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During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the argument that U.S. air strikes against Soviet missile sites in Cuba would be morally analogous to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 had a major impact on policymaking. The invocation of this analogy contributed to President John F. Kennedy's decision to forgo an immediate attack on the missiles and to start instead with a naval blockade of the island. The "Pearl Harbor in reverse" argument is an example of an important phenomenon that has received little attention in foreign policy analysis—the moral analogy. Fusing together elements of moral and analogical thinking, the moral analogy can be a powerful force in shaping policy preferences, as it was in October 1962.

Americans usually perceive nation-building missions as failures even when they succeed on the ground. In interventions such as Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, win or lose, America will be seen to lose. Four factors underlie this 'quagmire mentality': American ideals, elite rhetoric, memories of Vietnam, and media manipulation. The quagmire mentality undermines public approval for nation-building, thereby limiting the United States' capacity to carry out such operations, and it also influences the ways in which Americans learn from past missions. (Survival / SWP)

During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the argument that U.S. air strikes against Soviet missile sites in Cuba would be morally analogous to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 had a major impact on policymaking. The invocation of this analogy contributed to President John F. Kennedy's decision to forgo an immediate attack on the missiles and to start instead with a naval blockade of the island. The "Pearl Harbor in reverse" argument is an example of an important phenomenon that has received little attention in foreign policy analysis-the moral analogy. Fusing together elements of moral and analogical thinking, the moral analogy can be a powerful force in shaping policy preferences, as it was in October 1962. Adapted from the source document.

un arms embargoes have been increasingly applied to civil wars, yet these embargoes have tended to be either irrelevant or malevolent in their effects. arms embargoes are rarely enforced in a civil war; they undermine the credibility of the un; they are unlikely to change the political positions of civil war participants; they criminalise target societies; and they benefit arms suppliers willing to break the rules. this article argues for the reform of partial arms embargoes, which target select groups in a civil war. it also argues for the restriction in use of impartial embargoes, which apply to all sides in a civil war. enforcing impartial embargoes can actually make the situation worse, by shaping the course of the civil war in unpredictable and immoral ways.

In 1938, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt became involved in an illegal scheme to circumvent the US arms embargo, which applied to both sides in the Spanish Civil War. Seeking strategies to aid the Spanish Republic against General Franco's Nationalists, Roosevelt supported a scheme to ship to France aircraft, which would then quietly be trans-shipped to Spain. The scheme was notable for three elements: its colourful nature, involving sending FDR's alcoholic brother-in-law to Paris as a secret emissary; its deep flaws and ignominious collapse; and its importance as an indication of Roosevelt's changing perceptions of the Spanish Civil War and his ideas about creative policy-making in a deeply constrained domestic and international environment.