SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE CURSE OF 'COLLAPSOLOGY'

For over a decade now, several books have claimed that one country or the other is on the verge of ‘collapse’. Most of these books are about China. Other favourites in this regard include Saudi Arabia, Russia and Pakistan. A large number of these tomes are written by American or European authors. However, so far none of their predictions have come true.

In 2015, two French academics, Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens, coined the term, ‘collapsology’, to define a trans-disciplinary field of study that explores environmental, economic, social and political factors that contribute to civilisational collapses. Collapsology as a term may have appeared in 2015, but its roots as a field of (speculative) study can be located in the 1970s. 

In 1970, the American biologist Paul Ralph Ehrlich predicted global civilisational collapse due to severe food shortages. He wrote that, between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish.

In 1975, the highly respected science editor of Newsweek Peter Gwynne wrote an article warning of a ‘new ice age’ which, by the 1980s, would block sea routes, destroy agriculture, and create global famines and unprecedented civil unrest.

Western political scientists and academics are often quick to label nations such as China and Pakistan as being ‘on the verge of collapse.’ But such ill-informed ‘predictions’ only betray the West’s inability to fully grasp the underlying dynamics that drive these nations

Many scientists agreed with Gwynne. But what the world actually got was ‘global warming.’

Present-day scientists suggest that, when these predictions were made, the technology and knowledge available today (to study climate change and its social and economic impacts) was underdeveloped and not fully understood. The same can be said about (Western) political scientists today who are quick to predict the collapse of certain nation-states. Their understanding of societies that they insist are on the verge of collapse, seems to be rather specious. 

So, no matter what economic, social or political model they apply to understand a society outside their own, it will produce scenarios based on their largely spotty knowledge of it. Recall the Hollywood film Zero Dark Thirty, in which common Pakistanis were shown speaking in Arabic. 

The understanding of Western political scientists of their own societies is mostly, if not always, brilliant. But for some odd reason, the same academic rigour goes missing when it comes to studying non-Western scenarios. 

In 2018, I befriended an American academic who lamented that just a year after she completed her PhD in Kremlinology (study of the politics of the now erstwhile Soviet Union), the Soviet Union collapsed.  I asked her, did the collapse take her by surprise? “Absolutely!” she responded. Then she added: “The collapse took us all by surprise. The policy experts, the think tanks and the White House.” 

There had been no books, papers or articles informing of ‘the coming collapse of the Soviet Union.’ Despite putting so much effort in understanding the dynamics of Soviet politics, economy and society, they just couldn’t see a coming implosion. 

From the early 2010s, when US think tanks and political scholars began to churn out studies in earnest about China’s ‘imminent collapse’, they failed to notice what was happening in their own backyard: the rise of right-wing populism. They were shocked when Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. 

No Western think tank or political scientist predicted the eruption of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ in the Middle East. Then, after concluding that Arabs had finally decided to embrace democracy, they began to engage with large Islamist parties with strong electoral traction. But they were left scratching their heads when huge protests sprang up in Egypt by those who wanted the elected Muslim Brotherhood government out, and especially when thousands of Egyptians cheered the fall of the regime in a military coup.

The ‘experts’ — some specialising in Muslim Brotherhood and advising US President Barack Obama — entirely failed to understand the social, economic and political complexities of Egyptian society. 

On many occasions, I have met some US academics and scholars who are entirely focused on building a case for ‘China’s coming collapse.’ But I believe their understanding of China is as good as mine.  China was rising when the West’s attention became focused on it. This was in the mid-2000s. By the late 2010s, China began to be seen as a ‘threat’. One that was ‘destined to collapse.’ 

In 2022, Zhang Yiwu, director of the China Institute of Fudan University, was quoted as saying: “Western political science is based on the experience of Western history. So, when Western scholars use it to analyse a country with an entirely different civilisation, they come to unreliable conclusions.” 

Many Western academics and political scientists have dished out numerous studies, articles and books on Pakistan being ‘on the brink of collapse.’ This has been going on for years. Indeed, political stability in this country has often been an elusive item. But there has been a growing underlying consensus among its diverse ethnic and sectarian communities on the importance of the nation-state remaining intact. The economic interests of these communities are now deeply rooted in the political economy of the country.

It is true that, within the communities, there are, on the one hand, those who want to separate, and on the other hand, those who want to impose a totalitarian strand of Islamism. But they remain on the fringes — even though they tend to dominate the news due to their violent ways. There are also the ones who voluntarily play in the hands of certain foreign

powers looking to undercut Pakistan’s foreign policy (vis-a-vis China) by destabilising (but not dismantling) this nuclear state. 

This is important for the collapsologists focused on Pakistan to understand. Certain external forces may want to destabilise Pakistan, because of various geopolitical compulsions, but they will always hesitate to push it over the brink. 

Collapsologists get a tad too excited when Pakistan’s powerful military establishment (ME) becomes the focus of internal criticism. They greatly underestimate the fact that the ME is too deeply entrenched in the country’s economy and politics and perhaps the only stable state institution in the country. 

In a September 2023 article, the British diplomat and professor of war studies, Tim Willasey-Wilsey wrote that, in a nuclear state such as Pakistan, the survival of a disciplined army should matter a lot. He wrote that it should matter to India as well, “because the disintegration of Pakistan would provoke a regional catastrophe.”

So, collapsologists in this regard often miss the underlying consensus among the country’s communities, the fringe nature of separatists and totalitarians and, most of all, the West’s (albeit grudging) need to keep Pakistan afloat — unless it wants to see the country’s nuclear arsenal falling in the hands of trigger-happy lunatics.

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 5th, 2025