President Lyndon Johnson, when deciding to escalate US intervention in Vietnam, drew an analogy with Munich, when the failure to respond to Hitler’s aggression had catastrophic consequences. A quarter-century later, President George H.W. Bush, considering how best to roll back Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, drew an analogy with Vietnam, where the absence of an exit strategy had caused US forces to get bogged down.
当然，历史经验在塑造政策制定时起作用的例子并不局限于央行。当年林登·约翰逊（Lyndon Johnson）总统决定升级美国对越南的干预时，就引用了慕尼黑的例子——后者因坐视希特勒的恶行而导致了灾难性的后果。四分之一个世纪后，乔治·H·W·布什（George H.W. Bush）总统在思考如何击退伊朗对科威特的侵略时也用越南来作类比——由于缺乏退出策略，驻越美军深陷泥潭。