正文
Stephen M. Walt
What I learned from Jared Diamond
Posted By Stephen M. Walt Wednesday, August 25, 2010 - 12:38 PM
Earlier this summer I mentioned that I was reading Jared Diamond\'s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and I promised to sum up the insights that I had gleaned from it. The book is well-worth reading -- if not quite on a par with his earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel -- and you\'ll learn an enormous amount about a diverse set of past societies and the range of scientific knowledge (geology, botany, forensic archaeology, etc.) that is enabling us to understand why they prospered and/or declined.
The core of the book is a series of detailed case studies of societies that collapsed and disappeared because they were unable to adapt to demanding and/or deteriorating environmental, economic, or political conditions. He examines the fate of the Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the Anasazi of the Pacific Southwest, the Norse colonies in Western Greenland (among others), and contrasts them with other societies (e.g., the New Guinea highlanders) who managed to develop enduring modes of life in demanding circumstances. He also considers modern phenomenon such as the Rwandan genocide and China and Australia\'s environmental problems in light of these earlier examples.
I read the book because I am working on a project exploring why states (and groups and individuals) often find it difficult to cut their losses and abandon policies that are clearly not working. This topic is a subset of the larger (and to me, endlessly fascinating) question of why smart and well-educated people can nonetheless make disastrous (and with hindsight, obviously boneheaded) decisions. Diamond\'s work is also potentially relevant to the perennial debate on American decline: Is it occurring, is it inevitable, and how should we respond?
So what lessons does Diamond draw from his case studies, and what insights might we glean for the conduct of foreign policy? Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me as I finished the book.
First, he argues that sometimes societies fail to anticipate an emerging problem because they lack adequate knowledge or prior experience with the phenomenon at hand. Primitive societies may not have recognized the danger of soil depletion, for example, because they lacked an adequate understanding of basic soil chemistry. A society may also fail to spot trouble if the main problem it is facing recurs only infrequently, because the knowledge of how to detect or deal with the problem may have been forgotten. As he emphasizes, this is especially problematic for primitive societies that lack written records, but historical amnesia can also occur even in highly literate societies like our own.
By analogy, one could argue that some recent failures in U.S. foreign policy were of this sort. Hardly anybody anticipated that U.S. support for the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in Afghanistan would eventually lead to the formation of virulent anti-American terrorist groups, in part because the U.S. leaders didn\'t know very much about that part of the world and because public discourse about U.S. policy in the Middle East is filled with gaping holes. Similarly, the people who led us into Iraq in 2003 were remarkably ignorant about the history and basic character of Iraqi society (as well as the actual nature of Saddam\'s regime). To make matters worse, the U.S. military had forgotten many of the lessons of Vietnam and had to try to relearn them all over again, with only partial success.
Second, societies may fail to detect a growing problem if their leaders are too far removed from the source of the trouble. Diamond refers to this as the problem of distant managers, and it may explain why U.S. policymakers often make decisions that seem foolish in hindsight. As I\'ve noted here before, one problem facing U.S. foreign policymakers is the sheer number and scope of the problems they are trying to address, which inevitably forces them to rely on reports from distant subordinates and to address issues that they cannot be expected to understand very well. Barack Obama doesn\'t get to spend the next few years learning Pashto and immersing himself in the details of Afghan history and culture; instead, he has to make decisions based on what he is being told by people on the ground (who may or may not know more than he does). Unfortunately, the latter have obvious reasons to tell an upbeat story, if only to make their own efforts look good. If things are going badly, therefore, the people at the top back in Washington
Earlier this summer I mentioned that I was reading Jared Diamond\'s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and I promised to sum up the insights that I had gleaned from it. The book is well-worth reading -- if not quite on a par with his earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel -- and you\'ll learn an enormous amount about a diverse set of past societies and the range of scientific knowledge (geology, botany, forensic archaeology, etc.) that is enabling us to understand why they prospered and/or declined.
