Sophisticated folks like to tell themselves that history doesn’t repeat itself. Life, politics, and diplomacy are all driven by a multitude of circumstances that make every moment different and every judgment so much different … except of course when they aren’t. But as Maya Kandel, an analyst at Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l’Ecole Militaire, a French defense ministry think tank, and a specialist on American foreign policy, wrote in a recent email: