Departments
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Week of 26 March 1999 |
Vol. II, No. 28 |
Feature
Article
Peace is hell too, says Mayers in new book
By Jonathan Vena
"War is hell," said Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, but as David Mayers describes it in his latest book, the peace that follows war can be pretty rough, too.
"When the Cold War ended, there was a lot of discussion about the new world order," says Mayers, a CAS professor of political science. "That was what first drew my attention to the way Americans handle the postcrisis period."
Wars and Peace: The Future Americans Envisioned, 1861-1991 (Saint Martin's Press) isn't about the terrors of combat; it is an examination of war's aftermath and of how Americans anticipated postwar times and sought justification for the horrors of hostility. The book looks at five national crises, beginning with the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, continuing with the two world wars, and ending with the post-Cold War policies of Presidents Bush and Clinton.
"These crises generated very high hopes," he says, "prompting people to say, 'We've paid this cost, now how do we validate it? What sort of better future are we trying to purchase?'"
Mayers says the Nuremberg Trials following World War II are an example of the United States' trying to achieve a better future in a postwar period. He points to the significance of trials by an international court and the symbolism the gesture represents.
"It's very hard to argue that any good comes out of war," Mayers says. "But what is very much to the credit of the United States is its willingness to participate, in a very important way, in Nuremberg, which despite its [imperfections] was nevertheless a very important moment.
"Sponsorship of European reconstruction after the war, the Marshall Plan, was also a high moment," he says. "That represents the best in American political imagination. It was completely humanitarian to help people who were suffering at the time, but it also helped advance American interest, namely having a role again in international relations."
"All of my other books were driven by archival research," Mayers says. "They entailed going through the National Archives, collections of confidential governmental papers, stuff of a historian. I think it's appropriate every once in a while to pause and step back from that kind of work to ask some larger questions about the significance of one's research."
Aside from the physical warfare in our nation's history, Mayers also comments on the Cold War, which he calls a "coherent, international system defined by bipolarity, self-regulation, and clearly delineated spheres of influence." Mayers admits the awkwardness of covering the Cold War in a book about postwar society, although he's quick to point out that we're still experiencing the post-Cold War era.
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David Mayers |
