Chaos as Condition, Order as Achievement: Rethinking US Strategic Assumptions in Twenty-First-Century Interventions

Chaos as Condition, Order as Achievement: Rethinking US Strategic Assumptions in Twenty-First-Century Interventions by J. William DeMarco, Modern War Institute.

Chaos as Condition, Order as Achievement argues that the United States has long based its intervention strategy on the false assumption that political order is the natural condition of societies and that chaos results only from discrete disruptions.

The author contends that modern conflict environments function as complex adaptive systems characterized by persistent instability. He shows that US military success in defeating regimes has not translated into a durable order because planners treat war as a linear event rather than a systemic process. The article calls for a strategic shift that treats chaos as the baseline condition and views order as a deliberate, long-term achievement.

In a similar vein, this Small Wars Journal article, Who Consolidates Gains? The Enduring Requirement for Consolidation in Large-Scale Operations analyzes US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The article similarly asserts that strategic failures stemmed from underestimating the continuity and complexity of operational environments and overestimating the ability of quick tactical successes to produce lasting political control. Like Chaos as Condition, it identifies a persistent pattern where initial success does not translate into sustained order without deep, systemic engagement and land forces designed to consolidate gains and manage enduring instability.

Key Sections from Chaos as Condition

Theoretical Foundations: From Westphalian Order to Durable Disorder

The American way of war is inextricably linked to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which established the state as the primary unit of international affairs…Classical strategic theorists like Carl von Clausewitz and Antoine-Henri Jomini operated within this state-centric paradigm… The Gulf War of 1991 was the apotheosis of this mindset…These experiences cemented the concept of the center of gravity…Destroy the hub, and the system collapses into a form that can be remolded.

The Neomedieval Shift and Globalization

The end of the Cold War did not create globalization or supranational governance…The stabilizing constraints imposed by great-power rivalry weakened, allowing long-latent dynamics to assert themselves. The monopoly of the state began to erode from above, as globalization intensified and supranational institutions assumed more prominent roles, and from below…This shift has profound implications for intervention.

In a Westphalian system, removing a leader changes the policy of the state. In a neomedieval system, removing a leader often dissolves the state entirely, leaving behind a vacuum that is rapidly filled by violent competition among micropowers. The state does not snap back; it evaporates.

Entropy and Complexity Science

Modern conflict zones function as complex adaptive systems. Unlike mechanical systems (e.g., a car engine), which can be disassembled and reassembled, complex systems are organic and dynamic. They are characterized by…nonlinearity…emergence…feedback loop…The US military’s failure to internalize this shift is the root cause of its strategic frustrations…in a complex system defined by entropy, the removal of a dominant node (a dictator) often leads to system-wide cascading failure—a rapid descent into chaos that is self-sustaining and durable.

Panama 1989: The Deceptive Success

The US invasion of Panama in December 1989, Operation Just Cause, stands as the high-water mark of the decapitation model…Militarily, the operation was a masterpiece of synchronization…However, the narrative of a flawless surgical strike obscures the immediate systemic shock that followed the regime’s collapse.

The surgical removal of the wart (Noriega) nearly killed the patient (Panama’s economy) through the secondary infection of anarchy. Order was restored not automatically, but through the extraordinary concentration of US forces in key urban areas…This success was not due to the inherent validity of the decapitation strategy, but rather to unique systemic variables that are virtually impossible to replicate elsewhere…preexisting legitimacy…institutional reform…scale and sphere of influence.

Iraq 2003: The Systemic Shock

If Panama was the false positive, Iraq was the catastrophic correction…assumptions underpinning the invasion were breathtakingly linear…he event of regime change triggered an immediate, systemic collapse for which the United States was totally unprepared…The United States spent the next eight years trying to retrofit a process solution (counterinsurgency) onto a botched event strategy… the state is not a building you can occupy; it is a shared agreement on legitimacy. When that agreement is shattered, the result is not a blank slate, but a war of all against all.

Libya 2011: The Light-Footprint Disaster

The 2011 intervention in Libya was driven by a desire to avoid the quagmire of Iraq…adopt[ing] a light-footprint strategy: US and NATO airpower would protect civilians and degrade Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, enabling local rebels to do the fighting on the ground… Libya was a disaster of omission…the intervention plan included zero provision for a post-Gaddafi stabilization force…President Obama later admitted that “failing to plan for the day after” was his worst mistake.

Operational Design and Doctrinal Gaps

 The institutional lessons drawn from earlier interventions have often cut against this doctrinal logic…The result is a force superbly optimized for winning events but repeatedly unprepared to manage what follows…Iraq and Libya exposed the fragility of the Panama-derived model…Recent events in Venezuela underscore how enduring the event-centric impulse remains.

The US military remains essentially an industrial-age machine trying to operate in a biological age of warfare. It is optimized for the destruction of armies, not the management of entropy.

Strategic Recommendations: From Event to System

The strategic center of gravity must shift from the event of war to the system of peace…

Recommendation 1: Institutionalize Phase IV as the Main Effort…Planning for the day after must be the primary filter for any intervention decision.

Recommendation 2: Adopt a Regime-Evolution Strategy…In complex systems, total decapitation is often fatal to the society.

Recommendation 3: The Powell Doctrine for the Twenty-First Century… the associated you break it, you own it concept—must be reinstated but updated for complexity.

Recommendation 4: Design-Centric Professional Military Education…Professional military education must prioritize systems thinking over the military decision-making process.