Joshua Cooper Ramo has an interesting argument: most of the leaders of our world, and our country, look at the world in the wrong way. His explanation is that we all are looking at the world in confined terms, unable to see the reality, that the future is unpredictable. Ramo uses contemporary physics experiments and interviews with “experts” ranging from Hezbollah leadership to Nobel winners. Those who have learned to view the world correctly, as a constantly changing and adapting world which fails to conform to any models, are the ones who are successful (i.e. the leaders of Hezbollah, some Fortune 500 CEOs, and a handful of physicists).
Ramo takes an interesting look at modern physics experiments. The work of Danish physicist and biologist Per Bak is of particular relevance to Ramo’s argument. Bak wanted to understand the nature of avalanches, most importantly, their predictably. He devised an experiment to build sand piles one grain at a time and see how they eventually collapsed. He found that no matter how many times he did the experiment, he could not predict the outcome, nor control it. Ramo used Bak’s experiment and applies it to political science. We cannot predict the outcomes of the next “grain of sand” into our global system, so we can only prepare ourselves to meet the global “avalanche.” We do this by understanding how “avalanches” work.
Ramo’s argument goes that we need to rethink how we look at the world, such that our concept of the very foundations of the international system is wrong. Our models are wrong. Thus, we are unprepared for events such as the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, economic development in developing countries, or Chinese advancement and global expansion. We just don’t understand how it all works because we all want to classify and model everything, but not everything is cut and dry. It’s unpredictable.
Although I agree that our leaders are often shortsighted, I disagree that we should throw out all our models. We just need to better understand the limitations of models. Often we want an input to equal a given output for every problem; we want a one-size-fits all policy solution to immense global problems. This just doesn’t work, but I disagree with Ramo’s argument that we need to start over in our thinking.
Ramo thinks we should take our thinking to the next level, understanding that our previous conceptions can be “mashed” together to make completely new ideas. However, his lack of clarity on HOW we should move forward muddies his argument to the point of ambiguity. It is a very hard argument to follow, especially since he uses unconventional sources of evidence. I personally don’t like the idea of following the legacy of ingenuity created by Hezbollah, although Ramo seems to think that it doesn’t matter the ends, only the means if it leads us to advance. I would argue that these advances are wrong. To an extent he agrees, using the ingenuity of Hezbollah to show the extent to which we must be ingenious in order to beat them.
Sadly in this, I think Ramo is correct; we will never beat terrorists, solve global poverty, or save the environment by looking at the problem the same ways it has been for decades. However, like most authors, Ramo seems to be better suited to complaining about the problems and has failed to provide practical methodology for finding real solutions to the problems. His argument falls short of being worthy in that the reader is left to puzzle. Beyond now looking differently at the problem, the conversation has advanced no closer to being solved.
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