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Published in:
2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
2. Generational Learning and Foreign Policy
Author : Richard Ned Lebow
Published in: Avoiding War, Making Peace
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
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Abstract
Lessons people and policymakers learn from history rarely meet the canons of good scholarship. They tend to be adopted because they are politically useful and psychologically satisfying. Once learned, they guide policy and are often counterproductive. This is due to the lessons themselves but also the likelihood that they will be applied to situations that bear only a superficial resemblance with those on which they are based. I demonstrate this problem in an analysis of the origins application the lessons of World Wars I to the events leading up to World War II, and the lessons of that war to the Cold War.