It is a rare moment for those who contemplate international politics
when a dramatic event suddenly clarifies seemingly insoluble
arguments over basic principles and policies. Such moments are of two
basic types: those that repudiate a course of action and those that
confirm it.
When a seminal event confounds a reigning consensus, it can condense
fragmented thoughts on the margins of debate into powerful new
metaphors and motivations, and generate a new vocabulary to discuss
new realities. Thus Hitler's perfidy in Czechoslovakia not only
turned the 1938 Munich agreement into a powerful symbolic repudiation
of appeasement, but revealed unmistakably the strategic intentions of
the Nazi regime.
When an event reaffirms widely held convictions, on the other hand,
even strong dissent may be silenced by the trumpets of official
vindication. Confirmation can lead to the commitment of more
resources to achieve a more complete success, and to "lessons
learned" applied to seemingly analogous problems. Thus the 1948
Berlin blockade solidified U.S. elite consensus around a Cold War
model of American foreign policy, and the June 1950 invasion of South
Korea spread that consensus to the country at large. Both resources
and lessons followed.
