Driving With The Rearview Mirror? Historical Analogies And European Foreign Policy

Abstract

Historical analogies are a key feature permeating the conduct of European foreign policy. As I will show in this chapter, analogies are problematic on a number of levels and yet they regularly recur in the practices and narratives of European foreign policy. This is partly because historical analogies serve an important cognitive-organizational function that leaders and officials often resort to in times of crisis, when there is an urgent need to make policy decisions and there is little scope for policy appraisal and deliberation. But historical analogies also serve more overtly political purposes, both as rhetorical constructs mobilized to justify foreign-policy decisions vis-à-vis the public, as well as explanatory frameworks for making sense of broader structural shifts within the international order. The instrumentalization of history – through the use of analogies – provides important insights into the complex and interrelated roles, which history, perceptions, norms and individuals play in the conduct of Europe’s international relations.