The core of the book is a series of detailed case studies of societies that collapsed and disappeared because they were unable to adapt to demanding and/or deteriorating environmental, economic, or political conditions. He examines the fate of the Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the Anasazi of the Pacific Southwest, the Norse colonies in Western Greenland (among others), and contrasts them with other societies (e.g., the New Guinea highlanders) who managed to develop enduring modes of life in demanding circumstances. He also considers modern phenomenon such as the Rwandan genocide and China and Australia\'s environmental problems in light of these earlier examples.
I read the book because I am working on a project exploring why states (and groups and individuals) often find it difficult to cut their losses and abandon policies that are clearly not working. This topic is a subset of the larger (and to me, endlessly fascinating) question of why smart and well-educated people can nonetheless make disastrous (and with hindsight, obviously boneheaded) decisions. Diamond\'s work is also potentially relevant to the perennial debate on American decline: Is it occurring, is it inevitable, and how should we respond?
So what lessons does Diamond draw from his case studies, and what insights might we glean for the conduct of foreign policy? Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me as I finished the book.
First, he argues that sometimes societies fail to anticipate an emerging problem because they lack adequate knowledge or prior experience with the phenomenon at hand. Primitive societies may not have recognized the danger of soil depletion, for example, because they lacked an adequate understanding of basic soil chemistry. A society may also fail to spot trouble if the main problem it is facing recurs only infrequently, because the knowledge of how to detect or deal with the problem may have been forgotten. As he emphasizes, this is especially problematic for primitive societies that lack written records, but historical amnesia can also occur even in highly literate societies like our own.
By analogy, one could argue that some recent failures in U.S. foreign policy were of this sort. Hardly anybody anticipated that U.S. support for the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in Afghanistan would eventually lead to the formation of virulent anti-American terrorist groups, in part because the U.S. leaders didn\'t know very much about that part of the world and because public discourse about U.S. policy in the Middle East is filled with gaping holes. Similarly, the people who led us into Iraq in 2003 were remarkably ignorant about the history and basic character of Iraqi society (as well as the actual nature of Saddam\'s regime). To make matters worse, the U.S. military had forgotten many of the lessons of Vietnam and had to try to relearn them all over again, with only partial success.
Second, societies may fail to detect a growing problem if their leaders are too far removed from the source of the trouble. Diamond refers to this as the problem of distant managers, and it may explain why U.S. policymakers often make decisions that seem foolish in hindsight. As I\'ve noted here before, one problem facing U.S. foreign policymakers is the sheer number and scope of the problems they are trying to address, which inevitably forces them to rely on reports from distant subordinates and to address issues that they cannot be expected to understand very well. Barack Obama doesn\'t get to spend the next few years learning Pashto and immersing himself in the details of Afghan history and culture; instead, he has to make decisions based on what he is being told by people on the ground (who may or may not know more than he does). Unfortunately, the latter have obvious reasons to tell an upbeat story, if only to make their own efforts look good. If things are going badly, therefore, the people at the top back in Washington may be the last to know.
Third, serious problems may go undetected when a long-term negative trend is masked by large short-term fluctuations. Climate change is the classic illustration here: there are lots of short-term fluctuations in atmospheric temperature (daily, seasonally, annually and over eons), which allows climate change skeptics to seize upon any unusual cold snap as evidence that greenhouse gases are of no concern.
Similarly, it\'s easy to find short-term signs of American primacy that may be masking adverse long-term trends. Optimists can point to U.S. military predominance and the fact that the American economy is still the world\'s largest, or to the number of patents and Nobel Prizes that U.S. scientists continue to win. But just as the British empire reached its greatest territorial expanse after World War I (when its actual power was decidedly on the wane) these positive features may be largely a product of past investments (and good fortune) and focusing on them could lead us to miss the eroding foundations of American power.
