Short-term Thinking for Long-term Actions

The better our technology, the more visible our actions, the more important it is to think about what we plan to do before doing it. Unfortunately, as we gain the ability to do more faster, we seem compelled but some internal self-destruct paranoia to think less. Whatever one's political perspective, we should all be able to agree that if our actions will have an impact over some period of time, then we should think through the implications of those actions for that period of time.

• If we plan an action with the intention of giving ourselves, say, three decades of control over some territory's resources, then we should think through how that control will actually be realized for those three decades.
• If the plan is for a nuclear strike, which will leave behind radiation poisoning some region for, say 50,000 years, then we should take the time to ask if we really want to sacrifice that territory for that long.

In other words, be clear on the distinction between a debate over whether or not a plan is justified and the process of thinking through a clear answer to the often overlooked question:

What makes you think your plan will actually work for the
whole time period over which you want it to work?

If you cannot think it through satisfactorily for the whole period over which your action will have an impact, then you do not know the outcome of your action and to undertake it would be irresponsible, perhaps suicidal.

Iraq: Not Just for Oil...

Greenspan admitted half the story in the now-famous quote from his new book that Bush invaded Iraq for oil - true but the other main reason was the right-wing, expansionist Protestant alliance with right-wing, expansionist Israeli Zionists. The second reason may seem a bit subtle to some, but if you did not know the first, you were either ignorant (easy in a country like the U.S., where the media spins a single, endless fairy tale about what is happening in the world) or in denial to the point of real psychosis. Nevertheless, Greenspan did America a real service by commenting on the Emperor's state of dress.

Given this issue's fundamental importance for understanding where the world is headed and why "they" hate "us," commentary on this issue is well worth following in detail. And (this comment is addressed only to my American readers; sincere apologies to everyone else), believe it or not, some of the non-U.S. commentary is a must.

For example, see "America and the Iraq Oil Grab" in the Pakistani newspaper Daily Times.

Viewing World Politics Through the Lens of Complexity Theory

One key to understanding is asking the right questions. Confusion about what actions to take to achieve national goals is rampant; the effects of actions taken are appalling; the outcomes of policies repeatedly prove harmful to the very actor who adopted the policy. It is evident that mankind needs to view global affairs in a new way, to ask deeper questions in hopes of opening doors to obtaining more helpful answers. Complexity theory offers a rich array of concepts that can help us ask deeper questions. Taken together, these concepts argue for viewing world politics increasingly as a group of tightly bound actors evolving together, characterized more by context than their innate nature, vulnerable to surprise from new groups whose members decide independently to organize themselves in new ways and for new purposes. These concepts argue further for assuming that substantive consequences can arise, sometimes rapidly, from initially minor conditions and that organizations and countries will have a dangerous tendency to push themselves to limits beyond which catastrophe is almost unavoidable. The resultant picture of the 21st century world of high technology, instant communication, tight international connectivity at all levels of society, and universal education is one of a political world not only constantly evolving but evolving more rapidly, where actors can change course abruptly, policies that worked can suddenly fail, and success will go to the nimble. For an example of how these concepts can be applied to world politics, see "The Iranian-Israeli Confrontation: Nuclear War or Mideast Compromise. Part I. Scenarios."

To understand the political world now coming into being, we need to learn how to use these new analytical tools from complexity theory (interdependence of parts, criticality, adaptation, co-evolution, self-organization, nonlinearity, criticality, and emergence):

Interdependence of Parts. When pushed, we may all recognize that everything has at least some influence in world affairs on everything else, but typically most people assume their own country has a fixed nature independent of the rest of the world. Most people also all too easily slip into the assumption that all parts of a foreign country share a set of defining characteristics. Complexity theory’s concept of interdependent parts sets a different baseline: unless you happen to have specific evidence to the contrary for a given case, assume all components in a class are the same.

Criticality. The conventional perspective focuses on addressing the symptom – the avalanche (e.g, revolution, depression). The complexity perspective reveals the build-up of pressures to the point where a slight push can cause an avalanche. The trick is to avoid the push by dealing with the pressures.

Adaptation. If the conventional perspective in foreign affairs defaults to be "us vs. them," the complexity perspective begins by assuming that we are all part of an adaptive system. Win, lose, or draw—according to this perspective—we are tied to the opponent. Consequently, the fight will change us.

