\n<\/p>\n
My grandfather\u2019s idea of an Easter egg hunt involved hiding money in colorful plastic eggs sprinkled around his house in Long Island. Most held coins, but there was always one with a crisp, new $100 bill.<\/p>\n
My cousin, Billy-O, and I were the only players. We were usually playful partners in mayhem but as competitors, we took on every hunt with gusto, flipping over cushions, throwing open cabinets, knocking each other aside until, without fail, Billy-O found the $100.<\/p>\n
The first time he won, I fought back tears. But after a few years of losses, I exploded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just not fair<\/em>,\u201d I yelled.<\/p>\n \u201cLife\u2019s unfair,\u201d my grandfather told us. \u201cYou win or you lose.\u201d<\/p>\n This is what\u2019s called zero-sum thinking \u2014 the belief that life is a battle over finite rewards where gains for one mean losses for another. And these days, that notion seems to be everywhere. It\u2019s how we view college admissions, as a cutthroat contest for groups defined by race or privilege. It\u2019s there in our love for \u201cSquid Game.\u201d It\u2019s Silicon Valley\u2019s winner-take-all ethos<\/a>, and it\u2019s at the core of many popular opinions: that immigrants steal jobs from Americans; that the wealthy get rich at others\u2019 expense; that men lose power and status when women gain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But nowhere is the rise of our zero-sum era more pronounced than on the world stage, where President Trump has been demolishing decades of collaborative foreign policy with threats of protectionist tariffs and demands for Greenland, Gaza, the Panama Canal and mineral rights in Ukraine. Since taking office, he has often channeled the age he most admires \u2014 the imperial 19th century<\/a>.<\/p>\n And in his own past, zero-sum thinking was deeply ingrained. His biographers tell us he learned from his father that you were either a winner or loser in life, and that there was nothing worse than being a sucker. In Trumpworld, it\u2019s kill or be killed; he who is not a hammer must be an anvil.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump may not be alone in this. Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China have also displayed a zero-sum view of a world in which bigger powers get to do what they want while weaker ones suffer. All three leaders, no matter what they say, often behave as if power and prosperity were in short supply, leading inexorably to competition and confrontation..<\/p>\n Until recently, the international order largely was built on a different idea \u2014 that interdependence and rules boost opportunities for all. It was aspirational, producing fourfold<\/a> economic growth since the 1980s, and even nuclear disarmament treaties from superpowers. It was also filled with gassy promises<\/a> \u2014 from places like Davos or the G20 \u2014 that rarely improved day-to-day lives.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reversion to zero-sum thinking now is in some ways a backlash against the positive-sum thinking of the post-Cold War era \u2014 the idea that globalization could lift all boats, that the U.S. could draft an international order in which nearly everyone could participate and become a responsible stakeholder,\u201d said Hal Brands, a global affairs professor at Johns Hopkins University<\/a> and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. \u201cThe original Trump insight from 2016-17 was that this wasn\u2019t happening.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What we are now experiencing, especially in the United States<\/a>, is effectively a rejection of the belief in abundance and cooperation. It is an uprising against the premise that many groups can gain at once \u2014 a cynical, contagious us-or-them attitude, spreading across countries, communities and families.<\/p>\n With kids\u2019 games, maybe zero-summing feels like tough love. But on a national and global scale, it\u2019s increasingly hard not to ask: What are we losing with a win-or-lose approach?<\/p>\n Zero-sum thinking probably seemed to make a lot of sense for our evolutionary ancestors, who were forced to compete for food to survive. But the mind-set has lingered and researchers have become more interested in mapping its impact.<\/p>\n The most recent work in the social sciences builds on the findings of George M. Foster, an anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley. He did his field work in Mexico\u2019s rural communities where he was the first researcher to show that some societies hold \u201can image of limited good.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1965, he wrote<\/a> that the people he studied in the hills of Michoac\u00e1n view their entire universe \u201cas one in which all of the desired things in life such as land, wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Psychologists later confirmed that a sense of scarcity and feeling threatened are fundamental components of zero-sum thinking in individuals and cultures. A 2018 analysis of 43 nations<\/a>, for example, found that zero-sum beliefs tend to emerge more \u201cin hierarchical societies with an economic disparity of scarce resources.\u201d<\/p>\n But zero-sum thinking is a perception, not an objective assessment. Sometimes people will see zero-sum games all around them, even though for most of us, \u201cpurely zero-sum situations are exceedingly rare,\u201d as a paper<\/a> in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology recently noted.<\/p>\n Think about two co-workers vying for the same promotion: Yes, one might get it and the other not, but over the long term, their fortunes will also rise or fall together based on how their team or company performs. Even in sports \u2014 the prototypical zero-sum contest \u2014 losing to a stronger competitor can accelerate the development of important skills \u2014 as I keep telling my son when his soccer team struggles to score in a tough, local league.<\/p>\n Essentially, many people slip into what Daniel V. Meegan, a psychologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has identified<\/a> as a \u201ca zero-sum bias.\u201d They believe they are in scenarios of cutthroat competition even when they are not.<\/p>\n Many zero-summers like to picture themselves as tough, hardheaded realists \u2014 and sometimes a winner-take-all approach can lead to gains or victory, at least temporarily. But the science says zero-sum thinking is rooted in fear. It mistakes Foster\u2019s \u201cimage of limited good\u201d for wisdom and treats potential partners as threats, creating blind spots to the potential for mutual benefit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s why zero-sum thinking can be so problematic: It pinches perspective, sharpens antagonism and distracts our minds from what we can do with cooperation and creativity. People with a zero-sum mentality can easily miss a win-win. <\/p>\n But the far greater danger for zero-sum thinking is the lose-lose.