A fourth source of foolish decisions is the well-known tendency for individuals to act in ways that in their own selfish interest but not in the interest of the society as a whole. The tragedy of the commons is a classic illustration of this problem, but one sees the same basic dynamic whenever a narrow interest group\'s preferences are allowed to trump the broader national interest. Tariffs to protect particular industries, or foreign policies designed to appease a particular domestic constituency are obvious cases in point.
Ironically, these problems may be especially acute in today\'s market-oriented democracies. We like to think that open societies foster a well-functioning marketplace of ideas, and that the clash of different views will weed out foolish notions and ensure that problems get identified and addressed in a timely fashion. Sometimes that\'s probably true, but when well-funded special interests can readily pollute the national mind, intellectual market failure is the more likely result. After all, it is often easier and cheaper to invent self-serving lies and distortions than it is to ferret out the truth, and there are plenty of people (and organizations) for whom truth-telling is anathema and self-serving political propaganda is the norm. When professional falsifiers are more numerous, better-funded, and louder than truth-tellers, society will get dumber over time and will end up repeating the same blunders.
Fifth, even when a state or society recognizes that it is in trouble, Diamond identifies a number of pathologies that make it harder for them to adapt and survive. Political divisions may make it impossible to take timely action even when everyone realizes that something ought to be done (think gridlock in Congress), and key leaders may be prone to either groupthink or various forms of psychological denial. And the bad news here is that no one has ever devised an effective and universally reliable antidote to these problems.
Moreover, if a group\'s identity is based on certain cherished values or beliefs, it may be hard to abandon them even when survival is at stake. Diamond suggests that the Norse colonies in Greenland may have disappeared because the Norse were unwilling abandon certain traditional practices and imitate the local Inuits (e.g., by adopting seal hunting via kayaks), and it is easy to think of contemporary analogues to this sort of cultural rigidity. Military organizations often find it hard to abandon familiar doctrines and procedures, and states that are strongly committed to particular territorial objectives often find it nearly impossible to rethink these commitments. Look how long it took the French to leave Algeria, or consider the attachment to Kosovo that is central to Serbian nationalist thinking, and how it led them into a costly (and probably unnecessary) war in 1999.
To sum up (in Diamond\'s words):
Human societies and smaller groups make disastrous decisions for a whole sequence of reasons: failure to anticipate a problem, failure to perceive it once it has arisen, failure to attempt to solve it after it has been perceived, and failure to succeed in attempts to solve it.
That last point is worth highlighting too. Even when states do figure out that they\'re in trouble and get serious about trying to address the problem, they may still fail because a ready and affordable fix is not available. Given their remarkably fortunate history, Americans tend to think that any problem can be fixed if we just try hard enough. That was never true in the past and it isn\'t true today, and the real challenge remains learning how to distinguish between those situations where extra effort is likely to pay off and those where cutting one\'s losses makes a lot more sense.
