DIPLOMATIC LICENSE
I may be wrong
When I broke the news about the impending arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping a few months before his Kathmandu touchdown, the ‘revelation’ was mostly greeted with skepticism. Where were the preparations to welcome one of the world’s strongest leaders? How was it that only I knew? For me, it was a simple case of a trusted source in Beijing passing the information. But did I really ‘know’ Xi was coming? Of course not. There could have been legions of reasons why his trip would have been postponed or even cancelled—in which case, many would have greeted my prognosis with derision.
Then I wrote of how, if he could somehow excuse himself from Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo could also come to Nepal. Of late the strategic salience of Nepal for the Americans has increased by leaps and bounds. Given how active the Chinese have been here, an acquaintance from foreign ministry recently quipped, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump himself makes the trip.” Then I said Narendra Modi could travel to Kathmandu, hot on the heels of Xi, for predictable reasons. I could be wrong on both counts.
It’s hard to forecast how even your closest friend or family member will behave tomorrow. In international relations, we are talking about the behavior of entire states, if the concept of ‘state behavior’ makes sense at all. Francis Fukuyama famously predicted the ‘end of history’ and the global domination of liberal democracies. Nearly three decades on, Fukuyama maintains he was not entirely wrong: it will just take a little longer for the total triumph of the liberal order to be apparent.
But in a recent Freakonomics podcast, he confessed to being wrong about something else: the Iraq war. Fukuyama had initially supported the 2003 invasion, but when no weapons of mass destruction turned up, and Fukuyama learned that the US had no exit plan, he withdrew his support. For admitting he was wrong, the ‘neo-conservative’ Fukuyama was lambasted by friends (who accused him of selling out to the left) and foes (who charged him with feigning repentance with blood on his hands) alike.
Again, it’s hard to predict or even make educated guesses about the future trajectory of a country, much less the world, as Fukuyama was trying with his ‘end of history’ thesis. With so many competing actors and interests involved, you wonder how anyone can ever get things right in diplomacy. Or if all those commentaries and essays and books on International Relations are any worthy. Professor of political science and the foremost authority on forecasting, Philip Tetlock, famously found that in soft sciences like economics and political science, the prognostications of experts are as good as those of dart-throwing monkeys.
He advises humility and reliance on multiple, preferably contradictory, sources to improve the precision of your analysis. And, like Fukuyama, the readiness to admit you were wrong. Easier said in a world full of Facebook and Twitter silos
