Reviewing The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman
Reason is the official god of our culture of scientism and expertocracy. One must “trust the experts”, “follow the science”, and “check the facts”, with humble submission. All of government and society are micro-surveilled, micro-analyzed, and micro-managed to produce rationally and reasonably what are supposedly the best results scientifically, expertly, and technically possible. But how successful is our worship of reason? Do we have a better-run government than in the past? Many of us have doubts, and the last few years of public life have only confirmed our fears. Government policies often seem extremely short-sighted, pointless, and beckoning towards disaster.
In The March of Folly, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman agrees that folly, “the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests,”[1] remains an ever-present danger to every government. Rationalism and the enlightenment did not bring us to better results or save us from some dark age of irrational political rule but paradoxically, as seen ultimately by the American experience in Vietnam in her book, may have even made the problem of folly worse. Our “experts” in government not only do not serve our or the nation’s interests but frequently do not even serve their own long-term interests of remaining in power. In this book, Tuchman attempts to unveil the mystery of folly, but while making definite progress towards establishing the conditions under which it operates, I believe her work still leaves its ultimate nature somewhat mysterious.
I first heard of Barbara Tuchman through Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History series on the First World War, Tuchman’s specialty. Carlin quoted extensively from Tuchman’s The Guns of August in his podcast, a work on the origins and very beginnings of the war, and I enjoyed this 1962 work as well as two of her other early works related to World War I, The Proud Tower and The Zimmerman Telegram. Tuchman writes seriously but straightforwardly, with great detail but with a flowing narrative, and 1984 The March of Folly, one of her last works, is no exception, even as her goal here is again more philosophically reflective and universal to human nature than her other works, more focused as they are on particular events, changes, and their causes. Unlike more modern works, there is a profundity of classical references and an assumption of some basic knowledge about the past throughout her general approach. We also see a willingness to make judgments about that is also rarer today; history for Tuchman does provide us lessons, and most relevant to this book, there is for her such a thing as human nature, and it is a constant that can be profitably studied.
The March of Folly is simple and well-organized in structure, an introduction to open the question of the omnipresence and causes of folly throughout history, followed by four major narrative expositions of key examples of political folly throughout history that serve as the opportunity for Tuchman to reflect more generally on the causes and inevitably of irrational policies against self-interest, and then a summary offering prescriptions and advice to politicians and the public. I will follow and react to each of these in turn in this review, before taking the opportunity to express some of my thoughts on Tuchman’s conclusions and other lessons perhaps implicit in the book, but not fully drawn out by her.
In her introduction, Tuchman notes, that although folly and seemingly irrational policies are a “chronic and pervasive problem,” Tuchman believes that few political philosophers other than Machiavelli have given serious enough consideration to this ill and how to avoid it, which places her aim in this work as a realistic, not idealistic inquiry, on “government as it is, not as it should be,”[3] In her inquiry, she sets strict limits here at the beginning. We will not hear of the many other ways the government can mismanage, not of tyranny, disaster befalling on account of excessive ambition, or pure incompetence as in cases where it seems no one is reasoning at all, as with harem politics in decadent ages within the Muslim world or the late Roman empire. Folly then, it seems by her definition must be negatively constrained to situations where reason is operating in some way, but actions do not seem to comport with what it would dictate. She constricts the focus and definition of political folly to cases where (1) such policies were seen as folly in their own time, (2) where alternative courses of action were feasible, and (3) such actions are not constrained to one ruler only.
The rest of this introduction draws us through a whirlwind of historical examples, briefly touched on that will illuminate her constraints before the more detailed analysis that forms the rest of the book. Rehoboam, the son of King Solomon of Israel, who against the advice of his elders and in the face of potential revolt, promised to his people, “Whereas my father laid upon you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions,” is our first example, a move which led to the secession of the ten northern tribes. The Aztec King Montezuma in the face of Cortez’s arrival, Visigothic Spain’s treatment of the Jews in the face of the threat of Islamic invasion, French King Louis XIV’s treatment of the Huguenots, French King Charles X’s actions in the leadup to the 1830 July Revolution, Germany’s 1917 decision to relaunch unrestricted submarine warfare, and the Japanese plan to attack the US at Pearl Harbor are just a few of the examples covered in this whirlwind chapter.
