Reading Questions

• Why does the United States intervene in Vietnam?

  • The author argues the US intervened because of the analogy that the nation drew between Vietnam and Korea, as well as the comparison to Munich in WWII. Using these analogies, it was easy to believe the VC was an aggressive force invading the south, and that communism must be stopped early if we didn’t want a longer war in the future. Unfortunately, the better analogies were the US Civil War and the French War in Vietnam.

• Has the US used analogies in its strategic thinking since Vietnam?

  • Yes, humans in almost all circumstances have to use analogies to express complex ideas that audiences don’t have the context/background to understand.

• Has the Cold War analogy come back into favor, given rising tensions with China and Russia?

  • Yes, both the Cold War and Thucydides analogies have been brought back up. Only time will tell which is correct, but we must realize China is a very different country from the USSR.

• What are the risks and advantages of analogous thinking?

  • Analogies allow people to communicate complex ideas that their audiences don’t have the context/background to otherwise understand. The risk involved is that, frequently, the context/background matters.

Online Description

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.

🔫 Author Background

Yuen Foong Khong is a political scientist specializing in international relations, with a focus on foreign policy decision-making and the psychological factors that influence leaders during crises. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was deeply influenced by scholars in political psychology and cognitive theory—fields that examine how historical analogies shape perception and choice. His experience as a research fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs during the Cold War provided a fertile environment for studying U.S. foreign policy missteps. In particular, the Vietnam War’s legacy and the use of the Korean War as an analogy captured his attention, sparking his interest in how policymakers draw lessons—sometimes incorrectly—from history. Analogies at War emerged from this scholarly background, combining rigorous archival research with psychological theory to explain U.S. escalation in Vietnam. Khong’s academic appointments at Oxford and later at the National University of Singapore further expanded his perspective, grounding his work in both Western and Asian strategic thought. His unique blend of international experience, academic rigor, and policy relevance shaped the analytical depth of this influential study.

📒 Sections

---

Introduction

---

🔑 Major Themes & Ideas

• Analogies as cognitive tools: perform six diagnostic tasks (from Analogies_Chapter2 AE Framework).
• Historical parallels shape perceptions & choices: analogies did more than justify; they structured thinking.
• Korea & Munich: urged intervention & defined stakes, but Korea also cautioned against overreach.
• Dien Bien Phu: warned of becoming colonial powers & domestic collapse of will.
• Cognitive psychology: schema theory, availability heuristics, top-down filtering explain misuse (from Analogies_Chapter8).

---

⚖️ Critical Tensions

• Analogies indispensable for simplifying uncertainty vs dangerously seductive shortcuts.
• Skeptics see them as rhetorical; Khong shows they actually drive choices.
• Bureaucratic/electoral incentives vs cognitive analogies — not always easy to disentangle.

---

🪓 Potential Critiques to Explore

• Does Khong underplay bureaucratic politics or domestic electoral concerns?
• Are lab-based cognitive theories too simple for messy policymaking?
• How might institutional “devil’s advocacy” mitigate analogy misuse?

---

✅ Core Synthesis

The Korean and Munich analogies didn’t merely decorate speeches — they shaped how U.S. leaders diagnosed Vietnam, assessed stakes, predicted outcomes, and chose gradual escalation over other paths. Ironically, America’s unresolved “lesson of Vietnam” might be healthier, because it keeps debate alive rather than locking policy into rigid dogma.

---

🔗 Related Concepts to Develop

• Cognitive Bias
• Availability Heuristic
• Schema Theory
• Bounded Rationality
• Graham Allison#Essence of Decision

---

Key Chapters Summary

📝 Notes on Key Chapters

Ch. 1 - Two Views on Analogical Reasoning

• Debate: real guides vs rhetorical cover. Shows need to prove mechanisms.

Ch. 2 - AE Framework

• Six diagnostic tasks analogies perform. Shapes stakes, morality, options, risks.

Ch. 3 - Vietnam Options

• Options considered; analogies nudged toward escalation.

Ch. 5-7 - Case Studies

• Korea: gradual escalation. Munich: avoid appeasement. Dien Bien Phu: warned, but overshadowed.

