This is the Historical Evaluation and Research Organization—which we modestly call HERO. HERO is dedicated to stimulating improved use of historical experience—as well as improved use of the professional historians who are most competent to marshal and to evaluate historical experience—in the development of national security policy.
Interestingly, and not surprisingly, we have encountered some skepticism amongst Government officials and others who had some doubts about the need for or the utility of our principal function: The application of historical experience to the development of current and future national security policy. There were two principal reasons for the skepticism. First, there are a number of people who feel that the tremendous technological advances of our times have totally invalidated any possible relevance of the past experience which is the stuff of history. Secondly, there are those who feel that the competent Government specialist has no need for the services of the historian; he is usually far more conversant with his field of interest than any academic scholar can be; he has his files available for documentation; he knows what facts can be considered relevant, and he will include these in any statement which may be required of “Facts Bearing on the Problem.”
As to the first of these doubts, as I shall show, we have clearly demonstrated the relevance of history to current policy issues. For the second, we believe that the dangers of the concept of “every man his own historian” are becoming apparent to many Government officials. The historical background of Government specialists, even in their own area of specialty, is not only spotty, but their recollection of historical experience is limited mostly to those examples which tend to support their own pre-conceived ideas. Furthermore, their own Governmental documentation is often inadequate in most areas other than in classified documents. More and more people are beginning to recognize the ability of the trained historian to bring out all of the pertinent facts, and to weigh their relative value far more objectively than is possible for the average person without historical training.
Thus, HERO is convinced of the utility of our primary mission of mining the rich natural resource which we think history is, and also of refining the ore so as to permit history to serve mankind, as philosophers have always said it should. This has never been done before, either here or in any other country, to the best of my knowledge—though, as a historian, I am aware of the danger of using such absolute terms as “never,” or “the first ever.”
Rather than going into any generalized explanation of how we go about mining and refining this resource, I think I can demonstrate how we do it—and at the same time give concrete examples of some uses of history—by talking about some of HERO’s past and current work.
The first study which HERO completed was done for the Sandia Corporation—a special contracting agency for the Atomic Energy Commission. The purpose of this study—which we dubbed “Pre-Alert”—was to ascertain the extent to which historical example and experience could be useful in the area of military command and control. The Sandia Corporation had the responsibility for developing the so-called “black box” to provide foolproof, automatic controls which will prevent accidental or unauthorized employment of nuclear weapons systems. Our study was unclassified, so we didn’t get into the classified details of these foolproof, automatic controls. Our task was to assess the likelihood that such controls might be so complicated, or might be so inhibiting to individual initiative, as to preclude adequate military response in the event of unforeseen emergency conditions or circumstances.
Sandia had, of course, called upon the psychologists and sociologists to study this problem but the results of these scientific studies were not completely satisfactory in synthetic “model” environments. So we were asked to see if anything could be learned from historical experience.
After surveying the history of weapon systems, and the sometimes divergent history of command and control systems, we came to the conclusion that much could be learned from history about the human aspects of command and control. We laid out a program for a detailed investigation of a number of pertinent case studies, and some general areas for intensive research. We don’t know how useful our study was to the Sandia Corporation. We do know, however, that it aroused considerable interest in the Army. And it proved to us, without question, that our thesis about the relevance of history to current and future problems was as sound in the nuclear era, and with respect to nuclear weapon systems, as we had believed would be the case.
Our next study was for the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Entitled “Riposte,” the purpose of this study was to survey historical experience in the field of international treaties, to analyze this experience, and to point out lessons applicable to current and future treaty negotiations and treaty enforcement, particularly as this experience might be relevant to arms control treaties.
For over a year we surveyed and analyzed modern treaty experience, particularly looking at instances of violations of treaties, and enforcement measures that were taken, or that could have been taken, in response to these violations. We gave special attention to the enforcement (and non-enforcement) of the Treaty of Versailles; to sanctions and treaty enforcement experience of international organizations like the League of Nations, the Organization of American States, and the United Nations; and to the details of experience in negotiating and enforcing agreements with the Communists since World War II, such as those dealing with access rights to Berlin, the Geneva Conferences of 1954 and 1961 on Southeast Asia, and the Korean Armistice.