A counter-example, of a nation’s viewing responsibility as falling on others rather than on itself, is Australia blaming British “treachery” for the fall of Singapore, rather than recognizing that Australia had failed in its responsibility to develop its own defenses before World War Two. Similarly, Australia initially blamed the United Kingdom as treacherous for applying for membership in the European Economic Community, before Australia eventually came to the painful recognition that the United Kingdom had to pursue its own interests. That blaming may have slowed Australia’s development of economic and political ties with Asian countries.
An extreme and disastrous example of denying responsibility comes from Germany after World War One. A large segment of the Germany public accepted the false claim, made by Nazis and many other Germans, that Germany had lost that war because of a “stab in the back” by German socialists, rather than because Germany was in the process of being defeated militarily by overwhelming Allied forces. Nazis and other Germans focused on the gross unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles. They failed to acknowledge the long series of pre-war political mistakes by Emperor Wilhelm II and his government, leading to Germany entering the war under unfavorable military conditions, and then to the disaster of Germany’s defeat and the imposition of the Treaty of Versailles. The result of Germans thus denying their own responsibility, and assuming the mantle of victimization and self-pity, was support of the Nazis, resulting in World War Two, which was even more disastrous for Germany.
A striking example of simultaneous contrasting approaches to accepting responsibility is provided by Germany and Japan after World War Two. Both countries’ governments were responsible for initiating that war entirely by themselves; it was not the case, as it had been for Germany in World War One, that their opponents shared the responsibility for precipitating war. During World War Two both Germany and Japan did horrible things to other peoples, and the German and Japanese peoples themselves suffered horribly. Germany’s and Japan’s approaches to those realities have been opposite. Germany’s reaction might have been dominated by self-pity and a sense of victimization for the millions of Germans killed during the war (including all those killed by Allied bombing of German cities that would have been considered a war crime if the Allies hadn’t won the war); for the million German women raped in the Soviet advance from the east; and for the loss of large German territories after the war. Instead, in Germany there has been widespread acknowledgment of Nazi crimes, teaching in schools about them and about German responsibility, and the establishment of better relations with Poland and other countries victimized by Germany in the war. In contrast, Japan largely continues to deny its responsibility for initiating the war; a widespread Japanese view is that the U.S. somehow tricked Japan into bombing Pearl Harbor and thereby initiating the war, ignoring the fact that Japan had already begun a major undeclared war against China four years earlier. Japan also continues to deny its responsibilities for Japanese crimes against Chinese and Korean civilians and against Allied prisoners of war. Instead, Japan focuses on self-pity and on its role as victim of the atomic bombs, without frank discussion of the worse things that would have happened if the bombs had not been dropped. That embrace of denial, victimization, and self-pity continues to poison Japan’s relations with its powerful Chinese and Korean neighbors, and thereby poses a big risk for Japan.
3. Building a fence/selective change. All six countries that I discussed in Chapters 2–7 as having dealt with their crises adopted selective changes. The two countries for which I discuss changes underway (Japan and the U.S.) are doing so now, Japan more than the U.S. All of those countries changed, or are debating changing, only certain specific policies; other national policies are not under discussion. Especially instructive, because of the contrast between what did change and what didn’t, are again the cases of Meiji Japan and Finland. Meiji Japan westernized in many areas: political, legal, social, cultural, and others. But, in each area, Japan didn’t slavishly copy the West; it instead sought out which of the numerous available Western models was most suited to Japan, and modified that model to suit Japanese circumstances. At the same time, other basic aspects of Japanese society remained unchanged, including emperor worship, kanji writing, and many aspects of Japanese culture. Similarly, Finland changed by conducting constant discussions with the communist Soviet Union, sacrificing some freedom of action, and shifting from being a predominantly rural country to a modern industrial country. At the same time, Finland has remained a liberal democracy in other respects, and has retained far more freedom of action than have other European countries neighboring on the former Soviet Union (now Russia). The resulting seemingly glaring inconsistencies in Finnish behavior were heavily criticized by non-Finns, who failed to recognize the cruel realities of Finland’s geographic location.
4. Help from other nations. This theme of help from others, which is important in individual crises, has played either a positive role or a negative role in the resolution of most of the national crises that we have discussed. Western help of many kinds, ranging from sending advisors to Japan and receiving Japanese missions abroad to building a prototype battle-cruiser, was important for Meiji Japan in its selective Westernization. Economic help from the U.S. was important for Chile’s and Indonesia’s military governments’ strengthening their countries’ economies after the 1973 and 1965 coups, respectively, and for Japan’s and Germany’s rebuilding after the destruction suffered during World War Two. Australia looked first to Britain, then to the U.S., for military protection. On the negative side, Allende’s government of Chile was destabilized by U.S. withdrawal of help and erection of barriers to the Chilean economy; and Germany’s Weimar Republic after World War One was destabilized by British and French extraction of war reparations. For Australia, the shocks of the failure of British military protection after the fall of Singapore, and of Britain’s withdrawal of Australia’s preferential tariff status as a result of Britain’s EEC negotiations, contributed to Australia’s seeking a new national identity. Our outstanding example of lack of help from friends is Finland during its Winter War against the Soviet Union, when all of Finland’s potential allies couldn’t or chose not to deliver the hoped-for military assistance. That cruel experience became the foundation of Finland’s post-1945 foreign policy: the recognition that Finland could not expect help in case of a renewed conflict with the Soviet Union, and instead had to develop a working relationship with the Soviet Union that preserved as much Finnish independence as possible.
