If you scan social media during a crisis, you’ll find a plethora of analysts announcing that the world will never be the same again. The current US-Israel-Iran war is no exception, with many proclamations of profound changes to supply chains and energy systems awaiting us once the dust settles. Crises do on occasion herald deep transformations. However, much of the time, a few months into the post-crisis phase, we find ourselves in a virtual reset with barely a trace of the calamity. That’s why it’s important to understand why humans tend to expect seismic changes when disasters are often more likely to yield little more than evolutionary blips.
In 1853, a group of American ships led by Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan, carrying with them a list of demands that Japan open itself to the world. To the closed Tokugawa shogunate that existed in the Asian island empire, the ensuing crisis was transformational. A mere 15 years later, the rule of Emperor Meiji was restored, and Japan embarked on a breakneck modernisation programme that took it from a quasi-medieval state to a modern powerhouse that defeated the Russian Empire in less than 60 years.
At the time of Perry’s arrival, Japan lacked modern media, and there were no Instagram or X channels for experts to disseminate their views. However, had the talking heads that dominate 21st-century public discourse been around, then it would have been one of the notable occasions where predictions of profound change turned out to be true. In the case of the crisis currently unfolding in the Arabian Gulf, there is no shortage of analysts designating 2026 as a watershed moment in supply chains, the Sino-American cold war, the balance of power in the Middle East, and numerous other dimensions. The common denominator in these assessments is that the world will never be the same again, tacitly classifying anyone who expects a return to the previous state of affairs as a naïve idealist out of touch with the region’s latest birth pangs.
Yet as the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated, many of these predictions can end up being spectacularly wrong, with a return to the pre-crisis configuration arising remarkably swiftly. A non-exhaustive list includes: “A permanent urban exodus is upon us and cities are finished”; “remote work will slay office work”; “supply chain localisation will signal the death of globalisation;” “air travel and tourism will take a decade to recover”; “physical retail is going the way of the dodo”; and the one whose inaccuracy we are most grateful for: “online learning will replace schools and universities”.
The pontification deluge was by no means a unique trait of Covid-19, raising the question of why experts are so drawn to this type of sensationalism. Two reasons dominate, the first of which is basic human biology: we – ordinary people and experts alike – are hardwired to overreact when we experience a trauma. The extreme stress we endure during a crisis makes our brains try extra hard to avoid repeating the experience, making us consciously and unconsciously explore steps that ensure “the world must never be the same again”. However, when the calamity subsides, the human propensity to form and maintain habits tends to reassert itself, and we classify the previous expectations of permanent rupture as crisis-induced hysteria.
The second reason is more strategic: experts competing for attention in a crowded media space will gravitate toward eye-catching narratives, as few people will be excited by the prospect of reading an article that explains why the current crisis will change absolutely nothing. It is not just a matter of clickbait: analysts operating in the public domain will be eyeing lucrative consulting gigs should they convince a well-funded institution that their outlandish prediction is probable. After all, who better to advise a company on how to adapt to the new world order than the expert heralding its genesis?
In the context of the US-Israel-Iran war, some of the popular forecasts circulating are that there will be a sharp and permanent contraction in the demand for Gulf hydrocarbons, and that the Strait of Hormuz will never again operate as a free sea lane. Further, several analysts are predicting the destruction of the GCC economic model that involves high immigration, low taxes and the ability to attract foreign capital.
It would be imprudent to cavalierly dismiss such predictions as the analysis upon which they rest has merit. Yet one should also keep in mind the modest track record that experts have when imagining what the world will look like after a crisis ends, especially when we are only a few weeks into that crisis. The Arabian Gulf countries need to prepare for a potentially different world, but they should also allow for a return to business as usual, no matter how improbable that seems at present. As the French critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once quipped: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
