Abba Eban, a former Foreign Minister of Israel, in his book Diplomacy for the Next Century, makes a strong case against the use of historical analogy as a base for decision-making in world politics and diplomacy.^[1] He opens his book's shortest (3rd) chapter "The perils of analogy" (pp. 49-59) with what looks like a weak version of the argument against historical analogising as a means of orientation in diplomatic arena. At the very start he claims that, 'diplomacy and law are not part of the same intellectual family' (p. 49); whilst in law one can rely on the force of precedent and hence on an analogy, looking back to the past, in diplomacy one is bound to look into the future, and to seek for a compromise, which is something unique to the parties trying to settle their dispute. To this Eban adds that our, nuclear era is unlike all previous ones, and that is why 'nothing is less valuable than a nonnuclear metaphor about the nuclear era' (p. 50). A reader could interpret this to mean that the use of historical analogies, based on a cognitive source from the nuclear era, to handle another nuclear era-situation, or case in the present time, is legitimate. However, in Eban this rather weak version of the critique of historical analogies is, as we move through the chapter, further strengthened, so that by its end Eban arrives at the conclusion that there is 'no role for analogy except its exclusion from serious diplomatic historiography' (p. 59).

The chapter is filled with both empirical evidence and deductive/philosophical argument adduced to support Eban's view of historical analogies. As to deductive element, Eban claims that 'there are cyclical processes in the nature, but not in diplomacy. Therefore, history, including diplomatic history, should be based on the meticulous and separate discussion of particular events' (p.50). Particularism, not a historical analogising or generalizations, should play the key role historical and diplomatic considerations. Eban also seems to launch a head-on assault on analogy in its role of one of the fundamental principles of reasoning in general. He refers to his 'experiment' with a red (shiny, round) rubber ball and a shiny (round) red apple, which, once we apply the principle of analogy to the two items, delivers (so Eban thinks) the following error in judgment: "There is at least a strong probability that the rubber ball will be good to eat" (p. 50). Hence it seems that Eban suggests to the reader that analogy is flawed not only as a method of thinking about specific historical/diplomatic events, but is generally flawed as one of the ways of reasoning about the world around us.

As to the empirical part of his argument, Eban provides a number of historical cases that appear to lend support to his case against the use of historical analogies. All his illustrations relate to wars, and all seem to substantiate his point that analogies tend to project a past danger into a current situation, which then inevitably aggravates the relations between states, or nations, and sets a foundation for careless and narrow-minded decisions opening thus the road to an armed conflict. Eban starts with the case of the Suez 1956 crisis, in which British Prime Minister Anthony Eden compared Nasser's 1956 nationalization of the Suez Canal with Hitler's conquest of the Rhineland (p. 51). This analogy served as a base for a flawed decision to launch a joint, short-lived and ultimately failed attack (by Britain, France and Israel) against Egypt. But, Eban claims that the analogy not only led to a failed singular action; it also had disastrous effects on the very international standing of Britain and France. After the Suez crisis of 1956, the world politics became rigidly bipolar and remained so for a long time afterwards (p. 52). Eban thus wants us to believe that an historical analogy is likely to produce bad effects globally, and so not only for a short period of time but in the long run too.

He further quotes a number of additional examples, like the Korean and the Vietnam War, and the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs. He also quotes David C. Hendrickson who, criticizing the policies of Lyndon Johnson, suggests that historical analogies imprison a leader's mind.

All of this sums up to an epitaph to historical analogies that, according to Eban, must not be used, or relied on, in foreign policy-making. 'Treat all events as if each of them were unique,' and 'surely all the evidence indicates that each international situation really is unique. Each is influenced by human fallibility' (p. 57).

Near the end of the chapter Eban, inspired by his own critique of both the use of historical analogies in diplomatic practice and of generalizations in diplomatic theory, provides a comment on the current diplomatic academies and their educational system, which is worth quoting in full:

"Most governments and foreign ministries use the assistance of academic experts who continually search for unifying explanations. Few universities have working diplomats on their faculties. Ideal or fanciful notions about how the diplomatic process works echo across many campuses on the basis of theoretical models. It is hard to imagine a professor of surgery who has never performed a single operation, but there are many professors of international relations who have never negotiated an agreement or argued a case in the international forum" (p. 58).

The final conclusion one should draw from the Eban's eloquent and elaborate attack on historical analogies is as follows: Don't rely on historical analogies at the time you are engaged in the process of decision-making concerning the situation of some diplomatic, international, or world-political significance. Each international situation is unique, and we should not make cross-historical generalizations. Many a war had been incited by a careless use of past precedents in an attempt to shed light on both the present and the future. Many policy makers have narrowed their options, and made a wrong choice, by convincing themselves that the situation they faced was similar, or analogous, to a past event. "History…plays havoc with our generalizations, breaks all our rules. History is baroque" (p. 59)^[2] .

