Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

Jared Diamond, “Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis,” Little, Brown and Company, 2019, 463 pp.

I chose this book as it is one Bill Gates recommended and it is by an author I have read before.  This book explores how seven nations, out of more than 210, reacted during moments of crisis. Jared Diamond uses a series of case studies to show how these seven nations managed existential challenges like civil war, foreign threats, and general malaise.  The challenges described are almost entirely about modern national crises that occurred during the author’s lifespan (he is 82 years old in 2019).  Japan is an exception in that the author goes back to 1853 and Commodore Perry’s ultimatum to the Japanese.  The theory proposed by Diamond — a professor of geography at the University of California is interesting. Human beings go through personal crises all the time. We know a lot about how people change in order to cope — or fail to. What if we applied those lessons to countries in handling crisis?

Drawing on the work of therapists, Diamond reports that the key for individuals coping with a crisis is “selective change.” People who successfully overcome a problem tend to identify and isolate it, figuring out “which parts of their identities are already functioning well and don’t need changing, and which parts are no longer working and do need changing.” Diamond asks, Could the same be true for countries? He believes so, and he seeks to test his theory by adapting a dozen factors known to affect the resolution of personal crises to national crises. Some factors translate easily — just as people must first accept being in crisis, nations must first come to a consensus about their woes. Other analogies feel more strained —for instance, help from your close friends translates into material and financial aid from allies. Armed with this framework, Diamond sets out to see how well it fits countries’ actual histories.

Diamond’s method is the case study. Looking at Finland, Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Germany, Australia, and the United States at pivotal moments in their histories, he evaluates their courses of action with reference to his 12 bullet points. For example: Meiji-era Japan after 1853, needing to open up to the world while preserving its cultural core, found a way “to adopt many Western features, but to modify them to suit Japanese circumstances.” After World War II, Germany worked its way to take full responsibility for its actions and thereby successfully transformed itself. America, in part, because it shrugs off the lessons of other places, struggles to resolve its issues.

My Notes:

Pg. 4:  On November 28, 1942, a fire broke out and spread rapidly through an overcrowded Boston nightclub called Cocoanut Grove, whose sole exit became blocked.  A total of 492 people died, and hundreds of others were injured.

Pg. 60:  In October 1939 the Soviet Union made territorial demands on four Baltic countries: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.  Finland was the only country that refused those demands, despite the Soviet Union having an enormous army and a population almost 50 times larger.  Finland fiercely resisted, losing 2.5% of Finland’s then-total population of 3.7 million, including 5 % of its males. 

Pg. 102:  Commodore Perry’s ultimatum to the Japanese on July 8, 1853, began Japan’s transition to fending off and accommodating western influence.  This all accelerated with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when Japan embarked on a program of selective national change, and of using other nations as models. 

Pg. 121:  Japan today ties for having the world’s highest percentage of literate citizens (99%), despite also having the world’s most complicated and hard-to-learn writing system.  In the 1880s, recruitment for the central government bureaucracy became based on an exam testing Western knowledge, rather than testing knowledge of Confucian philosophy.  Now, higher education rather than birth became the stepping-stone to a high government office.  Among the world’s 14 large rich democracies today, Japan is the one with the most equal division of wealth, and the one with proportionately the fewest billionaires in its population; the US lies far at the opposite extreme in both respects.

Pg. 124: Each nation has its own familiar ideals and phrases responding to the task of creating a unifying ideology.  For example, American ideals have included democracy, equality, freedom, liberty, and opportunity.  (Hence: high school history in each country is devoted to teaching a rather myth laden history using selected facts, some true; teaching histories of other countries is relatively free to be factually taught in America.)

Pg. 128:  From 1894 to 1895 Meiji Japan fought and won its first overseas war, against China, and did annex Taiwan.  Japan then defeated Russia in 1905 and gained control of the South Manchurian Railroad.  Japan established a protectorate over Korea and annexed it in 1910.  In 1914 Japan conquered Germany’s Chinese sphere of influence and Micronesian island colonies in the Pacific Ocean. 

Pg. 142:  In 1973, Chile was taken over for 17 years by a military dictatorship that smashed previous world records for government-perpetrated sadistic torture.  In the course of the coup, Chile’s democratically elected president committed suicide.  The junta even directed the killing of a target in Washington D.C. in 1976. 