Co-evolution. The conventional perspective denies that "we" can be influenced by the enemy. The complexity perspective sees actors adapting to respond not only to others but to their perceptions of how others will adapt.

Self-Organization. According to the conventional perspective, when a system is broken, say by regime change or military defeat in the case of a country, it ceases functioning. The complexity perspective, however, offers an alternative possibility – that the broken pieces will self-organize. This does not exactly mean that they will reconstitute themselves but create some, most likely novel, structure and start functioning again…perhaps for a very different purpose.

Nonlinearity. The conventional perspective is frequently to plan for a repeat of the last war; somewhat better, it may be to plan for acceleration of current trends. Complexity theory has bad news: the disproportionality of effects to causes will undermine all efforts at planning.

Individual Variation. The conventional perspective is that certain groups behave in a certain way. A group is judged "ready" or "not ready" for independence or democracy—without even considering the impact on the group’s behavior of, say, the colonial power that is repressing it. According to the complexity perspective, it is not even enough to say that everything is connected by a complex set of interlinked dynamics that generate a multitude of tipping points shifting behavior in one direction or another. Reality is further complicated by individual variation, which means that you very well may not be able to simplify by averaging over all members of a group. Thus, not only is the nature of a group not immutable (because all groups evolve in response to the behavior of other groups), but even at a moment in time, all group members are not cut from the same cloth. All (almost) characterizations of groups are false.

Sensitivity to Initial Conditions. This individual variation has huge potential significance because slight changes in initial conditions related to an individual can much later lead to fundamental changes in system behavior. Not only do our actions affect our opponents’ behavior but even slight actions on our part may ultimately have major impacts on the behavior of others. Thoughtful people intuitively sneer at hubris; this is the theoretical justification for such sneers. Sensitivity to initial conditions explains how current conditions are likely to lead to widely divergent future possibilities: rather than waking up to find the world changed, it is more likely that slight variations in initial conditions will lead to a slow shift in the dominance of underlying causal dynamics.

Criticality. The conventional perspective focuses on addressing the symptom – the avalanche. The complexity perspective reveals the build-up of pressures to the point where a slight push can cause an avalanche. The trick is to avoid the push and deal with the pressures.

Emergence. The conventional perspective is that one applies force and halts undesired behavior. The complexity perspective holds that force leads to disequilibrium characterized by a variety of shock waves of varying period and amplitude that reverberate throughout the system (because the parts are interdependent).

The implications of these concepts for foreign policy are numerous:

• dividing actors into good guys and bad guys is unlikely to be very useful because the context will have more impact on behavior than their fundamental nature (even if we could know what that was);
• reliance on past superiority is likely to be a dangerous delusion because the adaptation of the system can quickly change the nature of power, the results of the application of force are increasingly unpredictable because the range of response options is rapidly broadening;
• identifying the enemy will be increasingly difficult because enemies will shift, perhaps rapidly, and unimagined enemies will arise with little warning.

If we hope to create a safe political environment that beneficially balances stability with responsiveness, it is incumbent upon us to investigate these implications.

Day One of a War on Iran

In a set of recent posts, I explored some medium term scenarios (1-5 years out) for the various ways in which the future of Iran might develop. Here is a well-written scenario for the first day of how a U.S. attack on Iran might develop. As somber as this scenario may be, it is unrealistically optimistic from the perspective of mankind, however, because it is a scenario for non-nuclear war only. For some sense of what a real attack on Iran might entail, check here.

Has anyone else out there given this any thought?

Who Is Bush Fighting in Iraq?

Here is one estimate of who Bush and company are fighting in Iraq:

al Qua'ida ----------------------------------- 1,300
other anti-U.S. insurgents ---------------- 103,000.

[Patrick Cockburn in Belfash Telegraph, Sep 14, 2007]

XVI. Conclusion: Seeing Iranian-Israeli Futures...and Building One

In the context of spreading hostility from Pakistan to Egypt among the various forces contending in the region, the increasingly acrimonious Iranian-Israeli competition poses a threat the world ignores at its peril. This post concludes this series in which the concepts of system dynamics and complex adaptive systems were integrated with scenario analysis to consider how the Iranian-Israeli confrontation may evolve.