Tuchman now moves us to deeper analysis, presenting the Trojan’s acceptance of the infamous Trojan Horse as the prototypical example of folly in both its fame and mystery. To us, to the poets who told the tale, and even for many of the Trojan characters within the tale, the horse is so obviously a Greek trick, that the fact that the Trojans would simply take it within their city unopened is unbelievable and requires some sort of outside explanation. Within the tale, there is an attempt to give plausibility by blaming the gods for man’s irrational behavior against his interest, but within this tale, the gods argue back that man still could have acted otherwise and is thus to blame for his folly. As a myth, the tale of the Trojan Horse leaves things unfinished, and in tension, drawing out in condensed and highlighted form man’s own fear and terror at his own folly in general. Given reason, given knowledge of the best possible, or at least non-destructive courses of action, why do we not always follow them? Put another way that Tuchman doesn’t mention here, the Original Sin presents a similarly terrifying mystery, but this chapter, like the myth in itself provides no ultimate answers.
Next, we look in depth at the corruption of the Renaissance-era papacy of the late 15th and early 16th centuries and how a general lack of willingness for reform provoked the Protestant revolt. Tuchman quickly and neatly presents us with a simple chain of causality for the Protestant revolt. The attempt to end the Avignon papacy, or the presence of the Popes in Avignon, France rather than Rome, caused the western schism of 1378, which, dividing the Church, caused a money problem for the Popes. Solving this as well as ending the schism required ever more involvement in political alliances with the monarchs and princes of the age, which made the Papacy itself in its actions and outlook hardly distinguishable from the decadence and immorality growing among the increasingly secular and humanistic upper classes, although the peasants and lower folk, of the humanistic age.[4] A desire for reform was common throughout the laity of the Church. Many preachers decried the corruption, lack of proper formation of priests, and the dissoluteness of the Church hierarchy, as Church councils “held endless discussions” but accomplished little. Tuchman, using a phrase oft-quoted throughout the work, says the Popes were “wooden-headed” concerning their true interests, succumbing “to the worst in society. ”[5] The Popes knew there was danger of major revolt as with the examples provided by the English Lollards and Bohemian Hussites in the 14th century and worked to end these revolts in particular, but made no sustained effort to redress their root causes. Although any leader is formed and bent by the society they rule, Tuchman believes that their failure to work for reform alongside the Councils, regarding them instead in an adversarial manner, failed to produce any alignment within the Church in favor of necessary reform.
The details of Church corruption from 1470-1530 recounted by Tuchman are many, scandalous, and macabre, and there is no real need to descend into them. The easiest way to summarize is with a joke, encouraging for the present situation in the Church, offered recently by several of my friends: “You know times are good in the Church when even the Pope’s kids are Catholic.” In this period, the Pope’s kids were not often very Catholic, nor, seemingly were the Popes. What I find more interesting in Tuchman’s review of this era, however, is that two Popes, Pius III and Adrian VI, did attempt Church reform, making brief stabs at purging corruption and reinvigorating piety. But Pius III reigned less than a month in 1503 and was not able to accomplish, while Adrian VI, reigning about a year in 1523, attempted much but “found the system too entrenched for him to dislodge”[6] and exhausted, died, having also accomplished little in permanent change. Even the Fifth Lateran Council made many good plans, but finishing its work in 1517 and unsupported by Pope Julius II, it was too late, Luther launched his revolt that same year.
