The shocks that always make a difference

Marta Dassù makes a very good point when she reminds us of the difficulty analysts and policy makers face in anticipating dramatic changes on the international scene. We are simply very bad at predicting the future. International affairs experts and government officials, in particular, tend to fall back on linear extrapolations. We prefer to assess trends rather than hazard guesses on potential shocks. But it is precisely these shocks that give meaning to underlying trends. Examples abound. Trends in military technology and changing power relationships helped drive the world to conflict in 1914. But it took an assassin in Sarajevo to provide the spark, and European leaders were certainly surprised by the scale and duration of the ensuing war – though they should not have been. The horrors of World War I led most to conclude that war had become impossible among “civilized” states – another error.

From the 1973 Middle East War, to the financial crises of 1929 and 2008, from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the Pakistani nuclear tests, from the fall of the Shah to September 11^th, it is the “shocks” rather than the gentle trends that tend to define international relations. In an odd sense, the public and the media have a better sense of this reality. To most people, foreign affairs are all about the surprising and unexpected things that happen and suddenly appear on their screens. Analysts and opinion shapers live in the world of longer-term trends. The public lives with shocks (and so do most policy makers, although their definition of what constitutes a shock is often more bureaucratic or political than geopolitically transforming).

So, what next? An Iranian nuclear test? War on the Korean peninsula? And because shocks can also be positive, let me add a surprise settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?