ABSTRACT The most effective way for the Western profession of arms to use history is to disavow the purism and narrow specialisation of today’s academia in favour of developing a contemporary approach to the subject. The latter aims to foster a range of applied diagnostic skills that transcend the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future. A contemporary approach to history for military professionals emphasises the use of inter-disciplinary war studies to enhance policy relevance. In any defense and security organisation, history must be usable in the sense of providing cognitive and interpretative skills for probing relationships between possibility and actuality, between experience and expectation, and between singularity and repetition. Using history to examine such dialectical interconnections is particularly valuable when military establishments confront their essential task of analyzing emerging trends in the future of war.

中文翻译：

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一个可用的过去：西方武器行业的当代历史方法

摘要 西方军火界利用历史的最有效方式是摒弃当今学术界的纯粹主义和狭隘专业化，转而采用当代方法来研究该主题。后者旨在培养一系列超越过去、现在和未来时间维度的应用诊断技能。军事专业人士的当代历史方法强调使用跨学科战争研究来增强政策相关性。在任何国防和安全组织中，历史必须在提供认知和解释技能的意义上可用，以探索可能性与现实之间、经验与期望之间以及单一性与重复之间的关系。