哈佛大学约翰.F.肯尼迪政府学院教授斯蒂芬.沃尔特（Stephen M. Walt）利用贾雷德.戴蒙德（Jared Diamond）所写的《大崩壞—人类社会的明天》一书，剖析了当今美国所麵对的问题。沃尔特指出，戴蒙德一书與美国是否正在衰落，这个多年来被辩论的议题有所关连∶美国是否正在走向衰落？是否不可避免？能够如何反应？对此，沃尔特在25日的美国《外交政策》作出了五点总结。文章摘译如下。
??首先，戴蒙德认为，某些社会因缺乏足够的知识和未能掌握足够的经验，因而未能预知一些正在冒起的问题，使之走向失败。远古社会可能因为未能掌握到土壤肥力下降的情况，他们缺乏基本土壤化学的认识。一个社会也可能因为他们未能察觉到问题的存在，如果那些问题並非频密地发生，发现和处理问题的知识可能会被遗忘。戴蒙德认为，对於远古社会而言，这是相当麻烦的事，因为古代並没有良好的记录工具。但历史健忘症（historical amnesia）或会在当代出现。
??沃尔特认为，美国近期在外交政策上的失误，是可以用以上的理解去解释。我们都难以预料美国当年支持阿富汗的伊斯兰武装份子对抗苏联时，会引致到反美恐怖组织的组成。某程度上，这是因为美国领导人对於当地的形势所知不多，也因为美国的中东政策是充满安全漏洞。同样地，那些令美国於2003年卷入伊拉克战争的人，也明显对历史和伊拉克社会（以及萨达姆政权）缺乏认知。美军遗忘了越战的教训也令情况变得更为恶劣。
??第二，社会或步向失败，是由於他们发现问题的存在，但其领导人與问题的发生的地点相距太远。戴蒙德称此问题为“遥距管理员”（distant managers）。这或许能够解释到，为什厶美国决策者经常後知後觉，並作出愚蠢的决定。美国现正麵对的问题是，他在同一时间所要关注的问题太多、太广泛，使决策者无可避免地依赖远方下属的报告，处理一些他们不太熟悉的问题。奥巴马没有花数年时间去学习普什图语，使自己沉浸在阿富汗的历史之中。取而代之的是，他需要按照当地人民所获得的信息来作判断（他们或许、或不比奥巴马知得更多）。
??第三，大量的短期波动，遮盖了持续出现的负麵趋势，或许会令严重的问题不被发现。氣候变化就是一个典型的例子。大量的短期大氣温度变化的出现（每日、季、年等），使氣候懷疑论者认为突如期来的寒冷天氣证明了温室氣體的排放是没有关连。
??相似的是，乐观派指出，美国仍然拥有军事上的優势，其经济體係仍然是世界最庞大的；或者拥有专利发明以及诺贝尔科学奖得主继续增多。这些正麵的因素很大程度是过去投资的成果，过份专注於此会使美国看漏了侵蚀美国根基的力量。就像英帝国於第一次世界大战後，其领土麵积扩张至顶峰，但他们的实际国力显然走向衰落。
??第四，愚蠢的决定往往是源於人们按照一已的意願而非社会的意願所作出的决定。讽刺的是，这个问题的起因是源於今日以市场为主导的民主政治。我们认为开放的社会能够让“概念交易 场”的功能充份发挥。不同意见的交错亦能够把愚蠢的想法除去，確保问题得到確定，並及时处理。有时候这大概是正確的。但是，自私的谎言和扭曲事实，较追查找真相更加容易和便宜。而有许多人和组织均认为，把真相告知是可恨的事，利己的政治宣传却是常态。当捏造者成为大多数的时候，社会将会变得呆笨，最终将会重複犯错。
??第五，尽管一个国家能够確定自己陷於麻烦之中，戴蒙德確定了一係列的因素会导致他们难以 应和生存下去。尽管任何人都意识到采取行动的必要，政见分歧或会使之难以迅速采取对症下药的行动（如国会的僵局）。领导人或倾向於“团體迷思”（Groupthink，指团體在决策过程中，由於成员倾向让自己的观点與团體一致，因而令整个团體缺乏不同的思考角度，不能进行客观分析）或者作出心理上的否认。
??加上，如果一个团體的身份是建基於某些独特的價值和信念，这将会难以放弃，尽管情况已经到了生死存亡之际。例如，一个国家或会难以放弃某些领土，並且难以重新考虑是否继续投资於此。法国就花了很长时间去放弃阿尔及利亚的领土。而美国或许能够反思1999年科索沃战争是如何破费，甚至乎是不必要。
??人类社会，以及其他较细小的组织作出灾难性的决定，有一係列的原因∶未能预见问题；当问题浮现时，未能察觉到问题的存在；当问题被发现时，未能试图去解决问题。以及，未能成功把问题解决。美国人倾向认为，隻要努力尝试，任何问题都能够解决，但这从古至今都不是正確的。真正的挑战是，美国应学会如何分析各種情况，在那些地方上投放更多的资源，在那些地方削减开支是更为合理。
What I learned from Jared Diamond
Posted By Stephen M. Walt Wednesday, August 25, 2010 - 12:38 PM
Earlier this summer I mentioned that I was reading Jared Diamond\'s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and I promised to sum up the insights that I had gleaned from it. The book is well-worth reading -- if not quite on a par with his earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel -- and you\'ll learn an enormous amount about a diverse set of past societies and the range of scientific knowledge (geology, botany, forensic archaeology, etc.) that is enabling us to understand why they prospered and/or declined.
