Noah Smith has a very, very long essay about how the run-up to the Second World War seems eerily similar to the current geopolitical moment, and not enough Americans are concerned about that. He makes some cogent points about the possibility of the Sino-Russian entente creating problems for the rest of the world, though he’s underestimating some countervailing trends that are also worth noting. Still, Smith’s opening paragraph caught me short:
Being the guy who’s always shouting about impending disaster is frustrating, thankless work. If nobody listens to you, and the disaster happens, you’re a useless Cassandra. If nobody listens to you and the disaster luckily doesn’t happen, you’re viewed as a fool. If people do listen to you and they take action to successfully avert the disaster, a lot of people will still say that your warning was wrong and the precautions were unnecessary. The only way you’ll ever come out looking smart is if the disaster does happen, and people heed your warning in time to mitigate its impact. At that point, you’re Gandalf. But the problem with being Gandalf is that it involves a disaster actually happening, so it’s not exactly something you should hope for.
As someone who has written at length about the marketplace for ideas in world politics, I have to say that Smith’s conviction that this marketplace incentivizes optimism over pessimism surprised me. From my vantage point, the opposite is true, a contention I made well before I wrote The Ideas Industry. On the last page of The System Worked I wrote:
In the world of international affairs punditry, pessimism sells. Professionally, it is less risky to predict doom and gloom than to predict that things will work out fine. Warning about a disaster that never happens carries less cost to one’s credibility than asserting that all is well just before a calamity. History has stigmatized optimistic prognosticators who turned out to be wrong. Beginning with Norman Angell’s errant prediction a century ago that war would soon become obsolete to Francis Fukuyama’s proclamation that history has ended, errant optimists have been derided for their naiveté. Policymakers prematurely declaring “mission accomplished” have suffered even more embarrassment.
To go further than that, Smith is definitely wrong about the downside risks of predicting doom even if it does not happen. Prognosticators can always claim that the bad outcome was only averted because of their warnings. Even if that turns out not to be true, pundits can always justify their pessimism as a form of prudence or caution. On the whole, the penalty for excessive pessimism is much less than the penalty for excessive optimism in international affairs.
So do I think Smith is wrong? Absolutely — but I also think I know why he’s saying it. As an economist, Smith is likely aware of two dynamics that lead him to believe pessimism is rewarded less than optimism. First, there has been a longstanding optimism bias among economic forecasters that often leads to rosy predictions of economic growth that do not match reality. Smith may be less aware that international relations scholars are more likely to overpredict doom and gloom, as are geopolitical risk consultants.
The second dynamic is even more salient. Smith’s observations about the downsides of predicting disaster do not make any sense in the world of international relations. They make a ton of sense when it comes to predicting a financial crisis, however. Anyone who knows anything about asset bubbles knows that warnings that the end is nigh are usually ignored and often ridiculed. A common trait to asset bubbles is to believe that the bubble is the new normal. Saying otherwise, particularly at the early stage of the bubble, does lead to “useless Cassandra” charges being bandied about. The point Michael Lewis tried to make in The Big Short is that the folks who recognized the subprime mortgage crisis as a bubble were often misfits, social outcasts, and folks on the autism spectrum. They were not treated as credible — until their predictions came true.
As an economist, I suspect Smith is convinced that playing the Cassandra will be risky. In international relations, however, predicting ten of the last two wars is often viewed as the perfect amount of pessimism.
All of this is to say that Smith is in error when he claims that he’s taking a risk in saying World War III is more likely than most Americans believe. Whether he is right or not is a topic for another day.
My read of Noah was his frustration that no one is acting like they believe it (taking action). I agree with you that predicting these horrible things is not unusual, but if there is no action taken to prepare he is right that no one really believes.
Is there evidence he's wrong the military production capacity issue and there is change happening?
Noah Smith is a smug jerk about history and historians right up until he decides that he can Dunning-Kruger his way into a historically-driven argument ...