5. Using other nations as models. Just as models are often valuable in resolving individual crises, they have also been significant, positively or negatively, for most of our countries. Borrowing and modifying Western models was especially important in the transformation of Meiji Japan, and to a lesser extent for Japan after World War Two when Japan again borrowed with modification (or had imposed on it) some American models of democratic government. Chile’s and Indonesia’s military dictatorships borrowed American models (or what they imagined to be American models) of free-market economies. Australia for most of its history before World War Two borrowed heavily from British models, then increasingly rejected them.
Conversely, our countries also provide two examples of actual or presumed lack of models. For Finland, there is no model of another neighbor of the Soviet Union that succeeded in preserving its independence while satisfying Soviet demands; that was the essence of Finland’s policy of Finlandization. Finns’ recognition of the uniqueness of their situation was the basis of the saying by their President Kekkonen, “Finlandization is not for export.” An example of presumed lack of models is provided by the U.S. today, for which belief in American exceptionalism translates into the widespread belief that the U.S. has nothing to learn from Canada and Western European democracies: not even from their solutions to issues that arise for every country, such as health care, education, immigration, prisons, and security in old age—issues about which most Americans are dissatisfied with our Am
erican solutions but still refuse to learn from Canadian or Western European solutions.
6. National identity. Of the dozen outcome predictors for individual crises, some translate readily into predictors of national crises. One that doesn’t readily translate is the individual characteristic of “ego strength,” which instead serves as a metaphor to suggest a related national characteristic: sense of national identity.
What is national identity? It means shared pride in admirable things that characterize one’s nation and make it unique. There are many different sources of national identity, including language, military accomplishments, culture, and history. Those sources vary among countries. For example, Finland and Japan both have unique languages that are spoken in no other country, and that are viewed with pride. Chileans, on the contrary, speak the same language as most other South and Central American countries, but paradoxically turn that into a unique identity: “We Chileans are different from all of those other Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, in our political stability and democratic traditions. We are more like Europeans than Latin Americans!” Military accomplishments contribute heavily to the national identity of some countries: Finland (the Winter War), Australia (Gallipoli), the U.S. (World War Two), and Britain (many wars, most recently World War Two and the Falkland Islands War). In many countries national pride and identity focus on culture: for example, Italy’s historical preeminence in art and modern preeminence in cuisine and style, Britain’s in literature, and Germany’s in music. Many countries feel pride in their sports teams. Britain and Italy illustrate pride in memories of their history and world importance—in Italy’s case, memories of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago.
Of our seven countries, a shared sense of national identity is strong in six of them. The exception is Indonesia, where national identity is weaker. This is no criticism of Indonesians: it just reflects the obvious fact that Indonesia didn’t come into existence as an independent country until 1949, and wasn’t effectively unified even as a colony until around 1910. Hence it’s no surprise that Indonesia has experienced secession movements and rebellions. However, Indonesian national identity has recently been growing rapidly, spurred by the spread of the unifying Indonesian language, and by the growth of democracy and citizen involvement.
National identity has been an important contributor to crisis resolution in all of our older countries. Sense of national identity held Meiji Japanese and Finns together, gave those countries the courage to resist powerful external threats, and motivated their citizens to survive privations and national humiliations and to make personal sacrifices in the national cause. Finns even turned in their gold wedding rings to help Finland pay its war reparations to the Soviet Union. National identity enabled post-1945 Germany and Japan to survive crushing military defeat and subsequent occupation. In Australia, national identity has been the focus of Australian reassessment and selective change, revolving around the question: who are we? Sense of national identity contributed to Chilean leftists behaving with restraint when they returned to power after Pinochet’s fall: even as fear of the Chilean army receded, Chilean leftists in power, while continuing to hate Pinochet’s supporters, adopted a conciliatory policy of building “a Chile for all Chileans,” including right-wing admirers of Pinochet as well as left-wing admirers of Allende. That’s a remarkable achievement. In contrast, in the U.S. today one hears much emphasis on subgroup identity and less on broad national identity.
Nations’ peoples and governments regularly seek to reinforce national identity by recounting history in a way so as to foster national pride. Such recountings of history constitute “national myths.” I don’t use the word “myth” in its pejorative sense of “a lie,” but instead in its neutral sense of “a traditional story, ostensibly with a historical basis, but serving to explain some phenomenon or to promote some purpose.” In reality, national myths, told and retold for political purposes, encompass an entire spectrum from truthful recountings to lies.
