Failure to go out and look is the typical reason for persisting in a course of action long after it has ceased to be appropriate or even rational. This is true for business decisions as well as for governmental policies. It explains in large measure the failure of Stalin’s postwar policy in Europe but also the inability of the United States to adjust its policies to the realities of de Gaulle’s Europe or the failure of the British to accept, until too late, the reality of the European Common Market.