The analysis of the 15 posts in this series on the Iranian-Israeli confrontation raises some serious but generally ignored questions. Could Israeli democracy survive the decision to launch a “preventive” nuclear war? Could the Israeli people’s self-image as a morally exceptional population survive the guilt of nuclear aggression against a weak country simply because that country might someday pose a threat? Could Israel after such aggression ever be accepted by the rest of the Mideast or the world as a whole as a legitimate country? Can a people stray that far from civilized norms and just return to decency the next day?

How would an Israeli nuclear attack change the behavior of other prospective or current nuclear powers? How would nuclear-armed Pakistan, where Islamic unrest seems to be approaching its own state of self-organized criticality, react to the shock of nuclear attack on a Moslem country trying to achieve its natural place as a regional power? If Israel were to launch a nuclear attack because of Iranian insults and Iranian nuclear research, then what excuse for nuclear war would be too trivial? Will the world suffer through an age of casual nuclear strikes, replacing the era of global terrorism by individuals and small, marginalized groups with an era of governments gone mad?

Of course, we do not know.

Scenarios do not predict the future, but they reveal the shape of potential dangers and opportunities. Power and status are by no means the only significant forces motivating Iranian and Israeli behavior. However, the desire for power and the desire for status are such core influences over the behavior of Iranian and Israeli elites that looking at these two drivers alone already suffices to explain much about the irrational, self-destructive course these two nations have chosen to follow. Neither side is being compelled to do this. Each side still has numerous options, but as extremists strengthen their hold on power and the uninformed are sent an ever more alarmist message of doom, logic evaporates like water in the hot desert sun. Iran and Israel are moving steadily toward a doom that will leave no one on earth untouched. Evaluation of how various scenarios might develop is one tool for helping them to discover a better path forward…for all our sakes.

These scenarios are not toys, they are not parlor games. One of the great values of theory is that it cuts through the endless arguments about the unknown details of specific cases straight to the bottom line.

The methodology of this scenario analysis is useful because of its theoretical perspective. We do not know what will happen, but we can see that the milestones of “Victory for al Qua’ida” push the region in a different direction than the milestones of “Respect” because, for example, vicious cycles have different implications than virtuous cycles. We can see that today’s behavior will not just produce an instantaneous response and end but will have consequences that perhaps play out slowly or perhaps do not occur at all until much later. We can see that states of criticality are fundamental threats, the possibility of which needs to be recognized in advance and watched out for. We can see from many concepts of complexity theory—interdependence of parts, adaptation, self-organization, sensitivity to initial conditions, emergence--that intense inputs will generate unanticipated consequences, mandating that ambitious actions be accompanied by careful long-range planning, if success is to be achieved.

Scenarios, underlying dynamics, and the overall complex systems perspective combined constitute actionable intelligence about the future, recipes to enable decision makers to create the world they want.

• If decision makers want a Mideast of high tension; racial, religious, and cultural antagonism; where there is always an insurgency to justify occupation and regimes willing to become proxies; where outside powers can grab the oil they want but at the cost of funding huge armies to defend the supply lines from enemies they have created; a Mideast of colonies, lackey dictatorships, and apartheid, then these scenarios lay out steps to build such a world.
• Conversely, if decision makers want a democratic Mideast, e.g., one in which people have the right to choose their own path; a Mideast in which all compete in the marketplace for oil, but do not have to fight expensive wars; a Mideast perhaps characterized by wild politics but with minimal violence and focused on economic development; a Mideast that is not a profitable market for arms exporters but is also not a proliferation threat; a Mideast in which all people have states and all states have the right to exist, participate, and play by the same rules as their neighbors, then these scenarios lay out steps to build that world as well.

The choice is ours. It isn’t simple, quick, or certain, but given patience, open-mindedness, and careful analysis of the future, choices that make a difference do exist.

Scenarios provide models of the future – extreme possibilities stripped of contradictory detail. Dynamics show the dominant forces that could push events in a particular direction. Complexity provides a detailed view of how the whole system functions. Point predictions may be impossible. But point predictions are really not what matters. Complexity seems to be an analytical perspective with the promise of illuminating the processes that will make our future and the conditions under which certain of these processes will become dominant forces. That is what really matters if we care about the future.

