But your position seems to require that national character have some predictive power in policy decisions.
Indeed, but it has significant predictive power only in cases where some state of affairs would be in striking contradiction with the "national character." It's clearly not a heuristic that would give concrete and reliable predictions about all issues.
My objection to the comment you cite is that: (1) the proposed anti-communism heuristic, while not entirely devoid of predictive power, is nowhere as consistently accurate as the commennter claims, and (2) contrary to the commenter's claim, there are issues outside of the proposed category (religious, ideological, etc. identification with parties in foreign disputes) where heuristics based on national character make accurate predictions.
contrary to the commenter's claim, there are issues outside of the proposed category (religious, ideological, etc. identification with parties in foreign disputes) where heuristics based on national character make accurate predictions.
Can you give examples? Because my paradigmatic example of the use of national character to make predictions is Napoleon's (failed) prediction that a "nation of shopkeepers" would not be able to successfully resist his domination of Europe based on their supposed lack of will.
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules: