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The major difference between Khong’s analysis and this one is that, while Khong is investigating the question of whether analogies are truly cognitive mechanisms used for making sense of reality, as opposed to ex-post justifications, I am primarily interested in seeking answers to two (related) questions. First of all, does the ‘style’ of individual decision-makers make a difference to the use of analogical reasoning? Previous case studies of analogizing in policy-making have 47 48 Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies At War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992) p.

This emphasis on surface similarity, of course, renders analogical reasoning inherently flawed as a method of comprehension. Looking at the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 or the expansion of North Vietnam into the South during the 1960s without the benefit of hindsight, it was relatively easy to see both events as comparable to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1938. Mistakes, biases and errors are thus an inherent part of the analogical process, not least because analogical reasoning usually involves reasoning from an n of one, a practice which any good student of political methodology knows to be fraught with potential error.

34 Jervis was by no means the first to make this point; there is, for instance, an old adage that ‘generals are always fighting the last war’. Nevertheless, his arguments about drawing on personal experiences and on recent events are both highly consistent with Kahneman and Tversky’s availability heuristic framework. While illustrated by a number of examples, Jervis’s thoughts on analogical reasoning mostly took the form of theoretical observations on the psychological character of the phenomenon and its general effects on international relations, so much later work by supporters of the cognitive approach to decision-making has sought to apply these observations to actual case studies.