Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond

  Our last two cases involve the lack of honest self-appraisal in two nations today. As already mentioned, Japan today does recognize some of its problems, but is currently failing to be realistic about others. The U.S. is also deficient in honest self-appraisal today: particularly in that not enough American citizens and politicians take our current major problems seriously. Many Americans also delude themselves by blaming other countries rather than ourselves for our current problems. Skepticism about science is increasingly widespread in the U.S., and that’s a very bad portent, because science is basically just the accurate description and understanding of the real world.

  8. Historical experience of previous national crises. Confidence derived from having survived previous crises is an important factor for individuals dealing with a new personal crisis. A corresponding factor at the national level is significant for several of the nations that we consider in this book, and for other nations as well. An example is modern Japan, with confidence derived from the extraordinary achievement of Meiji Japan in changing rapidly and gaining sufficient strength to resist the risk of dismemberment by the West, and eventually to defeat two Western powers (Russia in 1904–1905, and German colonial troops in 1914). Meiji Japan’s success is all the more impressive when one contemplates the simultaneous failure of the much larger and apparently much stronger Chinese Empire to resist Western pressure.

  Finland provides another case of national self-confidence derived from previous successes. For Finns, the pride gained from fighting off Soviet attacks during World War Two is so important that the hundred-year anniversary in 2017 of Finland’s independence focused on the Winter War as much as on Finland’s independence. Among countries that are not the focus of this book, another example is the United Kingdom, with its history of success in eventually defeating Hitler in World War Two with the U.S. and Soviet Union as allies; even more, fighting entirely alone against Hitler for the year from the fall of France in June 1940 until Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941; and especially from the Battle of Britain, in which the British air force (the RAF) in the latter half of 1940 defeated the German air force (the Luftwaffe) in air battles over Britain, thereby thwarting German plans to invade Britain. Whatever difficulties Britain has faced from 1945 to the present day, the British often reflect: nothing could be more difficult than was the Battle of Britain; we succeeded then, so we can succeed against anything else now.

  Past successes also contributed to American self-confidence. The successes on which we look back include the outcome of the American Revolution; our acquisition, exploration, and conquest of the entire width of the North American continent; holding the U.S. together in a long civil war that still remains the bloodiest war with the highest casualties in American history; and U.S. military successes simultaneously against Germany and Japan in World War Two.

  Finally, Indonesia, as the youngest country discussed in this book, has the shortest history of successful coping from which to derive confidence. But, as I saw in the lobby exhibit in my Indonesian hotel in 1979, Indonesians still retell the success of their independence struggles against the Dutch in 1945–1949, and of their take-over of Dutch New Guinea in 1961. Those successes play a big role in Indonesian national self-confidence.

  9. Patience with national failure. Even more than individual problems, national problems don’t lend themselves to quick solutions, or to guaranteed success on the first try at solving them. Whether the problems are national or individual, crises tend to be complex, to require trying a series of possible solutions before identifying one that works, and thus to call for patience and for toleration of frustration, ambiguity, and failure. Hence even if national decisions were made by just a single absolute dictator, they would require patience. But most national decisions instead involve negotiations between groups with divergent interests. Thus, national crisis-solving requires extra patience.

  Most of the countries that we have discussed have been steeled to patience by the experience of failure and defeat. That was especially true for Meiji Japan, Germany, Finland, and modern Japan. It took more than 50 years from Perry’s 1853 uninvited visit ending Japan’s isolation before Japan was able to fight and win its first war against a Western power. It took 45 years, after Germany’s de-facto partition in 1945, for Germany to achieve re-unification. For decades after the end of Finland’s Continuation War against the Soviet Union in 1944, Finland was constantly re-assessing its policy towards the Soviet Union, and trying to figure out which Soviet pressures it could safely refuse, and which independent actions it could safely adopt without provoking yet another Soviet invasion. Japan since World War Two has had to survive American occupation, decades of material and economic rebuilding, chronic economic and social problems, and natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis. All four of those countries (counting Japan twice) experienced frustration, but resisted the pitfall of acting quickly and foolishly. Patience proved essential to their eventual successes.

  The exception to these stories of patience is the modern U.S. Of course one can object: Americans have indeed tolerated initial failure, shown patience, and persisted through setbacks at many times in our history: notably, during the four years of the Civil War, the dozen years of the Great Depression, and the four years of World War Two. But the U.S. has not been steeled to crushing defeat and occupation, as have Germany, Japan, France, and many other countries. Having won all four of our foreign wars from the Mexican War of 1846–1848 to World War Two, Americans found it hard to come to terms with the effective stalemate ending the Korean War, to swallow defeat in the Vietnam War, and to tolerate protracted military stalemate in Afghanistan. In these first decades of the 21st century the U.S. has been struggling with complex internal social, economic, and political problems that do not lend themselves to quick solutions. They instead require patience and compromises that we have not yet displayed.