Prediction #1. Iran and Israel will co-evolve: without either necessarily perceiving it, they will influence each other, revolve around each other like binary stars, each in its individual orbit but bound to the other by their mutual insistence on making the other a priority, and traveling
an unseen path together. Most likely, all the while each will see only its own uniqueness; neither will perceive the increasingly significant points of similarity as their mutual adaptation subjects them to similar pressures. Judging from current trends, each will feed on the other’s hostility to the detriment of both.

Prediction #2. States of criticality will occur in Iranian-Israeli relations. They are fundamental danger zones. A wise society ill avoid them. As tensions rise and groups organize to push radical agendas, thereby making tensions rise further,
it is easy to slide into the unmarked state of criticality where going one step too far leads to some sort of disaster – perhaps a tremor, perhaps the “big one.”

Prediction #3. Positive feedback loops will bring to the fore dynamics that were previously insignificant, and tipping points will be reached, to general astonishment, even though the clues will be visible well in advance.

Prediction #4. Adaptation will occur in unforeseen ways –
sometimes at an unexpected location, sometimes after an unexpected delay. However it happens, we may be sure that Israel and Iran will evolve…they will change, although our perceptions of them may not. The Israel still perceived in
some quarters as a plucky pioneering movement of idealists adopted selective assassination of terrorists and then moved beyond that to assassination of opposing political leaders. (Daniel Byman, “Do Targeted Killings Work?” Foreign
Affairs March/April 2006, 95-111) Iran’s messianic Shi’ite spirit of the early 1980s has evolved into a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. vs. the Taleban in 2001 and support for the U.S.-sponsored regime in occupied Iraq today. Change
is predictable; if unseen, the fault almost certainly lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Prediction #5. New forms of social organization and behavior
will emerge in Iran and Israel. Crisis conditions will intensify the tendency for such emergence.

Brilliance, decency, incompetance, and evil surely exist in international relations – but these traits are not the unique personal possessions of any particular actor. They are contextual attributes, sectors of the environment through which actors move, following a sinuous evolutionary path buffeted by all manner of influences. These traits are less attributes of actors than of actions. The high and rising complexity of modern societies surely makes peering into the future more difficult but also offers the thoughtful decision maker a rich choice of purposeful actions to create whatever future is desired.

XV. Emergence in the Iranian-Israeli Confrontation

The last section on concepts of complex adaptive systems that can illuminate the future of the Iranian-Israeli confrontation…

The conventional perspective is that one applies force and halts undesired behavior.

The complexity perspective holds that force leads to disequilibrium characterized by a variety of shock waves of varying period and amplitude that reverberate throughout the system (because the parts are interdependent). The effect of these waves, because of the complicated nature of the interactions, is effectively unpredictable in detail but may very well include the emergence at the system level of behavior that could not be inferred from behavior at the individual level.

Aggressiveness at the national level of countries whose citizens as individuals oppose war may be an example of emergence to which we are so accustomed that we no longer think it counterintuitive.

Emergent behavior is hard to identify and almost unpredictable by definition (it is only slightly sarcastic to define emergent behavior as behavior we were too ignorant to predict). At a minimum, the complexity perspective warns us to be prepared for something new. Given the existence of a complex system (and a modern country with its high popular educational level, tight social networks that extend throughout the country, and close communication links is a prime example), severe pressure (war, depression) is likely to generate adaptive forces that will lead to the emergence of dramatically new types of social organization, new goals, and new behavior.

Adopting a complexity perspective would have made it obvious to U.S. decision makers considering the 2003 invasion of Iraq that it would be naïve to expect Iraqis to throw flowers on the invaders: the injection into a small system of a huge amount of (military, financial) energy will generate new behavior. One can argue about the specifics, but there is no need to argue about whether or not new, surprising behavior will occur. It will occur and must be planned for. If the time, will, and resources to plan for the unknown are not available, then the triggering action should not be taken.

Even in the case of tiny Lebanon facing invasion by the regional superpower Israel in 1982 and 2006, the same argument applied. Although Lebanon had “no chance” of defending itself against Israel, in 1982 Israeli violence provoked the formation of Hezballah, which became the vanguard of the Lebanese independence movement. A massive and utterly unpredicted political phenomenon that continues to grow in power today emerged very slowly during 1982 and 1983 in response to endless Israeli violence against the Lebanese people. The same organization responded in a dramatically different tactical manner in 2006 but once again succeeded in persuading the vastly superior Israeli military that aggression was more trouble than it was worth. Powerful forces can emerge from small beginnings and take unforeseen forms...

