In the matter of Iran: I’ve been reading the recent Iran-war speculations by Clayton Cramer, Niall Ferguson, et al. Are things as bad as all that?

I think they are. The week after 9/11 the excellent and prescient Irish columnist Kevin Myers wrote a piece that caught my eye. Said he:

“Last Tuesday, the entire world crossed a terrible threshold. We departed from the realm of ordered events into the realm of chaos… We are back to that place of chaos, twice visited in the last century, where consequence runs free of human control, where wisdom seems to be of no avail, and evil seems master of all.”

That phrase “the realm of chaos” stuck with me, and is still with me. The word “chaos” has a fairly specific meaning in physics. It refers to situations where tiny inputs can cause huge outputs — the flapping of a butterfly’s wind setting off a cascade of events that ends with a hurricane, the pebble that rolls loose & starts an avalanche.

I do think that since 9/11 we have indeed been in the realm of chaos, and are now deep into it. A small miscalculation on our part could have tremendous consequences, and this is more and more the case every day that passes. Consider the following sequence:

(1) Iraq 2003, pop. 26m, may have been trying to acquire the technology to get started on producing nukes. Stable under strict dictatorship.

(2) Iran 2006, pop. 68m, has all the technology & expertise to produce nukes, may be just months away. Semi-stable under loose dictatorship.

(3) Pakistan 2006, pop. 162m, possesses goodish stockpile of nukes & delivery systems. Unstable under feeble military dictatorship.

That 1-2-3 may be an up escalator, and we may get stuck on it: by doing the wrong thing when we should have done the right thing, by doing something when we should have done nothing, or by doing nothing when we should have done something. These are dicey times. Let’s not forget it. And let’s pray for wisdom in our leaders.