The core of the book is a series of detailed case studies of societies that collapsed and disappeared because they were unable to adapt to demanding and/or deteriorating environmental, economic, or political conditions. He examines the fate of the Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the Anasazi of the Pacific Southwest, the Norse colonies in Western Greenland (among others), and contrasts them with other societies (e.g., the New Guinea highlanders) who managed to develop enduring modes of life in demanding circumstances. He also considers modern phenomenon such as the Rwandan genocide and China and Australia\'s environmental problems in light of these earlier examples.
I read the book because I am working on a project exploring why states (and groups and individuals) often find it difficult to cut their losses and abandon policies that are clearly not working. This topic is a subset of the larger (and to me, endlessly fascinating) question of why smart and well-educated people can nonetheless make disastrous (and with hindsight, obviously boneheaded) decisions. Diamond\'s work is also potentially relevant to the perennial debate on American decline: Is it occurring, is it inevitable, and how should we respond?
So what lessons does Diamond draw from his case studies, and what insights might we glean for the conduct of foreign policy? Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me as I finished the book.
First, he argues that sometimes societies fail to anticipate an emerging problem because they lack adequate knowledge or prior experience with the phenomenon at hand. Primitive societies may not have recognized the danger of soil depletion, for example, because they lacked an adequate understanding of basic soil chemistry. A society may also fail to spot trouble if the main problem it is facing recurs only infrequently, because the knowledge of how to detect or deal with the problem may have been forgotten. As he emphasizes, this is especially problematic for primitive societies that lack written records, but historical amnesia can also occur even in highly literate societies like our own.
By analogy, one could argue that some recent failures in U.S. foreign policy were of this sort. Hardly anybody anticipated that U.S. support for the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in Afghanistan would eventually lead to the formation of virulent anti-American terrorist groups, in part because the U.S. leaders didn\'t know very much about that part of the world and because public discourse about U.S. policy in the Middle East is filled with gaping holes. Similarly, the people who led us into Iraq in 2003 were remarkably ignorant about the history and basic character of Iraqi society (as well as the actual nature of Saddam\'s regime). To make matters worse, the U.S. military had forgotten many of the lessons of Vietnam and had to try to relearn them all over again, with only partial success.
Second, societies may fail to detect a growing problem if their leaders are too far removed from the source of the trouble. Diamond refers to this as the problem of distant managers, and it may explain why U.S. policymakers often make decisions that seem foolish in hindsight. As I\'ve noted here before, one problem facing U.S. foreign policymakers is the sheer number and scope of the problems they are trying to address, which inevitably forces them to rely on reports from distant subordinates and to address issues that they cannot be expected to understand very well. Barack Obama doesn\'t get to spend the next few years learning Pashto and immersing himself in the details of Afghan history and culture; instead, he has to make decisions based on what he is being told by people on the ground (who may or may not know more than he does). Unfortunately, the latter have obvious reasons to tell an upbeat story, if only to make their own efforts look good. If things are going badly, therefore, the people at the top back in Washington
Earlier this summer I mentioned that I was reading Jared Diamond\'s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and I promised to sum up the insights that I had gleaned from it. The book is well-worth reading -- if not quite on a par with his earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel -- and you\'ll learn an enormous amount about a diverse set of past societies and the range of scientific knowledge (geology, botany, forensic archaeology, etc.) that is enabling us to understand why they prospered and/or declined.
