Historical analogies as markers of decisions: an LLM-assisted analysis in foreign policy

Why past stories matter for today’s politics

When national leaders face a crisis, they often reach for stories from the past. Comparing a current showdown to World War II, the Cold War, or a famous peace treaty can make a confusing moment feel familiar—not only for the public, but for the leaders themselves. This article asks a striking question: when presidents start repeating a specific historical comparison, does it quietly reveal what they have already decided to do in foreign policy, even before any official announcement is made?

Leaders, crises, and borrowed memories

Political leaders routinely invoke history to make sense of new dangers. Scholars usually see these references in two ways. First, they can be mental shortcuts, helping leaders simplify tangled problems under pressure. Second, they can be persuasive tools, used to rally support at home and abroad. Yet both views treat analogies mainly as background influences or public spin. This article puts forward a third angle: that certain historical comparisons, once voiced and then repeated, can serve as visible markers of choices that are already taking shape behind the scenes.

How an AI sifted through presidential words

To test this idea, the author built a workflow using a large language model (LLM) to scan hundreds of foreign-policy documents from three leaders: Bill Clinton in the United States, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Xi Jinping in China. The system searched for moments when a leader explicitly compared a current challenge to a past event and linked that comparison to concrete policy choices. The LLM first flagged possible analogies, then the researcher manually checked each one, sorting them into three roles: helping the leader think, persuading an audience, or signaling an emerging decision. The goal was not to count every analogy, but to isolate a small set of highly meaningful cases for close reading.

Clinton, Truman, and the future of NATO

In Clinton’s case, the key reference point was President Harry Truman and the early days of NATO after World War II. Starting in early 1993, Clinton repeatedly praised Truman’s creation of the alliance and framed his own era as a moment that demanded similar bold choices. These speeches came well before NATO actually expanded eastward and before formal strategy documents publicly committed to enlargement. Looking back with the benefit of declassified memos and later interviews, the article argues that Clinton’s persistent return to Truman shows that his mind was already set on expanding NATO. The analogy did more than comfort or persuade—it signaled that he saw himself as the heir to Truman’s project and would carry it forward.

Putin, Versailles, and a contested European order

For Putin, the guiding story was the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. From 2013 onward, he portrayed that settlement as a model of what goes wrong when a weakened power is treated unfairly and its interests are ignored. He likened the post–Cold War European security system to this earlier “unjust” order, hinting that such arrangements plant “time bombs” that later explode. By returning to the Versailles theme in later speeches and writings, Putin framed Russia as the aggrieved power and prepared the ground—at least in his own mind—for strong measures to revise Europe’s security landscape. The article suggests that these recurring references were not just moral complaints; they were early markers of a decision to push back, including through force.

Xi, national humiliation, and the Taiwan question

Xi Jinping’s case centers on China’s “century of humiliation,” a powerful story of foreign invasions and lost territory. In speeches about Taiwan beginning around 2015, Xi cast the island’s separate status as a leftover wound from that painful era and tied reunification to China’s “national rejuvenation.” This framing became more forceful between 2018 and 2021, when he openly kept the option of using force on the table while insisting that history was moving inexorably toward reunification. Later, Xi’s tone shifted slightly toward emphasizing peaceful approaches and invoking past Chinese leaders who favored long-term patience. Still, the core analogy—Taiwan as unfinished business from a period of weakness—remained a stable guidepost, signaling that some form of reunification remains a non‑negotiable goal.

Reading hidden signals in leaders’ stories

Across these three leaders, the article finds a shared pattern: once a specific historical comparison appears and is later repeated, it tends to line up with the direction policy ultimately takes. In other words, when presidents publicly settle on a particular story about the past, they may already have settled on the future they intend to pursue. This does not mean every decision rests on an analogy, or that outsiders can skip all other evidence. But carefully tracking which historical episodes leaders invoke—and when—can give analysts an extra open, non-secret clue about where foreign policy is heading.

Citation: Tsvetkova, N. Historical analogies as markers of decisions: an LLM-assisted analysis in foreign policy. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 13, 547 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06930-9

Keywords: historical analogies, foreign policy decisions, political leadership, artificial intelligence analysis, international security