Pg. 145:  Chile shares with many other Latin American countries a Spanish legacy which established large land-holdings unlike the small farms established by European settlers of North America.  Hence whereas the US and Canada developed broad-based democratic governments from the very beginnings of their settlement by Europeans, in Chile a small oligarchy controlled most of the land, wealth, and politics.  That concentration of political power has constituted a basic problem of Chilean history.  Women finally gained the right to vote in 1934 and in presidential elections in 1949.  Secret ballots were not introduced until 1958, resulting in a decidedly leftward shift.

Pg. 147:  Developments in Chile from 1970 onwards were guided by two consecutive leaders who represented opposite extremes in politics and personality.  Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet.  Allende, already in his student days became a declared Marxist.  He aimed to bring a Marxist government to Chile by democratic means, not by armed revolution.  In any event, his election horrified the US and the Chilean military.  Allende’s first measure was to nationalize the US-owned copper companies without paying compensation.  He also nationalized other big international businesses and horrified the Chilean armed forces by bringing large numbers of Cubans into Chile.  He carried a personal machine gun given to him by Castro and invited Castro to Chile for a visit that stretched out to five weeks.  His policies spread economic chaos, violence, and opposition to him.  The long-expected coup took place on September 11, 1973.  Chile’s previous military governments had quickly returned power to a civilian government—not this one.

Pg. 155ff:  The CIA’s appraisal of Pinochet was: Quiet, mild-mannered, honest, harmless, friendly, hard-working, businesslike, religious, modest in lifestyle, a devoted husband.  As soon as the junta took power, it rounded up leaders of Allende’s Popular Unity Party and other perceived leftists with the goal of literally exterminating the Chilean leftwing.  Within the first 10 days, thousands of Chilean leftists were taken to two sports stadiums and killed.  Pinochet personally ordered a general to go around Chilean cities in what became known as “Caravan of Death,” killing political prisoners and Popular Unity politicians whom the army had been too slow at killing.  Hundreds of Chileans were tracked down and killed in other South American countries, Europe, and even one in the US.  He arrested 130,000 Chileans, or 1 % of Chile’s population.   (Apparently, in a democratic country this is possible when all political compromise breaks down).

Pg. 161: Many Chileans and the US government supported Pinochet for more than half of his 17 years in power.  In the US case, because of Pinochet’s strong stance against Communism.  The US extended economic and military aid and publicly denied Pinochet’s human rights abuses, even when those being tortured and killed were American citizens.   As Henry Kissinger said at the time: “Pinochet is better for us than Allende was.”  Finally, as the evidence of abuse became overwhelming, including abuses against American citizens, the US government turned against Pinochet. 

Pg. 179ff:  Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country, with a predominantly Muslim population, with about 260 million inhabitants exceeded only by China, India, and the US. In 1965 there was a Communist Revolt and communists tortured and killed seven generals.  Following this killing, the remaining military murdered about 500,000 other Indonesians & imprisoned another 100,000 for over ten years.  Among the mass killings around the world since WWII, only a few others have exceeded the Indonesian death toll, yet this atrocity is little known in the west.  Those killings remained mostly untalked about until a change of government in 1998.  In both Chile and Indonesia, they experienced a breakdown of political compromise and a leftist effort to gain control of the government, and a military coup that ended that effort and installed a long-lasting dictatorship. 

Pg. 181:  Indonesia didn’t become independent until 1945 (and it hadn’t been a unified colony until 1910).  Geographically, Indonesia is the most splintered country in the world, with thousands of inhabited islands scattered over an expanse of 3,400 miles from west to east.  They speak over 700 different languages.

Pg. 206:  Suharto finally fell in 1999 and Indonesia carried out its first relatively free elections in more than 40 years.  Indonesia's voter turnouts of 70%-90% are higher than the US which barely reach 60% even for presidential elections. 

Pg. 241:  Of the seven nations crisis dealt with in this book, four of them were marked by a single crisis abruptly exploding on one day: Commodore Perry’s arrival in a Japanese harbor on July 8, 1853, the Soviet attack on Finland on November 30, 1939, Pinochet’s coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, and Indonesia’s coup attempt on October 1, 1965.

Pg. 244:  The Thirty Years’ War, which was the major religious and power struggle between most of the leading nations of the 17^th century Western and Central Europe was fought mainly on German soil and reduced the population by approximately 50%.  Germany was the last large Western European country to be unified in 1871.

