A01=Yuen Foong Khong
Adolf Hitler
Adviser
Analogy
Anthony Eden
Appeasement
Author_Yuen Foong Khong
Cambodia
Case study
Category=JPQB
Category=JPS
Category=JWK
Category=NHB
Category=NHF
Clark Clifford
Colonialism
Containment
Counter-insurgency
Cuban Missile Crisis
Czechoslovakia
David Halberstam
Dean Rusk
Decision-making
Dwight D. Eisenhower
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ernest May (historian)
Expansionism
Explanation
Foreign policy
Foreign policy of the United States
George Ball (diplomat)
Hanoi
Harvard University
Ho Chi Minh
Indochina
Inference
Insurgency
International crisis
International relations
John F. Kennedy
Joseph Nye
Korea
Laos
Lyndon B. Johnson
McGeorge Bundy
Mike Mansfield
Munich Agreement
Myanmar
National security
Ngo Dinh Diem
North Korea
North Vietnam
Operation Rolling Thunder
Oral history
Pentagon Papers
Policy
Political psychology
Political science
Politics
Precedent
Prediction
Princeton University Press
Robert McNamara
South Vietnam
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
Soviet Union
Thailand
Theory of International Politics
United States Department of State
Viet Cong
Viet Minh
Vietnam Syndrome
Vietnam War
War
Wars of national liberation
William Bundy
World War II
Product details
- ISBN 9780691025353
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 05 May 1992
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
