Article from September 2021: Western establishments have never responded successfully to a crisis, and they aren’t prepared for the ones to come

Below is the article I wrote on groupthink for Redaction Politics back in September 2021. Whilst I did not predict Russia's invasion of Ukraine (and potentially more than Ukraine), I feel the article is very relevant to the current situation. The West was slow too respond to the build up of Russian troops on the Ukraine border and even in the final days before Russia's invasion, there was still many in the West who did not seriously believe that Russia would attempt a full-scale invasion. 

We still do not know whether the invasion of Ukraine will be successful and whether Putin will go further if he successfully occupies Ukraine. We still do not know how much of a deterrence Western sanctions on Russia will impact Putin's decision making. The West is still making the mistake of treating Putin and therefore Russia's actions as rational, e.g. Russia will not invade Moldova, Latvia, Estonia etc because the further sanctions we would impose would bring economic deprivation to Russia. Putin has shown that he will commit war crimes, escalate his invasion of Ukraine & tensions with the West despite sanctions. He does not think rationally and so NATO must be preparing itself for war.

With this in mind, my article attempts to concisely understand why the West does not respond successfully to a crisis of any variety. It was written within the context of analysing responses to COVID, although the same themes are present in its current response...

Western establishments have never responded successfully to a crisis, and they aren’t prepared for the ones to come

The West has failed to make the most effective decisions in crisis throughout history. For example, the European establishment failed to prevent WWII, despite aggressive nationalism and subverting international treaties and democracy by Hitler during the 1930s.

Indeed, the policy of appeasement was heavily influenced by the idea that there definitely would not be another large-scale conflict in Europe due to the devastating economic and social consequences of WWI, rather than treating Germany as the unpredictable military nation that had occupied Czechoslovakia.

More recently, the invasion of Iraq was motivated by the wrongful belief that Iraq had WMD.

In all three instances, western establishments suffered from an ‘illusion of invulnerability’. A lack of scrutiny to plans, preparations and information has ensured that the West has consistently made poor decisions, informed by confirmation bias and motivated reasoning as much as any empirical evidence.

Groupthink, the idea that groups of people have a tendency to agree in order to maintain group harmony, has been an eternal factor in the failures of the West to prepare and respond to crises.

A system that incentivises loyalty rather than rewarding success means that there is a lack of cognitive diversity within the political class as those who are promoted to prominent positions are too often reinforcing the status quo beliefs, rather than challenging them through rational thought.

In October 2019, the UK was ranked as the second best prepared country for a pandemic, yet it now has one of the worst death totals globally.

German philosopher Hegel once claimed that ‘we learn from history that we learn nothing from history’.

Hegel’s words are a stark warning for the future. Western establishments have never responded successfully to a crisis, and they aren’t prepared for the ones to come.

Groupthink will continue to harm decision making as politicians and officials seek to pass responsibility on for their failures during the pandemic

REPORT THIS ADPRIVACY

The West might not be prepared for upcoming AI developments, nor the impact of cryptocurrency and climate change. We will continue to see crises develop in the coming decades, and the West are still likely to be slow and ineffective at responding.

To solve the groupthink issue, officials and institutions should be encouraging cognitive diversity and the use of ‘red teams’. Whilst preventing groupthink altogether is highly unlikely, minimising its impact on decisions is crucial to ensuring an effective decision.

This does not mean they are going to be more successful, but spotting groupthink must be the first step in making better decisions.