Ch. 8 - Psychology

• Surface similarities, schema perseverance, ignoring contrary evidence.

Ch. 9 - Conclusion

• Analogies: indispensable yet dangerous. Deep biases limit improvement.

---

Chapter 1: Vietnam and the Korean Analogy

📌 Analogical Reasoning in Foreign Affairs: Two Views

Chapter in: Analogies at War
Type: #Chapter #Analogies #DecisionMaking #CognitiveBias

🎯 Identified Thesis (Restated Simply)

Khong lays out two competing perspectives on historical analogies in foreign policy:

• Skeptics: Analogies are rhetorical devices, used to justify decisions made for other reasons (power politics, domestic pressures).
• Analytical/Cognitive (Khong’s view): Analogies actively shape how policymakers diagnose problems, define stakes, predict outcomes, and choose policies.

❓ Author’s Questions / Objectives

• Why do statesmen turn so often to historical analogies?
• Are analogies just legitimation tools (skeptics) or do they fundamentally shape perceptions and choices?
• Why do even smart, historically literate policymakers use analogies poorly?

🔑 Key Arguments & Points

• Historical analogies are common and powerful.

Examples

• LBJ’s NSC, July 21, 1965: Henry Cabot Lodge likens not intervening in Vietnam to Munich — equating non-intervention with appeasement.
• Woodrow Wilson: worried about repeating patterns of past wars.

Two Views

• Skeptical: Analogies mainly persuade publics or Congress after decisions are made for strategic reasons.
• Khong’s analytical: Analogies do real cognitive work — helping leaders map new, ambiguous crises onto familiar historical events.

Khong’s Intervention

• Argues skeptics are too narrow: analogies also diagnose, frame, and shape decisions.
• Analogical reasoning is inherently psychological, simplifying complex problems but often misleading by overweighting superficial similarities.

Formally: AX:BX::AY:BY — If A and B are similar in X, and A caused Y, predict B will too.

🗂 Supporting Evidence & Examples

• Aguirre/Cortez: pushed on to El Dorado based on a faulty analogy — led to disaster.
• Deng Xiaoping (1989): saw Tiananmen as another Cultural Revolution, concluded repression was needed.

🧠 Intellectual Foundations

• Builds on Ernest May, Stanley Hoffmann, Robert Jervis, Vertzberger on prevalence & misuse of analogies.

⚖️ Assumptions

• Analogical reasoning is inevitable given human cognitive limits.
• Policymakers share the same cognitive shortcuts & schema biases as ordinary people.

🪓 Potential Weaknesses / Critiques

• Skeptics validly note it’s hard to prove causation vs justification.
• Khong says we need repeated private invocations over time to show shaping effect, not just public PR analogies.

🌐 Larger Aim / Context

Sets up the core puzzle for the book: are analogies just rhetoric, or do they fundamentally shape decisions? Prepares ground for the AE Framework in Chapter 2 — formalizing six diagnostic tasks.

✅ Pithy Synthesis

Historical analogies aren’t just clever speech lines; they’re mental maps guiding leaders through crises — often down mistaken paths.

---

Chapter 2: The Johnson Administration’s Internal Debate

📌 The AE Framework

Chapter in: Analogies at War
Type: #Chapter #Analogies #DecisionMaking #CognitiveBias #AEFramework

🎯 Identified Thesis (Restated Simply)

Khong develops the AE (Analogical Explanation) framework, arguing that analogies perform six key diagnostic tasks that guide foreign policy decisions by shaping how leaders:

• define situations,
• assess stakes,
• prescribe policies,
• predict success,
• evaluate morality, and
• foresee risks.

This formalizes why analogies are so influential — they structure thinking under uncertainty, making some choices seem natural.

❓ Central Questions

• What exactly do analogies do beyond post hoc justification?
• Can we break down their cognitive work into identifiable, testable tasks?
• How does the AE framework help explain why policymakers favor certain options?

🔑 Key Points & Arguments

Six Diagnostic Tasks

The AE framework says analogies:

1. Define the situation.
2. Assess what is at stake.
3. Provide implicit policy prescriptions.
4. Predict chances of success.
5. Evaluate moral rightness.
6. Warn of dangers or risks.