<\/p>\n The last time zero-sum thinking guided the world, Europe\u2019s colonial powers of the 16th to 19th centuries saw wealth as finite, measured in gold, silver and land. Gains for one translated to losses for another and empires levied high tariffs to protect themselves from competitors.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has romanticized the era\u2019s tail end. \u201cWe were at our richest from 1870 to 1913,\u201d he told reporters last month. \u201cThat\u2019s when we were a tariff country.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, the United States is far richer now in household income and economic output. But of greater concern may be Mr. Trump\u2019s refusal to acknowledge the historical context. Economists say the mercantilism<\/a> and great-power rivalries of that imperial age hindered wealth creation, advanced inequality and often led to the most complete zero-sum game of all: war.<\/p>\n The 80 Years War.<\/a> The 30 Years War<\/a>. The Nine Years War<\/a>. Trade monopolies and empire building produced decades of lose-losing that cost huge sums and caused millions of casualties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What actually made the United States distinct, according to historians, was a greater adherence to the exuberant capitalism laid out by Adam Smith\u2019s \u201cWealth of Nations.\u201d<\/p>\n Published in 1776, the book pivoted away from the scarcity assumptions of mercantilism. Smith showed that wealth could be more than metal. It could be everything an economy does, otherwise known as gross domestic product. New riches could be created through productivity, innovation and free markets that let each country prioritize what it does best.<\/p>\n Nonzero-sum capitalism was pretty compelling for a young nation of striving immigrants. (The foreign-born share of the U.S. population peaked at nearly 15 percent around 1890<\/a>, a fact Mr. Trump also seems to ignore.) And in a lot of ways, free markets and sharing were harder for Europe\u2019s leaders to embrace. World War I and II were both spurred on by zero-sum approaches to international relations.<\/p>\n That line I included high up in this article \u2014 \u201che who is not a hammer must be an anvil\u201d? It comes from a speech that Adolf Hitler gave about the Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to pay reparations, disarm and lose territory after World War I.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s the 1930s, you correctly understand that if countries are not firmly in your bloc, they might be completely mobilized against you,\u201d said Daniel Immerwahr, a historian of U.S. foreign policy at Northwestern University. Only after the war ended, he added, was there an attempt to \u201cchange the rules of the game\u201d \u2014 to make the world less zero-sum, by assuring countries that they could get rich through trade rather than by seizing land or starting wars.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The United States built and oversaw that system, mainly through organizations like the International Monetary Fund. Which is not to say that Washington\u2019s outlook was never zero sum, or that the United States never got stuck in a lose-lose of its own.<\/p>\n I covered the Iraq war, after President George W. Bush told other countries they had a zero-sum choice: \u201cEither you are with us or you are with the terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n A few months ago, I opened a new bureau for The New York Times in Vietnam. I now live with my family in a country still dealing with the fallout of a zero-sum civil war that the United States joined because of its own zero-sum belief that any country the Communists won amounted to a major loss for America\u2019s way of life.<\/p>\n The consequences were severe: a toll of three million Vietnamese lives and more than 58,000 American soldiers,<\/a> plus a legacy of psychological trauma.<\/p>\n Maybe the world can avoid repeating such a catastrophic spiral. The global economy is more interconnected now, a potent disincentive to aggression. Many countries that have also benefited from the postwar system \u2014 especially in Europe and Asia \u2014 are seeking to protect its principle of peace through cooperative deterrence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Maybe zero-sum thinking can even encourage restraint. In the same paper<\/a> declaring that purely zero-sum situations are \u201cexceedingly rare,\u201d two psychology professors, Patricia Andrews Fearon, and Friedrich M. Gotz, found that \u201cthe zero sum mind-set predicts both hyper-competitiveness and anxious avoidance of competitions.\u201d<\/p>\n Some zero-summers may not compete, they concluded, because they do not want to cause the pain or face the costs that they think are necessary for success. They also may avoid contests that they do not think they can win.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump may end up fighting and fleeing, depending on the circumstances. He views other nations in only two ways, Mr. Immerwahr said: \u201cEither they are completely in your thrall or they are threats.\u201d<\/p>\n Simplistic, yes, but many Americans also see foreign affairs in blunt, personal terms. After I wrote recently about the painful impact of U.S.A.I.D.\u2019s demise on Vietnam\u2019s Agent Orange victims<\/a>, one reader emailed a short, telling critique: \u201cGet real. That\u2019s MY money.\u201d<\/p>\n What causes this kind of zero-sum thinking?<\/p>\n Economic inequality fosters such a belief about success. But zero-sum Americans may not really be squabbling over taxes, college, jobs or wealth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Jer Clifton, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who oversees extensive surveys of primal world beliefs<\/a>, told me the current backlash may be rooted in a zero-sum conviction about something deeper: importance.<\/p>\n Many Americans seem to fear that if some other group matters more, they matter less. \u201cIn 21st-century America, the more common, driving fear is not food or resource scarcity, but not enough meaning,\u201d Dr. Clifton said. \u201cWe are a people desperate to matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Under the old order, Americans found meaning in a belief that the United States was special. Our nation was built not on blood or soil but ideas \u2014 democracy, freedom, a chance to rise from rags to riches \u2014 and we were confident we could inspire and improve other countries.<\/p>\n\u2018An Image of Limited Good\u2019<\/h2>\n
With Us or Against Us<\/h2>\n
Change the Game<\/h2>\n