Learning and foreign policy: sweeping a conceptual minefield
- 1 January 1994
- journal article
- book review
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in International Organization
- Vol. 48 (2), 279-312
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020818300028198
Abstract
Do political leaders learn from historical experience, and do the lessons of history influence their foreign policy preferences and decisions? It appears that decision makers are always seeking to avoid the failures of the past and that generals are always fighting the last war. The “lessons of Munich” were invoked by Harry Truman in Korea, Anthony Eden in Suez, John Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, and George Bush in the Persian Gulf War. The “lessons of Korea” influenced American debates about Indochina, and the “lessons of Vietnam” were advanced in debates about crises in the Persian Gulf and in Bosnia. Statesmen at Versailles sought to avoid the mistakes of Vienna and those at Bretton Woods, the errors of the Great Depression. Masada still moves the Israelis, and Kosovo drives the Serbs. Inferences from experience and the myths that accompany them often have a far greater impact on policy than is warranted by standard rules of evidence. As J. Steinberg argues, in words that apply equally well to the Munich analogy and the Vietnam syndrome, memories of the British capture of the neutral Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1807 (the “Copenhagen complex”) “seeped into men's perceptions and became part of the vocabulary of political life,” and it influenced German decision making for a century.Keywords
This publication has 47 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Cognitive Structure of Peacemaking: Egypt and Israel, 1970-1978Political Psychology, 1992
- Where Is the Schema? Going Beyond the “S” Word in Political PsychologyAmerican Political Science Review, 1991
- Mobilization and Inadvertence in the July CrisisInternational Security, 1991
- From London to Bretton Woods; Sources of Change in Bargaining Strategies and OutcomesJournal of Public Policy, 1988
- Reputation and Hegemonic Stability: A Game-Theoretic AnalysisAmerican Political Science Review, 1988
- Crisis Learning GamesAmerican Political Science Review, 1988
- The Sources and Prospects of Gorbachev's New Political Thinking on SecurityInternational Security, 1988
- Nuclear learning and U.S.–Soviet security regimesInternational Organization, 1987
- Power and InterdependencerevisitedInternational Organization, 1987
- Integrative complexity of American and Soviet foreign policy rhetoric: A time-series analysis.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1985