Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond

  In short, it’s certain that, within the lifetimes of most of us, per-capita consumption rates in the First World will be lower than they are now. The only question is whether we shall reach that outcome by planned methods of our choice, or by unpleasant methods not of our choice. It’s also certain that, within our lifetimes, per-capita consumption rates in many populous developing countries will no longer be a factor of 32 below First World consumption rates, but will be more nearly equal to First World consumption rates than is the case at present. Those trends are desirable goals, rather than horrible prospects that we should resist. We already know enough to make good progress towards achieving them; the main thing lacking has been the necessary political will.

  Those are what I see as the biggest problems facing the world as a whole. From the perspective of our crisis framework, which factors favor, and which stand in the way of, humanity solving those problems?

  There is no denying that we face formidable obstacles. Much more than in the cases of the national crises faced by each of the seven individual countries discussed in the previous chapters of this book, world efforts to solve world problems force us onto unfamiliar terrain, with fewer precedents from the past to guide us. Just think of how the world as a whole differs from individual nations. The nations that we have discussed have coherent acknowledged national identities and national shared values, distinguishing that nation from other nations with different identities and different values. Our seven nations have long-established forums of national political debate, and national histories of coping from which to draw inspiration. All of our nations have benefitted from allied friendly nations offering material help, advice, and models to modify and adopt.

  But our world as a whole lacks those and other advantages of nations. We aren’t in contact with another inhabited planet from which we could seek support (factor #4 of Table 1.2), or whose society we could scrutinize for models to guide our own search for solutions (factor #5). Humanity lacks wide acknowledgment of a shared identity (factor #6) and shared core values (factor #11) contrasting with the identities and values prevailing on other planets. For the first time in history, we face truly global challenges; we lack past experience of such challenges (factor #8), and of failure to solve them (factor #9). Our precedents of previous success at worldwide coping are limited: the League of Nations and the United Nations have constituted the first two institutional attempts, and while they have achieved some successes, those successes have not yet been on a scale commensurate with the scale of world problems. There isn’t worldwide acknowledgment (factor #1) of our world crisis, nor worldwide acceptance of responsibility (factor #2) for our current problems, nor worldwide honest self-appraisal (factor #7). Our freedom of choice (factor #12) is limited by severe constraints: the seemingly inexorable depletion of world resources, the rise of world CO2 levels, and the worldwide scale of inequality leave us little room for experiment and maneuver. All of those cruel realities make many people feel pessimistic or hopeless about humanity’s prospects for a decent future.

  Nevertheless, there is already progress along three different routes towards solving world problems. One long-tested route consists of bilateral and multilateral agreements between nations. We know that there have been negotiations and agreements between political entities for at least as long as there has been writing to document them (over 5,000 years). Modern bands and tribes without writing also make agreements, so our history of political negotiation surely goes back through modern humans’ tens of thousands of years of existence before the origins of state governments. In particular, all four of the world problems discussed in this chapter have been subjects of recent bilateral and multilateral negotiations.

  I’ll mention just one example, not because the problem that it solved was among the most pressing ones (it wasn’t), but because it illustrates the possibility of reaching agreement even between nations otherwise locked in the most bitter enmity: Israel and Lebanon. Israel has invaded and partially occupied Lebanon. Lebanon has served as a base for launching rocket attacks into Israel. Nevertheless, bird-watchers of those two countries succeeded in reaching a milestone agreement. Eagles and other large birds migrating seasonally between Europe and Africa fly south from Lebanon through Israel every autumn, then north again from Israel through Lebanon every spring. When aircraft collide with those large birds, the result is often mutual destruction. (I write this sentence a year after my family and I survived the collision of our small chartered plane with an eagle, which dented but didn’t bring down our plane; the eagle died.) Such collisions had been a leading cause of fatal plane accidents in Lebanon and Israel. That stimulated bird-watchers of those two countries to establish a mutual warning system. In the autumn Lebanese bird-watchers warn their Israeli counterparts and Israeli air traffic controllers when they see a flock of large birds over Lebanon heading south towards Israel, and in the spring Israeli bird-watchers warn of birds heading north. While it’s obvious that this agreement is mutually advantageous, it required years of discussions to overcome prevailing hatreds, and to focus just on birds and airplanes.

  Of course, an agreement between just two or even several countries falls short of an agreement for all 216 nations constituting the whole world. But it nevertheless constitutes a big step towards world agreement, because just a few nations make up the lion’s share of the world’s population and economy. A mere two nations (China and India) account for one-third of the world’s population; another pair of nations (the U.S. and China) account for 41% of the world’s CO2 emissions and economic output; and five nations or entities (China, India, the U.S., Japan, and the European Union) account for 60% of emissions and outputs. China and the U.S. already reached an agreement in principle on CO2 emissions. That bilateral agreement was then joined by India, Japan, and the European Union in the Paris agreement that came into force in 2016. Of course the Paris agreement wasn’t enough, because it lacked a serious enforcement mechanism, and because the U.S. government in the following year announced its intention to pull out. But the Paris agreement is nevertheless likely to serve as a model or starting point for reaching an improved future agreement. Even if the world’s 200 other nations with smaller outputs don’t join such a future agreement, just a five-way agreement among the five biggest players could go a long way towards solving the emissions problem. That’s because the five biggest players can then put pressure on the other 200, e.g., by imposing trade tariffs and carbon taxes on countries that don’t adhere.

