Stop Comparing Every Angry Dictator to Hitler

Ted Galen Carpenter

Politics, Americas

Faulty historical analogies continue to bedevil American foreign policy.

Foreign policy elites are fond of citing philosopher George Santayana that those “who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In the political arena and popular culture, his observation is typically further simplified to the adage “history repeats itself.” But that cliché is dangerously inaccurate. History never truly repeats itself. Every era is different in crucial ways. Because of that factor, even attempting to learn the “lessons” of history and avoid repeating its mistakes is fraught with danger unless the application of knowledge is conducted with great caution. Policymakers are tempted to assume that two events in different eras, cultures, and situations are analogous when they are nothing of the sort. Such erroneous beliefs, in turn, can lead—and, in fact, have led—to debacles in U.S. foreign policy.

An especially dominant (and poisonous) historical lesson is the Munich analogy. Because the democratic nations failed spectacularly in their policy to appease Nazi Germany and its fascist allies in the late 1930s, a horrifically destructive war was the result. The belief became entrenched that all unfriendly dictatorial powers must be confronted early and decisively. Even garden-variety authoritarian regimes were equated with malignantly expansionist totalitarian states that must be squashed. And countries with limited means and parochial agendas were magnified into global threats.