Interconnections

• Defining the situation shapes stakes & prescriptions.
• The last three tasks evaluate the proposed solution: Will it succeed? Is it moral? Is it risky?

Cognitive Psychology Underpins This

• Schema theory: people use stored knowledge structures to process new data, “going beyond the information given.”
• Analogies simplify problems but also introduce choice propensities, steering decisions.

Top-Down Filtering

• Once an analogy is activated, it filters incoming information.
• Leaders favor consistent evidence, discount contradictions — explaining why flawed analogies persist.

🗂 Supporting Examples & Evidence

• Truman & Korea:

  • Saw Korea like Hitler’s early moves.
  • Defined situation as aggression → high stakes → required intervention.
  • Predicted success (standing up early might have stopped Hitler).
  • Framed as moral duty.
  • Minimized dangers (appeasement worse).

• Cognitive Parallels:

  • Draws on Nisbett & Ross, Rumelhart, Simon on human reliance on schemas.

⚖️ Assumptions

• Policymakers face bounded rationality (limited memory, time, processing power), pushing them to use analogies.
• Analogies perform multiple interconnected diagnostic functions, making them powerful.

🪓 Critique Points

• Framework may overstate uniform influence: not all policymakers rely on the same analogies, bureaucratic/electoral pressures may override cognitive frames.
• Hard to falsify: if analogies do all six things, teasing them apart from ideology or domestic politics is tricky.

🌐 Larger Aim / Context

Sets up a test: if analogies do all this cognitive work, we should see it clearly in Analogies at War#Ch. 5-7 - Case Studies (Vietnam).

✅ Pithy Synthesis

Analogies aren’t mere rhetorical flourishes; they’re cognitive toolkits leaders use to decode crises, decide stakes, pick policies, weigh risks, and judge morality — indispensable yet dangerously seductive.

---

Chapter 3: The 1950 Analogy and the Decision to Escalate

📌 America’s Vietnam Options

Chapter in: Analogies at War
Type: #Chapter #VietnamWar #DecisionMaking #Analogies

🎯 Identified Thesis (Restated Simply)

Khong argues that to understand why the U.S. intervened in Vietnam in 1965 the way it did, we must examine how policymakers chose among competing options. The real puzzle is not just why intervene, but why choose graduated escalation (Option C) over harsher or more modest paths.

❓ Central Questions

• Why did Johnson and advisers pick Option C (gradual escalation) over:
  • more restrained options (A, A’ — continue current course or withdraw), or
  • harsher options (B, D’, E’ — massive bombing, SAC strikes, calling up reserves)?
• How does this reflect analogical reasoning vs traditional explanations (containment, credibility, bureaucratic politics)?

🔑 Key Points & Arguments

Options on the Table (1965)

Air War

• A: Continue sporadic retaliation
• B: Massive, continuous bombing (“fast squeeze”)
• C: Graduated attacks (“slow squeeze”)

Ground War

• A’: Withdraw
• B’: Continue present course
• C: Send 100,000 troops (chosen)
• D’: SAC heavy attacks
• E’: Call up reserves, declare emergency

Johnson’s Decision

• Approved Option C for both air & ground.
• Rejected harsher B, D’, E’ despite military lobbying.

Why It Matters

• Choice of how to fight shaped war’s course & failure.
• Debate over “could Vietnam have been won?” often hinges on whether harsher options might have succeeded.

Khong’s Aim

• Explains not just why intervene (containment & credibility cover that) but why this method.
• Suggests analogies (especially Korea) led to gradual escalation while avoiding moves that might provoke China.

🗂 Supporting Evidence & Examples

• Archival records show all options were genuinely considered:

  • George Ball, Clark Clifford argued for minimal escalation/withdrawal (A’, B’).
  • McNamara supported C + E’.
  • Joint Chiefs favored D’, E’ (more force).

• Khong argues: if only containment or credibility mattered, harsher options likely chosen — the rejection signals analogical reasoning (lessons from Korea).

