the first tended to trigger positive feelings, whereas the second and the third tended to trigger negative feelings.*" When the match was only par- tial, for example, when subjects were given descriptions of individuals who only partially resembled their old flame, the affect was more mod- cerate than when the match was very good. the exact sequence or process by which y is not important, us, vf sto that in Korea, the analogy might not only conjure up images of Chinese troops crossing the Yalu river, but also evoke negative feclings about inscrutab thereby contribute to the perseverance effect—of analogies or schemas with which it is associated. ‘TOP-DOWN PROCESSING, PERSEVERANCE, AND DIFFERENCES NEGLECTED: DID THEY MATTER? Using the psychological literature to demonstrate that policymakers are likely to be unreceptive to i inconsistent with their schemas is potentially illuminating because it “identifies” a process-based explana- tion of the pattern observed above. Similarly, knowing that policymakers are not likely to abandon their analogies even when challenged suggests * Thid. One suppotes that for most ofthe subjects, the parting of ways with their old anes was not unduly pinfl * See Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, pp. 995-86; Rusk, Av Saw tp. 169, PSYCHOLOGY OF ANALOGICAL REASONING 227 that their analogies will continue to play an important role in their infor- tiation processing, In that sense perseverance an ssing reinforce one another. The two observable effects of this reinforcement are the continued salience of the analogies to the polieymakers and the tendency to slight information inconsistent with the expectations of the analogy. If it can be shown that the inconsistent information rejected or the differences neglected by these two mutually reinforcing processes were not just potentially important but were actually so, so that the neglect contributed to suboptimal outcomes, we will have demonstrated that the differences neglected mattered. An argument along these lines will be attempted next.” Its basie purpose isto indicate that the neglect of im- portant differences between Vietnam and its purported analogues con- tributed to judgmental errors on the part of the policymakers and that these errors partially explain why America’s Vietnam policy failed. ‘THE VIETNAM DIFFERENCE It is possible to cite any number of differences between Vietnam and its purported analogues examined in this study. From geography national psychology, there must be hundreds of differences obscured by the Malayan, Korean, Munich, and Dien Bien Phu analo- gies. General Lemnitzer, in his mero to Maxwell Taylor, pointed out five differences between Malaya and Vietnam. One pertained to geogra- phy, another to logistics, and the other three to local historical eireum- stances. The point on geography is a good illustration of the importance of such differences. According to Lemnitzer, the “Malayan borders were far more controllable in that Thailand cooperated in refusing the Com- ‘munists an operational safe haven.”® The implicit contrast was of course to the st free access-enjoyed by the Vietnamese communists along ‘of Laos and Cambodia. The significance of these geographical realities became most apparent for the United States in 10969, when President Richard Nixon ordered the secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia, followed by the invasion of Cambodia in April of 1970. ‘Nixon felt that unless these sanctuaries, including the headquarters of the lorences neglected under the loge of 3¢ logic of analog reasoning in ‘© Memo, LL. Lemiaiter to Maxwell Taylor, October 1, 196, in Pentagon Papers, 2950,228 cHarTERs NLF in Cambodia, were destroyed, the Vietcong could continue the in- surgency with impunity. The absence of such sanctuaries in Malaya made it easier for the British to subdue the communist insurrection there. it took the British twelve years to sup- than the one in South Vietnam.”* ‘Leaders who fulfilled this image could extrat intense loyalty and enormous sucrfice from a broad spectrum of the population. Those leaders who suc- ‘cumbed to foreign pressure, collaborated with foreign rulers, or accommo- ‘ated foreigners for personal gain sufered self-doubt and weak support. namese history it was most freq olutionary élan’ munists, and his memos reflect this insight: he constantly warned about the danger of the United St admitted in the end Vietnamese commut It would serve no tween Vietnam and its analogues. Many of those differences—minor and ‘major—have already been raised by the critics of the analogies analyzed in this book. Instead, 1 will focus on a few major factors unique to Viet- nara that were obscured by all the analogies: Union and China in the Vietnam confit, th conflict, and finally, the incompetence an itimacy of successive tba. William Turley, The Second Indochina Wer (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1980), ne Last—and Won (Baton Rouge: Lou ‘describe the intensity with which Hino! pur- ic anticolonalsm.” See George Ball, The Past Hes Another Pattern, p, 422. S00 aio memo, George Ball othe President, "Keeping the Power of Decision,” june 18, 185, NSC History—Troop Deployment. * Ball interview. PSYCHOLOGY OF ANALOGICAL REASONING 220 South Vietnamese governments. These factors draw the broad contours within which the import of many other differences can be compre- hended. Recognition of these factors should have given the decision-mak- ers pause in 1965. Not seeing them or refusing to accord them the weight they deserved made it easier for the United States to intervene and more Aiffcult for it to succeed. ‘THE ROLE OF EXTERNAL POWERS A popular view of the origins of the Malayan communist insurrection held that it was directed by the Soviet Union.