The core of the book is a series of detailed case studies of societies that collapsed and disappeared because they were unable to adapt to demanding and/or deteriorating environmental, economic, or political conditions. He examines the fate of the Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the Anasazi of the Pacific Southwest, the Norse colonies in Western Greenland (among others), and contrasts them with other societies (e.g., the New Guinea highlanders) who managed to develop enduring modes of life in demanding circumstances. He also considers modern phenomenon such as the Rwandan genocide and China and Australia\'s environmental problems in light of these earlier examples.
I read the book because I am working on a project exploring why states (and groups and individuals) often find it difficult to cut their losses and abandon policies that are clearly not working. This topic is a subset of the larger (and to me, endlessly fascinating) question of why smart and well-educated people can nonetheless make disastrous (and with hindsight, obviously boneheaded) decisions. Diamond\'s work is also potentially relevant to the perennial debate on American decline: Is it occurring, is it inevitable, and how should we respond?
So what lessons does Diamond draw from his case studies, and what insights might we glean for the conduct of foreign policy? Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me as I finished the book.
First, he argues that sometimes societies fail to anticipate an emerging problem because they lack adequate knowledge or prior experience with the phenomenon at hand. Primitive societies may not have recognized the danger of soil depletion, for example, because they lacked an adequate understanding of basic soil chemistry. A society may also fail to spot trouble if the main problem it is facing recurs only infrequently, because the knowledge of how to detect or deal with the problem may have been forgotten. As he emphasizes, this is especially problematic for primitive societies that lack written records, but historical amnesia can also occur even in highly literate societies like our own.
By analogy, one could argue that some recent failures in U.S. foreign policy were of this sort. Hardly anybody anticipated that U.S. support for the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in Afghanistan would eventually lead to the formation of virulent anti-American terrorist groups, in part because the U.S. leaders didn\'t know very much about that part of the world and because public discourse about U.S. policy in the Middle East is filled with gaping holes. Similarly, the people who led us into Iraq in 2003 were remarkably ignorant about the history and basic character of Iraqi society (as well as the actual nature of Saddam\'s regime). To make matters worse, the U.S. military had forgotten many of the lessons of Vietnam and had to try to relearn them all over again, with only partial success.
Second, societies may fail to detect a growing problem if their leaders are too far removed from the source of the trouble. Diamond refers to this as the problem of distant managers, and it may explain why U.S. policymakers often make decisions that seem foolish in hindsight. As I\'ve noted here before, one problem facing U.S. foreign policymakers is the sheer number and scope of the problems they are trying to address, which inevitably forces them to rely on reports from distant subordinates and to address issues that they cannot be expected to understand very well. Barack Obama doesn\'t get to spend the next few years learning Pashto and immersing himself in the details of Afghan history and culture; instead, he has to make decisions based on what he is being told by people on the ground (who may or may not know more than he does). Unfortunately, the latter have obvious reasons to tell an upbeat story, if only to make their own efforts look good. If things are going badly, therefore, the people at the top back in Washington may be the last to know.
Third, serious problems may go undetected when a long-term negative trend is masked by large short-term fluctuations. Climate change is the classic illustration here: there are lots of short-term fluctuations in atmospheric temperature (daily, seasonally, annually and over eons), which allows climate change skeptics to seize upon any unusual cold snap as evidence that greenhouse gases are of no concern.
Similarly, it\'s easy to find short-term signs of American primacy that may be masking adverse long-term trends. Optimists can point to U.S. military predominance and the fact that the American economy is still the world\'s largest, or to the number of patents and Nobel Prizes that U.S. scientists continue to win. But just as the British empire reached its greatest territorial expanse after World War I (when its actual power was decidedly on the wane) these positive features may be largely a product of past investments (and good fortune) and focusing on them could lead us to miss the eroding foundations of American power.
