Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles, in the Presence of the Foreign Minister, State Secretary Meissner, and American Charge d’Affaires Kirk,” March 2, 1940, doc. 649, pp. 838–45.
25. Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 1, March 2, 1940. See also Welles’s subsequent account in Sumner Welles, Time for Decision (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), ch. 3, “My Mission to Europe: 1940.”
26. DGFP, Series D, vol. VIII, “Conversation Between Field Marshal Göring and Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles,” March 3, 1940, doc. 653, pp. 853–62.
27. FRUS, Welles Report on conversations with Göring, March 2, 1940.
28. Fred L. Israel, The War Diary of Breckinridge Long: Selections From the Years 1939–1944 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), p. 64. One scholar of the Welles mission concludes that FDR had multiple aims in mind beyond seeking a peace initiative, including gleaning information on Hitler’s and Mussolini’s views, prolonging the Phoney War, and continuing Italy’s neutrality. See C. J. Simon Rofe, Franklin Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy and the Welles Mission (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007).
29. OSS Study of Hitler, 1943, Hitler 201 File, RID/AR, WASH X-2 PERSONALITIES #43
30. DGFP, Series D, vol. XI, doc. 326, Berlin, November 16, 1940, p. 547.
31. DGFP, Series D, vol. XI, doc. 326, Berlin, November 16, 1940, p. 542. Record of the conversation on November 12, 1940. People present: Hitler, Molotov, von Ribbentrop, Dekanozov, Hilger, and M. Pavlov.
32. DGFP, Series D, vol. XI, doc. 328, Berlin, November 15, 1940. Record of the conversation on November 13, 1940. People present: Hitler, Molotov, von Ribbentrop, Dekanozov, Hilger, and M. Pavlov, p. 554.
33. DGFP, Series D, vol. XI, doc. 328, Berlin, November 15, 1940. Record of the conversation on November 13, 1940. People present: Hitler, Molotov, von Ribbentrop, Dekanozov, Hilger, and M. Pavlov, p. 557.
34. Montefiore, Stalin, p. 350. Montefiore has offered this quote from an unpublished collection of notes by Reginald Dekanozov, son of the Soviet Ambassador to Berlin and Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Dekanozov. I have therefore not corroborated the quote from Montefiore’s book with the original that he claims is found in the son’s notes.
1. This chapter and the subsequent one previously appeared as an article in the Journal of Cold War Studies. I am grateful to the journal for its permission to reprint the work here.
2. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (The New Cold War History) (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
3. “The Historic Talks: 35th Anniversary of the Paris Agreement, 1973–2008,” Diplomatic History Research Committee of the Foreign Ministry, ed. Vu Duong Huan [Vũ Du’o’ng Huân] (Hanoi, Vietnam: National Political Publishing House, 2009), p. 101.
4. This lament is made most famously by Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1996), p. 32. McNamara wrote that neither he nor the Presidents he served nor their top advisors possessed any appreciation for or understanding of Indochina, “its history, language, culture, or values.”
5. The Van Kien Dang is a collection of Politburo and Central Committee directives, speeches, and cables, emanating from Hanoi and covering most of the post–World War II era. The collection is assessed in the Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 5, no. 2 (2010).
6. From among the many official DRV histories, this article has been informed in part by the 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, the memoirs of prominent military officers, records of the secret negotiations with the Johnson administration, and some Vietnamese newspapers.
7. Pierre Asselin has highlighted the Party Secretary’s importance in state building. See his article, “Le Duan, the American War, and the Creation of an Independent Vietnamese State,” The Journal of American—East Asian Relations, vol. 10, nos. 1–2 (2001). A 2007 biography of Le Duan, which is essentially a hagiography by the official state-run publishing house, covers his general background and impact on Vietnamese history. See Tong Bi Thu, Le Duan: Party General Secretary Le Duan (Hanoi, Vietnam: VNA Hanoi Publishing House, 2007).