Pg. 258:  In January 1788 a fleet of 11 ships from Britain landed in Australia carrying 730 convicts, their guards, administrators, workers, and a British naval officer as governor.  More fleets and convicts followed.  Thirty-two years later, Australia’s European population still consisted of 84% of convicts and former convicts, and convict transport from Britain to Australia did not cease until 1868.  Today there has been significant Asian immigration as they now represent over 50% of current immigrants to Australia.

Pg. 296:  Today Japan’s population numbers more than 120 million and is healthy and highly educated.  Japanese life expectancy is the highest in the world: 80 years for men, 86 for women.  Japan is the world’s third—most egalitarian nation in its distribution of income, behind only Denmark and Sweden.  Social status in Japan depends more on education than on heredity and family connection, the reverse of US trends. 

Pg. 298:  Japan has problems.  The debt is currently about 2.5 times Japan’s annual GDP (America’s is about 1.0 times GDP).  Luckily this debt is owed to bond-holding Japanese individuals, Japanese businesses and pension funds—not foreign creditors who might not be so obliging.  Japan has few resources and depends on imports; their aging population and low birth rate is alarming.

Pg. 309:  As a percentage of a  country’s total population, immigrants and their children constitute 28% of Australia’s population, 21% of Canada’s, 16% of Sweden’s, and 14% of the US, but only 1.9% of Japan’s.

Pg. 329:  The US has 10 large nuclear-powered aircraft carriers; only one other country (France) has even a single one, and few countries have any aircraft carrier at all, nuclear-powered or not.  As a result, the US is today the world’s sole global military power that can and does intervene around the world.  (I think that even Iran could take out a carrier today).

Pg. 341:  The author feels that the most fundamental problem threatening America today is our inability to compromise.  The US Constitution sought to create pressure for compromise by devising systems of checks and balances.  For instance, our president leads government policy, but Congress controls the government’s budget, and the Speaker of the House sets the House’s agenda for acting on presidential proposals. 

Pg. 343:  When Obama was elected in 2008, Republican leaders declared their intent to block anything that he proposed.  That included blocking 79 Obama nominees by filibusters in just four years, more than in the entire previous 220 years. Democrats responded by abolishing the supermajority requirement for approving presidential nominees other than Supreme Court justices, reducing the safety valve available to a dissatisfied minority.  In Obama’s second term, the most frequent Republican tactic was to refuse to schedule a Senate committee meeting to consider the nomination; next most frequent was to refuse to schedule a full Senate vote on a nomination approved by the relevant Senate committee.  Even the filling of jobs much less controversial or powerful than a position as a judge or ambassador has been blocked. 

Pg. 344:  Why has this breakdown of political compromise accelerated within the last two decades?  It is a self-reinforcing process, because it makes people, other than uncompromising ideologues, reluctant to seek government service.  Another reason is the astronomical rise in costs of election campaigns, which has made donors more important than in the past and those donors are not inclined to donate to middle-of-the-road candidates.  Also, the election cycle is unending.  Domestic air-travel now permits legislatures to go home on weekends and not form any community among themselves (Gingrich even encouraged this, if not required it).  At present about 80 out of the 

535 members of Congress don’t even maintain an apartment or house in DC, instead they sleep on a bed in their office.  Gerrymandering is another reason for the breakdown of civility.  These districts do not lend themselves to middle-of-the-road candidates.

Pg. 347:  Our coast and big cities are now overwhelmingly Democratic, and our interior and rural areas are overwhelmingly Republican.  Each party is increasingly homogenous and extreme in its ideology. 

Addenda:  There are some errors in the book; I’m a bit surprised that fact-checking did not get more emphasis when edited. Diamond gets wrong the year of the Brexit vote. He claims that, under President Ronald Reagan, “government shutdowns were nonexistent.” But they occurred a number of times. He describes Australian-rules football as a sport “invented in Australia and played nowhere else.” But it is played elsewhere as in China, Canada, France, Japan, Ireland, and the United States.  Diamond says a 1976 terrorist attack in Washington, D.C., targeting a former Chilean official was “the only known case of a foreign terrorist killing an American citizen on American soil — until the World Trade Towers attack of 2001.” This claim wholly overlooks the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, in which six people died.