  Another route towards solving world problems consists of agreements among a region’s nations. There are already many such regional agreements for North America, Latin America, Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and other regional groupings. The most advanced set of regional agreements, with the widest range of institutions and agreement spheres and binding rules, is the set for the European Union (E.U.), currently comprising around 27 European nations. Of course, mention of the E.U. immediately makes one think of disagreements, back-sliding, Brexit, and other possible political exits. That’s only to be expected, because the E.U. has constituted such a big and radical step forward, not just for Europe but for any world region.

  But before you get overwhelmed by pessimism about the E.U., think of Europe’s shattered condition in 1945 at the end of World War Two, and then think of what the E.U. has achieved. After several thousand years of nearly constant warfare, culminating in Europe’s nations fighting the two most destructive wars in world history, no E.U. member has fought any war against any other E.U. member since the founding of the E.U.’s predecessors in the 1950’s. When I first visited Europe in 1950, there was rigorous passport control at every national border; but restrictions on trans-border movements are now much more limited between E.U. nations. When I lived in Britain from 1958 to 1962, the number of British scientists holding permanent teaching and research jobs at universities on the European continent, and vice versa, was so minimal that I could name the few such individuals in my own field of research on t
he fingers of one hand. Now, a significant fraction of university positions in E.U. countries is held by non-nationals. Economies of E.U. nations are substantially integrated. Most E.U. nations share a common currency, the euro. For major world problems such as energy, resource use, and immigration, the E.U. discusses and sometimes adopts shared policies. Again, I acknowledge all the dissensions within the E.U.—but don’t forget all the dissensions within any individual nation as well.

  Other examples of more narrowly focused regional agreements include ones to eliminate or eradicate regional diseases. A major success was the eradication of rinderpest, a formerly dreaded cattle disease that inflicted huge costs on large areas of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Following a long regional effort that took several decades, there has now been no known case of rinderpest since 2001. Large-scale regional disease efforts currently underway in both hemispheres include ones to eradicate guinea worm and eliminate river blindness. Hence regional agreements constitute a second already-tested route towards solving transnational problems.

  The third route consists of world agreements, hammered out by world institutions, and reached not only by the United Nations with its comprehensive world mission, but also by other world organizations with more specific missions—such as organizations devoted to agriculture, animal trafficking, aviation, fisheries, food, health, whaling, and other missions. Just as with the E.U., it’s easy to be cynical about the United Nations and other international agencies, whose power is generally weaker than the E.U.’s, and much weaker than the power of most nations within their national boundaries. But international agencies already have many achievements, and they provide a mechanism for more progress. Major successes have been the worldwide eradication of smallpox in 1980; the 1987 Montreal Protocol to protect the stratosphere’s ozone layer; the 1978 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (known as MARPOL 73/78) that reduced world pollution of the oceans by mandating separation of oil cargo tanks from water ballast tanks on ships, then by requiring that all transport of oil at sea be by double-hulled tankers; the 1994 Law of the Sea Convention that demarcated exclusive national and shared international economic zones; and the International Seabed Authority that established the legal framework for seabed mineral exploitation.

  Globalization both causes problems and facilitates solutions of problems. One ominous thing that globalization means today is the growth and spread of problems around the world: resource competition, global wars, pollutants, atmospheric gases, diseases, movements of people, and many other problems. But globalization also means something encouraging: the growth and spread of factors contributing to solutions of those world problems, such as information, communication, recognition of climate change, a few dominant world languages, widespread knowledge of conditions and solutions prevailing elsewhere, and—some recognition that the world is interdependent and stands or falls together. In my book Collapse, published in 2005, I compared the tensions between those problems and solutions to a horserace: a race between a horse of destruction and a horse of hope. It’s not an ordinary horserace, in which both horses run at approximately constant top speed for the whole distance. Instead, it’s an exponentially accelerating horserace, in which each of the two horses runs faster and faster.

  When I wrote in 2005, it wasn’t clear which horse would win the race. As I write these sentences in 2019, each horse has been continuing to accelerate for the last 14 years. Our problems, especially world population and world consumption, have increased markedly since 2005. World recognition of our problems, and world efforts to solve them, have also increased markedly since 2005. It still isn’t clear which horse will win the race. But it is certain that fewer decades now remain until the race’s outcome is settled, for better or for worse.

  EPILOGUE

  LESSONS, QUESTIONS, AND OUTLOOK

  Predictive factors—Are crises necessary?—Roles of leaders in history—Roles of specific leaders—What next?—Lessons for the future

  This last chapter will begin by summarizing how our dozen factors of Table 1.2, postulated at the outset as influencing the outcomes of national crises, actually apply to our sample of seven countries. Next, I shall use that sample to consider two general questions about crises that people often ask me: whether nations require a crisis-provoking acute upheaval to motivate them to undertake major change; and whether history’s course depends heavily on particular leaders. I then suggest strategies for deepening our understanding of crises. Finally, I ask what lessons for the future we can draw from that understanding.