⚖️ Assumptions

• That these options were realistic alternatives, not strawmen.
• That choosing among them involved AE framework diagnostic processes.

🪓 Critique Points

• Focus on options could miss broader forces (bipolar rivalry, economic interests).
• Starts building analogy case but causation only shown in Ch. 5-7.

🌐 Larger Aim / Context

• Sets empirical stage to show how analogies shaped choosing Option C.
• Also makes a methodological case (like Graham Allison#Essence of Decision) for studying options vs broad IR theories.

✅ Pithy Synthesis

America didn’t just decide whether to fight in Vietnam — it decided how. That it chose cautious escalation over both restraint and all-out war is a puzzle Khong will argue was solved by policymakers’ mental maps of past conflicts.

---

Final Reflections

📚 Analogies at War

Author: Yuen Foong Khong
Type: #Book #PoliticalScience #InternationalRelations
Tags: #Khong #Analogies #DecisionMaking #CognitiveBias #VietnamWar #Korea #Munich #DienBienPhu #AEFramework

🎯 Thesis (Restated Simply)

Khong argues that historical analogies are powerful cognitive tools that decisively shape foreign policy decision-making by helping leaders diagnose situations, assess stakes, predict outcomes, justify actions, and choose options — but these analogies often lead to flawed decisions because of systematic psychological biases.

He uses the Vietnam decisions of 1965, influenced by analogies to Korea, Munich, and Dien Bien Phu, to show how analogical reasoning guided (and misguided) U.S. policy.

❓ Central Questions

• How do historical analogies influence foreign policy decisions?
• Do they merely justify pre-chosen policies (skeptics’ view) or actively shape how policymakers perceive problems, weigh stakes, and select options (Khong’s AE thesis)?
• Why do policymakers so often use analogies badly?

🔑 Key Premises / Subarguments

• Analogical Reasoning is Central: Statesmen use historical analogies routinely to understand crises.
• The AE Framework: Analogies perform six diagnostic tasks:
  • Define the situation
  • Assess stakes
  • Provide policy prescriptions
  • Predict outcomes
  • Assess moral dimensions
  • Warn of risks
• Vietnam Policy Was Driven by Analogies: Korea (force), Munich (no appeasement), Dien Bien Phu (limits)
• Psychology Explains Poor Use: Cognitive shortcuts & schema biases.
• Challenges the Skeptics: Not just rhetorical; shapes perception.

🗂 Main Supporting Evidence

• Case Studies: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu analogies in Vietnam.
• Archives: Interviews, LBJ Library.
• Data: Tables on analogy frequency, diagrams.
• Psychology: Schema theory, cognitive bias experiments.

⚖️ Assumptions

• Policymakers rely on cognitive shortcuts.
• Past = enough similarity for lessons.
• Historical knowledge helps, but deep biases limit.

🪓 Critique Points

• May downplay strategic rhetoric.
• Risks over-attribution (post hoc).
• AE framework is hard to falsify.

🌐 Larger Context

Khong builds on Robert Jervis, Alexander George, and Ernest May, pushing cognitive approaches over realism.

🥰 Who Would Like it?

• Buffalo, since he recommended it to me.

📚 Related Books

• All other SAASS books so far.

☠️ Agree, Disagree, or Suspend

Strengths

• I agree with the author that historically the US hasn’t used the best analogies when thinking about future conflicts, and that it can be hard to select the correct analogy when one is needed.

🗂 Notable Quotes & Thoughts

1.

“The use of historical analogies is not a sign of irrationality in decision-making but a necessary heuristic device in situations of uncertainty.”

— Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War

2.

“Decision makers do not retrieve analogies randomly; they select those that ‘make sense’ of the current situation, often reinforcing existing preferences.”

— Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War

3.

“The Korean War analogy served as a cognitive filter through which the Johnson administration interpreted events in Vietnam, limiting the range of options considered.”

— Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War

4.

“Once an analogy becomes entrenched, it tends to resist contradictory evidence and perpetuate itself through policy feedback loops.”

— Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War

5.

“Analogies provide answers to the questions leaders ask in crises: Why is this happening? What is at stake? What should we do?”

— Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War