Analogies of War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (review)

166 SAIS REVIEW on U.S. policy failures and successes. Using a variety of examples, the author effectively supports his criticism of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Cooley successfully draws the parallel between U.S. actions and the resulting"paybacks."Payback is not only a study ofrecent U.S. mistakes in the Middle East; it is also a warning that the U.S. government must work harder to understand the complexities of a region that continues to be of vital interest to the United States. Analogies of War:Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965. By Yuen Foong Khong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992. 286 pp. $39.50/Cloth. $16.95/Paperback. Reviewed byBernardI. Finel,PhD. Candidateand GraduateFellow in Government, Georgetown University. During the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, President Bush repeatedly compared Saddam Hussein to Adolph Hitler. Was this a cynical ploy to rationalize and justify decisions made based on the need to protect oil resources? Or did the President truly believe that comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler described the situation in the Gulf? And furthermore, did this analogy help suggest the solution of standing firm and meeting force with force? In Analogies at War, Yuen Foong Khong attempts to explain the impact of analogies and "lessons ofthe past" upon decision-makers. Specifically, he examines the impact of analogies in the formulation of policy towards Vietnam in 1965. Khong argues convincingly that despite the claim by skeptics that analogies are only used to rationalize existing policy preferences, analogies also have a much more important influence on policy choices. In order to demonstrate this point, Khong specifies the functions performed by analogies and tests them empirically. He lists these functions in an analogical explanation (AE) framework. The AE framework suggests that analogies perform six specific diagnostic tasks: define the nature of the situation confronting the policymaker; assess the stakes; provide prescriptions; help predict alternative options' chances of success; evaluate their moral lightness; and warn aboutdangers associated with the options. These functions are arrived at by synthesizing empirical observation, deductive reasoning, and insights borrowed from social cognitive psychology. The latter is particularly important. The contributionsof"schema" theory—the ideathathuman beings interpret the world from top to bottom by filtering it through previously accepted concepts or theories—are especially useful and again highlight the need for political scientists to examine the theories and methods used in the other social sciences. Khong examines how these analogies perform the functions listed above in the case of American policy toward Vietnam in 1965. Specifically, he attempts to explain both policy choices in early 1965 with regard to bombing and in mid-1965 with regard to the deployment of ground troops. Khong examines only a small number of cases, but avoids the pitfalls of such studies, namely spurious correlation and overdetermined outcomes, by careful use of process tracing and the congruence procedure approach. Process tracing is a methodology which closely examines the important influences on decision makers BOOK REVIEWS 167 at key points in the policy process. The congruency procedure specifies a set of expected outcomes based on one's theoretical perspective and checks these against actual outcomes. Together these two methodologies make a study based on as few as one or two valuable cases. Thus, Khong capitalizes on the limited number of cases, providing a deep and textured examination of the cases. Indeed, Khong's case study is extremely well done. It is focused, comprehensive, original, and enlightening. Khong finds that the 1965 Vietnam decisions do support the argument that analogies are important in policy formation, and the AE framework is a good description ofthe role analogies perform. Specifically, he finds a prevalence ofthe analogy between Vietnam and Korea, depicting an external aggression which had to be met with limited force so as to avoid a Chinese intervention, among key decision makers such as President Johnson, Dean Rusk, and McGeorge Bundy. This helps to explain both the American decision to intervene in response to the perceived aggression from North Vietnam, and the need to keep the intervention relatively limited to avoid a direct Chinese intervention. Beyond the basic conclusion that analogies do matter, Khong finds that policymakers...