Success Through Failure

I have finished reading Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design by Henry Petroski. In this book, Dr. Petroski postulates that the great failures of human designed systems occur in 30 year cycles. He attributes this to the generational nature of human institutions because thirty years is about the time for the people examined the last great failure to have been put out to pasture and that their solution has been become commonplace.

In view of the current US policy fiasco in the Middle East and elsewhere, I began to consider if the US policy followed the same pattern of major faliures every 30 years.

1916

1916 saw the invasion of Mexico by US forces. This followed the last invasion of the USA by a foreign army. This was Pancho Villa's raid on Colombus, New Mexico. The US incursion was unsuccessful in capturing Pancho Villa. US influence in Mexico waxed and waned over the next few years as the Mexican Revolution ran its course.

The prime reason for the entry of the USA into the Great War was the revelation about the Zimmermann Telegram, in which, the German Empire promised the Mexican Republic the restoration of territories lost to the USA in exchange for an alliance.

With the defeat of the German Empire, the focus of the USA foreign policy, during the next thirty (30) years, was directed to securing the southern flank of the USA against further incursions and unrest with invasions and coups throughout Central America. Here the USA was successful in making their influence secure through the use of naval and marine forces. The rest of the world was left to its fate with scattered US forces throughout the Pacific and in China.

1941

1941 saw the surprise attack by the Empire of Japan on the USA. The US was not prepared for an attack by a foreign naval power and so lost its power west of Hawaii.

The prime reason for the Japanese attack was the oil embargo imposed by the USA in order to get the Japanese to stop attacking China. If the Japanese acquiesced, then Japanese power was effectively curtailed. The oil embargo was an existental threat to the Japanese Empire.

The Japanese victories failed to secure the peace with the USA and its allies in the Pacific. US victory was inevitable given the effectiveness of the US submarine fleet in isolating the Japanese homeland from the oil in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

The Second World War allowed the USA to replace Britain as a world power especially in the Caribbean and the Far East. US forces were now in Europe, Japan, and throughout the Pacific.

1976

1976 saw the fall of Saigon to the Communist Vietnamese armed forces. 1973 saw the withdrawal of all US troops out of Indochina. The lessons from this failure seem to be to rely on non-conscripts;