Liên-Hang T. Nguyen’s Hanoi’s War spotlights intra-Party factionalism, emphasizing the roles of Le Duan and Le Duc Tho. Still largely absent from the literature is a focus on the Party General Secretary’s ability to know his American enemy and its effect on the war.
8. Tuong Vu, “From Cheering to Volunteering: Vietnamese Communists and the Coming of the Cold War, 1940–1951,” in Connecting Histories: The Cold War and Decolonization in Asia (1945–1962), eds. Christopher Goscha and Christian Ostermann (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 172–204; and also “Dreams of Paradise: The Making of Soviet Outpost in Vietnam,” Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space, no. 2 (2008), pp. 255–85.
9. Martin Grossheim, “‘Revisionism’ in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam: New Evidence from the East German Archives,” Cold War History, vol. 5, no. 4 (2005), pp. 451–77.
10. For an excellent analysis of just how dangerous Party rivalries could be, consider Le Duan’s maneuvers to sideline General VÕ Nguyên Giáp and force the Tê´t Offensive. See Merle L. Pribbenow, “General VÕ Nguyên Giáp and the Mysterious Evolution of the Plan for the 1968 Tê´t Offensive,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (2008), pp. 1–33.
11. Christopher E. Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945–1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies) (Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS Press, 2011), p. 261.
12. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War.
13. Hanoi’s official commemorative biography of the Party First Secretary states that Le Duan was granted an exemption from the rule limiting Politburo members to one wife. In the arduous resistance war, Le Duan had close relationships with southern compatriots and comrades. In 1950 he was allowed by the Party organization to obtain a second marriage to Ms. Nguyen Thuy Nga. Tong Bi Thu, Le Duan: Party General Secretary Le Duan (VNA Hanoi Publishing House, 2007), p. 5.
14. “The Southern Wife of the Late Party General Secretary Le Duan,” Installment 3, Tien Phong, July 9, 2006., Accessed July 10, 2006, at http://www.tienphongonline.com.vn/Tianyon/Index.aspx?ArticleID=52871&ChannelID=13.
15. Carlyle Thayer, War by Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam, 1954–1960 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989). See chapter titled “The 8th Plenum, August 1955.”
16. As translated by Robert Brigham and Le Phuong Anh, the relevant text reads: “Recently, in the U.S Presidential election, the present Republican administration, in order to buy the people’s esteem, put forward the slogan ‘Peace and Prosperity,’ which showed that even the people of an imperialist warlike country like the U.S. want peace.” Le Duan, “The Path of Revolution in the South,” 1956. Available at http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/southrevo.htm.
17. See Nhan Dan, no. 975 (November 5, 1956); “Some Observations Regarding the Recent General Election in the U.S.” no. 981 (November 11, 1956); “Is That Actually Democratic?” no. 993 (November 25, 1956); “Democracy and Dictatorship,” no. 1000 (November 30, 1956).
18. Historical Chronicle of the Cochin China Party Committee and the Central Office for South Vietnam, 1954–1975 (Hanoi, Vietnam: National Political Publishing House, 2002), pp. 119–20. This history discusses the significance of Le Duan’s thesis, placing it in the context of COSVN activities at the time.
19. History of the COSVN Military Command, 1961–1976, ed. Colonel Ho Son Dai (Hanoi, Vietnam: National Political Publishing House, 2004), p. 44.
20. Alec Holcombe, “The Complete Collection of Party Documents: Listening to the Party’s Official Internal Voice,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies vol. 5, no. 2 (2010), pp. 225–42.
21. Thayer, War by Other Means. See chapter titled “The Fatherland Front and Renewed Political Struggle, September 1955–April 1956.” For more on Moscow’s influence over Hanoi, see Ilya Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
22. History of the COSVN Military Command, p. 42. “Faced with the duplicity and the brutal terrorist actions of the U.S. and their puppets, starting with 200 officers and men we had left behind to support the political struggle movement, the self–defense and armed propaganda forces of the B2 Front had expanded to form 37 armed propaganda platoons. However, these units only conducted limited operations because of the fear that they might be violating the Party’s policy at that time, which was to conduct political struggle only.”
23. Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975, trans. Merle L. Pribbenow (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), p. 43.
24. For more on armed propaganda, see Greg Lockhart, Nation in Arms: The Origins of the People’s Army of Vietnam (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989).
25. For more on the construction of Le Duan’s police state, see Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, ch. 2.
26. See William J. Duiker in the Foreword to Victory in Vietnam, p. xiii.
27. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had closely followed General Thanh’s rise and analyzed his influence. It was well-aware of his closeness to Le Duan within the Politburo. Following the General’s death, the Agency assumed that his replacement would indicate whether Pham Van Dong and the moderates or Le Duan and the militants had greater power within the Party. See CIA Directorate of Intelligence, Intelligence Memorandum (July 11, 1967), No. 1365/67, “Problems Posed for North Vietnam by Death of Politburo Member Nguyen Chi Thanh.”
28. See Asselin, “Le Duan.”
29. Sophie Quinn-Judge, “The Ideological Debate in the DRV and the Significance of the Anti–Party Affair, 1967–1968,” Cold War History, vol. 5, no. 4 (2005), pp. 479–500.
30. Asselin, “Le Duan.” One of Le Duan’s close supporters has published a memoir, attempting to defend his former boss’s reputation. Tran Quynh served as Deputy Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam from 1981 to 1987. See Tran Quynh, “Reminiscences of Le Duan.” Self-published recollections were available at http://d.violet.vn//uploads/resources/492/369514/preview.swf at the time of this manuscript’s submission.
31. See Tran Quynh, “Reminiscences of Le Duan.” The author served as Deputy Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam from 1981 to February 16, 1987, and worked closely with Le Duan. Self-published recollections were available at http://d.violet.vn//uploads/resources/492/369514/preview.swf at the time of this manuscript’s submission.
32. For a helpful summary of communist states and the primacy of the Party, see Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (New York: Ecco, 2009).
33. Liên-Hang T. Nguyen argues that in 1963 Le Duan abandoned a protracted war strategy in favor of “big war” involving conventional forces aimed at a rapid victory. My own view is slightly different. I note that Le Duan preferred “big war” but recognized the need for protracted war against America for a variety of both military and political reasons. Nguyen’s view is detailed in both Hanoi’s War, ch. 2, and “The War Politburo: North Vietnam’s Diplomatic and Political Road to the Têt Offensive,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 1, nos. 1–2 (2006), pp. 4–58.
34. Letters to the South [Tho Vao Nam] (Hanoi, Vietnam : Su That Publishing House, 1985). Letter to Muoi Cuc (Nguyen Van Linh) and the Cochin China Party Committee [Xu Uy Nam Bo], April 20, 1961, p. 48. Because the English translation of Letters to the South does not contain all of the letters in the Vietnamese version, I have drawn on both editions. The letter referenced here, for example, is not found in the English edition.
35. Letters to the South. Letter to Muoi Cuc (Nguyen Van Linh) and the Cochin China Party Committee [Xu Uy Nam Bo], July 1962, p. 50. “Currently, even though there are some cities where the enemy is vulnerable, it is not yet the time to attack and occupy them. From an over-all strategic standpoint, such a victory would not yield positive results at this time, because it could incite the American imperialists to increase their intervention and to expand the war.”
36. Letters to the South, July 18, 1962, p. 65. A slightly different version of this letter is reprinted in Van Kien Dang.
37. Letters to the South, July 18, 1962. Le Duan wrote: “If we present limited demands that allow the enemy to see that, even though they must lose, they can lose at a level which they can accept, a level that the enemy can see does not present a major threat to them, then they will be forced to accept defeat. We have put forward goals and requirements for the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam that we have calculated are at the level necessary for us to be able to win and for the enemy to be able to lose.”
38. For a thoughtful revision of Diem’s reputation, see Philip E. Catton, Diem’s Final Failure: Prelude to America’s War in Vietnam (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002).