The lesson here, Tuchman states for us, is that the Popes could not seem to consistently work on fixing the corrupt system “because they were part of it, grew out of it, depended on it.”[7] The folly of the Popes of this age was in sum, the simple focus on present gains with no regard for the future of the office, no reasoning about anything other than the present. The issue was not a lack of reason in general or pursuing one single counter-productive policy, but the policy was a lack of far-sighted policy, a failure of each Pope to move beyond the imprisoning mental frame of the Church as the “supreme pork barrel.”[8] Even as it is clear that reason was operative in these Popes, as they reacted to each challenge and affair in a well-thought-out, rather Machiavellian way, a properly reasoned course of action concerning the future of the Church and even of the future of Papal power was not followed because it would require certain sacrifices of prestige, luxury, and giving up too many concubines for many of the Popes’ tastes, making the issue also a failure of will-power.
Tuchman again emphasizes her refreshing belief in human free will and individual agency throughout this section, believing as she does that reform could have been achieved by a more saintly Pope working in full cooperation with a Council. However, it was only ironically the Protestant revolt that fixed the problem by forcing the issues in the Church to the fore, where Pope Pius IV and the Council of Trent as well as many saints rose to the occasion of redeeming and repairing the Church. Perhaps there is a hopeful message here, that ultimate and severe crisis is a good thing, breaking the ruler’s reason out of the mental prison of immediate self-interest that is folly and towards instead the truer, better reason of wisdom? Perhaps?
Next, we move to the British treatment of the American colonies. A well-tread tale, I will not repeat all details offered by Tuchman’s flowing account, except for some that are quite interesting and new to me. Although of key importance to the Crown and the trading economy of the British, there was not a well-defined or organized administration of the colonies—or perhaps of the British government in general. Power and administration were divided in a rather ad-hoc and personal manner, which works well with outstanding individuals, but creates a system where no one bore much individual responsibility for anything, and personal prestige wore much more heavily on every decision than expediency. British politicians in the king’s administration wanted money from the colonies to pay for their defense, as well as to reduce their personal tax burdens, but little cost-benefit analysis, long-term thinking, or collaboration was evident. No one was responsible for rational policy, but everyone was extremely responsible for their own appearance of prestige, while ministers also had to maintain their position at the whim of King George III. Simply put, a tit-for-tat cycle of retribution on revenue measures created the American Revolution, a folly of short-term reasoning and self-interested behavior which Tuchman summarizes:
However justifiable in principle, these measures, insofar as they progressively destroyed goodwill, and the voluntary connection, were demonstrably, unwise in practice, besides being impossible to implement except by force. Since force could only mean enmity, the cost of the effort, even if successful, was clearly greater than the possible gain. In the end Britain made rebels where there had been none.[9]
This is not to say that rebellion was inevitable as early as the 1764 passage of the Sugar Act or the 1765 Stamp Act. Britain backed down, but the Townshend import duties of 1767 amounted to a repetition of a previously unproductive policy. And this was worse than merely a repetition, for the circumstances had changed, as the previous 1764 and 1765 revenue attempts had “progressively destroyed goodwill” among the colonists. A wiser, perhaps more Machiavellian set of British rulers could have made placating efforts for some time to restore the colonists’ willingness to cooperate for the moment. But the British treasury’s actions under Charles Townshend while self-interested for himself—if they worked—were the precise opposite course of action. With goodwill destroyed, violent rebellion began, and we of course know where things went from there. Force, rather than persuasion, became the only tool left for the British to assert control, and British force created American enmity out of thin air, with Tuchman enlightening me greatly on this note with details like Benjamin Franklin’s initial opposition and late persuasion to the idea of American secession.
Once war was hot, Britain’s leaders, and especially its King felt it necessary to continue due to fears of loss of empire and loss of prestige. Contrary to common supposition, opinion on the war was divided in England, Tuchman tells us, but the King, rather than trying to salvage the most out of a situation by early parlay, continued in an intractable cause out of what Tuchman calls the “the ‘terrible encumbrance’ of dignity and honor; of putting false value on these and mistaking them for self-interest.” George III, she continues:
simply could not concede that he might preside over defeat. While Parliament and public grew increasingly sour on the war, the King persisted in its continuance partly because he believed the loss of empire would bring shame and ruin, and more because he could not live with the thought that it would be his reign that would forever bear the stigma of the loss.[10]
Again, for Tuchman, there is no historical necessity at work here. At multiple places, a more truly self-interested ruler or ruling class could have stepped back from the brink and restored a relationship of respect between Britain and her colonies. A similar breakdown of relations in the mid-19th century between Britain and Canada, she notes, was handled with far more conciliation by Britain. Herein we see folly’s character as parallel constraints of reason and of willpower. British rulers were boxed in within their very minds by an overemphasis on honor and appearance within their reasoning, and a lack of willpower to change their minds and break out of their prison box of dissective, isolated short-term reasoning. The longer a pattern continues, no matter how ill-serving to self-interest it is as a whole, as long as all of your reactions “make sense” individually, the harder it is to truly reason. Reason is only reason when it acts in full context of the desired end. Otherwise, in the phrasing of historian Dan Carlin, it is “logical insanity,” as with the escalation that produced the First World War or the escalation of aerial bombing in the Second World War, justified for the sake of reducing casualties in theory, but producing the opposite result in practice Such “reasoning” may technically be reason, but it is reason imprisoned and flying blind by a too-narrow focus, and often merely serves as Thomas Hobbes said as “the scouts and spies of the passions,” not reason at all, but a slave of emotion.
Our final example in the book, the American war in Vietnam[11] is to Tuchman extremely similar to the last in the causes, execution, and lessons of its folly. While the overall purpose of the war seems horribly pointless in retrospect given the results, every individual decision could seem to make sense to the politicians and generals making them, even if both national and personal interest were ill-served, it contributing to the political downfall of both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Keeping Asia from falling totally to communism was the general goal of course, but there was no clearly thought-out goal for Vietnam at the beginning of the conflict, which stretched back to the end of World War II, or perhaps earlier, to its time as a French colony. Here, starting from a worse position than the British in America, as America took power slowly from France in Vietnam (and later South Vietnam) to fight communist influence, it and its puppet rulers never had the support of the people on whose behalf we claimed to be directly intervening and in whose name we installed several corrupt regimes who often even openly collaborated with the Communist North Vietnamese against their ostensible benefactor. Even if a just cause in general with regard to the evils of communism, politics, and war are the realms of the practical and possible, and to be reasonable, ought at least to be oriented toward the self-interest of each nation, or at least of the rulers. For Tuchman, Vietnam was none of these, as successive American politicians, even, initially wanting to pull the United States out of involvement or at least not to escalate the situation, were like the British in America, sucked into involvement by fear of loss of prestige and a fear of being perceived as “soft” on communism, with this pressure being enough to persuade American leaders to continue in a lost cause. We might sympathize with American politicians in this fear, and understand, why they felt compelled to escalate, and escalate, and escalate some more. But very few Americans in general actually got into any trouble at all over being soft on communism, or even being a Soviet spy. The Vietnam War itself contributed to the political downfall of far more politicians, as well as the destruction of much of Vietnam with absolutely nothing to show in the long term. One might even argue that our intervention worsened the evils to come when the total communist takeover of the entire country ensued, as our intervention certainly created lots of internal scores to be violently settled.
