“The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte
“Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.”
— Werner Herzog
“Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.
— Will Durant
“I think frankly when it comes to chaos you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
— Nigel Farage
“Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.”
— Henry Miller
“We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit. … Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.”
— Henry Adams
“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
— Sun Tzu
In the last post, I had a brief look at the situation that appears to be evolving out of the Ukraine-Russia conflict – particularly as it concerns the WEF’s Great Reset schemes. The current post tries to figure out where things might be headed – a what-next look-ahead.
Unfortunately, from all that appears to be going on right now, the prognosis is at best “Who knows?”. Look-ahead insights mostly go downhill from there.
What is especially visible at the moment is chaotic disorder. This seems very inconvenient, especially for folks like the WEF who are driving hard for a Great Reset and a subsequent New World Order. Their achievements thus far, however, are more like a New World Disorder. Is this a major WEF fail, or worse yet, part of a grander WEF or other power-center plan?
This post is being written primarily for myself as an attempt to make sense of whatever is going on, or appears to be going on. I am less concerned about the ‘why’s’, although these are important, than about the ‘what should us normal folks do in this chaotic situation’. Most of us normals live in the future, which is the never-ending present, not the gone-forever past.
Chaos
Chaos is defined as disorder and confusion and is derived from the Greek word khaos, meaning chasm or void. I can’t think of a better word to describe what is going on right now. Lots of information out there, but so much is propaganda, opinion, or ponderings. Is this chaos intentional? A front-end to a New World Order, such as Order From Chaos (ordo ab chao)? Or simply evidence of such efforts gone astray, leaving not the desired order but unwanted disorder? So far, at least.
Important questions, I think, but credible answers very hard to come by. For whatever it may be worth, here is where I have come out as of this moment.
Recap of the enormous changes from last week
The Russia-Ukraine war has been underway for over a month (counting from the February 24 invasion, aka special operation). Reliable information is hard to come by but it seems that Russia is steadily gaining the upper hand. Action is now focused on the eastern regions and on the southern coast.
Typical regional war stuff at this point. But what has happened that is of far greater importance to the world is the sanctions and seizures imposed by the “West” – U.S., U.K, E.U., NATO, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) – upon Russia-and-its-new-friends – the newly-formed “East” or Eurasia (Russia, China, and India primarily). See my last post for a more complete list of players and sides.
Russia got things moving in early April by requiring payment in rubles or gold for oil, gas, and other commodities. “No rubles, no gas” for the E.U. Russia was also cut off from SWIFT, the international payments services system between banks worldwide.
The sanctions list is quite lengthy, and probably growing daily, but all aimed at isolating Russia from global economics and political systems. Russian economic and political collapse (as in ‘no more Putin’) seems to be the underlying goal of the West.
Things are not going well for the West so far
After a brief post-sanctions tumble, the ruble has recovered fully and even a bit more. Oil markets turmoil has driven prices up hugely, having the inconvenient result of enriching rather than impoverishing Russia.
Worse yet, China has jumped into the chaos as a light-handed (so far) supporter of Russia. India appears to be moving similarly. BRICS nations and others in Eurasia seem to be getting on board this way as well, albeit very tentatively.
The formerly unipolar, petrodollar world dominated by the West aka U.S. is rapidly splitting into a multi-polar, commodity-based world led by Russia and China. This split appears to be permanent. The East seems to be going its own way, abandoning for most practical purposes the West, including the WEF.
Such huge changes are resulting in widespread chaos – globally. No surprise here.
On the surface, this situation seems, to me at least, to be an inescapable consequence of the world’s economic, financial, and political reordering. Such huge changes could probably not have been possible in any gradual manner.
For the moment, chaos seems to be the disorder of the day. Very painful but probably a necessary part of the process. There will be no going back from here.
It is hard to imagine that things will not settle down to some extent before too much longer. Most of the world requires some degree of stability to function. So, maybe a stepwise movement toward a fundamental new order seems almost certain, assuming no World War III in a military sense.
Order out of chaos seems certain but the big question is how it gets there
One time-tested way to restore order is tyranny of some sort. It gets the job done but usually in a very brutal and random manner. Germany after World War I experienced a chaos period in the form of hyperinflation until Hitler and his enablers took power – harshly. Might we be in a comparable period of chaos and then order restoration – the hard way?
A scary thought in this respect is the possibility that the current chaos – including the Russia-Ukraine mess – is part of a grand plan to establish a New World Order. This is usually connected to Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset and his WEF organization but there is a disturbing link also the Russia’s Putin.
