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Xi lives inside an echo chamber
Xi's isolation
Under Xi, there is a high level of fear that anyone stepping out of line will be punished, and most discussions inside China are domestically oriented. It is also very difficult to get the top leadership's attention.
The 1914 parallel
Before 1914, the political systems were set up so that reaching the top leadership when it really mattered was just as difficult, even though there was no lack of communication.
Putin's narrower circle
Putin is caught in some of the same trap because of his insistence on the war in Ukraine, although his circle is in many ways wider than Xi's. Only those who support that war fully and totally get any credence in the Kremlin, and that limits political choices.
How did court politics isolate leaders before 1914?
In Germany, the army and navy cabinets reported directly to the Kaiser, bypassing the chancellor and civilian ministers. Different officials could give the monarch different advice without knowing what the others had said. In Russia, Nicholas II preferred to deal with his ministers one at a time rather than through a united cabinet. Historians point to both arrangements as reasons that no single adviser could reliably get the leader's full attention in a crisis.
How does groupthink distort a leader's choices?
The Yale psychologist Irving Janis coined the term groupthink after studying the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. He found that a close-knit advisory group can suppress doubts to preserve unity. President Kennedy changed how he handled advice before the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, assembling a committee in which advisers challenged one another's assumptions. Janis published his analysis in Victims of Groupthink in 1972.
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