39. Van Kien Dang, 1963, p. 818.
40. Van Kien Dang, 1963, p. 815.
41. Le Duan, Letters to the South, May 1965. English edition.
42. For an interesting assessment of the hollowness of America’s “flexible response” approach see Marc Trachtenberg, The Cold War and After: History, Theory, and the Logic of International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), ch. 6, “The Structure of Great Power Politics.”
43. Van Kien Dang, 1963, p. 813.
44. Wayne Morse, a Republican turned Independent turned Democrat, represented Oregon in the Senate from 1945 to 1969. He was one of only two Senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The other was Ernest Gruening, a Democrat from Alaska.
45. Carlyle Thayer, War By Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam, 1954–1960 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989).
46. Bui Anh Tuan ed., Ministry of Public Security (Hanoi, Vietnam: People’s Public Security Publishing House, 2004), pp. 156–71. This official history describes some of the radio communications counterespionage against the Americans and acknowledges the Soviet Union’s assistance in establishing those operations in the 1950s.
47. Two sources offering a glimpse into Hanoi’s intelligence apparati are Larry Berman, Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent (New York: Smithsonian Books, 2007), and a declassified CIA report on prisoners of war, which offers an outline of intelligence services, Central Intelligence Agency, “The Responsibilities of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Intelligence and Security Services in the Exploitation of American Prisoners of War,” November 17, 1975, available at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=11270323004. See also Christopher Goscha, “The Early Development of Vietnamese Intelligence Services,” in R. G. Hughes, P. Jackson and L. Scott, eds., Exploring Intelligence Archives (Londen: Routledge, 2008), pp. 103–15. For a compelling oral history of a Soviet spy in Vietnam, see Xiaobing Li, Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans (Louisville: University of Kentucky Press, 2010). See ch. 10, “Russian Spies in Hanoi.”
48. Le Duan cited an American as the originator of this terminology, i.e. “special,” “limited,” and “general war.” Van Kien Dang, 1965, p. 581.
49. Van Kien Dang, 1963, p. 821.
50. Victory in Vietnam, pp. 126–27.
51. Pham Hong Thuy, Pham Hong Doi, and Phan Trong Dam, History of the People’s Navy of Vietnam (Hanoi, Vietnam: People’s Army Publishing House, 1985), p. 89.
52. Victory in Vietnam, Part II, chapters 4–6 detail the many attacks against American forces leading up to the U.S. deployment of ground troops.
53. Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 189.
1. One of the best works on the Tonkin incident is Edwin Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
2. Lieutenant General Hoang Nghia Khanh, The Road to the General Headquarters Staff (Hanoi, Vietnam: People’s Army Publishing House, 2008), pp. 112–13.
3. Combat Operations Department, General Staff of the People’s Army of Vietnam, History of the Combat Operations Department 1945–2000 (Hanoi, Vietnam: People’s Army Publishing House, 2005), p. 210.
4. Victory in Vietnam, p. 133.
5. Moise, Tonkin Gulf, ch. 3, “The Desoto Patrols,” p. 60.
6. Logevall, Choosing War, p. 200.
7. Van Kien Dang, Toan Tap, 25, Politburo Directive No. 81-CT/TW, August 7, 1964, ed. Vu Huu Ngoan (Hanoi, Vietnam: National Political Publishing House [Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia], 2003), p. 185.
8. Van Kien Dang, 1964, p. 186.
9. Ed Moise, Tonkin Gulf, ch. 2, “Thoughts of Escalation.”
10. Logevall, Choosing War, p. 147.
11. Dubbing McNamara the “high priest of rational management,” the historian Barbara Tuchman critiqued the Defense Secretary’s strategy of incremental escalation for its cool calculation. “One thing was left out of account: the other side. What if the other side failed to respond rationally to the coercive message?” she asked. “Appreciation of the human factor was not McNamara’s strong point, and the possibility that human kind is not rational was too eccentric and disruptive to be programmed into his analysis.” Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1984), p. 288. In contrast, Fredrik Logevall notes that McNamara was already exhibiting signs of concern in 1964 that the war was unwise, yet Logevall sees McNamara’s “slavish” loyalty to the President as the reason for his continued support of the policy. Logevall, Choosing War, p. 127.