A fourth source of foolish decisions is the well-known tendency for individuals to act in ways that in their own selfish interest but not in the interest of the society as a whole. The tragedy of the commons is a classic illustration of this problem, but one sees the same basic dynamic whenever a narrow interest group\'s preferences are allowed to trump the broader national interest. Tariffs to protect particular industries, or foreign policies designed to appease a particular domestic constituency are obvious cases in point.
Ironically, these problems may be especially acute in today\'s market-oriented democracies. We like to think that open societies foster a well-functioning marketplace of ideas, and that the clash of different views will weed out foolish notions and ensure that problems get identified and addressed in a timely fashion. Sometimes that\'s probably true, but when well-funded special interests can readily pollute the national mind, intellectual market failure is the more likely result. After all, it is often easier and cheaper to invent self-serving lies and distortions than it is to ferret out the truth, and there are plenty of people (and organizations) for whom truth-telling is anathema and self-serving political propaganda is the norm. When professional falsifiers are more numerous, better-funded, and louder than truth-tellers, society will get dumber over time and will end up repeating the same blunders.
Fifth, even when a state or society recognizes that it is in trouble, Diamond identifies a number of pathologies that make it harder for them to adapt and survive. Political divisions may make it impossible to take timely action even when everyone realizes that something ought to be done (think gridlock in Congress), and key leaders may be prone to either groupthink or various forms of psychological denial. And the bad news here is that no one has ever devised an effective and universally reliable antidote to these problems.
Moreover, if a group\'s identity is based on certain cherished values or beliefs, it may be hard to abandon them even when survival is at stake. Diamond suggests that the Norse colonies in Greenland may have disappeared because the Norse were unwilling abandon certain traditional practices and imitate the local Inuits (e.g., by adopting seal hunting via kayaks), and it is easy to think of contemporary analogues to this sort of cultural rigidity. Military organizations often find it hard to abandon familiar doctrines and procedures, and states that are strongly committed to particular territorial objectives often find it nearly impossible to rethink these commitments. Look how long it took the French to leave Algeria, or consider the attachment to Kosovo that is central to Serbian nationalist thinking, and how it led them into a costly (and probably unnecessary) war in 1999.
To sum up (in Diamond\'s words):
Human societies and smaller groups make disastrous decisions for a whole sequence of reasons: failure to anticipate a problem, failure to perceive it once it has arisen, failure to attempt to solve it after it has been perceived, and failure to succeed in attempts to solve it.
That last point is worth highlighting too. Even when states do figure out that they\'re in trouble and get serious about trying to address the problem, they may still fail because a ready and affordable fix is not available. Given their remarkably fortunate history, Americans tend to think that any problem can be fixed if we just try hard enough. That was never true in the past and it isn\'t true today, and the real challenge remains learning how to distinguish between those situations where extra effort is likely to pay off and those where cutting one\'s losses makes a lot more sense.
