You’re at a company event and someone asks your views on China vs Japan in North Asia, or whats your perspective of the problems in the middle east… or what do you think will happen in 2014.
You need some cogent answers to difficult questions, and more importantly how they may impact your business.
So for your education, here are three extracts from Quartz.com, that will enable you to assess world affairs and to develop a cogent train of thought, as well as an extract from Quartz’s predictions for 2014. They claim to have hit 5 out of 6 for 2013, so it cant be too bad.
The 15 Quartz.com rules of global events
1. Muddle-along rule
On and off for several decades, knowing analysts have forecast state collapse for Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, and other nations. North Korea has been consigned to the ash heap of history annually for decades. Yet they have gone on—often with the help of the global community, but gone on they have. The lesson is that countries tend to muddle along regardless of the trouble, and not collapse, unless there is a reason for this.
2. Precipice rule
A corollary to Rule No. 1. Even the most violence-riven nations tend not to plunge over the precipice, as it seems they might, but to pull back if only at the last moment and not devolve into utter chaos and ruin. Often they need help—last year, Kenya sent troops to Somalia to break up the radical militia al-Shabab, for example. But absent the Precipice Rule, Kenya’s intervention would not have worked: Somalians in fact did not wish to dive into the abyss. So al-Shabab could be uprooted.
3. Conspiracy rule
There are no conspiracies… when you find a simple explanation for an event, the safest bet is to embrace it. To be sure, conspiracies exist—what would war be without them, for instance? But they are much rarer than many suppose. Generally speaking, groups of people do not successfully conceive and execute dastardly schemes; even if they want to, they are typically confounded by too many moving parts and human fallibility. Or put another way Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
4. Economic/health/injustice rule
A desire for these three things—economic success, good health and justice—is the big driver in political revolt and revolution. The inflection point is when a critical mass of individuals despairs for the future of its children, and youths feel they can succeed only under a different circumstance. Governments generally do not fall over questions of liberty and political expression, which are not nearly as potent as a collective sense of injustice, helplessness or outrage over the security or health of their children. To battle this rule, a regime will try to change the subject (using the potent factors of Rule No. 14—nationalism, xenophobia, jingoism and fear of instability) and, if that fails, to scare the wits out of its population.
5. Idea rule
The most over-rated of the drivers of change. Political ideas and theories, even when they are brilliant, only very rarely gain the critical mass to move events. But occasionally they do. A case in point is the Arab Spring. Originally triggered by Rule No. 4, the Spring has spread and been sustained by the idea of the right to rise against oppression.
6. Caesar rule
When states are muddling along, staying away from the precipice and not at the stage of revolt, as described in Rules No. 4 and 5, the only other way that dictators are typically ousted is defection or assassination. Generally speaking, a key ally or a few will either pull away from a ruler for their personal benefit (see rule 7 and rule 13), causing an apparently strong edifice of power to crumble, or kill him outright.
7. Staying in power rule
The ultimate objective of almost every leader in the world. Governments including dictatorships may seem sclerotic, but can become among the most nimble of things when under existential threat. Keep this in mind when you are tempted to say, “He will never change. He has always been that way.” When trying to predict actions in democracies, look to the next election to see what is likely to occur, or not occur.
8. Territory rule
Your territory is Among the most powerfully visceral forces in politics. A threat to even the slenderest sliver of land can arouse the primal and uncontrolled indignation of a people. When territory is involved, common sense can vanish even among otherwise worldly and balanced leaders and their people, leading to poor diplomacy and, if Rule No. 2 is not invoked, a drift toward war.
9. The rule of averages
As with most matters in life, events tend toward the average, the local version of the moderate middle. There can be periods of wild, insane extremism. But then people are prone to calm down, do business and seek strong, stable and bright futures for their children.
11. True-believer rule
While people and countries tend toward the middle, events can turn on exceptions operating on the extremes and big-personalities can galvanize people by creating true believers in a cause. Hitler’s Germany is an example. Today, Khamenei’s Iran, Afghanistan’s Taliban, Kim’s North Korea and Chávez’s Venezuela punch above their weight in influencing the geopolitical landscape.
12. Mountain rule
Certain countries are so large and their behaviour so singular that their actions can create and disrupt economic and geopolitical trends. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States are among the Mountains. When one or more of them step into the picture, they can and do create news.