  10. Situation-specific national flexibility. Psychologists use the dichotomy of flexibility versus rigidity for characterizing people. Personal flexibility means that a person is receptive to considering different new approaches to a problem. Personal rigidity means that a person believes that there is only one approach to any problem. That dichotomy has proved important in understanding differences among individuals in their success in resolving crises by devising new approaches. While any individual may be flexible in one area and rigid in another area, psychologists also recognize a trait of flexibility or rigidity that may pervade a person’s character, that varies among individuals, and that is influenced especially by childhood upbringing and life experiences.

  When we turn from individuals to nations, convincing examples of pervasive national flexibility or rigidity seem to me rare. The sole example that is familiar to me, and for which there are understandable reasons why the nation came to be that way, is a nation not otherwise discussed in this book: historical Iceland. During the centuries when Iceland was governed by Denmark, Icelanders frequently frustrated Danish governors by their apparent rigidity and hostility to proposed changes. Whatever well-intentioned suggestions for improvement the Danish government offered, Icelanders’ response was usually, “No, we don’t want to try something different; we want to continue doing things in our traditional way.” Icelanders refused Danish suggestions about improving fishing boats, fish exports, fishing nets, grain agriculture, mining, and rope-making.

  That national rigidity is understandable when one considers Iceland’s environmental fragility. Iceland lies at high latitudes, with a cool climate and short growing season. Icelandic soils are fragile, light, formed by volcanic ash, susceptible to erosion, and slow to regenerate. Iceland’s vegetation is easily stripped off by grazing or by wind or water erosion, and then is slow to regrow. In the early centuries of Viking colonization, Icelanders tried various subsistence strategies, all with disastrous results, until they eventually devised a set of sustainable agriculture methods. Having devised that set, they didn’t want to consider cha
nges in their subsistence methods, or in other aspects of life, because of their painful experience: having finally devised one strategy that worked, whatever else they tried made things worse.

  Perhaps there are other countries besides historical Iceland that can be characterized as flexible or rigid in many respects. But it seems much more common to find that national flexibility is situation-specific: a country is flexible in some spheres but rigid in other spheres. Finns have adamantly refused to compromise on their country being occupied, but have been extraordinarily flexible in compromising on what other nations consider inalienable rights of a democracy—such as not permitting other nations to change the rules for a presidential election in one’s own country. Meiji Japan refused to compromise on the role of the emperor and traditional Japanese religion, but was extraordinarily flexible in compromising on political institutions. Australia for a long time refused to compromise on its British identity, while simultaneously developing a society much more individualistic and egalitarian than Britain’s.

  The U.S. poses interesting questions with respect to flexibility. Americans can be characterized as flexible as individuals, based for example on their frequent house moves, on the average once every five years. The history of American politics has been marked by signs of national flexibility, such as our frequent transitions of federal government control between the major political parties, and our major parties frequently co-opting programs of nascent new parties and thereby aborting those parties’ development. Conversely, though, American politics for the last two decades have been characterized by increasing refusal to compromise.

  Hence I expect that it usually won’t be profitable for social scientists to generalize about a nation as being uniformly either flexible or rigid. Instead, it may prove worth considering whether nations can be classified as variously flexible or rigid independently along multiple axes. That question remains a challenge for the future.

  11. National core values. Core values for individuals underlie a person’s moral code, and often constitute what a person is willing to die for. For individuals, core values may make it either easier or else harder to resolve crises. On the positive side, core values can provide clarity and a position of strength, from which one can contemplate changing other aspects of one’s life. On the negative side, people may cling to core values when they have become no longer appropriate under changed circumstances, and when they thus interfere with a person’s solving a crisis.

  Nations also have core values that are widely accepted by a nation’s citizens, and that in some cases its citizens are willing to die for. Core values are related to national identities, but there are differences. For example, Finland’s national identity is related especially to its unique language and cultural achievements, but the core value for which so many Finns died in their war against the Soviet Union was Finnish independence; that, rather than the Finnish language, was what the Soviet Union sought to destroy. Similarly, German national identity revolves around the German language and culture and the shared histories of Germanic peoples. But German core values include what many Americans decry as “socialism,” and what most Germans view as admirable: government support of public benefits; restriction of individual rights in order to favor the common good; and not letting important public benefits depend on selfish private interests that may or may not see pay-off in supporting them. For example, the German government provides large-scale funding for the arts (including opera companies, symphony orchestras, and theaters), provides good medical care and financial security in old age for all Germans, and enforces the maintenance of traditional local architectural styles and woodlands; those are among modern Germany’s core values.

