Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics

by Francis Fukuyama

Book Overview

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A host of catastrophes, natural and otherwise, as well as some pleasant surprises--like the sudden end of the cold war without a shot being fired--have caught governments and societies unprepared many times in recent decades. September 11 is only the most obvious recent example among many unforeseen events that have changed, even redefined our lives. We have every reason to expect more such events in future. Several kinds of unanticipated scenarios--particularly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081572991X
• ISBN13: 9780815729914
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Playing with wild cards

"Prediction is very hard," Yogi Berra supposedly remarked, "especially about the future." It's hard to argue with that, but even skeptics must admit that such events as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the East Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s or the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 came as a shock even to most experts. Yet, for all its difficulty, forecasting matters. No one, whether in government or business, wants to be blindsided by oil shocks, declining stocks, environmental crises, global pandemics, natural disasters or any of the other nasty surprises that chance sometimes delivers. Can anything be done, or must humanity merely watch the wheel of fortune spin, hoping for the best? According to this modest book, something can be done. Even when specific predictions are hard, if not impossible, leaders can "plan for surprise" by developing scenarios, boning up on history, overcoming cognitive biases and learning to think about the types of significant disruptions that could arise. While this uneven collection of articles is understandably short on conclusions, getAbstract predicts it will help you think about the unthinkable.