Joseph George Caldwell
9 June 2019
Copyright © 2019 Joseph George Caldwell. All rights reserved. Posted at Internet website http://www.foundationwebsite.org. May be copied or reposted for non-commercial use, with attribution to author and website.
I previously read Jared Diamond’s books, Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, and enjoyed them very much. When his new book, Upheaval, was released recently, I purchased a copy, and I just finished reading it.
Although the book is interesting reading, I did not find it at all as interesting as the earlier two books. The book Upheaval discusses the ways that countries deal with crises. Diamond applies the methodology that has evolved over the past half-century to deal with crises at the level of the individual to the problem of dealing with problems at the national and international level. This approach involves considering the following twelve factors that affect the outcome of national crises:
1. National consensus that one’s nation is in crisis
2. Acceptance of national responsibility to do something
3. Building a fence, to delineate the national problems needing to be resolved
4. Getting material and financial help from other nations
5. Using other nations as models of how to solve the problems
6. National identity
7. Honest national self-appraisal
8. Historical experience of previous national crises
9. Dealing with national failure
10. Situation-specific national flexibility
11. National core values
12. Freedom from geopolitical constraints
Diamond applies his methodology to analyze the response of six nations to major crises in modern history. These are:
1. Finland, following the Winter War with the Soviet Union in 1939-1940
2. Japan, following Commodore Perry’s intervention in 1853
3. Chile, following the demise of Salvador Allende and rise to power of Augusto Pinochet in the military coup of 1973
4. Indonesia, following the demise of Sukarno and rise to power of Suharto in the military coup of 1965
5. Germany, following its defeat in World War II
6. Australia, following its loss of military security in World War II
In addition to detailed analyses of the six crises listed above, Diamond identifies several current crises in Japan, the United States, and the world as a whole, and discusses what he believes is required to resolve them. These are as follows:
For Japan:
1. Large national debt
2. High old-age dependency ratio (ratio of number of old persons to the number of working persons)
3. High level of dependence on diminishing resources from extranational sources
4. Unfair treatment of women
5. Hatred of Japan by China and Korea for ill treatment prior to and during World War II
For the United States:
1. Political and social polarization
2. Economic inequality (high and increasing level of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth)
3. Low voting participation
4. Decline in quality of education
For the world:
1. Nuclear weapons
2. Climate change
3. Depletion of natural resources
4. Global inequalities of living standards
Diamond does a good job of identifying factors that affect the outcome of crises, and his detailed analysis of the crises for the six nations is interesting. For all six of these cases, the crisis under review is the aftermath of a violent upheaval, such as war or a military coup. The main theme of his book is how the post-upheaval situation is managed. For example, Finland determined to get along with the Russians; Japan decided to adopt Western technology; the Pinochet regime killed many of its opponents, and the post-Pinochet government did nothing to antagonize those previously in charge; the Suharto regime slaughtered its opponents; Germany put Marshall-Plan aid to good use, and developed economically; when it saw that Great Britain could no longer protect it, Australia forged a alliance with the United States, and increased trade with nearby countries.
In his analysis of the historical crises for the six nations, Diamond discusses how each crisis was handled, with respect to each of the twelve factors.
For the current crises, Diamond relates each crisis to the twelve factors, and assesses the likelihood of peaceful resolution of each crisis. Diamond observes that, for Japan, the United States, and the world as a whole, those in control are not highly motivated to address any of them.
Diamond’s analysis is descriptive, not prescriptive. He discusses the historical evolution of the resolution of each crisis in terms of the twelve factors. He identifies factors that are associated with crisis resolution, but makes no assertions about quantitative causal relationships of the factors to crisis outcome. He offers little insight into how current crises might be resolved, of which factors may be more important than others, or whether, or how, or to what extent certain factors may be influenced or controlled to affect outcomes. While his analysis may contribute to an understanding of why a post-crisis situation evolved the way it did, his work provides little insight into how to resolve current crises, or to resolve crises that are evolving prior to upheavals.
