A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind (35 page)

I believe that precisely this type of cautious yet open-minded approach is not only sensible but invaluable for studies of decision-making. Today, the historian has the benefit of more than just psychology for understanding how people think. In the twenty years since Browning wrote
Ordinary Men
, we have made astonishing advances in cognitive neuroscience and other related fields, all of which have expanded our knowledge of how the human brain functions.

The second curious aspect of this book is that it combines two forms of scholarship: original, primary-source historical research and interpretive essays reflecting how historical actors thought about their enemies. To accomplish this, the book draws on a wide range of English, German, Russian, and Vietnamese primary sources, many of which are published archival records, as well as the substantial secondary literature on relevant topics. Like all historians, I plumb the extant record, watch for corroborating evidence, try to ascertain causes and verify claims. But I also apply a conceptual framework to my analysis by focusing on the effects of pattern breaks on the way that leaders thought.

For the chapter on Gandhi’s assessments of the British I draw heavily on the
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
. I also use memoirs of one close to the Mahatma during the events in question, as well as British newspaper accounts and the
Hansard
transcripts of debates in the House of Commons.

For the section concerning Germany in the 1920s, I use materials as diverse as Reichstag session transcriptions, records of Cabinet meetings, newspaper accounts, and the diaries and memoirs of leading decision-makers. I harness all of the standard resources available to diplomatic historians, such as the
Foreign Relations of the United States
series,
Documents on German Foreign Policy
, and
British Documents on Foreign Affairs
, including the more selective
Confidential Print
series.

For the section on Roosevelt’s and Stalin’s attempts to think like Hitler, I rely on similar sources as noted above, as well as the reports of Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles in private communication with President Roosevelt on the Welles mission in 1940 to see Hitler and Mussolini. I tapped the Franklin D. Roosevelt President’s Secretary’s Files, particularly Parts I and II, with their records of correspondence between the President and the American Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd. I also consult the published Soviet archival
documents concerning Stalin’s intelligence on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, including materials from the Stalin Digital Archive.

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
.