Futures, Events and excessive Learnings: review of Forsberg and Patomäki, Debating the war in Ukraine

Abstract

ABSTRACT Futures past, historically open when they were our present, are often recast as pre-determined after dramatic events. The war in Ukraine displays this pattern, and makes the book by Forsberg and Patomäki so welcome. It allows nuanced discussions of counterfactuals and causal complexes when the political climate favors reductionist, deterministic interpretations of who and what caused the war and what this implies for future possibilities. The book’s dialogue format facilitates balanced analysis and its structure aroundtime phases adds complexity. Prevailing excessive learnings produce powerful policy guidance on false premises. However, the book underestimates the political forces involved in the writing of history treating public knowledge as an intellectual investigation writ large. Excessive mislearnings from the past follow not primarily from cognitive limitations distributed evenly – they are shaped by political struggles and a dominant folk conception of the nature of international relations. Enriching the analysis with a political sociology of knowledge.