Brandon Smith reporting in The Rio Times raises exactly this question: “Opinion: Order out of chaos – How the Ukraine conflict is designed to benefit globalists”:
“The diplomatic mess between Ukraine and Russia can be blamed in part on both sides, and it’s this kind of historical ambiguity where globalists tend to thrive. The fog of war helps to obscure establishment activities and often it is hard for people to see who is truly benefiting from the chaos until it’s too late.”
“It is my belief that the Ukraine problem is at least partially engineered and that it is designed as the first domino in a chain of intended crises.”
“I don’t think there is anything unique to the Ukraine conflict for the globalists; they could have just as easily tried to initiate a regional war in Taiwan, North Korea, Iran, etc. There are numerous powder keg countries that they have been cultivating for a couple of decades.”
“We should not hyper-focus on who is to blame between Ukraine or Russia; we should focus on the effects that will result from any major regional disaster and how the globalists exploit such catastrophes to further the agenda of total centralization of power.”
“As Putin rose through the political ranks he maintained a steady friendship with [former U.S. Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger and to this day they have regular lunches. Kissinger has been an adviser to multiple branches of the Kremlin. It doesn’t stop there, though. Putin and the Kremlin have also kept a steady dialogue with the World Economic Forum, the project of the now notorious globalist Klaus Schwab.”
“In fact, only last year did Russia announce it was joining the WEF’s “Fourth Industrial Revolution Network” which focuses on economic socialization, Artificial Intelligence, the “internet of things” and a host of other globalist interests which will all lead to worldwide technocracy and tyranny.”
“Again, the Russian government is NOT anti-globalist. This claim is nonsense and always has been. I would attribute the fantasy of Russian opposition to a steady stream of propaganda and what I call the False East/West Paradigm – The fraudulent notion that the globalist agenda is a purely Western or American agenda and that countries like China and Russia are opposed to it. If you look at the close interactions between the east and the globalists, this idea completely falls apart.”
“The strategy of order out of chaos is nothing new, it’s something the globalists have been doing for a very long time. The number of open revelations post-Covid about the ‘Great Reset’ that globalists have publicly admitted to is so staggering that their plans can no longer be denied. Any skeptics at this point should be suspected of having a single-digit IQ.”
“So, now that we have established the reality of globalist involvement in both the West and in Russia, we need to ask ourselves how they benefit from initiating a crisis between these powers over Ukraine? What do they get out of it?”
On the Putin-WEF connection, however, there is this slight problem: Apparently WEF “Young Global Leaders” must be 38 or under when they are admitted. At 38 Putin would have still been in the KGB in the dying days of the USSR in 1990. Also, WEF didn’t start the Young Global Leaders program (as “Global Leaders for Tomorrow”) until 1993 when Putin was already 41. Slight WEF-Putin link problem, yes?
Chaos leads to order because power hates a vacuum
Chaos can be thought of as an absence, or vacuum, of social order. It occurs most often when an existing order collapses from internal weaknesses or is forcibly collapsed by a powerful group of some kind. Germany’s hyperinflation collapse chaos was “fixed” in the sense of a new order by Hitler and associates.
Physical chemist and Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine may not have originated the “order out of chaos” phrase but he did write a book about it:
“When one combines the new insights gained from studying far-from-equilibrium states and nonlinear processes, along with these complicated feedback systems, a whole new approach is opened that makes it possible to relate the so-called hard sciences to the softer sciences of life—and perhaps even to social processes as well. (Such findings have at least analogical significance for social, economic or political realities. Words like “revolution,” “economic crash,” “technological upheaval,” and “paradigm shift” all take on new shades of meaning when we begin thinking of them in terms of fluctuations, feedback amplification, dissipative structures, bifurcations, and the rest of the Prigoginian conceptual vocabulary.) It is these panoramic vistas that are opened to us by Order Out of Chaos.”
Setting aside the complex Prigoginian terminology, the underlying message is that order flows naturally from chaos. It’s what “nature” does.
Order is next but what kind of “order” might we face?
Klaus Schwab and the WEF have their own answer, which they were pursuing aggressively up until a few weeks ago: Agenda 21, now known as Agenda 30 (and possibly on the way to Agenda 2050) saw the New World Order as a single world government run by elites, “elite” by their definition. They have a particular picture of what this “order” entails and they describe it helpfully as “Build Back Better”. Or something.
A group called the “Globalists”, which may be affiliated in some manner with the WEF agenda, seems to have a somewhat different approach to order out of chaos. They want a one-world government run by themselves. This seems like the WEF plan but with a different set of rulers. Great.
The COVID catastrophe seems to have created yet another plan for restoring order in the form of national dictatorships. Examples today are Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and China, among quite a few others. This is the traditional way of enforcing order when things get out of hand at the national or regional level.
Just as the various sets of wannabe-rulers are jockeying for dominance nearly everywhere, the Russia-Ukraine war outbreak may well have messed up many such plans – greatly and permanently.
