| Chaos theory, as formulated by mathematicians and physicists three decades ago, attempts to identify the rules or laws that govern any system which – on the face of it – lacks a sense of order, such as smoke rising from a cigarette, a flag snapping in the wind or a highway pile-up.
The key to this theory is "sensitive dependence on initial conditions," the idea that tiny differences in input can quickly become massive differences in output – the so-called butterfly effect, in which a butterfly flapping its wings one week in Brazil sets in motion a weather system that results in a storm in New York a week later.
Since the end of the Cold War, an apparent sense of chaos has prevailed in international affairs. Gone was the over-arching framework – capitalism versus communism, democracy versus dictatorship, good versus evil, etc. – that structured events since the end of the Second World War. In its place was a sense of confusion, unease and, well, chaos.
This new zeitgeist was evident in the titles of books that attempted to describe the post-Cold War world. Picking a few at random, Ken Jowett’s New World Disorder (1992), Robert Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy (2000), Robert Harvey’s Global Disorder (2003) and Philippe Sands’ Lawless World (2005) all capture the dominant mood of our times.
Or do they? Is the world really now subject to random chance and chaos, or – like that swirling smoke and snapping flag – does it still rest upon an underlying order that follows particular rules and laws? Can chaos theory help provide answers to such questions?
The problem with chaos theory and its "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" is determining just what (and when) these "initial conditions" are. Which flap of the butterfly’s wings are we talking about? All the same, and with or without the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult not to pinpoint 9/11 as a clear juncture in recent history. For all the anarchy and chaos that may have prevailed on September 10 2001, the terrorist attacks that took place the following morning clearly set the world along a new course, providing a new set of "initial conditions."
Again, the key to chaos theory is that small differences of input become massive differences in output. In the days and weeks after 9/11, there was an unprecedented wave of support and sympathy for the U.S. around the world. For a brief moment, it was even possible to feel sorrow for America.
And then, slowly at first but then gathering pace, the administration of George W. Bush reacted to those "initial conditions" in a manner that would soon squander much if not most of this new-found solidarity. The attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 achieved its primary objective of removing the Taliban from power, but failed to capture Osama bin-Laden or break Al-Qaeda. Six years on, even this initial "victory" in the "war on terror" is now in doubt in the face of a resurgent Taliban.
In January 2002, Bush widened the scope of that war when he named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the "axis of evil," guilty of sponsoring terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction. A year later, he followed through with the invasion of Iraq, the subsequent capture of Saddam Hussein, and the installation of a U.S.-backed government. At the same time, U.S. forces took over Abu Ghraib prison just west of Baghdad, where they would interrogate and occasionally torture Iraqi prisoners.
Allegations of torture at Abu Ghraib first became public in April 2004, just two-and-a-half years after 9/11. Not only was the U.S. now in breach of Geneva and UN Conventions against torture, but it had managed to throw away almost all the international goodwill of 2001. But the Bush administration had in fact signalled its disregard for international law and order much earlier. In February 2002, it declared the Geneva Conventions to be outdated. "We should look at all international documents to see whether they are compatible with this moment in history…. The war on terror is a new type of war not envisaged when the Geneva Conventions were negotiated and signed (in 1949)."
Which brings us to the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16. In the aftermath, public opinion was divided between those who blamed the ease with which guns may be legally acquired in the U.S., even by obviously and well-documented unstable individuals, and those who suggested that a greater access to firearms – i.e. among teachers or fellow students – may have prevented the scale of death that morning.
What’s this got to do with the practice of torture in the war against terror? Only that it was another "outdated" document — the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – that allowed the Virginia gunman to obtain a firearm in the first place. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," reads that amendment, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." On the basis of this archaic phrase, then, 32 individuals were gunned down two weeks ago.
The phrasing is important, for it embodies the intent of those who drafted it in 1789. Specifically, the right to form and arm a State militia (composed of volunteers) was deemed crucial to offset the threat of a Federal standing army of professional soldiers. Today, almost 1.5 million men and women serve in the federal U.S. forces, with a budget of $400 billion. The idea of raising any State militia to resist such a force would be laughable, if the consequences of the Second Amendment remaining unrepealed were not so tragic.
How tragic? Last year, there were 29,000 gunshot fatalities across the U.S. Of the victims, 11,000 were murdered, 17,000 committed suicide and 1,000 died in accidents. Those numbers far exceed the number of American casualties in the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
Yet there is little prospect that the Second Amendment is in any serious jeopardy. There is no prospect of a "war on terror" caused by deranged gunmen at home. Instead, the U.S. continues to wallow in a pop culture that worships guns. One study estimates that by the age of 18, American children witness 32,000 murders and 40,000 attempted murders on TV. The slaughter at Virginia Tech did not take place within a vacuum, but against this cultural backdrop of casual carnage.
The authors of the Second Amendment – that other "initial condition" – can never have intended to permit, let alone propel, the chaos of American culture that prevails more than two centuries later. Similarly, it may not have been the intent of those who initiated the "war on terror" to end up sanctioning torture as a legitimate weapon (though it might have been).
Still, in the world of chaos theory, where tiny differences of input – a different word or phrase here, an alternative course of action there – become massive differences of output, we perhaps shouldn’t be surprised. |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.