I will again not go into many details. Tuchman gives a great and readable outline of the decades of the Vietnam War from 1945-1975, long but much more manageable than Max Hastings’ Vietnam which I began but put down after only managing 30 out of its 1000+ pages. With regard to her focus on bringing out and understanding folly, however, Tuchman brings to light that the irrationality and folly of the war arose most out of the “rationalization” and over-analyzing of every detail. During his term as president, Johnson was deeply and daily involved in choosing every bombing target and calculating the potential impact and possible response to these by America’s other adversaries. Billions of dollars were spent on new technologies, processes, and experts to achieve each micro-goal of the conflict, but this was all missing the forest for the trees. Their supposed “rationalization” of war, and the idea of an expertocracy running a well-managed “limited war”, in fact made the problem worse by allowing politicians to delude themselves that small improvements in some random metric meant that the entire war effort was doing better, when, in reality, more resources were being poured down the drain. Reason about the actual state of the situation as whole was being lost in many politicians and “experts” involved in the war, swamped by a hall of mirrors of micro details that proved ultimately to be irrelevant.
On the other side, many Americans opposed the war, taking down many a career of pro-escalation politicians, showing that sometimes a people can recognize the dictates of reason even as leaders were trapped in folly. But no one politician was in a position to exhibit the moral courage to make what U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union George Kennan called even during the time “a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions,”[12] a move which would have hurt the individual politician in the short-run, but benefited the nation and perhaps even saved many a political career from falling beneath the weight of their foolishness. American policy with regard resembled a mob in a crowded theater crushing itself to death. As Tuchman concludes, “to recognize error, to cut losses, to alter course, is the most repugnant option in government.”[13] And no one took this option. Tuchman breaks down the causes of the folly into many particular failures, but they again show together folly as following from failures of both reason and will. If you don’t reason according to the situation as a whole and the long-term objectives, you will often act in a short-term and irrational way, often misguided by irrelevant facts and an imperfect analysis of the situation. But even knowing the best course of action isn’t sufficient to act accordingly if other considerations bear upon your will. Vietnam examples both, as I believe so also do the later American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Having presented all these examples of folly, Tuchman summarizes her book by perceiving a three-step process at work in each of her examined cases:
In its first stage, mental standstill fixes the principles and boundaries governing a political problem. In the second stage, when dissonances and failing function begin to appear, the initial principles rigidify. This is the period, when, if wisdom were operative, re-examination and re-thinking and a change of course are possible, but they are as rare as rubies in a backyard. Rigidifying leads to increase in investment and the need to protect egos; policy founded upon error multiplies, never retreats. The greater the investment and the more involved in it the sponsor’s ego, the more unacceptable is disengagement. In the third stage pursuit of failure enlarges the damages until it causes the fall of Troy, the defection from the Papacy, the loss of a trans-Atlantic empire, the classic humiliation in Vietnam.[14]
She summarizes folly’s origins as a “rejection of reason,”[15] often stemming from irrational reason, reason not properly considering the entirety of a situation, the ends aimed at, and the means to attaining it. This is a failure at the first stage mentioned above, a failure to break out of a constrained framework of thought when the situation requires reevaluation of reason’s own principles. But folly also comes from rejecting reason entirely at the level of the will. We can reject the reasoned course of action because it is hard to do so, because it could hurt us both individually and in the short-term, with the path offered by reason thus becoming subjectively unappealing even if we know it to be the right course of action objectively.
While this is clarifying, folly on an individual basis remains mysterious. Tuchman, realistic, but optimistic attempts to conclude with prescriptions for betterment. She examines in her concluding chapter various ways attempted by societies throughout history to pick more reasoned—wiser—rulers, wisdom seeming, though never stated directly to be in her view the exact opposite of folly. Avoiding political folly in America today, requires, at its root, creating a wiser electorate, not just wiser rulers, as wise rulers have little chance of being elected in her view as conditions stand today in America. And she has no clear proposals for ensuring the virtue of the electorate: “We can only muddle on,” she concludes.
