Historical Analogies in the Congressional Foreign Policy Process

Some political scientists and historians have argued that lessons from the past, in the form of historical analogies, shape the policy choices of contemporary foreign policymakers. We test this thesis by examining the impact of the Munich and Vietnam analogies on the decisions made by members of Congress about U.S. policy toward Iraq during the Persian Gulf crisis of 1991: Our analysis reveals that, contrary to much of the literature on the subject, analogies are mostly utilized merely as post-hoc justifications for policy choices determined by ideology and partisanship and are therefore not independent variables in the policy process.