Analogies at War : : Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 / / Yuen Foong Khong.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Khong, Yuen Foong,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2020]; ©1992
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (304 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- PART I: THE ARGUMENT -- Chapter 1. Analogical Reasoning in Foreign Affairs: Two Views -- Chapter 2. The AE Framework -- Chapter 3. America's Vietnam Options -- PART II: THE CASES -- Chapter 4. Containment, Analogies, and the Pre-1965 Vietnam Decisions -- Chapter 5. Korea -- Chapter 6. Dien Bien Phu -- Chapter 7. Munich and the 1930s -- PART III: THE IMPLICATIONS -- Chapter 8. The Psychology of Analogical Reasoning -- Chapter 9. Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index