Again with the Marshall Plan Analogy

Back to the Future, Again: A Mini-Marshall Plan for Egypt?, Heritage Foundation Foundry, May 19, 2011. "Absolutely none of the conditions that conduced to the success of the Marshall Plan are present in Egypt, which is a poorly-governed, corrupt, ill-educated country with a backwards economy and a political system that is trending strongly towards an alliance of military authoritarians and radical Salafis. The Marshall Plan does indeed show that, given good domestic governance, certain kinds of U.S. assistance can work. But the Marshall Plan was not a hand-out: it was conditioned in many ways, it was predicated on a shared acceptance of democracy and economic freedom, and it rested on the competent administration of Europeans."

Iran, the USSR and the Containment Analogy

Containing a Nuclear Iran: Difficult, Costly, and Dangerous, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #2157, with James Phillips, February 14, 2011. "Proponents of a containment policy toward Iran are ignoring the harsh realities inherent in seriously pursuing such a policy. First, the U.S. has been trying to contain Iran since the Iranian revolution in 1979, with little success. If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, it will become even more difficult to contain. A serious containment policy will require the U.S. to maintain a credible threat of force against Iran. This will be even more difficult if Iran goes nuclear because the U.S. will have lost credibility. A containment policy will also require the U.S. to support the undemocratic governments in the countries neighboring Iran, which will pose many political dilemmas. Instead of pursuing a policy of containment, which would be a policy in name only, the U.S. should keep the military option alive, defend itself and its allies, and seek both to weaken the regime’s economic base and to empower and encourage its domestic adversaries."

This Is Just What I Was Talking About

A ‘Marshall Plan’ Sighting in Egypt, Contentions, February 9, 2011. "A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned my list of inaccurate historical analogies that warn of further fallacies to come. The leading such analogy was “We need a Marshall Plan.” Sure enough, reliable as a broken watch, along comes Roger Cohen in the New York Times, demanding just such a plan, contradicting himself up and down, and posing a wonderful false dichotomy to boot."

Obama Uses Another Bad Historical Analogy

Oh, Man, Not Another Sputnik Moment . . ., Contentions, January 26, 2011. "I keep a list of historical analogies — derived from years of grading papers — that tell me that the individual using them is (to be polite) more interested in rhetorical impact than historical accuracy. Before last night, the list began with “we need a Marshall Plan for X,” where X usually equals Africa or the Middle East, and ended with “the United States is a young country.” Both are fallacies: the Marshall Plan was a pump-priming program, not an effort to rebuild the infrastructure and remake the culture of half a continent; and while European settlement of North America is fairly recent, the U.S.’s political institutions have a longer continuous existence than those of any other country except, arguably, the United Kingdom. Now, thanks to President Obama, I’ve got a third analogy to add to the list: 'Sputnik moment.'"