The globalization of chaos

No matter how many dirty tricks the USSR and USA used against each other the 'cold' war between the two powers was orderly because it developed a predictability. That's the way things go when only a few deploy dirty tricks; no matter how much damage they do, they don't set off chaos. But once many governments found the means to play dirty tricks, the Monkey See Monkey Do syndrome set in:  If the Americans and Soviets could do it, why can't we?

And so even pipsqueak governments mounted 'black ops,' information warfare, proxy war using mercenary armies; instigated phony people's revolutions; and forged insane alliances with enemies, on the limited theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Sensing big profits from pipsqueaks playing superpower the rentier, ex-military, and revolving-door crowds (in and out of civilian and government jobs) sold their expertise to the highest bidders on how to take down another government without actually sending tanks across the border.

Soon these crowds were taking over the show, until nobody could figure out who or what was fighting whom and why.

The upshot was chaos on a global scale. 

The spectacular warning that things had gotten completely out of hand came with the 2010 Red Shirt peaceful protests in Bangkok.

Inside the ramshackle Red Shirts camp and unseen by outsiders was a secret armed camp made up mostly of ex-military loyal to Thailand's deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Those were the Black Shirts. Their role was to stage provocations against the military, which retaliated against the Red Shirts, who would then cry to the TV cameras. It went on like that for more than month until there was chaos.

     

That was how one man with deep pockets and some friends in the country's military and among the rentier and revolving door crowds in Washington, DC nearly toppled the government of Thailand. If not for the huge ego of the commander of the Black Shirts, Shinawatra might well have pulled it off.

But Seh Daeng couldn't resist the spotlight. He just had to boast to the Western press. He agreed to meet a group of them outside, under cover of darkness. Then a reporter told Seh Daeng the video camera needed light to show him speaking his momentous words.  

As soon as the camera light switched on, one shot was fired from a Winchester .308 rifle with a silencer. Sniper shot to the head. 

Seh Daeng lingered a few days and the Red Shirt protests limped on a few more days but his death was the end of a clever clandestine operation to bring down a government in record time while using peaceful protests as cover.

When things get to the point where just one man can reasonably hope to bring down a government, this is no longer Monkey See Monkey Do; we're in Kaiser Soze territory.

What now? On the heels of chaos comes attempts to reimpose order. Thus, the New Cold War, in which Pentagon and NATO chiefs scramble to recreate the order of the good old days, when it was just our gang against their gang. 

However, the punchline to the New Cold War is the same as the one for the Old Cold War: 14 minutes after one side's launch of a nuclear missile, it's the end for living creatures.

If the initial nuke launch turns out to be in retaliation to a seagull flying off course or a computer glitch, well, the people with their finger on the counter-launch button have 14 minutes to figure this out.  

(Amazingly, there are still some people in this world who don't believe in the existence of God.)  

As to the global chaos, did they learn their lesson in Syria, which saw seven foreign governments, each for their own reasons, trying to overthrow the country's government?  

Only one thing is certain. It was Islamic State, a non-state actor, which made a financial killing in the oil trade while those seven governments unleashed chaos in Syria and fell to squabbling with each other. 

Once again, it's the Kaiser Soze model that profits most from chaos.    

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