Fighting the last war: Is presidential hindsight 20‐20?

Abstract

Fighting the last war lays out the contours of a theoretical framework that explains U.S. presidential decisions to cut losses or double down on major post-Vietnam military conflicts. The archival sources and principal interviews give readers an insider's look into presidents' conflict decision making. The article explains how the Vietnam War catastrophe shaped Presidents Reagan and Clinton's attempts to avoid a similar quagmire in Lebanon in 1983–1984 and Somalia in 1993, respectively. It then shows how new lessons from 9/11 and beyond shaped Presidents Bush and Obama's decisions to surge troops and employ counterinsurgency strategies in Iraq (2007) and Afghanistan (2009). While Vietnam-era lessons remained important to all these presidents, pre-9/11 they believed entrapment risks from incremental escalation were worse than de-escalation risks. After 9/11, the logic flipped.