So Eban's case seemed to rest; but I continued reading his book and arrived at page 138. The page is a part of Chapter 8 dealing with the United Nations, which means that it is not a part of Chapter 3, which deals explicitly with historical analogies. On page 138 I found Eban implying something different about historical analogy, which caught me by surprise, and should probably catch everybody else by surprise. Eban there points out that he was the first one 'to propose a European solution for the structural interrelationship between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian state that will probably arise out of the current Middle East peace process.' He further recounts how at a United Nations gathering he met Robert Schuman, a founding father of the European Union, to whom he 'alluded to the fact that European integration had begun with the Benelux Union in which three small states- Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg - established what became a prescription for the Six, then the Nine, then the Twelve, and later the Fifteen. This analogy for Israel, Jordan and a Palestine state has been shamelessly plagiarized, but I do not repent of it' (p. 138).

In other words, here Eban claims a lasting merit for his proposal of an historical analogy, which he hoped would contribute to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He looked back to the past, found a source of inspiration, a guide to the future, and formed the belief that the future (desirable) relationship between Jordan, Israel, and a Palestine state, should somehow emulate the relationships within the Benelux community at the formative stage of development of the European Community. Eban here implicitly endorses the use of historical analogy as a base for decision-making in international politics. This is a surprising development in the book. Whilst Chapter 3 concludes with the statement that history is baroque, hence inimical to analogising, the last two sentences of Chapter 8 imply that there is some regularity in history, and that resurrection of past events is not only feasible, but at times also desirable. Eban then continues with emphasising that,

"In the light of these slow but deep currents of human evolution, the idea of an international organization playing an assertive role in the pacification of our turbulent world may have to bide its time, but it will never disappear from view. History and the future are firmly on its side (emphasis added)" (p. 140).

Therefore, I am convinced that here Eban contradicts himself. His Chapter 8 contradicts his Chapter 3. Whilst Chapter 3 makes a head-on assault on the use of historical analogies, his Chapter 8 endorses an historical analogy and pictures it as a valuable tool of orientation in international politics. What can one say, or do, about such a contradiction? Should we close Eban's book, and accuse him of a sheer non-sense, of being a highly irrational writer who simultaneously argues for two contradictory and hence irreconcilable ideas? I do not think one should do so, but before pursuing this specific subject, let us simply and firmly note here that indeed there is a contradiction in Eban's view of historical analogies.

My view of this contradiction and controversy too, is that Eban launched too strong a case against the use of historical analogies in the 'management' of the international relations. I will provide a number of arguments against Eban's theory, both deductive and empirical ones, and along the way hopefully answer the question as to what should one should say about the contradiction in Eban's reasoning.

I will start with a deductive and a broadly theoretical argument.

Not all analogising is equally bad. Some inferences from analogy are sound, and some are flawed. Eban defines analogy as a form of inference according to which "if two situations are similar in some respects, they are probably similar in all respects, or at least in most of them" (p. 49). Well-informed students of logic would never subscribe to such a definition of analogical reasoning. Wesley Salmon, for instance, defines analogy as a kind of inductive argument in which, given the fact that the objects of the kind A display features G, H etc., and that the objects of the kind B display features G, H etc., and the additional fact that the objects A display a feature F, one draws the conclusion that objects B should display a feature F too.^[3] Such definition does not suggest, or imply, that objects A and objects B need to be similar in all respects. It only claims that, if A and B are similar in certain respects, then the two are similar in another respect. Such reasoning may turn out to be flawed, but not necessarily. As Salmon points out, the validity of analogy depends on the relevance of the features (G, H etc.), on which analogy rests, to the inference concerning the one, extra-feature, which the two analogous items are, via analogy, expected to share. The more relevant the features G, H etc., are to the feature F, the stronger is the argument from analogy.^[4]

We may conclude from this that Eban's definition of analogical reasoning is not sound, and that his conclusion to the effect that analogies are, somehow, too permissive does not hold.

One can formulate a similar refutation of the conclusion he draws from his experiment with an apple and a ball. Those who tend to draw the conclusion that the red, shiny rubber ball will be good to eat, would indeed argue from an analogy, but this would represent a bad use of analogy, i.e. a flawed kind of analogical reasoning, because no feature from which one would draw such a conclusion ('that rubber balls are good to eat') is relevant to the conclusion concerned. The fact that the rubber ball is shiny, round and red (like an apple), is irrelevant to the issue of its being edible, and that is why Eban's 'experiment' certainly refutes this piece of analogical reasoning, but it cannot be extended to the cases of analogy based on the relevant features of the items in question. The experiment is a fitting example of a fallacious analogical reasoning, but it does not prove that all analogical reasoning is in itself fallacious.

