Foreign Policy Analysis: history, identity and foreign policy

Aims & Learning Objectives
Identify the role of history in shaping foreign policy decisions
Discuss the use of analogies and metaphors in FPA
Discuss the competing interpretations of how history influences FP decision making
Critically evaluate the relationship between history, identity and FP

History and Foreign Policy
History used by FP decision makers because they face:
high volume of information
search for broader policy choices
concern for the ambiguities of potential outcomes
personal experience of decision maker

Analogy and Metaphor
Analogies & metaphors key means of relating history and foreign policy
Analogy: comparisons drawn from same realm of experience (within domain)
Knowledge is ‘retrieved’
Assumes ‘Lessons of History’ are self-evident and knowable
Cold War and Munich analogy

Analogy and Metaphor
Metaphor: understanding or experiencing one thing in terms of another category (outside domain)
Knowledge is ‘created’
Assumes similarities between the 2 cases allows for general comparison
Cold War and metaphor of ‘falling dominoes’
‘Soft underbelly’ and metaphor as distortion

Historical Analogy as Tool
This view holds that the place of history is to help decision makers process and interpret material
Livy on Rome: ‘We can endure neither our vices nor our remedies for them.’
Machiavelli followed Caligula’s advice: ‘Let them hate us as long as they fear us.’

Historical Analogy as Justification
This view holds that the place of history is to provide justification for pre-determined action on the part of decision maker.
A mobilising tactic by leaders to win public support for a particular foreign policy aim

History and FP Decision Making
Problem Framing
(‘what sort of situation am I confronting?’):
Define situation
Analyse issues
Suggest general approach

History and FP Decision Making
Problem Solving
(‘what exactly should I do now?’):
Identify specific courses of action
Evaluate their prospects for success or failure

Which Historical Analogy and Why?
Preference is not neutral (Khong & Reiter) but is determined by the degree to which a given analogy conforms to the shared goals and values of the decision maker (Houghton & Peterson).
Key selection criteria is the role of beliefs, images and operational code of leaders

The Politic of Analogy
Accessibility of History- collective memory
Need to contextualize complex contemporary events within a historical framework of past events about which an individual has a more confident judgement of ‘success’ or ’failure’
The US government and its critics have favoured historical frameworks
Munich= danger of appeasement
Pearl Harbor= imminent threat (now 9/11)
Germany and Japan= Nation Building
Vietnam= Un-winnable War
Hollywood (and now video games) brought language and imagery of WW2 and Vietnam to generation who didn’t experience it

Dangers
Inappropriate analogies (e.g. lessons of Korea applied in Vietnam)
More appropriate analogies ignored (e.g. British occupation of Iraq 1917)
Preference is not neutral (Khong & Reiter) but is determined by the degree to which a given analogy conforms to the shared goals and values of the decision maker (Houghton & Peterson).
Key selection criteria is the role of beliefs, images and operational code of leaders

Historical Analogies and Iraq
Used to convey…
We can easily beat Saddam because we have done it before in 1991
We can then re-build Iraq as a stable pro-American democracy because we have done it before in post-war Germany and Japan
We have to do this because Saddam could be another Hitler
If we don’t do this then Munich 1938 tells us that we will have to fight a worse war later on. (Appeasement Rhetoric)

Examples
“As President Kennedy said in October of 1962: Neither the US nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats large or small” GWB 7th October 2002
“If we don’t stop the reds in South Vietnam, tomorrow they will be in Hawaii, and next week they will be in San Francisco.”
President Lyndon Johnson 1966
“Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places so our people will not have to confront them in New York or St Louis or LA.”
President Bush, 26 August 2003.

Critique of History and FPA
Bureaucratic dimension underplayed
‘institutional memory’ (or its absence)
Do institutions ‘learn’ and how? (lessons learned units)
Public opinion and history
Sets parameters of what constitutes ‘national memory’
…but many interpretations of ‘history’ possible, reflecting divisions within state & society

Identity, History and Foreign Policy
Identity and history
National myths set parameters on what is deemed to be ‘objective history’ and who are its subjects (citizens)
‘Necessity of forgetting’ to construct an inclusive national identity (Renan)
FP as a means of reifying national identity (‘us’ versus ‘them’) through constant reinvention of history (Campbell)