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88 4 HISTORY LESSONS “It is the purpose of this book to make the past reusable for present tasks and future goals.” —Renato Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited “We do not write history to make history, but to participate in the foundation of the new regime.” —Van Tao, director, Institute of Historical Studies, Vietnam, quoted in Nguyen 1995, 122. The lessons of history are rarely straightforward. History in the hands of policymakers is frequently misread, and historical analogies are often wrongly applied.1 Yet policymakers in Southeast Asia, like their counterparts elsewhere, exhibit great confidence in their own reading of history and the lessons to be drawn from it. In official documents, public statements, and private conversation,“history ” is identified again and again as the reason for a given policy orientation and the beliefs that underpin it. For America’s longstanding friends and allies in the region, the most frequent justification for viewing the country as a benign, stabilizing force is its historical record. In Vietnam, where such a claim would meet unavoidable obstacles, those in favor of closer strategic relations with the United States choose a different historical narrative to justify the realignment: the much longer history of a Chinese threat to Vietnam. In all countries, policymakers , practitioners, and other members of the foreign policy community turn to history to justify the perceptions of threat and relative degrees of trustworthiness affixed to the United States, China, and neighboring countries. History seeps into the strategic environment at almost every conceivable juncture . We must ask, however, what kind of history is learnt in different countries in Southeast Asia, and why some lessons rather than others are drawn from it. As we shall see, the histories that inform current beliefs and attitudes have been fashioned 1. Jervis 1976, 217–282; Khong 1995; Neustadt and May 1986; Tetlock and Belkin 1996. HIstory Lessons 89 in quite specific ways and, although far from being driven by concerns relating to the United States, have clear implications for beliefs about the United States. How much policymakers actually believe the versions of history they espouse is not directly verifiable. Few have been as frank as Winston Churchill is said to have been in acknowledging the inevitable biases surrounding the production of history.2 Political leaders almost never lay out the historical controversies surrounding their rise to power, the mythic elements of many national histories, or the allegations of outright distortion that dog the field of national history in each country. Instead, the versions of history espoused by members of the foreign policy community and enshrined in official or quasi-official texts tend to be unified, admit few if any uncertainties, and largely shy away from addressing competing points of view. It is tempting to view national histories simply as blunt instruments in the policymaker’s toolkit. However, what was once created to serve instrumental goals can acquire the status of objective knowledge. Policymakers , like others, must get their historical knowledge from somewhere. This chapter examines the versions of history that enjoy status in each country : official accounts, school textbooks, and histories that have received political blessing. These sources provide the material from which members of the foreign policy community draw historical lessons about the United States and its role in the region. The unifying thread that runs through these histories is a bias in favor of the ruling authority or dominant political elite in each country. Only in the Philippines and Thailand is this bias significantly challenged within the mainstream. Given the direct hand that political leaders and acolytes have had in writing many of these histories, this is hardly surprising. Although painting their own actions in a favorable light is the most obvious source of bias, the resulting national histories also paint a refracted picture of the United States: by commission , by omission, and by implication. Three aspects of national history bear on beliefs about the United States. The first, for the noncommunist countries, is the specter of communism in past domestic conflicts. By offering a history from the perspective of the winners in these conflicts, the losing side is tarred as communist and presented as illegitimate . The second, more prominent in some countries than others, is the depiction of external threats that either present the United States as a protective presence or downplay an American threat by giving more attention to other external threats. The third aspect of these national histories relevant for understanding beliefs about the United States is their scant attention to...

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