In a recent FP article, Francis Gavin and James Steinberg
observed that historical analogies can prove an unreliable guide to present-day
policy decisions, specifically with regard to the momentous decision facing the
United States and its allies regarding whether to strike Iran. As if to
prove Gavin and Steinberg's point, Fareed Zakaria seeks in a Washington Post
column to marshal two historical analogies in defense of his view that Israel
should not attack Iran, but rather should seek to "contain" a nuclear-armed
Iran if necessary. In doing so, Zakaria provides little insight into the
difficult decisions facing Israeli or American leaders, but instead provides an
instructive example of the fallacies that Gavin and Steinberg warn against.
Zakaria's first error is to cherry-pick historical analogies
which fit what is presumably a preconceived conclusion -- that attacking Iran
would be a strategic error. To support his view, he cites Germany's
ill-fated decision to invade France in 1914, and the United States' decision
not to attack the USSR in the late 1940s.
There are two problems with this sort of
cherry-picking. First, Zakaria chooses only those historical cases which
support the case for non-intervention, and ignores other possible analogies
which might undermine his view. Just as critics of a strike like Zakaria
could point to the cases he mentions or others to demonstrate how an attack
could fail or non-intervention could succeed, advocates of a strike can cite
the failure to confront mounting German militarism in the 1930s to highlight
the risks of passivity, or cases of successful military interventions to
illustrate the benefits of action.
Second, as with most broad historical analogies, both of the
events cited by Zakaria are problematic as comparisons to the current tensions
between Israel and Iran. Indeed, they must be shoe-horned into service to
Zakaria's thesis. For example, Zakaria focuses on one factor which
contributed to the outbreak of World War I -- German concerns about Russian
armaments and mobilization capacity -- and excludes the many other circumstances
which precipitated that conflict. And in citing the success of the
decision to maintain a policy of "containment" (which was adopted prior to
Moscow's development of nuclear weapons) toward the USSR rather than go to war,
he fails to mention that this success came at considerable cost -- the
domination of Eastern Europe for decades by the Soviets, the proliferation of
nuclear weapons, and several major and countless minor wars.
Zakaria's second error is to commit, as many who employ
analogies do, the logical fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc -- that
is, to assume that because an outcome followed a decision, it was caused by
that decision. It is difficult to know even in retrospect whether the
course of events depended on a particular decision or were in fact independent
of it. Historians may wonder whether any decision by the major powers in
the summer of 1914 could have averted a war in Europe, just as present-day
policymakers are concerned that the Middle East will be more conflict-prone in
the future regardless of Israel's decision regarding Iran.
Also problematic is the question of counterfactuals -- that
is, whether different decisions would have produced outcomes better or worse
than those which actually occurred. Historians argue vehemently over such
issues, whereas partisan policy analysts have the cynical tendency to argue
that anything that went well did so because of decisions their party or leader
made, and that things that went poorly were either fated to do so or were
someone else's fault. In reality, policymaking is a world of maddening
ambiguity, in which not only outcomes but even facts tend to be
uncertain.
Policymakers can -- indeed, must -- learn from history, but
not by employing facile analogies in the service of preordained
conclusions. History can help us understand problems and put them in
their proper context; it can offer up novel solutions or shed new light on a
dilemma; and it can warn us of the pitfalls that attend any decision and
perhaps teach us how to avoid them. Learning from history is a tricky
business -- in studying history, a policymaker must take lessons from one
context and determine how and whether they apply to a different situation and a
different era. Not only do different historical cases frequently suggest
contradictory conclusions, but even individual cases -- for example U.S. arming of
Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s or the U.S. rapprochement with Muammar Qaddafi in
the 2000s -- can offer multiple lessons which pull one in different
directions.
As Gavin and Steinberg assert, in the end history cannot
tell us what to do. Resolving thorny policy problems requires not just
historical analysis, but also regional and strategic expertise, personal
experience, and sound judgment. But above all, it requires the courage
and conviction to choose, amid great uncertainty, among risky options. This
is the essence of policymaking.
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