12. History of the Sapper Forces, Vol. I [Lich Su Bo Doi Dac Cong, Tap Mot], ed. Headquarters and Party Current Affairs Committee of Sapper Command, by Nguyen Quoc Minh, Vu Doan Thanh, Pham Gia Khanh, and Nguyen Thanh Xuan (Hanoi, Vietnam: People’s Army Publishing House, 1987), p. 83–85.
13. Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Quoc Minh, History of the Sapper Branch Technical Service, ed. People’s Army of Vietnam (Internal Distribution) [Lich Su Nganh Ky Thuat Dac Cong: Quan Doi Nhan Dan Viet Nam (Luu Hanh Noi Bo)] (Hanoi, Vietnam: People’s Army Publishing House, 1997), p. 91. See also History of the Resistance War in Saigon-Cho Lon-Gia Dinh (1945–1975) [Lich Su Saigon-Cho Lon-Gia Dinh Khang Chien (1945–1975)], ed. War Recapitulation Committee, Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee; Tran Hai Phung, and Luu Phuong Thanh, by Ho Son Dai and Tran Phan Chan (Ho Chi Minh City: Ho Chi Minh City Publishing House, 1994), p. 4. Also The New York Times, March 19, 1963, p. 4.
14. Robert S. McNamara, Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), p. xix. Earlier scholarship had speculated that the Viet Cong commanders acted on their own initiative in order to garner Soviet support for their cause. Premier Kosygin happened to be visiting Hanoi at the time of the attacks. This view was later discredited once it was revealed that the Soviets had already pledged their support.
15. Colonel General Dang Vu Hiep, with Senior Colonel Le Hai Trieu and Colonel Ngo Vinh Binh, Highland Memories, Part IV (Hanoi, Vietnam: People’s Army Publishing House, 2000), p. 13.
16. Highland Memories, pp. 9–14.
17. Logevall, Choosing War, p. 325.
18. Letters to the South [Tho Vao Nam], February 1965 (Hanoi, Vietnam: Le Duan, Su That Publishing House, 1985), p. 73.
19. Letters to the South, p. 74.
20. Letters to the South, Letter to Muoi Cuc (Nguyen Van Linh) and the Cochin China Party Committee [Xu Uy Nam Bo], February 1965, p. 75.
Le Duan’s strategy represented, of course, a form of deterrence. By crippling the ARVN forces, he believed that American decision-makers would be dissuaded from escalating their commitment to the South. In fact, the increased attacks on both ARVN and American forces produced the opposite result. They served only to strengthen those American decision-makers’ desire to escalate. The problem with Le Duan’s analysis was that it assumed a rational, as opposed to an emotional, decision-making process on the part of top American officials. It also required the American decision-makers to share Le Duan’s perception of American vulnerability.
21. James Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization, vol. 49, no. 3 (1995), pp. 379–414.
22. Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1985), p. 58.
23. See William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (Gloucester, MA: P. Smith, 1968). For a penetrating analysis of President Franklin Roosevelt’s policy toward Japan during the prelude to Pearl Harbor, see Marc Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), ch. 4, “Developing Interpretation Through Textual Analysis: The 1941 Case.”
24. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen cites the postwar writings of General Tran Van Tra as evidence of southern communists’ resistance to Le Duan’s push for conventional warfare. See Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, ch. 2.
25. Van Kien Dang, Le Duan speech, December 1965, p. 599.
26. Letters to the South [Tho Vao Nam], Le Duan, Su That Publishing House, Hanoi, 1985. Letter to Muoi Cuc (Nguyen Van Linh) and the Cochin China Party Committee [Xu Uy Nam Bo], November 1965, p. 124.
