Rewind and Reconnoiter: Joseph Caddell on the Evolving Historiography of National Security Events

Last year, Joseph Caddell wrote “From Waterloo to Pearl Harbor: How We Understand National Security Events‘” for War on the Rocks, in which he reviewed Takuma Melber’s book, Pearl Harbor: Japan’s Attack and America’s Entry into World War II , and considered how understanding of major national security events, like Pearl Harbor, change over time. A year and a half into the Russo-Ukrainian war and a month after the outbreak of the war in Gaza, we asked him to look back on his piece. Read more below. Image via the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration In your piece, you start out by saying