Mapping the Competing Historical Analogies of the War on Terrorism
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117811404448 |
| Author | Jan Angstrom |
| Date | 01 June 2011 |
| Published date | 01 June 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
International Relations
25(2) 224–242
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0047117811404448
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Corresponding author:
Jan Angstrom, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, PO Box 514, SE-751 20
Uppsala, Sweden.
Email: jan.angstrom@pcr.uu.se
Mapping the Competing
Historical Analogies of
the War on Terrorism:
The Bush Presidency
Jan Angstrom
Abstract
This article maps the historical analogies of the war on terrorism used by the Bush administration.
It identifies four historical analogies of the war on terrorism present in the US political and
academic discourse since the attacks on 11 September 2001. These are the war on terrorism
as: (a) the Second World War; (b) the Crusades; (c) the Vietnam War; and (d) the Cold War.
These analogies have been a constant presence in the US discourse, although the analogy with
the Crusades has been more prominent in the academic discourse than in the political. There is,
moreover, no conclusive pattern of when and how these analogies have been used, suggesting that
we cannot use them to evaluate how well the war on terrorism is progressing. This also indicates
that the Bush administration, with one exception, was not successful in framing the policy agenda in
a certain direction regarding the war on terrorism. Understanding the war on terrorism as a new
Cold War, for example, still implies different policy measures such as roll-back and containment.
Keywords
Cold War, Crusades, foreign policy decision-making, Pearl Harbor, terrorism, Vietnam War, war
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 policymakers,
the public and scholars desperately searched for a meaning for the horrific scenes in New
York and Washington DC. The analogy that came to dominate the early agenda was that
of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, prompting the United States to enter the
Second World War. References to then President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘day of infamy’
speech soon dominated the public debate. But what historical analogies have been used
since then with regard to the war on terrorism? How persistent was the use of these
Angstrom 225
analogies in the political and scholarly discourse? What competing analogies were used
to highlight various policies? And to what extent was there variation in the use of these
analogies during the Bush presidency?
The roles and problems of analogies in politics and war
History is full of cases where collective memory and analogies inform how a particular
event is understood. During the past 70 years the analogy with Munich 1938 has been
made on numerous occasions to defend a firm stand against perceived threats, among
them to motivate increased US troop strength in the Vietnam War. Indeed, many observ-
ers suggest that creating a favourable narrative of the policy that is undertaken increases
its probability of success in modern political conditions. Metaphors and analogies are
powerful tools in creating such narratives and providing a meaning to actions.1 According
to Margaret MacMillan, historical analogies are important since they provide ‘comfort’,
as using an analogy implies that the situation is not unprecedented, and however difficult
it is perceived to be, it is fundamentally something that has occurred before and has been
dealt with in a particular way before.2 Problems arise, however, since history can rarely
be interpreted and used in only one way. Moreover, history offers several analogies to
any current situation, which implies that any attempt to seek meaning in a current situa-
tion faces a choice of competing analogies.
This article is a first step towards systematically mapping the competing historical
analogies of the war on terrorism. Rather than examining whether or not the use of his-
torical analogies influenced the Bush administration’s decision-making, this study has a
more modest ambition. It is an attempt to map and examine variations in the president’s
public use of historical analogies of the war on terrorism. This more modest aim also
means that public speeches are central as source material. There is no need to examine
internal, possibly secret, documents of the administration, since analogies – if they are
important for framing the public’s perception of this events – need to be verbalized. I
have focused on the president’s major foreign policy speeches, as the presidency carries
a critical role in US foreign policy and because major speeches receive widespread pub-
lic attention.3 Because the war on terror started during George W. Bush’s presidency,
moreover, it is more important to study the Bush’s administration and its use of analo-
gies, since these were central to the process of shaping the rationale for the war on terror.
In this respect, President Barack Obama’s use of analogies is less relevant, as they are
contingent upon how George W. Bush understood the war on terror.
I will demonstrate that four perspectives dominated the political and the scholarly
debate on the war on terrorism during Bush’s presidency. The war on terrorism, in short,
was made intelligible by comparing it with the Crusades, as the Vietnam War, as the Cold
War, and as the Second World War. Although valuable, and certainly related to each other,
these frames of reference are neither synonymous nor necessarily mutually exclusive.
These results stand in contrast to other analyses of analogies and the war on terrorism.
First, many have noted that the Cold War and the Vietnam War have been used in refer-
ence to the war on terrorism and especially for the war in Iraq.4 However, by only noting
two of the prevalent analogies, we fail to recognize the full width of competing analogies
and, accordingly, our understanding of the role of analogies in the war on terrorism is
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