27. Letters to the South, Letter to Muoi Cuc (Nguyen Van Linh) and the Cochin China Party Committee [Xu Uy Nam Bo], November 1965, p. 145.
28. Letters to the South, Letter to Muoi Cuc (Nguyen Van Linh) and the Cochin China Party Committee [Xu Uy Nam Bo], November 1965, p. 161.
29. Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013). See also Deborah Nelson, The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth About U.S. War Crimes (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
30. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, ch. 2.
31. Van Kien Dang, 1965, Speech Given by Party First Secretary Le Duan to the Twelfth Plenum of the Party Central Committee, December 1965, p. 568.
32. Van Kien Dang, Le Duan speech, December 1965, p. 568.
33. Van Kien Dang, Le Duan speech, December 1965, p. 569.
34. Van Kien Dang, Le Duan speech, December 1965, p. 575.
35. Van Kien Dang, Le Duan speech, December 1965, p. 579.
36. Van Kien Dang, Le Duan speech, December 1965, p. 586.
37. Van Kien Dang, Le Duan speech, December 1965, p. 590.
38. Van Kien Dang, Le Duan speech, December 1965, p. 592.
39. Van Kien Dang, 1966, Speech Given by Chairman Ho Chi Minh to a Conference of High-level Cadres Held to Study the Resolution of the Twelfth Plenum of the Party Central Committee (January 16, 1966), pp. 4–17.
40. Van Kien Dang, Resolution of the Politburo, August 1968, p. 409.
41. Van Kien Dang, Resolution of the Politburo, August 1968, p. 376.
42. Major Events: The Diplomatic Struggle and International Activities During the Resistance War Against the Americans to Save the Nation, 1954–1975 (Hanoi, Vietnam: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1987). See cables for January and February 1969, in particular January 1, 1969, p. 202, and February 1, 1969, p. 211.
1. I have relied on two separate English editions: one from 1925 and another from 2005. Luo Guanzhong, The Romance of Three Kingdoms, trans. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor (Rockville, MD: Silk Pagoda, 2005). See also Luo Guanzhong, San Kuo, or Romance of Three Kingdoms, trans. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1925). The story of Cun Ming’s lute is found in ch. 95.
2. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), pp. 193–94.
3. I am adapting this scenario as Kahneman constructed it. I note with regret that this discussion presupposes that productivity is the most valuable trait for academics to possess. It ignores the possibility that creativity and depth of ideas could be more meaningful than the quantity of scholarly output. For the sake of clarifying the continuity heuristic, this simplification is useful.
4. The more specific version of the fundamental attribution error is the actor–observer asymmetry. In a meta-analysis of psychological studies of this effect, one scholar has found little support for the effect’s existence, save for its prevalence in cases where observers attributed negative, as opposed to complimentary, characteristics to the actors in question. For my purposes, it is enough to use the fundamental attribution error as a short-hand label for a specific type of faulty thinking. I take no position on whether or not most people commit this error. Instead, I find that the particular historical actors discussed in this chapter attributed stable, negative dispositions (namely aggression) to the foreign leaders they observed. See Bertram F. Malle, “The Actor–Observer Asymmetry in Attribution: A (Surprising) Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 132, no. 6 (2006), pp. 895–919.
5. F.O. 371/257. Memorandum by Mr. Eyre Crowe. Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany. (8882. *) Secret. Foreign Office, January 1, 1907.
6. See for example Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
7. F.O. 371/257. Memorandum by Mr. Eyre Crowe. Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany. (8882. *) Secret. Foreign Office, January 1, 1907.
8. The fact that the Kaiser remained in power for more than another decade does not diminish Fitzmaurice’s point. His objection was to Crowe’s assumption that national interests alone determined policy. Even the same individuals can come to perceive their own interests, as well as their nation’s interests, differently over time.
9. G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, eds., British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914 (London: H.M.S.O., 1926–1938), appendix.
