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Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 Paperback – April 15, 1992
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From World War I to Operation Desert Storm, American policymakers have repeatedly invoked the "lessons of history" as they contemplated taking their nation to war. Do these historical analogies actually shape policy, or are they primarily tools of political justification? Yuen Foong Khong argues that leaders use analogies not merely to justify policies but also to perform specific cognitive and information-processing tasks essential to political decision-making. Khong identifies what these tasks are and shows how they can be used to explain the U.S. decision to intervene in Vietnam. Relying on interviews with senior officials and on recently declassified documents, the author demonstrates with a precision not attained by previous studies that the three most important analogies of the Vietnam era--Korea, Munich, and Dien Bien Phu--can account for America's Vietnam choices. A special contribution is the author's use of cognitive social psychology to support his argument about how humans analogize and to explain why policymakers often use analogies poorly.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateApril 15, 1992
- Dimensions6 x 0.76 x 9.1 inches
- ISBN-100691025355
- ISBN-13978-0691025353
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Khong's interviews and newly declassified documents make a compelling case the American decision-makers in 1965 used historical analogies not only to justify decisions but to make them, most notably in the process of rejecting options." ― Foreign Affairs
Product details
- Publisher : Princeton University Press; 1st edition (April 15, 1992)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0691025355
- ISBN-13 : 978-0691025353
- Item Weight : 1.09 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.76 x 9.1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,045,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,434 in Asian American Literature & Fiction
- #2,040 in Vietnam War History (Books)
- #2,189 in Military Strategy History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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This book is most recommended for students of Qualitative Reseach methods, to learn how to develop a comparative case study method and of course - how to project from history to current events
Khong asserts that the decision to intervene in Vietnam was the inevitable outgrowth of the assumptions of the day: containment, the domino theory, etc., and therefor was not a hypocritical use of analogies to justify aggression. Policymakers, like all humans transform selected aspects of historical events into schema which influences all decisions. Because it is subconscious, historical events are seldom probed for accuracy. In my own research, I see analogies to Neville Chamberlain’s disastrous pact with Hitler in Munich, 1938 used to justify all kinds of actions.
This work is very useful and should be thoroughly internalized by decision-makers and those who work for them. In its framework, it is more “explicitly psychological” than other similar works. I assess Khong’s work to be “analogous” (no pun intended) to the lessons of the Iraq War, fought years after this book’s publication. For now, at least, the result of the Iraq War, like Vietnam, is so bereft of consensus that no clear-cut analogies can be made.