There is another deductive argument against Eban's case against the use of historical analogies of which I was reminded by E.H. Carr's discussion of similar issues in his book What is History?^[5] Carr claims that "…insistence on the uniqueness of historical events has the same paralysing effect as the platitude taken over by Moore from Bishop Butler and at one time especially beloved by linguistic philosophers: 'Everything is what it is and not another thing'."^[6] Carr further proposes a strong deductive argument against reasoning à la Eban, which draws on the idea that we could not escape reasoning by a means of both generalization and analogy, because the two are built into the very basics of our thinking and speaking. As he succinctly put it:

"The very use of language commits the historian, like the scientist, to generalization. The Peloponnesian War and the Second World War were very different, and both were unique. But the historian calls them both wars, and only the pedant will protest…The reader, as well as the writer, of history, is a chronic generalizer, applying the observation of the historian to other historical contexts with which he is familiar - or perhaps to his own time."

It is not surprising then to find Carr arguing that history provides lessons, and that images of the past can help us to understand intricacies of our present time.

I am not certain if the aforementioned deductive argument would convince a reader that Eban's attack on analogy was unfounded and ultimately futile. However, the main deductive argument to be used against all those who claim that we could, and should, dispense with historical analogies is as follows: In our everyday life and reasoning we rely on the method of induction, which means that we use experiences from our past to form expectations about what is likely to happen in the future. We cannot avoid doing that. A majority of instances of such a kind of inductive reasoning draws on analogy, which means that, based on our past experiences of a set of similarities dispersed across objects we tend instinctively to expand such a set to form a projective hypotheses about the future. For instance, based on our experience concerning educational systems at a number of universities, we naturally expect that the next university we visit will have a certain educational system. Or, based on our driving experience with some type of vehicle, we naturally expect that the next type of vehicle is likely to 'behave' in certain ways; etc. etc. In other words, our reasoning is via analogy, and the images of our past experience are bound to guide us into the future as well. We link the past with the future through a fundamental belief that, in many important and relevant aspects, the future will be analogous to the past. That is why one cannot avoid analogy, and why one cannot avoid using an historical analogy. In international politics, history is our natural guide. You cannot force an average Palestinian to suddenly start trusting the Israeli Government. You cannot force an average Israeli to avoid speaking about Holocaust at the time when Israeli interests are seriously threatened. You cannot force an average American foreign policy maker to resist the temptation of evoking the images of the Vietnam War at the time when the US foreign policy makers are contemplating, or debating, a serious armed intervention abroad by the US force. For all of this, our instinctive analogical reasoning holds the ultimate responsibility. Human beings evoke history whenever they discuss international politics, and history does provide them with some cognitive point of orientation in international affairs. Sometimes such orientation will be dysfunctional, and sometimes not; sometimes it is less, and sometimes elaborate or sophisticated. But, historical analogies remain with us because that is the way we reason.

Applied to Eban's contradiction, this deductive argument implies that it was not only appropriate for Eban to use the Benelux analogy, but it was also unavoidable for him to use an analogy at a certain point in time. Hence the contradiction I pointed to should be resolved in favour of Eban's second, implicit opinion about historical analogies that he voiced on page 138. Page 138 is right; pages 49-59 on average are not.

I will now mention a few more things about empirical aspects. Eban stated that the use of historical analogies is harmful because they generate armed conflicts. The 'Munich' analogy gave rise to the Suez, Korean and Vietnam wars. That is why, according to Eban, one should not use historical analogies at all. However, in his analysis of the analogising that led to the Vietnam War, Eban (perhaps deliberately) failed to mention that the situation was not exactly such that one party (McNamara, Bundy, and Lyndon Johnson) simply used a historical analogy, whereas their opponent (George Ball) simply opposed and criticized their historical analogy in an analogy-less fashion. The situation was one in which the 'hawks' proposed one historical analogy ('Munich', and 'Korea'), whilst their opponent proposed another historical analogy ('Dien Bien Phu'- the final defeat of the French in Vietnam in 1954).^[8] Namely, George Ball has not refrained from using historical analogies as such. He proposed one, which he believed was more pertinent to the situation. Looking in retrospect, it is unfortunate that Ball's historical analogy has not prevailed. In theoretical terms, however, this means that an historical analogy could have actually prevented the war, and thus played a massively positive role. In such a case Eban would probably tend to argue that, in dealing with international politics, we should have relied on the use of historical analogies. This of course undermines the key part of Eban's empirical argument against historical analogies.

