In his latest novel, Cauldron, Larry Bond paints an unhappy picture of world politics in the next century. Harmony in the West has collapsed, the victim of a full-scale global depression, trade wars, resurgent authoritarianism in Germany and (of all places) France, and conspiring European industrialists. The ugly face of war returns to Europe-and not, as might be expected, initially between the West and a resentful, nationalistic East, but rather among the very Western nations which had supposedly transcended the practice of warfare itself. Bond's scenario is simplistic and somewhat far-fetched, to be sure, but it is nonetheless disturbing. For he has tapped into the most hotly-debated foreign affairs issue of the day: the future of international politics. With the end of the cold war, everything we thought we knew about the world community has been turned upside down. What was predictable has become unpredictable. Governments and regions that were stable have collapsed into hostility and civil war. These developments force us to ask basic questions anew: What will the world look like 5, 10, or 20 years from now? And in that context, what is the future of warfare? A close examination of the nature of world politics and of the factors that give rise to conflict suggests that any effort to explain or model or predict the behavior of nation-states or the future of warfare is doomed to fail. New mathematical theories of nonlinear, unpredictable relationships--the chaos theory popularized in the book and movie Jurassic Park--provide a more telling portrait of international relations than the more traditional, linear models in favor for the last four decades. In general terms, linear systems rely on equations whose elements can be written on one line, and which share the characteristics of proportionality (where changes in input are proportional to changes in output) and additivity (meaning that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts). Linear equations can be terribly complex, but they are nonetheless deterministic. Knowing the inputs means knowing the outputs; to understand a system now is to understand it later, to be able to forecast and predict its behavior and development. [7] Nonlinear, or chaotic, systems do not enjoy those convenient features of predictability and determinism. Chaotic systems are characterized by random interactions, complex feedback loops, and wild changes in results based on small variations in initial conditions. [8] These factors combine to produce events that do not conform to clear, predictable patterns. The bigger and more intricate a system, the harder prediction becomes; the more points of interaction, the more chance and chaos. [9] One aspect of chaotic systems makes them especially unpredictable, a phenomenon known as "sensitive dependence on initial conditions." Tiny changes in initial assumptions or circumstances (in fact, immeasurably small changes) can produce completely different outcomes. This feature of chaos is perhaps most evident in the weather: as demonstrated by computer models, weather patterns can evolve dramatically, even wildly, based on trivial shifts in winds or temperature. [10] This phenomenon is sometimes called the "butterfly effect," after the tongue-in-cheek metaphor of some chaos theorists that a butterfly flapping its wings over Beijing could, through a series of complex interactions, produce a thunderstorm over New York. But chaos does not imply total disorder. A form of order arises even within chaotic systems. This order is manifest in the form of "attractors," a set of points around which chaotic results tend to group. Chaotic systems have their own rules, their own trends, their own tendencies. These trends are not linear-they cannot be fully predicted-but they exist nonetheless. From this brief description, it should be readily apparent that world politics is chaotic. It is a complex system with many interdependent actors and variables, and every action begets unpredictable reactions. Very soon, even the most complex linear models of the behavior of nations break down, as events spin out of the control of forecasting. [11] World politics is especially susceptible to the butterfly effect. As the eminent historian Robert Conquest has put it, "In history and politics, in fact, the accidental, the totally unpredictable, is often decisive." Moreover, Conquest argues, "the decisive turn may be due to some quite trivial occurrence, hardly entering into the observer's consideration." [12] John Lewis Gaddis makes this case forcefully in a recent essay that asks why political scientists did not do a better job of predicting the end of the cold war. Against the trend of international relations theories that have tried, in the words of Hans Morgenthau, to develop a predictive "science of international politics," Gaddis argues that the chaotic elements of world politics make prediction fruitless. "Surely human affairs, and the history they produce," Gaddis concludes, "come closer to falling into the unpredictable rather than the predictable category." Not only are "the potentially relevant variables virtually infinite, but there is the added complication" of human self-awareness, which adds an even further twist to the feedback loop. [13] The essentially chaotic nature of world politics is mirrored in warfare. Combat itself is a chaotic enterprise, dominated by such elements as feedback, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, and chance. At least one observer contends that this conclusion represents Clausewitz's central message. [14] Martin van Creveld similarly suggests that the relationship between technology and warfare-an intersection at the core of the RMA-is chaotic. "Given the sheer number of the points of contact between technology and war," van Creveld points out, "it is exceedingly difficult to discern long-term trends," especially because the nature of technology and its relationship to war "are connected, interacting, and interchangeable." Van Creveld writes that "the interaction of technology and war at any given time has been as much the product of the arbitrary and the accidental as it was of the inevitable and the necessary." [15] It therefore appears that the future of international politics, the future of warfare, and the operational details of war defy prediction. The history of each of these three subjects is written in chaotic, rather than linear, form, and U.S. military planners cannot reliably know how they will evolve in the future. [16] This may seem like a common-sense conclusion, but to take it seriously is to draw some very specific implications for defense planning. Over the next two decades, U.S. planners will face a shifting, erratic menu of conflict. Small changes in world politics or national behavior can have dramatic and unpredictable effects. Traditional, comfortable ways of war will give way to dramatic new forms of high-technology combat and to ever more sinister forms of irregular warfare. As we respond to these changes, the model of chaos offers strict cautions about the degree to which we can influence the outcome of political or military events. [17] In developing a framework for military planning, therefore, the United States cannot make any decisive assumptions about the precise enemies or conflicts it will face during the next two decades. [18] Accepting these ideas would entail rejecting analyses that nominate one form of warfare as the singular or dominant threat in the future. [19] It would deny the truth of end-of-history optimism and the belief that major war is impossible, whether because of cultural factors or because of a shift to a "geoeconomic" era. [20] At the same time, it would reject realist pessimism that suggests large new wars are inevitable. [21] Anything, quite simply, is possible. This model of international relations and warfare establishes a difficult challenge for military planners: to find a broad framework capable of guiding decisions on military doctrine, force structure, organization, and procurement that will preserve U.S. capabilities at each level of warfare, from operations short of war to peacekeeping and counterinsurgency missions to major war. [22] This monograph now turns to outlining such a framework. Back to Table of Contents Revolution in Military Affairs Back to SSI List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by US Army War College. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com