No mistakes , just applied theory of chaos as a new grand US strategy

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jun 21, 2012 at 10:18

Hi, sara !

Thanks for your kind words. We totally agree on Israel which I support whole-heartedly.Now I wonder how many Israelis would answer "Yes" to the question : "Do you think that the US supports Israel as a matter of principle and not of opportunism " ?

I met a few that told me bluntly that given America's notorious record it will betray Israel the moment it can get a much bigger profit from betraying Israel than from preserving it. Well, do you think that bringing al-Qaeda and the Moslem Brotherhood to power in Libya, Egypt and attempts to do the same in Syria are seen in Israel as promoting Israel's security and national interests?

You write :

" Yes, you are quite correct in stating that the US has made her share of mistakes and misbegotten alliances. The two you mention are exemplary. Iran-Contra and fighting Russia via arming the Afghan Mujahedeen was in retrospect a critical error...

You are right again in reference to the mistakes made in Europe and it was again lack of foresight and oversimplification. However, we must hold on to something, believe in something. So we have to selectively remember the past and deal mostly with the present and future, hoping to have learned from the mistakes."

I wonder how often one can make the same mistake without giving rise to a more than justified suspicion this is no mistake at all but part of a plan? Leaving Israel as a special case apart, the US for the last 50 years or more has been amazingly consistent in supporting Moslems wherever there was a conflict between Islam and kafirs - be it in Cyprus, East Timor, the Caucasus or the Balkans and even in supporting more radical Moslems against less bellicose Moslems as we have seen recently in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and we can see now in Syria. These cannot be all mistakes. It is a strategic choice and I suspect some powerful people want us to believe that there is a mistake where to my mind there is none.

We have a superpower with global ambitions and grand goals which were once defined as followed :

"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia."

Now this principal goal cannot be achieved by means of classical cold-war-style moral, economic and military superiority of the US.The superpower is in rapid economic decline with unheard-of debt paralyzing every fiber of it.The moral forces have been undermined in the wake of the destruction of the American middle class and are further discredited in numerous wars and scandals. Its military are unable to win even small-scale wars like in Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone get engaged in a serious classical global conflict.

Under these circumstances to assure the unquestioned US hegemony an alternative method had to be sought and found. And indeed , there is such a method, namely controllable chaos. You create chaos in areas "whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate (or support) rival power" and which you can't control directly.

In 1992 Steven R. Mann published a small but seminal paper "Chaos Theory and Strategic Thought "[in:] Parameters (US Army War College Quarterly), Vol. XXII, Autumn 1992, pp. 54-68) . The author had started as an expert in German literature, yet in 1976 he turned to diplomatic service where he has made a brilliant career (and lots of money) working in such places like Jamaica, Moscow, Мongolia, Micronesia, Armenia,Ceylon,Nepal. Between 1998-2001 he was the US ambassador in Turkmenistan and later he was a special representative of the US president in the Caspian region lobbying for the pipeline Aktau-Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan.

In the paper he outlines how discoveries and ideas in physics have shaped strategic military and diplomatic thought forming once a Newtonian idea of war and diplomacy where deterministic linear forces act and decide who wins and who loses. But with the emergence of the theory of chaos in the 80-ies there is an objective need to review and replace the old doctrine. The non-linear chaotic paradigm of the theory of chaos gives an excellent tool not just to reconsider warfare but also international relations. This tool allows to better manipulate international policy to promote American national interests and inhibit and thwart national interests of rivals. There are four factors ( "initial conditions", "underlying structure", cohesion of a system and conflict energy ) that are responsible for non-linear chaotic effects. Unlike the two first factors the latter two can be changed to get the desired end effects. Decreasing cohesion of a system and increasing its conflict energy is a direct way to "criticality" - a technical term describing a point where chaotic effects set in. S.Mann writes :

" How then to use criticality to our advantage? The true aim of national strategy is shaping the broad context of security affairs , achieving the desired end state with the mildest upheaval. There are times when we will wish to delay formation of a critical state ; there are times when we will wish to encourage it and will seek to shape the reordering"

And further :

"We should therefore be wary of incurring policy costs to achieve a future stability…Indeed, "stability, like "presence", "nation-building" and even "peace" , is a contextless goal.When such a goal is advanced as a policy objective , it betrays either the inadequacy or the duplicity …of the underlying strategy.Stability is no more than a consequence , and should never be a goal."

" Each actor in politically critical system possesses conflict energy , an active force that instigates change in the status quo , thus contributing to the formation of a critical state.In our international system , this energy derives from the motivations,values, and capabilities of the specific actors ,whether governments, political or religious movements, or individuals.These actors seek change in the status quo through peaceful or violent means , but either course inches the state of affairs towards its date with criticality and the inevitable catastrophic reordering...

To change the conflict energy of peoples – to lessen it or direct it in ways favorable to our national goals we need to change the software. As hackers have shown the most aggressive way to alter software is with a "virus" and what is ideology but another name for a human software virus? With this ideological virus as our weapon, the United States should move to the ultimate biological warfare and decide , as its basic national security strategy, to infect target populations with ideologies of democratic pluralism and respect for individual human rights…With a strong American commitment …the virus will be self-replicating and will spread in nicely chaotic ways."

When one observes what the US has been doing in the world since 1991 and reads Mann's paper and his recommendations, one sees of a sudden a fairly clear, consistent and thought-through policy in pursuing the final goal "to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power." And the US support for Islam which otherwise seems to be pure lunacy becomes also quite understandable and necessary. Islam is an agent of chaos and destabilization per excellence, its promotion therefore is absolutely consistent and logical within Mann's broad framework of applied theory of chaos to serve American national interests.

If this is correct and if decision-makers in Washington and their gurus believe that "stability ...should never be a goal" and that "when stability and "peace" ...(are) advanced as a policy objective , it betrays either the inadequacy or the duplicity …of the underlying strategy" , then it is easy to predict what is going to happen in the future – more chaos, more Islam, more desecrated churches and displaced and oppressed non-Moslem populations, more destabilization, more disasters, more insecurity and , more death and destruction in the world with the loud slogans of "democracy", "freedom", and "human rights" which Mann defines with disarming sincerity as nothing else but a "virus to intfect target populations", a weapon of chaos.

In short, as long as such ideas as Mann's classics are followed and form the basis of the "new thinking" in America we can expect no good news from this world.

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