** According to this view, the Soviet Union organized the Calcutta Conference in February 1948 to convey the new Cominform “two-camp” doctrine to its Asian delegates and to instruct them to start violent mn instigated by the Soviets as part of their plan to spread world revolution. tion has been questioned by some Southeast ‘grounds of insufficient evidence, but it remains gen played an important role in North {in 1950.47 China's entry into the war confirmed the solidarity and determination of the communist bl ’s move for the Sudentenland, in turn, was a pretext for his aggressive designs, Although the desire of some German-speaking people in the Sudentenland to join Germany was Senuine, Hitler capitalized on the issue of selfdetermination to extract concessions that would give re expansionist goals a firm footing. ‘To compare the problem in South Vietnam to the Malayan, Korean and Munich precedents is therefore to emphasize the role of external powers in instigating the conflict. Gelb and Betts summarize the U.S. perception ‘of who was doing the instigating in Vietnam: te 1940s the assumption was that Moscow controlled all Communist +++ After Korea, China was seen as the principal opponent in Asa, This perception stuck through the Laotian criss and Khrushchev’s rineton: Princeton University ounterinsurgonoy Ere , The Caleatta Conference andthe Southeast Asan Uprising (New York ity Interim Report Series, 195). Marshall Shulman, Stats Foreign Policy Reopproeed (Cambridge: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1968), pp. 190-44,290 CHAPTER 6 as the tion, from 1960 to 1962, when the Soviet Union emerged once again }).« « From 1964, high officials could not be sure who {in South Vietnam—Moscow or Peking or Hanot itself, States therefore “should delay China's swallowing up Southeast Asia (a) until she develops better table manners and (b) the food is somewhat more indigestible.”# Similarly, Lyndon Johnson emphasizes the China connection in his then have been ripe for the plucking.” Dean Rusk shared John- sentiments about China and the Asian dominoes; he prevent China and its ally, the Soviet Union, from succeeding.®! ‘The problem with this focus on China and the Soviet Union as insti- gators is not merely that it overemphasized their role while underempha- sizing the domestic roots ofthe Vietnam conflict. Equally troubling is the fact that it inflated the stakes of the conflict by blowing a civil war over the unification of the Vietnamese nation up into a conflict of Munich-like proportions. To be sure, both China and the Soviet Union provided sub- stantial aid to Hanoi during the course of the first and second Indochina wars but they hardly called the shots. In the absence gression schema, policymakers might have noticed the part of China and the Soviet Union that, for strate ‘own, they were less than enthusiastic about the reunification of North and South Vietnam. In a recent work aimed at explaining the drastic rupture of Sino-Viet- namese and Vietnamese-Cambodian relations in the late 1970s, Nayan Chanda traces China's ambivalence toward Hanoi back to the 1950s. (Chands's thesis i that China's approach to Indochina has been “strikingly “Gelb and Betts, Irony of Vietnam, pp. 188-89, “ Pontagon Papers, 048 ® Johnson, The Vantage Foi, pp. 135-36. 5 See Henry and Espinosa, “The Tragedy of Dean Rusk,” p. 187 PSYCHOLOGY OF ANALOGICAL REASONING 231 traditional” from the very start. By that he means China helped North vena not so much out of “ideological expansionism,” as Forrestal would have it, but more out of “concer about its own securit e southern border.”"=® ate ‘Thus, although China provided Hanoi with the military, economic, and technical assistance needed to defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu, it ‘was not particularly anxious to have @ unified Vietnam. At the Geneva Conference, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai told his French interlocutors that China “favored the prolonged existence of two Vietnams and, gen- erally, wanted a multiplicity of states on its borders.” from China and the S noi to accept the tem 1965 and 1968, China combat troops to keep Hano'’stransportat defenses, and to provide technical advice ‘been estimated that ‘China gave Hanoi up to $10 billion in aid during the course of the Second Indochina War.5* Interestingly enough, with the impending departure of the United States from Vietnam and with the Sino-American rapproachment in the early 1970s, China reverted back to its told Pham Van Dong in November 197 the handle of the broom is to reach. Thiew in South Vietné ‘We must resign ourselves to when North Vietnam launc! Lomperls, The War Eeeryons Lott—and Won, p. TS % Cited in Chanda, Brother Enemy, p, 182, Seo also Kurow, Vietnam, p43,