At one extreme are accounts of the past that are factually accurate, and that do focus on the most important thing happening to that nation at that time, but the recounting is still for political purposes. Examples include the fostering of British and Finnish national pride by accounts of British history during the summer of 1940 that focus just on the Battle of Britain, or accounts of Finnish history during the period December 1939–March 1940 that focus just on the Winter War. Yes, one can argue that those were indeed by far the most consequential things happening in Britain and Finland at the time, and those events are still recounted over and over again today for political purposes.
An intermediate stage is an account of the past that is factually correct as far as it goes, but that focuses on just one out of multiple things happening at that time in the history of that country, and that omits other important things. Examples include histories of the early 19th-century U.S. that emphasize the Lewis and Clark transcontinental expedition and other stages in white European exploration and conquest of the West, but that omit killings and displacements of Native Americans and enslavement of African-Americans; histories of Indonesia’s independence struggle that describe the battles of the Indonesian Republic against the Dutch, but that don’t mention the large groups of Indonesians themselves fighting against the republic; and histories of early 20th-century Australia that recount only Gallipoli, and omit killings and displacements of Aboriginal Australians.
The opposite end of the continuum is accounts of the past that rest heavily on falsehoods. Examples include German accounts attributing Germany’s defeat in World War One to German civilian treachery, and Japanese accounts minimizing or denying the Rape of Nanking.
Historians debate whether exact knowledge of the past is possible, whether history inevitably involves a plurality of interpretations, and whether all those alternative interpretations deserve to receive equal weight. Whatever the answers to those questions, the fact remains that national identities get reinforced for political purposes by national myths, that national identities are important to nations, and that the myths supporting them vary in their historical basis.
7. Honest self-appraisal. A totally rational visitor from Outer Space who knew nothing of humans and our societies might naïvely assume that, whatever factors lead to failures of human individuals and nations to resolve crises, lack of honest self-appraisal wouldn’t be among them. Why, our rational extraterrestrial visitor might reason, would any individual or nation of those admittedly strange humans ruin itself, by choosing to be dishonest with itself?
In fact, honest self-appraisal requires two steps. First, an individual or a nation must possess accurate knowledge. But that can be difficult to acquire; failure to respond successfully to a crisis may be because of lack of information, rather than because of the moral vice of dishonesty. The second step is to evaluate knowledge honestly. Alas, any human familiar with nations or with other individual humans knows that self-deception is common in human affairs.
The most easily understood cases of national honest self-appraisal, or of its absence, involve strong leaders or dictators. In those cases the nation either does or doesn’t undertake honest self-appraisal, insofar as its leader does or doesn’t. Well-known internationally are the contrasting cases among modern German leaders. Bismarck, an outstanding realist, succeeded in the difficult goal of unifying Germany. Emperor Wilhelm II, an emotionally labile unrealist, needlessly made enemies for Germany and blundered into World War One, which Germany lost. Hitler, far more clever but far more evil, undid his initial successes by unrealism in attacking the Soviet Union and needlessly simultaneously declaring war on the U.S. while already at war with the Soviet Union and Britain. More recently, Germany was fortunate in being led for several years by another realist, Willy Brandt, who had the courage to recognize the need for a painful but honest policy in Eastern Europe (recognizing East Germany and the loss of German territories beyond East Germany), and thereby achieved prerequisites for Germany’s re-unification 20
years later.
Less well-known in the West, but equally striking as a contrast between successive leaders, is the case of Indonesia. Its founding president, Sukarno, deluded himself that he was uniquely capable of interpreting even the unconscious wishes of the Indonesian people. While neglecting Indonesia’s own problems, he involved himself in the world anti-colonial movement, and he ordered the Indonesian army to try to take over Malaysian Borneo, against the wishes of its population and over the skepticism of his own army officers. Unfortunately for Sukarno, army general Suharto, who became Indonesia’s second president, was (until late in his political career) an outstanding realist whose style was to proceed cautiously and to act only when he could be confident of success. In that way, Suharto slowly succeeded in pushing Sukarno aside, abandoned Sukarno’s world pretensions and Malaysian campaign, and concentrated on Indonesian affairs (albeit often in evil ways).
The next three cases involve nations that were not dominated by a powerful leader, but that reached national consensus based on honest self-appraisal. Meiji Japan confronted the painful truth that the hated Western barbarians were stronger, and that Japan could gain strength only by learning from the West. Meiji Japan then acquired accurate knowledge of the West by sending many government officials and private Japanese citizens to Europe and the U.S. In contrast, Japan’s disastrous entry into World War Two occurred partly because young but powerful Japanese army officers in the 1930’s lacked first-hand knowledge of the West and its power. Finns similarly confronted the painful reality that Finland would continue to receive almost no support from potential allies, and that Finland’s policy towards the Soviet Union instead had to depend on Finland earning Soviet trust and understanding the Soviet point of view. Finally, Australia reached a national consensus by facing up to the reality that Britain’s former economic and military importance for Australia had faded, and that Asia and the United States had become more important.
Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis Page 42