Until the Kingdom of Heaven this seems true. Folly, and sin more generally, remains a mystery, often paired alongside the corresponding mysteries of free will and Divine grace. To me, the more fundamental primordial, and unexplained folly is Original Sin. We puzzle with John Milton in Paradise Lost about particular details, but we know not its essence. And the same seems true about Tuchman’s work here. From reading this work I know a lot more details about particular cases where politicians behaved with folly. But Tuchman’s views, in her openness to human free will never fully explain folly. Having read this book, we cannot predict the future in detail, other than noting that entrenched systems often make it difficult but not impossible for individuals, once set on a course towards folly, to escape it. We know that folly will probably be around as long as angels continue to neglect to rule men and men avoid being angels. (Come on St. Michael…) But we can never penetrate the secrets of the human heart, from whence can arise wise statesmanship and base folly. Our technology, as with the Coronavirus event, often only serves to trap human decision-makers by increasing social pressure and stigma, making it harder for individuals to escape mob insanity, even among supposed “scientific experts.” Folly has its roots in the unchanging mystery of human nature.
The more practical and conclusive lesson of the book to me, however, is more particular. In particular, all exertion of power must be backed up by the belief and support of those in whose name that power is exercised. Until we get artificial intelligence-enabled armies capable of complete self-actuation and self-resupply, this statement is as true as its converse. Any power not backed up by the belief and support of those in whose name it is exercised is folly, and will soon lead to disaster if those on whom your power rests withdraw their support No matter how strong and unassailable your position may seem, it depends on belief, yours, and those on whose belief in you depend for your power. We see this clearly in the relationship between the American colonies and Britain as well as between Vietnam and America. Force may be at the root of political power, but force is always exercised on the basis of belief. The real battleground is the mind, is about truth and belief, And of course, it is only truth, as Christ said, that will set you free from the bondage of falsehood and its lesser counterpart, the close-mindedness of a too-narrow view of reality.
Read Tuchman’s book to learn more about her particular examples and as a history book, even if its purpose was mostly otherwise. It is more enjoyable that way than trying to solve the ultimately intractable mysteries of human nature grappled with, admirable as her attempt may be. It is not my favorite work of hers, I learned far more from her earlier work The Proud Tower, but this one is also worthwhile to read, although I’d recommend Warren Carroll’s The Glory of Christendom and The Cleaving of Christendom as a particular counter-balance to her section on the Protestant revolt. Knowing the great reformation within the Catholic Church by the work of the Council of Trent changes the import of the evils of the Church in that era addressed in that section. Folly may march on, but the Church marched on, and so must we.
[1] Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly, 1.
[2] As referenced in The Guns of August, Tuchman was a personal witness to history. The daughter of Henry Morgenthau, ambassador of the United States to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, she happened to be present as a young girl nearby the first naval engagement between Germany and England while her father was travelling on a ship to Palestine near the beginning of the war.
[3] The March of Folly, 8.
[4] Having just read Warren Carroll’s History of Christendom series, I’d extend the chain backwards to a corruption of the original intention of the crusades, external defense of Christendom against Islam, to instead the calling of Crusades by Popes against other Christian princes. While some of these may have been justified in individual cases such as against Fredrick II, in general, this proved that politicization of the papacy had already occurred, and it was this that caused conflict between the Pope and the King of France, causing the Avignon papacy, and thereby the Western schism. As to the cause in general of the pre-Avignon papacy politicization of the papacy, Carroll blames the extremely tight Church laws against consanguineous marriages—and the Pope’s often granting dispensations against these regulations. The papacy was thus inexorably drawn into every question of a marriage alliance between Christian princes, the Medieval equivalent of the Pope having to adjudicate in every international treaty and election of a head of state, with predictable consequences.
[5] The March of Folly, 54.
[6] The March of Folly, 119.
[7] The March of Folly, 125.
[8] The March of Folly, 126.
[9] The March of Folly, 128.
[10] The March of Folly, 230.
[11] And in Laos and in Cambodia, perhaps rendering the Southeast Asian War a better title for the conflict.
[12] The March of Folly, 335.
[13] The March of Folly, 383.
[14] The March of Folly, 383.
[15] The March of Folly, 380.