Quote of the Day (Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, on National Stories and International Quarrels)

“No two countries tell the same story, even when describing the same events. One country’s glory is another country’s grievance. One’s founding myth is another’s crowning shame. In international relations, such dissonance is dangerous. Governments quarrel over what history makes rightfully theirs. Resentment over old offenses overrides powerful incentives to cooperate. Interests, threats, pride, justice—determinants of war and peace are defined by stories that never overlap exactly and often clash catastrophically. The past is never dead; it is kindling for future conflict.”—Foreign Affairs editor, diplomatic historian and George Marshall biographer Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, “The Clash of Victimizations” (review of Howard French’s “Everything Under the Heavens”), Washington Monthly, June/July/August 2017