Document created: 20 August 02
Air & Space Power Journal - Fall 2002

Making War, Thinking History: Munich, Vietnam, and Presidential Uses of Force from Korea to Kosovo by Jeffrey Record. Naval Institute Press (http://www.usni.org/press/press.html), 2062 Generals Highway, Annapolis, Maryland 21401-6780, 2002, 216 pages, $28.95 (hardcover).

Jeffrey Record is well qualified to write on the use and misuse of analogy in presidential decisions about war. Currently, he is a professor in the Department of Strategy and International Security, Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. Among his more than a dozen publications are Revising U.S. Military Strategy: Tailoring Means to Ends (1984); Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the Gulf War (1993); and The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (1998). Record was assistant province advisor in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War; worked at the Brookings and Hudson Institutes as well as the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis; and served as a staffer for Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), and the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In Making War, Thinking History, Record does something that hasn’t been done before, and he does it well. The misuse of analogy in war-making decisions has received limited study, starting with Ernest May’s “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (1973). Other scholars have carried May’s work forward, especially Yuen Foong Khong in his masterful Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (1992). Robert Jervis authored another groundbreaking work, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (1976), which tied the imaginable range of decisions to the decision maker’s perceptions and misperceptions of previous events. Record provides a major update and applies the theory to the previously ne-glected decisions to not go to war. 

Truman used the analogy of Munich in Korea but not in China (he let it go Red). Eisenhower used it in Lebanon but not in Vietnam. Munich remained an analogy of choice, even as the Munich-based decisions took life as analogies of their own. As each operation unfolds, the inventory of available analogies to use or misuse grows. But for the most part, the defining choice is still Munich, which defines the pitfalls of appeasement and the failure to stop aggression early on. Vietnam remains a popular analogy even though it is more difficult because no consensus exists on the war’s lessons. One finds a strong fear of quagmires and a concern for clarity of purpose, sufficiency of force, and a clear exit strategy characterized by the Weinberger-Powell school—as well as a force-protection fetishism.

Peripherally, Saddam Hussein used analogies from Lebanon and Vietnam suggesting that America was militarily timid and afraid of force. So did Slobodan Milosevic. Mixed analogies from Munich and Vietnam led President George Bush to act properly in Operation Desert Storm but to leave Saddam as the unfinished business for succeeding US presidents. 

Most presidents “have used force on behalf of nonvital interests, in the absence of public and congressional support, and not always as a last resort” (p. 135). But analogy is not the only factor in a given decision. Other factors include domestic politics, bad advice, or poor knowledge of history. No single consideration forces action—not even an apt analogy. President Lyndon Johnson ignored the lessons of Dien Bien Phu and China, opting for the Munich analogy as his guide down the slope to the Vietnam War.

Analogies become obsolete. Even if Munich and Vietnam are no longer reliable, they may well be dangerous. But the new analogy—the revolution in military affairs (RMA)—has little merit. Belief in technology is the popular analogy from Operations Desert Storm (1991), Deliberate Force (1995), and Allied Force (1999)—as well as all of the operations that will follow this book. Beware! “If the United States could use force casually, without the accountability imposed by the risk of death and defeat, might it not become the arrogant global bully that its enemies today accuse it of being? And what of the warrior ethic? How does it survive warfare without risk?” (p. 154). More important, RMA doesn’t stop asymmetrical responses, which will be on the rise as our power becomes even more overwhelming and we keep living with the Weinberger-Powell myth to which President George W. Bush signed up as a candidate.

Record uses analogy himself in comparing Weinberger-Powell’s last-resort use of force to appeasement in terms of inflexibility and perhaps inevitability if the enemy understands all that goes before to be bluff and bluster and just a slide down the slope. At what point does one reach the last resort? This is a hard choice for decision makers, who sometimes guess wrong. Weinberger-Powell still incorporates the worst lesson of Vietnam—that body counts are always bad. According to Record, “If the Munich analogy encouraged early use of force, the Vietnam analogy’s corollary of what I have elsewhere chosen to call ‘force protection fetishism’ encourages military timidity, even paralysis” (p. 142). 

Making War, Thinking History is really good, even beyond the update. Record’s long experience shows, and virtually every page has at least one sentence worthy of a full book. His skill at presentation is extremely sharp, making the book a joy to read. Remember that “if George Washington had insisted on the certainty of swift victory via overwhelming force, the Union Jack might still be flying in the capital city that today bears his name” (p. 133). But the bottom line is, “The power of historical analogies to warp presidential judgment should never be underestimated” (p. 88).

John H. Barnhill
Tinker AFB, Oklahoma 

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.