  Just as true for individuals, core values of nations can make it either easier or harder for a nation to adopt selective change. Core values of the past may continue to be appropriate in the present, and may motivate citizens to make sacrifices in defense of those values. Core values motivated Finns to die in the successful defense of their country’s independence, Meiji Japanese to make big efforts to catch up to the West, and Germans and Japanese after World War Two to work hard and to put up with privation in order to rebuild their shattered countries. But national core values of the past may also prove inappropriate today, and clinging to such outdated values may prevent a nation from adopting necessary selective changes. That was the central issue in Australia’s slowly unfolding crisis after World War Two: Australia’s role as an outpost of Britain made less and less sense, and it proved painful for many Australians to abandon that role. Another example is provided by Japan after World War Two: while core values of Japanese culture and respect for the emperor give Japan strength, Japan’s clinging to its former policy of unlimited exploitation of overseas natural resources is hurting Japan.

  12. Freedom from geopolitical constraints. For individuals, external constraints restricting one’s ability to adopt selective changes include financial constraints, the burden of responsibility for other people, and physical danger. Nations also face constraints on their freedom of choice, but the types are different from those limiting individuals: especially, geopolitical ones resulting from powerful neighbors, and economic limitations. Among our 12 factors, this is the one historically exhibiting the widest variation among our sample of nations. The U.S. has been outstandingly unconstrained; four nations (Meiji Japan, Chile, Indonesia, and Australia) have been constrained in some respects and relatively free in others; and two (Finland and Germany) have been extremely constrained. I’ll discuss below how geopolitical constraints today differ from the historical ones that I’ll summarize first.

  The U.S. has been historically unconstrained because of isolation by wide oceans on two sides, land borders with unthreatening neighbors on the two other sides, natural advantages of geography within the U.S., and large population and wealth. More than any other country in the world, the U.S. has been free to do as it pleases within its own borders. At the opposite extreme, Finland and Germany are both severely constrained. Finland has the misfortune to share Europe’s longest land border with Russia (formerly the Soviet Union). Recent Finnish history has been dominated by the dilemma of how to preserve as much freedom of choice as possible despite this severe constraint. Germany has the misfortune to lie in the center of Europe, and to be exposed to more neighbors (several of them large and powerful) across land and sea borders than any other European country. German leaders who ignored this basic fact of geography (Emperor Wilhelm II and Hitler) plunged Germany into disaster twice within the 20th century. Germany twice required exceptional gifted leaders (Bismarck and Willy Brandt) to negotiate the minefield of geopolitical constraints upon Germany.

  Our other four countries furnish a mixed picture. Meiji Japan, despite being an island nation, was seriously threatened by prowling Western powers. Chile, protected by the Andes on the east and by deserts in the north, now faces no significant threats within South America; but the Chilean economy was still weakened by pressure from the distant U.S. during Allende’s presidency. Indonesia is geographically protected by oceans and no nearby threatening neighbors, but had to struggle for independence against the Netherlands located half-way around the world. Indonesian governments since independence have been constrained by Indonesia’s internal problems of poverty and rapid population growth. Finally, Australia, despite being remote and geographically protected by oceans, was nevertheless threatened and bombed by Japan in World War Two. All of these countries have thus experienced intermittent constraints on their freedom of action, but not as serious and chronic as the ones constantly operating on Finland and Germany.

  Geopolitical constraints have obviously changed globally in recent millennia. In the remote past, local human populations were largely self-sufficient, received and sent goods and information over relatively short distances, and faced military threats only from immediate neighbors. Within the last five centuries, communications and economic and military connections have become global. Military threats by sea a
rrived from around the world: the Dutch began to occupy Indonesia around 1595, and Commodore Perry’s American fleet breached Japan’s isolation in 1853. Japan formerly was economically self-sufficient, with negligible imports and exports; now Japan’s industrial economy is severely limited by natural resources and dependent on imports and exports. The U.S. is also a major importer and exporter. Chile depended on U.S. capital and technology to develop its copper mines. Chile’s President Allende, and to a lesser extent Indonesia’s President Sukarno, were subjected to U.S. economic pressure and U.S. support for their domestic opponents. Three of this book’s seven nations were bombed by planes from enemy aircraft carriers originating thousands of miles away: the U.S. by Japan’s Pearl Harbor raid of December 1941, Australia by Japan’s Darwin raid of February 1942, and Japan by the U.S.’s Doolittle Raid of April 1942. Germany and Japan suffered massive attacks by land-based bombers during World War Two. The first rocket attacks were by German V-2s on Britain, France, and Belgium in 1944 and 1945, launched from 200 miles away. Now, ICBMs are capable of hitting targets anywhere in the world across the widest ocean barriers.