I can think of additional examples of an historical analogy playing a positive role. For instance, Henry Kissinger was inspired by Prince Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister from the first half of 19th century, in his handling of the process of the US opening to China in the early 1970s. The so-called triangular diplomacy, which implied the inclusion of China into the US-Soviet relations, played a positive role during the Cold War since it led to relaxation of tensions between the Cold War rivals. Or, to take a more recent example, the Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams used the analogy of the South African conflict to describe the relations within the Northern Ireland. Though the unionists have opposed this analogy for obvious reasons, it nevertheless played positive role as the peace process in Northern Ireland started taking roots. It set the firm link between Mandela (and African National Congress) and Sinn Fein, which made it possible for the latter to learn from the former, and endure in searching for peaceful solutions to the conflict in Northern Ireland.^[9]

For all the reasons proposed above, we cannot consider Eban's argument against historical analogies as plausible. We shall continue using analogies, and we shall continue reading about them in scholarly analyses as well as in popular speeches by presidents, prime ministers, and foreign secretaries. As one scholar put it: "In short, analogies recur repeatedly in published media, transcripts, communiqués, and, if we believe first-hand reports, in the conversations and thinking of the political figures closest to crucial decisions. They also figure prominently in the analyst's effort to describe and explain what transpired…The analogy or juxtaposition is not simply a turn of phrase, but is integral to the analysis…More than this, analogies are not simply rhetorical devices, but play a commanding role in shaping decisions by imposing certain options while masking others."^[10]

Mefford has perhaps overemphasized cognitive aspects of the principle of analogy - its role in description and explanation of events. There is however another, emotional aspect to every historical analogy, which ultimately feeds the decision-maker's drive to think of international events in an analogical mode. Namely, decision-makers quite often rely on 'historical role-models' for a guide and inspiration. For instance, after the Second World War Stalin to a huge extent relied on historical imagery of Tzar Alexander to elaborate and implement his foreign policy. Former US President Clinton probably relied a lot on historical memories of Jimmy Carter when he decided to bring the Israeli and Palestinian side together at what was called "Camp David II". At one point Russian President Putin stated that Napoleon was his paradigmatic figure in world politics. George W. Bush most definitely relies on his father not only as a key parental figure and the family role model, but also as a statesman and foreign policy decision-maker. Be it as it is, all those cases prove an important point: contemporary leaders find the past leaders inspiring, or simply likeable, and believe that there is a good deal to learn from the past cases, events, and situations. This implies that analogy gets a grip on our thought through not only cognitive but also emotional mechanisms.

This reading of Abba Eban may be taken to indicate many different things, but for me its primary relevance is due to its unearthing of Eban's self-contradiction, which strongly suggests that one cannot ban historical analogy. Every time you try to expel analogy from your cognitive universe, it will sooner or later return smuggled through the back door. One needs to both recognize the necessity of historical analogising and take seriously, and prudently, the fact that sometimes such analogising may indeed lead to cognitive rigidity or even international aggression.

Henry Kissinger describes the art of historical analogising in the following way: "The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically; history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations. But each generation must determine for itself which circumstances are in fact comparable"^[11] . This means that historical analogising is not a science, and it will never be one. Ultimate responsibility for tracing the similarities between the past and the present rests on each generation who, through applying the images of the past to their present, can learn something about themselves together with learning something about the world that surrounds them.^[12]

ENDNOTES:

[1] Abba Eban (1998), Diplomacy for the Next Century, New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
[2] Eban here approvingly quotes Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Reason Begins (1961, New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 267).
[3] Wesley S. Salmon (1983), Logik, Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., p. 198.
[4] Salmon (1983, p. 199).
[5] E.H. Carr (1990), What is History? London: Penguin Books, (1st edition 1961).
[6] Carr (1990, p. 63)
[7] Carr (1990, pp. 63-4)
[8] See Keith Holyoak, Paul Thagard (1995), Mental Leaps, Cambridge Mass. : The MIT Press, pp. 160-163
[9] See Adrian Guelke, 'Comparatively Peaceful': South Africa, the Middle East and Northern Ireland (2000), in: A Farewell to Arms? - From 'long war' to long peace in Northern Ireland, (ed. by Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, and Fiona Stephen), Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, pp. 223-233.
[10] Dwain Mefford (1987), 'Analogical Reasoning and the Definition of the Situation: Back to Snyder for Concepts and Forward to Artificial Intelligence for Method', in: New Directions in the Study of Foreign Policy (ed. by Charles Hermann, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and James N. Rosenau), (Boston: Allen & Unwin) pp. 221-244, p. 230.
[11] Henry Kissinger (1995), Diplomacy, London: Simon & Schuster, p. 27.
[12] This paper is intended as a post-script to my 'Historical rhetoric and diplomacy- an uneasy cohabitation' (presented at the Second International Conference on Knowledge and Diplomacy, Malta, 11-13 February 2000; published in Kurbalija J., Slavik H. (eds.) (2001), Language and Diplomacy, Malta: DiploProjects, pp. 117-138), which contains additional arguments and examples in support of the last few paragraphs of this reading of Eban in particular.