Father Raymond J. de Souza: The known unknowns of geopolitics

Humility is not a word often associated with Donald Rumsfeld, the twice former secretary of defence. He is back in the news, promoting his autobiography, Known and Unknown. The title comes from a press conference he gave nine years ago this coming Saturday: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Much ridiculed at the time, it turns out that those “unknown unknowns” are rather important. Egypt is an unknown unknown — those who are supposed to know about such things did not know that they did not know. Perhaps this lesson has been painfully learned. 

Hosni Mubarak was living in a serene world of unknown unknowns just a few weeks ago. Events teach us what we do not know, and that what we thought we knew we often didn’t. Rumsfeld himself learned of that folly to great and damaging consequence.

If we cannot be humble, we should at least be skeptical. For those of us who studied economics, the unpredictability of history brings to mind the spectacular failings of some in regard to the Soviet Union. As late as 1989, the acclaimed Lester Thurow, dean of management at MIT, was writing that the economic achievements of the Soviet Union were comparable to the United States. Paul Samuelson, the Noble laureate whose economics textbook was standard for generations, consistently got the Soviet economy wrong. In the 1989 edition, Samuelson wrote that “contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed … the Soviet economy is proof that a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.” In 1989! The skeptics were right; the most celebrated economist of his generation was wrong.

I remember being in Jerusalem in early 2006, listening to several days of security briefings, most of which predicted a war with Iran either that year or the next. Nobody said anything about Lebanon. Within six months, Israel was at war in Lebanon. The imminent war with Iran is still on hold.

In foreign policy, we don’t know all that we don’t know. But we ought to know that there is much that we don’t know (humility) and not to be too confident in what we think we know (skepticism). Egypt has taught us that again.

National Post

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