There are three corollaries to the Mountain Rule:
- The future superpower corollary: China is not yet a military or economic power of the stature of the US, but since most assume it will be, it is more or less already treated and behaves as one. As a Mountain, it can and does shape and shift economic and political trends.
- The former colonial/great power corollary: When you formerly were a great power, it is hard to give up the mantle. France and Great Britain can act like a great power, even though well past their great-power prime both can from time to time play outsized roles in big events, such as France’s 2011 intervention in Libya. A problem comes, however, when inflated former great-power thinking conflicts with current powers, in which case it is regarded as a nuisance. Such is the case of Russia, a Mountain whose often countervailing policies seem to be Moscow’s strategy for keeping their long gone great-power status.
- The perceived great power corollary: India, Iran and Turkey all perceive themselves as great powers (and in the latter two cases actually were a long time ago, and as such also fall under the previous corollary). So they can and do behave in ways that impact events far beyond their shores. India projects its weight around the Indian Ocean and the Subcontinent, Turkey around the Mediterranean and into Central Asia, and Iran around the Persian Gulf and into the Levant. Russia, having lost its great-power status in 1991, interjects its leverage wherever it sees a useful opening.
13. Getting-rich rule
Why do leaders act as they do? Often, look no further than personal enrichment or enrichment of their strongest supporters.
14. Local politics rule
Most geopolitics begin at home. Whether deliberate or inadvertent, domestic politics are a crucial contextual determinant of future events. Among key local influences are xenophobia, nationalism and jingoism. American foreign policy is at the mercy of a myriad of local politicians each acting to keep their local power bases.
15. The Rule of Miscalculation
Certain rigid patterns of thinking can lead ordinarily smart and capable people including statesmen and generals into monstrous errors of judgment. When this happens in business, once-titanic companies such as Microsoft and BlackBerry can at once fall behind and even collapse.These consequences can be more ominous in war and geopolitics. That is because while, as in the East China Sea, they often originate in nationalism—the desire to look tough and not weak is paramount and can lead to local and national miscalculations.
Hot-headed, impulsive and exhausted generals, statesmen and soldiers are inherent to confused and contested situations, like China v Japan or South vs North Korea. You get a situation where one guy on the ground gets so fired up that he fires a bullet when he isn’t supposed to or confusion that the other guy fired when he didn’t, and you retaliate—but there was nothing happening in the first place.”
When this happens, decision-makers need to step up their capacity for ultra-clear-eyed rationality. The side that receives the hit has to say, ‘Did they really intend to fire that, or was there some confusion?’. The question is whether, as the close calls mount, the statesmen will continue to exercise such judgment and not miscalculate and press the red button.
And now here are some predictions to make you look good in business conversations…
Quartz Predictions for 2014
1. Iran and the outside world will strike a big deal. Both the US and Iran will try to conclude their talks well before Obama becomes a political afterthought. The negotiation challenge will no longer be just the nuclear matter, but whether Iran can become an accepted player in the resolution of other regional questions
2. Russia and Iran will take a larger role in global crises. Both will act as stabilizers ensuring countries dont go over the precipice, but will look after their own interests.
3. Chaos will prevail in Syria and Iraq, but not not more than today. Getting Assad out would require the introduction of Rule 6, the Caesar rule, in which a strongman is removed by either assassination or the defection of a vital ally or set of allies. Neither Syria nor Iraq will crumble into unmanaged chaos. This is because of the Muddle Along (Rule 1) and Precipice (Rule 2) rules; both countries will pull back from the edge and muddle through.
4. The East and South China seas will be no picnic, either. Brinkmanship between China and Japan will go on, but the Asian giants will steer away from outright war, unless there is a major miscalculation (rule 15)
5. The US will retain its crude oil export ban. Americans are neither cool nor rational when it comes to oil. They are hot-under-the-collar, emotional and nationalistic. Very much like the Chinese, the Venezuelans and Russians whom US officials are prone to criticize for unfair playing rules in their oilfields, Americans regard their country’s crude oil as patrimony. But more refined crude and gas will be exported.
6. No deal for Snowden. he will be neither amnestied, pardoned nor offered a relatively short sentence. If Obama signs such an order, he would be immediately pilloried as a dupe, and inflict immense political damage on himself and perhaps his party in an election year. No US leader would do something so self-destructive.