In discussing global inequalities of living standards, Diamond includes the following comments:
“Today, the world has more than 7.5 billion people, and that may rise to around 9.5 billion within this half-century…. The First World consists of about 1 billion people who live mostly in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, and who have relative average per-capita consumption rates of 32 [a relative value, which is the ratio of average consumption by wealthy nations to average consumption by poor nations]. Most of the world’s other 6.5 billion people, constituting the developing world, have relative per-capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down towards 1…. …people with low consumptions want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle themselves…. Is everybody’s dream of achieving a First World lifestyle possible? … The result is that world consumption rates will increase by 11-fold. That’s equivalent to a world population of about 80 billion people with the present distribution of per-capita consumption rates…. There are some optimists who claim that we can support a world with 9.5 billion people. But I haven’t met any optimist mad enough to claim that we can support a world with the equivale t of 80 billion people. Yet we promise developing countries that, if they will only adopt good policies, like honest government and free market policies, they too can become like the First World today. That promise is utterly impossible, a cruel hoax. We are already having difficulty supporting a First World lifestyle even when only 1 billion people out of the word’s 7.5 billion people enjoy it.”
Every historical crisis that Diamond examined was the direct result of a violent upheaval, such as a war or military coup. It would appear that the utility of Diamond’s framework is in promoting a better understanding of how society may behave in the aftermath of a crisis of sufficient magnitude to precipitate a violent upheaval. Politicians have been claiming for decades that the world total human population level will stabilize as the result of a “demographic transition” brought about by improved economic conditions, but it never does. It is patently obvious that world consumption cannot continue to grow at current rates, and that world population is headed for a catastrophic collapse. Yet Diamond does not identify this imminent collapse as a crisis.
Many years ago, Joseph Tainter wrote a book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, which observes that complex societies grow until they collapse catastrophically. His observation applies to the present global industrial society. The world has a profound population problem (or consumption problem, or industrial production problem). Current high levels of human population and consumption are destroying the diversity of the biosphere, and are not sustainable. Large human numbers are not sustainable, and they will collapse, catastrophically. There are several ways in which a collapse might occur, but the most likely, based on history, is war – not the never-ending controlled guerilla and conventional (non-nuclear) local and regional conflicts, but massive, global nuclear war.
Today, the nuclear-armed states of the world possess about 15,000 nuclear weapons. The inventories of nuclear warheads by country are Russia, 6,490; United States, 6,450; France, 300; China, 280; United Kingdom, 215; Pakistan, 150; India, 140; Israel, 80; North Korea, 15. Today’s global industrialized world is highly interdependent, and is “brittle” [vulnerable to catastrophic collapse if damaged]. If 150 nuclear weapons were used to destroy the largest 100 cities, the 25 largest hydroelectric dams, and the 25 largest oil and gas fields, globalized civilization would be effectively destroyed. With fossil fuels gone, large-scale global industrial civilization would be unlikely to re-emerge. Mass starvation would ensue, and human population levels would plummet. Since global industrialized civilization is destroying the biosphere as we know it, there is a strong incentive to destroy it. Islam is committed to destruction of the West, on religious grounds. It appears highly likely that global nuclear war will occur, and soon. Not all nuclear powers possess delivery systems with global reach, but several do. Recent developments in hypersonic cruise missiles render ballistic-missile defense systems obsolete
Diamond discusses the possibility of nuclear warfare, but offers little advice on how to address it. In fact, most of the so-called crises discussed by Diamond are not “existential” crises that affect the long-term survivability of the human species or biospheric diversity. Three that are are global climate change, global resource depletion and global nuclear war.
In summary, while Jared Diamond’s book, Upheaval, is interesting reading and identifies factors associated with post-upheaval situation management, it offers little insight into how to influence or control those factors, and thereby to influence or control upheavals (such as war or military coups).
FndID(134)
FndTitle(Miscellany 61: Review of Upheaval by Jared Diamond)
FndDescription(Miscellany 61: Review of Upheaval by Jared Diamond)
FndKeywords(Upheaval; Jared Diamon; book review)