The decade-long Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion and subsequent, now intensifying Afghan resistance to the U.S. invasion constitute further examples of the unpredictable course of adaptation of a society in reaction to extreme stress.

This applies even more to an attack on Iran than it did to Iraq or Lebanon or Afghanistan, for Iran has far more capability to resist aggression than those three small, weak states did. The only safe prediction about the consequences of starting a war against Iran is that the result will take us by surprise. The growing complexity of Iranian society with its now educated and politically mobilized population, highly experienced in political organization as a result of the half century of resistance to Western colonialism and domestic revolution, open wide the doors to a vast range of possible reactions. How Iranians may adapt or self-organize in response to aggression cannot be foreseen, but the energy and complexity demonstrated by the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon hint at the potential for the emergence of new forms of political behavior if a population is pushed too far.

This ends the section on how the concepts of complexity theory can be used to analyze the future of the Iranian-Israeli confrontation or other world politics developments; the whole series on the future of the Iranian-Israeli confrontation will conclude with the next post...

XIV. Criticality in the Iranian-Israel Confrontation

"Criticality"--the state of being organized to work at maximum capacity, right on the edge of collapse--is a concept that may
help us to avoid the collapse of countries into the chaos of war.

The conventional perspective focuses on addressing the symptom – the avalanche. Popular Soviet Bloc frustrations were unheard in the West until quiet East German self-organization in churches reached criticality, and people spilled out onto the streets in defiance of authority. Islamic frustrations were unheard in the West until decades of self-organization by fundamentalists brought them to the stage of attacking the U.S. mainland.

The complexity perspective reveals the build-up of pressures to the point where a slight push can cause an avalanche. Intuitively, the explosion of East Germans onto the streets and of fundamentalists into global terrorism seem to be examples of movements reaching criticality: somehow the East Germans and Islamic fundamentalists reached the point where they would put up with no more pressure, and a minor push caused a major avalanche. The trick is to avoid the push by dealing with the pressures.

Complexity theory typically speaks of the unified concept of "self-organized criticality:" self-organization that proceeds to the point of criticality at which point "the interactions tie far-away parts of the system together [so that] only a holistic description…will do." (Per Bak, "Self-Organized Criticality: A Holistic View of Nature," in Cowan, Complexity, 480) One aims to balance organization at the maximum sustainable point, but there is of course no requirement that the process of self-organization cease when reaching the state of criticality (i.e., the edge of the cliff). What happens when a society miscalculates is the subject of Tainter’s and Diamond’s books on the collapse of civilizations (Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, and Jared Diamond, Collapse).
The closer a system gets to criticality, the more "avalanches"—in social terms, protests—will occur. In physical systems, we find numerous examples of a "scale-free" distribution of events. Were this pattern found to occur in social systems, then we might view a lot of mild social protest (demonstrations, strikes) and a smaller number of violent protests and predict from that the eventual occurrence of one extraordinary terrorist attack. Research is called for.

Has the Islamic world now approached criticality as numerous variables (frustration with economic deprivation and lack of status in the world and loss of oil and corruption and mistreatment; rising awareness and ability to organize) interact and intensify? Does that explain widespread violence by small groups from London to Bali? If so, that hints at why we see few 9/11-scale events; in an arena characterized by a scale-free distribution, there will always be far more small ones. It also, however, in no way implies that another large-scale event might not occur soon – there is no implication that high magnitude events need be evenly distributed over time. If so, it also suggests that the protests neither begin nor end with al Qua’ida.

Israeli-Iranian relations are currently dangerously close to criticality: a slight mistake or provocation could produce calamity, after which the reverberations might echo through the system for decades. But this is not the only road to disaster. "Nuclear Standoff" could also evolve into a "hair-trigger" confrontation. The classic historical example of criticality was Europe on the eve of WWI. Since criticality tends to be invisible (earthquakes and avalanches are only visible after they happen) and disastrous, alerting decision makers to the possibility and, if possible, to evidence that one is approaching such a state constitutes one of the most important potential contributions scenarios that integrate the complexity perspective.