10. The international relations theory of constructivism in part challenges the realist school along these lines. My purpose here is merely to elucidate how a static view of the enemy has influenced the history of twentieth-century international conflict, not to debate the merits of one international relations theory over another. See Alexander Wendt’s classic article, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization, vol. 46, no. 2 (1992), pp. 391–425.
11. For the best recent study of Kennan’s career and thinking, see John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin Press, 2011).
12. George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 25, no. July 4 (1947). For the classic work on essentializing non-Western behavior and beliefs, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 2003).
13. Marc Trachtenberg has argued that Kennan’s impact on the Cold War has been overstated by historians. Regardless of the extent of his influence, my aim here is to assess the shortcuts and assumptions underlying Kennan’s analysis in the oft-cited Long Telegram and Foreign Affairs article. See Marc Trachtenberg’s response to Robert Jervis on John Lewis Gaddis’s biography of George Kennan. H-Diplo, May 8, 2012, http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=1205&week=b&msg=SQRzD0MRH6ws2OYW4mNKvA&user=&pw=.
14. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years at the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), pp. 149–56.
15. Nathan Leites, The Operational Code of the Politburo (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951).
16. Nathan Leites, A Study of Bolshevism (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1953).
17. Alexander George, “The Operational Code: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-Making,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 2 (1969), pp. 190–222.
18. Margaret Hermann, “Circumstances Under Which Leader Personality Will Affect Foreign Policy.” In Search of Global Patterns, ed. James Rosenau. (New York: Free Press, 1976). See also Margaret Hermann, “Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders,” International Studies Quarterly vol. 27 (1980), pp. 7–46. See also Margaret Hermann and Charles Kegley, “Rethinking Democracy and International Peace: Perspectives from Political Psychology,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 39 (1995), pp. 511–34.
19. Ole Holsti, “Foreign Policy Viewed Cognitively.” In The Structure of Decision, ed. Robert Axelrod (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).
Ole Holsti, “The ‘Operational Code’ as an Approach to the Analysis of Belief Systems.” Final Report to the National Science Foundation, Grant NO. SOC 75–15368 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1977).
20. See for example Mark Schafer and Stephen G. Walker, “Democratic Leaders and the Democratic Peace: The Operational Codes of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 3 (2006), pp. 561–83. See also Stephen G. Walker, Forecasting the Political Behavior of Leaders with the Verbs in Context System of Operational Code Analysis (Hilliard, OH: Social Science Automation, 2000).
21. In more recent times, numerous foreign policy analysts have made similar claims about Arab thinking. Seymour Hersh even alleged that the neoconservatives influencing the George W. Bush administration relied on Raphael Patai’s 1973 book The Arab Mind as their bible for understanding Arab behavior. Seymour M. Hersh, “The Gray Zone: How a Secret Pentagon Program Came to Abu Ghraib,” The New Yorker, May 24, 2004.
22. The exact text reads: “For there is one road which, if past experience is any guide to the future, will most certainly not lead to any permanent improvement of relations with any Power, least of all Germany, and which must therefore be abandoned: that is the road paved with graceful British concessions—concessions made without any conviction either of their justice or of their being set off by equivalent counter-services.” Op. Cit. F.O. 371/257, “Crowe Memorandum.”
23. Jerrold M. Post, ed., The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders: With Profiles of Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 52.
Parts of this chapter appeared in articles in Armed Forces Journal and Joint Force Quarterly. I am grateful to the editors for their permission to reprint that material here.
1. For more on the early history and uses of the telescope see Mario Biagioli, Galileo’s Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
2. For more on the telescope, see Geoff Andersen, The Telescope: Its History, Technology, and Future (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007) and Mario Biagioli, Galileo’s Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
3. Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–But Some Don’t (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), p. 98.
4. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 167.
5. Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War (New York: Schockin Books, 2004).
6. Some of the information and quotations in this section stem from discussions between the author and Andrew Marshall, in person, by telephone, and through e-mail exchanges. Not all of Marshall’s assertions can be readily verified, as the details of some of these subjects remain classified. Marshall’s comments therefore must be viewed with this in mind.