  1. Acknowledgment that one is in a crisis. Acknowledgment is simpler for individuals than for nations, because in the former case one doesn’t have to reach a consensus among many citizens: there is only a single person who does or doesn’t acknowledge that he or she is in a crisis. But, even for an individual, there may not be a simple yes-or-no answer. Instead, there are at least three complications: the person may initially deny that there is a crisis, or may acknowledge only part of the problem, or may downplay its seriousness. Eventually, though, the person may “cry for help.” For practical purposes, that’s the moment of acknowledging the crisis. National crises present the same three complications, plus a fourth one: a nation is composed of many people falling into different groups, as well as a few leaders plus many followers. Those groups, and the leaders and followers, often differ about acknowledgment.

  Nations, as individuals, may initially ignore, deny, or underestimate a problem, until that denial phase is ended by an external event. For example, already before 1853, Meiji Japan knew of the West’s war of 1839–1842 against China, and the rising threat posed by the West to Japan. But Japan still didn’t acknowledge a crisis and begin debating reform until Commodore Perry’s arrival on July 8, 1853. Similarly, Finland received Soviet demands in the late 1930’s, and knew that the Soviet Union was populous and had a huge army, but Finland still didn’t take the threat seriously until the Soviet attack of November 30, 1939. When that happened, Finns reached virtually unanimous agreement overnight to respond by fighting. In contrast, while Perry’s arrival did quickly produce Japanese agreement that their country faced an urgent problem, anti-shogun reformers disagreed with the shogun’s government about how best to respond. That disagreement became resolved only 15 years later, when the reformers overthrew the shogun.

  Some other cases of national crises yielded widespread agreement that the country did suffer from some big problem, but disagreement about what the problem was. In Chile, Allende and the political left saw the problem as Chilean institutions in need of reform, while the political right saw the problem as Allende and his proposed reforms. Similarly, in Indonesia the communists saw the problem as the Indonesian government in need of reform, while the Indonesian army saw the problem as the communists and their proposed reforms. In both cases the crisis was not resolved by the eventual reaching of a national consensus, nor by one group prevailing by force but sparing the lives and rights of their defeated adversaries. (Japan’s last Tokugawa shogun was allowed to retire after his defeat, and he outlived the Meiji Restoration by 34 years.) In Chile and Indonesia the crisis was instead resolved by the victorious group exterminating much of the defeated group.

  Both Australia and Germany after World War Two illustrate long denial of a growing crisis. Australia clung for a long time to its British and White Australian identities. Germany for a long time denied the widespread responsibility of many ordinary Germans for Nazi crimes, and the unpleasant permanent reality of Germany’s territorial losses and Eastern European communist governments. Those issues became resolved in both Australia and Germany by the electorates slowly and democratically reaching enough of a national consensus to change government policies.

  Finally, today as I write these pages, Japan and the U.S. are still practicing widespread selective denial of major problems. Japan currently acknowledges some problems (its large government debt and aging population), and incompletely acknowledges the issue of Japanese w
omen’s role. But Japan still denies other problems: its lack of accepted alternatives to immigration for solving its demographic difficulties; the historical causes of Japan’s tense relations with China and Korea; and denial that Japan’s traditional policy of seeking to grab overseas natural resources rather than to help manage them sustainably is now outdated. The U.S., as I write, is still in widespread denial of our own major problems: political polarization, low voter turnout, obstacles to voter registration, inequality, limited socio-economic mobility, and decreasing government investment in public goods.

  2. Accept responsibility; avoid victimization, self-pity, and blaming others. The next step for resolving personal crises, after that first step of acknowledging the crisis, is to accept personal responsibility—i.e., to avoid wallowing in self-pity or focusing on oneself as the victim, and instead to recognize the need for personal change. That’s as true for nations as it is for individuals, though with the same complications just discussed for national acknowledgment: that acceptance of responsibility and avoidance of self-pity are not a simple yes-or-no matter either for individuals or for nations; and that nations consist of diverse groups, and of leaders plus followers, who often differ in their views.

  Our seven nations variously illustrate acceptance as well as denial of responsibility. Avoidance of self-pity is illustrated by Finland and by Meiji Japan. From 1944 onwards, Finland might have been paralyzed by self-pity, emphasized Finland’s role as victim, and blamed the Soviet Union for invading Finland and killing so many Finns. Instead, Finland recognized that the Soviet Union had to be dealt with. Finland switched to constantly engaging in political discussions with the Soviet Union and winning its confidence, with many beneficial results: the Soviet Union evacuated its naval base at Porkkala near Helsinki, reduced the amount and extended the period of Finland’s war reparations, and tolerated Finland’s association with the European Economic Community and joining the European Free Trade Association. Even today, long after the Soviet Union’s fall, Finland has made no effort to recover its lost province of Karelia. Similarly, Japan during the Meiji Era was exposed for decades to Western threats and unfair imposed treaties. But Japan didn’t assume the role of victim; instead, it focused on its responsibility to develop its power to resist.