Chaos in the enemy camp may sound momentarily like victory, but that is a dangerous game in today’s interconnected world. If the trillion-odd dollar cost of the US invasion of Iraq were added to the price of whatever Iraqi oil the U.S. ends up getting, one would quickly see the price was rather high…and that’s without adding in the cost of the terrorism provoked by the invasion that is highly likely one day soon to explode outside Iraq’s borders. An Israeli attack on Iran would be likely either to cement the control of hardliners in both countries (a calculation they are no doubt counting on) or lead to chaos – hence the scenario title "Victory for al Qua’ida."

Criticality as it may apply to social systems is very poorly researched. These comments are intended as a argument that a sufficient intuitive match exists to justify serious study of the degree to which this concept may help us prepare for the social avalanches that today constitute such costly surprises.

XIII. Sensitivity to Initial Conditions in Iranian-Israeli Relations

The individual variation described in the last post in this series has huge potential significance because slight changes in initial conditions related to an individual can much later lead to fundamental changes in system behavior. Not only do our actions affect our opponents’ behavior but even slight actions on our part may ultimately have major impacts on the behavior of others. Thoughtful people intuitively sneer at hubris; this is the theoretical justification for such sneers.

Sensitivity to initial conditions explains how current conditions are likely to lead to widely divergent future possibilities: rather than waking up to find the world changed, it is more likely that slight variations in initial conditions will lead to a slow shift in the dominance of underlying causal dynamics. The first step on the road from "Victory for al Qua’ida," which so strikingly resembles current trends, to "Respect" might be as simple as ignoring a hostile comment by some Iranian politician and responding positively to a conciliatory comment by another Iranian politician. Small steps incrementally modify perceptions and lead to large cumulative changes in the behavior of an actor. These small steps can also start a trend:

Once a terrorist gang gets away with a few car bombings, then car bombings become all the rage among wanna-be infamous thugs everywhere;

Once a few irresponsible leaders get away with loose talk about voluntarily igniting nuclear war as a rational policy option, then power-hungry extremists everywhere lose their moral inhibitions.

XII. Individual Variation & the Future of the Iranian-Israeli Confrontation

Further thoughts on complex adaptive systems as a tool for
futurology in world politics...

The conventional perspective is that certain groups behave in a certain way. A group is judged "ready" or "not ready" for independence or democracy—without even considering the impact on the group’s behavior of, say, the colonial power that is repressing it. Members of a group are judged to be "terrorists" or "fundamentalists" or "imperialists" without regard for their personal behavior.

According to the complexity perspective, it is not enough to say that everything is connected by a complex set of interlinked dynamics that generate a multitude of tipping points shifting behavior in one direction or another. Reality is further complicated by individual variation, which means that you very well may not be able to simplify by averaging over all members of a group. This emphasis on individual variation is one of the fundamental distinctions between system dynamics, discussed in the earlier section of this study on dynamics, and complex adaptive systems. According to the complexity perspective, not only is the nature of a group not immutable (because all groups evolve in response to the behavior of other groups), but even at a moment in time, all group members are not cut from the same cloth. All characterizations of groups are false.

To say that "all characterizations of groups are false" is clearly an extreme statement…and intended to be taken as a theoretical guideline. The point is to caution against the vastly more common opposite generalization, by which a whole group is indicted as being "X" without regard for individual variation. It is not hard to find examples of actions taken in this spirit. So complexity theory provides the invaluable warning that one should make the default assumption that individual variation exists until discovering differently, rather than falling into the trap of simplistically acting as though "they" are all the same. One’s new view of the world will naturally be more complicated…but also more realistic. One will be sensitized to search for attitudinal and behavioral variations that one would previously have assumed to be nonexistent. We all know of certain roads where, in the fog, it pays to assume that potholes exist and drive accordingly.

When it comes to social groups, the assumption of (at least potential) individual variation raises all sorts of possibilities a skilled actor can exploit.

Since it is utterly obvious when you think about it that assuming
individual variation exists can open doors to gaining advantage, it is
curious why even experienced foreign policy practitioners so commonly
act as though individual variation not only does not exist but cannot be
provoked into existence.

