Neocons and Chaos Theory

by soccerdad

In yesterday's Times of London (a Murdoch Operation)there was an article entitled Israel plans for war with Iran and Syria

There is some good information about the inevitable next war against Syria and Iran and the Richard Perle plays a prominent role in the article. I'll try to get back to the ever mounting evidence for the upcoming war, but for now I want to key in on the last part of the article.

Advocates of political engagement believe a war with Syria could unleash Islamic fundamentalist terror in what has hitherto been a stable dictatorship. Some voices in the Pentagon are not impressed by that argument.

“If Syria spirals into chaos, at least they’ll be taking on each other rather than heading for Jerusalem,” said one insider.

If I thought these lunatics would read them I would send them some fundamental books on Chaos Theory such as this, this or this.

For those not of a scientific or mathematical orientation chaos theory holds that relatively simple, but nonlinear systems can have very complex behaviors that are not always predictable. In some systems, behavior can be predicted within certain bounds but in other systems a bifrucation can occur. This can happen with a slight perturbation sending the system off into a very different and unpredictable behavior. Systems which are chaotic include the atmosphere, turbulent fluid flow, economics and the electrical activity of the heart. Even if one understands the components of a system in detail predicting their behavior when put together becomes extremely problematic.

Back to Syria. As juan Cole points out:

Why assume that the Syrians would stay busy with each other? If the Muslim Brotherhood managed to come to power, backed by the vast Sunni majority in the country, it could fairly quickly establish order and begin concentrating on getting back the Golan Heights and "liberating" "Palestine". The Syrian MB would be even closer to Hamas than the Syrian Baath. It would also be closer to the Salafi Jihadis fighting in Iraq. And it might well angle to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Israel might end up facing a massive, militant, fundamentalist Sunni state, aiming to unify all the Sunni Arabs in the neighborhood for a final drive against Israel, using Hizbullah guerrilla tactics and rockets and missiles. Sunni fundamentalists increasingly see themselves as caught in a pincers between Israel/the US on the one side, and Iran/the Shiites on the other, and would have lots of incentive to create a united front.

Where most people see chaos or the potential of chaos as a warning sign, the neocons see chaos as policy. The neocons see the meaning of chaos in its more traditional sense, i.e. a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order. Confusion and disorder are things to be taken advantage of. What Chaos Theory tells us is that their is no confusion and in fact that there is an organization and order, but that it is much more complex than expected. What appears random, is actually orderly and organized when viewed from the appropriate perspective. The inability for one to predict exactly what is going to happen should not be confused with the idea of disorder. Chaos is not randomness.

The idea that the neocons purposely try to induce chaos in the ME is summed in an excellent 2005 article by Mark LeVine at Tom Dispatch. It discusses how "chaos" has been used by the neocons to their supposed advantage throughout the Middle East. This is at the heart of the disconnect between most of us and the Bush administration. We see "chaos" and assume everything is going wrong and they see "chaos" and see policy. But what Chaos Theory teaches us is that the outcome may be completely unpredictable and in many cases uncontrollable. That is, once chaos is set in motion in a system, eg the group of states or peoples in the Middle East, the outcome cannot be predicted or forced, unless of course, you destroy the system.