ABSTRACT
“Foreign Policy Indicators: Predictors of War in History and in the State of the World Message” was written during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. Nixon and two political scientists, Henry Kissinger and Robert Osgood, had the staff prepare an annual status of the world message in which we were told that “history teaches us the virtues of strong alliances and military supremacy.” Mel Small and I translated these homilies into operational language and tested them against historical evidence going back to 1816. About half of these lessons turned out to be fairly close to the truth, while the other half were of dubious value to the decision-maker. Perhaps this is why the reports were dropped after four years. The paper presented here is a revised and abbreviated version of the paper originally prepared for the 1972 meeting of the American Political Science Association held in Washington, D.C.
