Historical analogies, traumatic past and responses to the war in Ukraine

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9899896
AutoresIrena Kalhousová (0000-0002-4446-1867, autor de correspondencia), Eugene Finkel, Jiří Kocián (0000-0001-5136-323X)
Año2024
Volumen100
Número6
Páginas2501-2523
Fecha de publicación2024-11-04
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Affairs (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ia/iiae228
OpenAlexW4403584129
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas1

This article examines the use of historical analogies by political leaders during foreign policy crises. Specifically, we focus on the German, Polish and Czech leaderships' reactions to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and investigate the historical analogies which leaders invoked to justify their responses to Russia's aggression. The existing scholarship recognizes the importance of historical analogies in foreign policy decision-making, but the literature focuses predominantly on several high-profile analogies (i.e. the Munich Agreement or the Vietnam War) and lacks comparative perspective. We employ a dual-method approach that combines qualitative coding with semantic network analysis, and conduct a comparative analysis of the full spectrum of analogies used by Polish, Czech and German policy-makers. We find that politicians did not focus on a single overarching analogy, but employed a wide array of historical references. We also find that even though the countries' policies largely aligned and that their leaders often invoked the same events, the meaning of analogies and the signals they sent differed substantially across cases. Analysing the full spectrum of analogies demonstrates that justifications for supporting Ukraine were shaped more by these states' own historical traumas than by their sympathy for Ukraine, support for international law, or desire to uphold the rules-based international order

Political science · History · Military, Security, and Education Studies · Psychology