Historical Bases for Prediction in International Relations: Some Implications for American Foreign Policy

• Author: Neal D. Houghton
• Published date: 01 December 1964
• Date: 01 December 1964
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591296401700404
• Subject Matter: Articles

HISTORICAL BASES FOR PREDICTION
IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: SOME IMPLICATIONS
FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
NEAL D. HOUGHTON
University of Arizona
AM
CONCERNED
with social prediction only as a functioning concept in the
t study of and adjustment to human affairs. Perhaps prediction is not an adequate
term for my purposes here. &dquo;Functioning understanding&dquo; may be better. By
functioning historical understanding I mean, not merely having &dquo;taken courses&dquo; or
even &dquo;majored&dquo; in history, but however acquired, the kind of savvy of basic Euro-
pean, Asian, Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American situations that may help
us to know, for each of those vast currently and prospectively disturbing areas: (1)
how it has come to its present state of affairs and significant attitudes; (2) what that
present state of affairs and those significant attitudes are; and (3) what may be
necessary and feasible for our intellectual and political leadership to do -
and not to
do -
in order to adjust to developments there. We need to know how the great flow
of history has brought what is out there. And we need to know basically what is out
there -
so we
may come to livable terms with that great flow of history, which con-
tinues to flow, and in which we must learn to live. There is no other practicable
place or medium in which we can live.
This developmental concept of history is to be distinguished from a newer more
limited working concept in which specific cases of past great crisis &dquo;decision-making&dquo;
may be selected for imaginative and creative comparison with a more recent specific
crisis case.’
The world is now passing through what I have already called a great convulsive
transition period of history; the first such era which recorded history has ever dealt
out on a global scale. With benefit of hindsight, it now appears that this period has
been coming on for a century -
actually for several centuries in some areas, in some
respects.
It must be assumed here -
hopefully -
that all who may care to read this
analysis may have acquired meaningful historical acquaintance with some identi-
fiable earlier western regional great convulsive periods.2 That working acquaintance
should facilitate a realization that, whatever makes such periods tick, they really
NOTE : This article is supplementary to the author’s &dquo;Perspective for Foreign Policy Objectives
in Areas - and in an Era - of Rapid Social Change,&dquo; Western Political Quarterly, 16
(December 1963), 844-84.
1
See specifically, "Crisis and Crises — Cuba in the Context of History," Stanford Today, Spring
1963. See also Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin (eds.), Foreign Policy
Decisionmaking (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962).
2
Including: (1) The long period of the rise of the Roman Empire; (2) the long period of the
decline and fall of that Empire, out of the wreckage of which came the ultimate develop-
ment of modern nation-states and commerce in the West; (3) the long era of the building
of western colonial empires; and (4) the more recent period of the parallel development
of modern industrialism and constitutional government in the West. Obviously, there have
been no hard lines of demarcation between and among these periods. They have over-
lapped both as to time and development. This listing is somewhat oversimplified, but
basically it is sound and useful.
632