7. See Andrew W. Marshall and Herbert Goldhamer, Psychosis and Civilization: Two Studies in the Frequency of Mental Disease (New York: Free Press, 1953).
8. Two useful studies of RAND in the 1950s are Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2008), and Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).
9. “Sources of Change in the Future Security Environment,” Paper by the Future Security Environment Working Group (Andrew Marshall and Charles Wolf, Chairmen). Submitted to the Commission on Integrating Long-term Strategy (Washington, DC: Pentagon, April 1988).
10. Douglas McGray, “The Marshall Plan,” Wired Magazine, February 2003.
11. See Mark Mazetti, “Obama Faults Spy Agencies’ Performance in Gauging Mideast Unrest, Officials Say,” The New York Times, February 4, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/world/middleeast/05cia.html. See also Paul R. Pillar, “Don’t Blame the Spies,” Foreign Policy, March 16, 2011.
1. Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
2. Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Knopf, 2006).
3. Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007).
4. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: Harper, 2009).
5. Silver, The Signal and the Noise.
6. Michael Spence, “Job Market Signaling,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 87, no. 3. (1973), pp. 355–74.
7. Diego Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
8. For a classic work on signals and noise in international relations see Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967). Another valuable work on how states signal their intentions and how they might try to transmit deceptive signals is Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
9. For more on Shannon, see James Gleich, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011).
10. Andrea D. Rosati, Eric D. Knowles, Charles W. Kalish, Alison Gopnik, Daniel R. Ames, and Michael W. Morris, “What Theory of Mind Can Teach Social Psychology? Traits as Intentional Terms,” Available at http://corundum.education.wisc.edu/papers/TomTraits.pdf.
11. Ray Kurzweil, How To Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (New York: Viking, 2012).
12. Ariely, Predictably Irrational, p. 129.
13. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 56.
14. “World Giving Index 2011: A Global View of Giving Trends,” Charities Aid Foundation, 2011. Accessed on February 4, 2013, at https://www.cafonline.org/pdf/World_Giving_Index_2011_191211.pdf.
15. Robert Frank, “The Biggest Gift in the World,” Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2011.
16. See for example Gerd Gigerenzer, “Surrogates for Theories,” Theory and Psychology, vol. 8, no. 2 (1998), 195–204; Gerd Gigerenzer, “On Narrow Norms and Vague Heuristics: A Reply to Kahnemann and Tversky,” Psychological Review, vol. 103, no. 3 (1996), pp. 592–96; Gerd Gigerenzer, “Why the Distinction Between Single-Event Probabilities and Frequencies is Important for Psychology and Vice Versa,” in George Wright and Ayton, Peter, eds., Subjective Probability (New York: Wiley, 1994), pp. 129–61.
17. Gerd Gigerenzer, “Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire: Behavioral Reactions to Terrorist Attacks,” Risk Analysis, vol. 26, no. 2 (2006).
18. For a related challenge from within the field of psychology, see Joseph Simmons, Leif Nelson, and Uri Simonsohn, “False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant,” Psychological Science, vol. 22, no. 11 (Nov. 2011), pp. 1359–66.
19. Richard K. Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
20. Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons From the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).
21. Joshua Rovner, Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). For a useful discussion of Rovner’s book, see the H-Diplo Roundtable reviews by prominent scholars of intelligence. ISSF Roundtable, vol. III, no. 17 (2012).
22. Daryl Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
23. Keren Yarhi-Milo, Knowing Thy Adversary: Assessments of Intentions in International Relations, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Political Science, 2009. See the more recent book version, Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence Organizations, and Assessments of Intentions in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
24. Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary, p. 504.
25. See for example Alexander George, Presidential Decision Making: The Effective Use of Information and Advice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980).
26. Ernest R. May, ed., Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessments Before the Two World Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
27. Ernest R. May and Richard E. Neustadt, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 166.
28. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 173–74.
29. Marc Trachtenberg, The Cold War and After: History, Theory, and the Logic of International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), preface.