Magical thinking, myths and ignorance are not good for national policy!

Map source

I lived in Chile for a couple of years in the last days of the Christian Democratic administration there. The general opinion of people to whom I talked at the time was that Salvador Allende would win the next election and become president of Chile. At the time, there was a lot of poverty in Chile, high inflation and the economy wasn't working very well for the people. A lot of Chileans thought that by electing a Marxist president the economic problems of the country would be solved. (A lot of other Chileans thought that electing Allende would inevitably lead to a military coup and authoritarian government, as it did.)

I have long thought that many of those Chileans who looked to a Marxist government as the solution to economic problems were doing magical thinking. They did not understand how the vision of economic success would come true, but simply believed that it would do so as if by magic. In fact, the transformation of the Chilean economy has been accomplished, but it took decades of hard work by an entire society. The magical thinking was in the fact that people thought transformation would be fast, easy and by process which they could not foresee.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.  Albert Einstein

Of course, change was necessary. As Einstein said, to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results is insanity. In fact, the Pinochet military dictatorship did do something different, implementing a plan developed by very conservative, free-market economists, and with a long period of financial discipline and great efforts and suffering of the Chilean people.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.  Albert Einstein

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins133991.html#ixzz1jSYdiTcG


Perhaps, however, the problem was not so much magical thinking as belief in myths rather than facts. By 1970 when Allende was elected there was a lot of information around that Marxist regimes were not solving economic problems, and indeed that some democratic, capitalist countries were doing quite well economically.

The George W. Bush administration believed that the United States would be successful in introducing democratic government in Iraq and Afghanistan by invading them, overthrowing their governing autocrats, and nation building for a limited time. They might have believed that the experience in West Germany, Italy and Japan after World War II was proof that such an approach would work, ignoring failures in many other countries.

Perhaps ignorance is the problem. George Kennan was clear that it would be possible to introduce democratic government in countries that "were ready for it", but not in other countries that did not have the needed culture and institutional precursors. Moreover, the Bush administration, which had been elected promising to avoid nation building efforts in its foreign policy, might have been aware of the difficulty of getting the American Congress and public to support nation building for the extended period that would be needed to build rule of law, free elections and other democratic institutions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Too many Americans are too ignorant of other peoples and other nations, including too often the people we elect to high office. Indeed, the experience since 9/11 has amply demonstrated that this country did not even have enough people to staff the necessary positions in the intelligence  agencies, the military agencies and the foreign service with the needed knowledge of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or indeed the entire region. I recall that the State Department had gathered a group of experts on Iraq to develop plans for the occupation, but their recommendations were ignored. Thus, American not only did not have enough expertise, but it was not placed to be effective; those in power seemed to have ignored their own ignorance and failed to utilize the expert advice that would have been available.