"In examining the influence of historical analogies on decisions to use - or not use - force, military strategist Jeffrey Record assesses every major application of U.S. force from the Korean War to the NATO war in Serbia. Specifically, he looks at the influence of two analogies: the democracies' appeasement of Hitler at Munich and America's defeat in the Vietnam War.

His book judges the utility of these two analogies on presidential decision-making and finds considerable misuse of them in situations where force was optional.

He points to the Johnson Administration's application of the Munich analogy to the circumstances of Southeast Asia in 1965 as the most egregious example of their misuse, but also cites the faulty reasoning by historical analogy that prevailed among critics of Reagan's policy in Central America and the Clinton's use of force in Haiti and the former Yugoslavia."--BOOK JACKET.