Take, for example, the Iranian armed forces (Pasdaran, frequently called, in a questionable translation, "Revolutionary Guards"). The Iranian armed forces are reputed to do a couple things that "normal" armies presumably do not do: manage huge sectors of the national economy (including control over significant trade and manufacturing affairs) and conduct foreign covert operations. It is not hard to imagine that the generals whose careers focus on trade or manufacturing might have very different concerns (e.g., international stability so they can get access to the desired foreign goods) from the generals whose careers focus on carrying out covert operations (e.g., international instability that can be exploited politically to get permission and resources for more covert operations). This is an empirical question, which may or may not be true at any given point in time. But for a foreign country to make a policy toward the Pasdaran as a whole without first trying very hard to ascertain the truth of this hypothesis would be rash indeed and might well cement the unity of a potentially split organization.

The role of individual variation in the very brief scenarios in this study is far more muted than it would probably be in actual history, but even here, individual variation raises its head.

• "Respect" depends on a single creative and courageous Israeli leader’s willingness to stand out from the crowd.
• "Victory for al Qua’ida" also contains elements of individual variation, where the Iranian elite is seen as composed of individuals all along a continuum from moderation to extremism and posits that foreign threat will empower the extremists.

A different type of individual variation (not variation among individuals but variation by a single individual) was discussed in the section on "interdependence of parts." The point of itemizing a long list of different goals Ahmedinejad probably has in making extreme anti-Israeli statements is precisely that the relative importance of these goals can be assumed to vary in response to conditions, so a skillful reaction might alter his behavior even though he might well never consciously renounce any of his original goals.

Future posts will continue this discussion of how the concepts of complexity theory can be applied to the Iranian-Israeli confrontation and to international relations in general.

Part XI. Nonlinearity & Predictability in Iranian-Israeli Relations

Continuing the study of how the Iranian-Israeli confrontation may
evolve...

The conventional perspective is frequently to plan for a repeat of the last war; only slightly better, it may be to plan for continuation of current trends. Even worse, it may be to plan for continuation of one of several current trends – an arbitrarily selected trend that exists among many, a trend selected because one finds it beneficial rather than because it has any particular predictive power.

Complexity theory and system dynamics are both bearers of bad news: the disproportionality of effects to causes will undermine all efforts at planning. According to system dynamics, variables, trends interact. Under one set of conditions, a trend can vanish, under another set it can explode. Small causes can have huge consequences or no consequences; it depends. Complexity theory would have no argument with this, but would add several more layers, as suggested by the earlier discussions of adaptation and criticality.

The practical impact for foreign policy planning is that nonlinearity is an ever-present threat to prediction and understanding of world affairs. Nonlinearity pervades almost every imaginable scenario for the future of Israeli-Iranian relations:

Members of the Israeli elite call for nuclear strikes on Iran because certain Iranian politicians made insulting remarks; in response partly, perhaps to the war of words and partly, perhaps, to Israeli attacks in Gaza, Hezballah attacks an Israeli army squad on the Lebanese border, and in response to that Israel launches a campaign of ethnic cleansing that drives one million Shi’a out of southern Lebanon.

With responses this far out of proportion to causes, how can anyone predict the future? And although the above story reads like a bad Hollywood movie, it is not one of the scenarios in this study or even the creation of a drunken imagination: it happened last summer.

Nonlinearity also pervades the scenarios generated in this study of the future of the Iranian-Israeli confrontation.

• In "Mideast Bipolarity," grudging Israeli acceptance of Iran as a regional power transforms both Iran and Israel into moderate states.
• In "Respect," initial, low-keyed Israeli verbal concessions evolve into Mideast peace.
• In "Victory for al Qua’ida," short-sighted playing of the zero-sum game evolves into Mideast war.

Huge consequences from small initial conditions.

Can decision makers be taught to think before they leap?

Of course it is not necessary to study complex adaptive systems in order to realize that trends can be nonlinear. But in practice decisionmakers frequently do not foresee the likelihood that minor resentment will explode into full-scale insurgency or that simmering resentment will bring down a government. Complexity helps illuminate the processes by which this perplexing and seldom anticipated nonlinearity takes place: the adaptation of interdependent parts, the self-organization to the edge of criticality, the sensitivity to initial conditions. If complexity theory holds the answer to the future, we do not yet know it. However, knowing that disproportional effects will certainly occur is better than naively assuming tomorrow’s weather will be just like today’s.