哈佛大学约翰.F.肯尼迪政府学院教授斯蒂芬.沃尔特（Stephen M. Walt）利用贾雷德.戴蒙德（Jared Diamond）所写的《大崩壞—人类社会的明天》一书，剖析了当今美国所麵对的问题。沃尔特指出，戴蒙德一书與美国是否正在衰落，这个多年来被辩论的议题有所关连∶美国是否正在走向衰落？是否不可避免？能够如何反应？对此，沃尔特在25日的美国《外交政策》作出了五点总结。文章摘译如下。
??首先，戴蒙德认为，某些社会因缺乏足够的知识和未能掌握足够的经验，因而未能预知一些正在冒起的问题，使之走向失败。远古社会可能因为未能掌握到土壤肥力下降的情况，他们缺乏基本土壤化学的认识。一个社会也可能因为他们未能察觉到问题的存在，如果那些问题並非频密地发生，发现和处理问题的知识可能会被遗忘。戴蒙德认为，对於远古社会而言，这是相当麻烦的事，因为古代並没有良好的记录工具。但历史健忘症（historical amnesia）或会在当代出现。
??沃尔特认为，美国近期在外交政策上的失误，是可以用以上的理解去解释。我们都难以预料美国当年支持阿富汗的伊斯兰武装份子对抗苏联时，会引致到反美恐怖组织的组成。某程度上，这是因为美国领导人对於当地的形势所知不多，也因为美国的中东政策是充满安全漏洞。同样地，那些令美国於2003年卷入伊拉克战争的人，也明显对历史和伊拉克社会（以及萨达姆政权）缺乏认知。美军遗忘了越战的教训也令情况变得更为恶劣。
??第二，社会或步向失败，是由於他们发现问题的存在，但其领导人與问题的发生的地点相距太远。戴蒙德称此问题为“遥距管理员”（distant managers）。这或许能够解释到，为什厶美国决策者经常後知後觉，並作出愚蠢的决定。美国现正麵对的问题是，他在同一时间所要关注的问题太多、太广泛，使决策者无可避免地依赖远方下属的报告，处理一些他们不太熟悉的问题。奥巴马没有花数年时间去学习普什图语，使自己沉浸在阿富汗的历史之中。取而代之的是，他需要按照当地人民所获得的信息来作判断（他们或许、或不比奥巴马知得更多）。
??第三，大量的短期波动，遮盖了持续出现的负麵趋势，或许会令严重的问题不被发现。氣候变化就是一个典型的例子。大量的短期大氣温度变化的出现（每日、季、年等），使氣候懷疑论者认为突如期来的寒冷天氣证明了温室氣體的排放是没有关连。
??相似的是，乐观派指出，美国仍然拥有军事上的優势，其经济體係仍然是世界最庞大的；或者拥有专利发明以及诺贝尔科学奖得主继续增多。这些正麵的因素很大程度是过去投资的成果，过份专注於此会使美国看漏了侵蚀美国根基的力量。就像英帝国於第一次世界大战後，其领土麵积扩张至顶峰，但他们的实际国力显然走向衰落。
??第四，愚蠢的决定往往是源於人们按照一已的意願而非社会的意願所作出的决定。讽刺的是，这个问题的起因是源於今日以市场为主导的民主政治。我们认为开放的社会能够让“概念交易 场”的功能充份发挥。不同意见的交错亦能够把愚蠢的想法除去，確保问题得到確定，並及时处理。有时候这大概是正確的。但是，自私的谎言和扭曲事实，较追查找真相更加容易和便宜。而有许多人和组织均认为，把真相告知是可恨的事，利己的政治宣传却是常态。当捏造者成为大多数的时候，社会将会变得呆笨，最终将会重複犯错。
??第五，尽管一个国家能够確定自己陷於麻烦之中，戴蒙德確定了一係列的因素会导致他们难以 应和生存下去。尽管任何人都意识到采取行动的必要，政见分歧或会使之难以迅速采取对症下药的行动（如国会的僵局）。领导人或倾向於“团體迷思”（Groupthink，指团體在决策过程中，由於成员倾向让自己的观点與团體一致，因而令整个团體缺乏不同的思考角度，不能进行客观分析）或者作出心理上的否认。
??加上，如果一个团體的身份是建基於某些独特的價值和信念，这将会难以放弃，尽管情况已经到了生死存亡之际。例如，一个国家或会难以放弃某些领土，並且难以重新考虑是否继续投资於此。法国就花了很长时间去放弃阿尔及利亚的领土。而美国或许能够反思1999年科索沃战争是如何破费，甚至乎是不必要。
??人类社会，以及其他较细小的组织作出灾难性的决定，有一係列的原因∶未能预见问题；当问题浮现时，未能察觉到问题的存在；当问题被发现时，未能试图去解决问题。以及，未能成功把问题解决。美国人倾向认为，隻要努力尝试，任何问题都能够解决，但这从古至今都不是正確的。真正的挑战是，美国应学会如何分析各種情况，在那些地方上投放更多的资源，在那些地方削减开支是更为合理。
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