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633
shake things up in the areas affected by them. Old attitudes and old social orders
are spectacularly challenged and greatly altered or abandoned. And those who have
been satisfied with old ways seem always to resist the challenges. Always the social
costs of it all have been high. And always the only practicable way out of such periods
has been to get on through them.
In any event, every continent is now observably being spectacularly and increas-
ingly shaken up by several kinds of basic interrelated revolution. These revolutions
are being impelled by partially identifiable human and technological forces. Some of
these basic impelling factors are recognizably demographic, appetitive, racial, ideo-
logical, nationalistic and scientific (using traditional terminology). This unprece-
dented world-wide convulsion is also unique in having, as a major impelling force,
lower-class mass-humanity determination to better its lot.3
In the pursuit of usable understanding, the recent and prospective efforts of
natural scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, behaviorists, behavioralists, &dquo;high
order of reasoning&dquo; people, statisticians -
even what C. L. Sulzberger has called
&dquo;mechanized cerebration&dquo; 4 - may all be needed. Any injection of more intelligible
objectivity into social research and writing should be welcomed -
and may the
offerings of these new workers be made increasingly more usably readable.
3
Earlier, I have given considerable attention to these primary impelling forces of this great con-
vulsive period. See Houghton, op. cit., especially pp. 848-57. See also A. Doak Barnett,
Communist China and Asia (New York: Harper, 1960) ; Peter Ritner, The Death of
Africa (New York: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 266-73; and Eric Fromm, May Man Prevail
(Garden City: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 142-48; Donald Michael, Cybernation: The Silent
Conquest (Santa Barbara: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1962);
Richard E. Moore, "The Plight of the Permanently Unemployed," Presbyterian Life,
January 15, 1963; James S. Coleman, "A Future Without Jobs," The Nation (special
issue), May 11, 1963; Gerard Piel, "The Advent of Abundance," Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, 19 (June 1963), 2-6; Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the
United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962), and Dwight Macdonald, Our Invisible
Poor (Hillman Foundation, 1963, 15 Union Square, New York 3).
See also Fred J. Cook, "The Corrupt Society," The Nation, June 1-8, 1963; John
Berendt, "Patterns of Decay," Esquire, June 1963; Edward Weeks, "A Quarter Century:
Its Retreats," Look, July 18, 1961; Gus Tyler, Organized Crime in America (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1962) ; and David Riesman
et
al., "Is America a Civiliza-
tion?" Shenandoah, Autumn, 1958; Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society? (New York:
Harper, 1960 ) ; Jules Henry, Culture Against Man (New York : Random, 1963 ) ; and
Gunnar Myrdal, Challenge to Affluence ( New York : Pantheon Books, 1963).
4
See C. L. Sulzberger, "In the Nation," New York Times, April 12, 1963. See also Walter
Sullivan, "Crime Study to Use Computers; Harvard Experts Seek Patterns," ibid., April
16, 1963; and Harold Guetzdow, Chadwick F. Alger, Richard F. Brody, Robert C. Noel,
and Richard C. Snyder, Simulation in International Relations: Developments for Re-
search and Teaching (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963) ; Harold M. Schmeck, Jr.,
"I.B.M. Machine Translates Chinese into English," New York Times, May 28, 1963;
Robert K. Plumb, "Computer Useful in Heart Studies," ibid.; "U.S. Backs One-Nation
Vote System in U.N.," ibid., June 3, 1963; Raymond J. Crowley, "Reapportionment Ills?
Call in Dr. Computer," Associated Press report, June 27, 1964; Lloyd Shearer, "How to
Choose a Mate: Marriage by Machine," Parade, October 6, 1963; and Hilbert Schenk,
"Computing ’ad absurdum,’ "
The
Nation 196 (June 15, 1963), 505-7. These citations
demonstrate the range in applicability of these methods suggested by a few unselected
cases. See two excellent symposia on The Limits of Behavioralism in Political Science and
Mathematics and the Social Sciences: The Utility and Inutility of Mathematics in the
Study of Economics, Political Science, and Sociology, ed. James C. Charlesworth (Ameri-
can Academy of Political and Social Science, October 1962 and June 1963) ; Robert A.
Dahl, "The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: An Epitaph for a Monument to a
Successful Protest," APSR, 55 (December 1961), 763-72; and David E. Lilienthal, "A
Skeptical Look at ’Scientific experts’ in Public Affairs," New York Times (Western Ed.),
September 30, 1963.

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634
But, if we are well advised, traditional students and the welcome new co-
workers, we shall all recognize: (1) that all are just that -
co-workers; (2) that
the contributions of the newer operators must be supplemental to pursuit and use of
functional historical background and activated historical insight; and (3) that the
newer approaches must not undertake to displace or downgrade the historical com-
ponent. The danger is that, lacking profound historical foundations, and lacking
time and opportunity to acquire them, the newer political and social science recruits
may seek to go it alone without benefit of functioning historical perspective.5 Even
traditional political scientists, economists, sociologists (and many historians) may
lack really functional historical comprehensions and have appeared willing to oper-
ate without them. For example, Professor Dahl has suggested that, &dquo;rather than
demand that every theorist should have to become his own historian, it may be more
feasible to demand that more historians should become theorists, at any rate familiar
with the most relevant issues, problems, and methods of the modern social sciences.&dquo;
In fact, Professor Norman Graebner has identified the establishment of the existence
of an historical profession in the United States with the publication of the &dquo;American
Nation&dquo; series of historical books (1904-07) -
that being largely the work of what
he calls the...