The war so far has split the West from the Eurasian (“Not-West”) block, thanks to Putin’s rather amazing and forceful responses to sanctions and other nastiness imposed unilaterally by the West. There are almost certainly no “good guys” in any of this mess – just a few powerful, effective players and the growing cadre of serious losers. Nobody good that I can see, at least.
Egon von Greyerz, Founder, Gold Switzerland, Matterhorn Asset Management, paints a very stark picture of where things may be headed under WEF management:
“With this understanding, the WEF’s call for a ‘Great Narrative’ should be seen for what it truly is – an attempt to displace all other visions of the future of humankind by placing the WEF and their partners at the heart of a narrative which paints them as the heroes of our time. This fits perfectly with the Technocratic philosophy employed by WEF founder Klaus Schwab. He envisions a future where ‘public-private partnerships’ of government and private business and so-called philanthropies use their wealth, influence, and power to design the future they believe is best for humanity. In actuality, the Technocrat philosophy merges with a Transhumanist mindset that sees humanity as limited, flawed, and in need of augmentation by technology in order to accelerate what Schwab calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
‘What-next’ doesn’t look much like a One-World dictatorship right now
Dreams of a centralized world government seem to be disappearing rather quickly as a result of Russia’s creative responses. The new world order is beginning to look like a multi-polar, loosely-connected world order among Non-West nation states. Maybe national sovereignty is making a comeback?
This means to me that the West is going to be restricted to its own set of supporting nations while the Non-West Russia-China-India group of nations will go their way and do their own thing without involving the West, except peripherally.
Global trade and political interactions probably have to take place within each of the major nation-blocks rather than globally as before. Is this necessarily bad? Sure doesn’t seem bad to me.
Of course, Klaus Schwab doesn’t quite see it this way:
“One of the great lessons of the past five centuries in Europe and America is this: acute crises contribute to boosting the power of the state [emphasis added]. It’s always been the case and there is no reason why it should be different with the COVID-19 pandemic. Historians point to the fact that the rising fiscal resources of capitalist countries from the 18th century onwards were always closely associated with the need to fight wars, particularly those that took place in distant countries and that required maritime capacities. Such was the case with the Seven Years’ War of 1756-1763, described as the first truly global war that involved all the great powers of Europe at the time. Since then, the responses to major crises have always further consolidated the power of the state, starting with taxation: ‘an inherent and essential attribute of sovereignty belonging as a matter of right to every independent government’. A few examples illustrating the point strongly suggest that this time, as in the past, taxation will increase. As in the past, the social rationale and political justification underlying the increases will be based upon the narrative of ‘countries at war’ (only this time against an invisible enemy).”
― Klaus Schwab, COVID-19: The Great Reset
The wild card: war between U.S. and Russia intensifies
The current war between the U.S. (via NATO-Ukraine proxy) and Russia seems to be getting worse. Despite many apparent opportunities to de-escalate, actions appear to be increasingly confrontational and threatening. Again, there are no good guys in any of this so far as I can see.
Note that this is not yet a “world war” in the sense of involving most of the world militarily. But, with all of the current players actively working toward WW III beyond its economic and political aspects, a military conflict has become a significant likelihood. It may not go nuclear immediately but the trigger may well be close at hand.
Bottom line:
Just when I thought that the world couldn’t get any crazier, it seems to have hit a craziness game-changing home run. Chaos is appearing nearly everywhere. Will this end, and if so, how? What might come next? Will it take World War III to reach a conclusion? Kind of important questions, but few if any credible answers. Looking at this conundrum in terms of chaos and order coming out of chaos, it appears that order of some kind is inevitable. It’s just the way nature works. The general shape and structure of this emerging order are beginning to become visible.
Related Reading
Von Greyerz, quoted earlier in this post, has a particularly grim view of the future:
“So the world is now entering the final battle, a battle with totally incompetent heads of state which will lead to everyone losing. The route to Armageddon will be disastrous for the world. Distressed leaders will take calamitous actions, exacerbating not only their own country’s problem, but also the rest of the world’s.”
“And that is exactly what we are seeing now with the worst possible concoction of debt deficits, currency debasement and decadence. The consequences were of course always predictable based on history. But no leader in the current era is a real student of history. And that is why the world is in such a mess.”
“I have in many articles outlined the course of events that I see from here – inflation, hyperinflation, debt collapse, asset collapse, leading to economic misery and eventually to a deflationary depression.”
“Sadly there will also be wars, cyber, civil and even major military wars. Mankind has never for any longer period stayed away from wars and especially not in periods of economic depression and high debts. Wars are such a wonderful excuse for poor leaders both to print more money and as a blame for the misery that the people suffer.”
“At the end of major economic cycles, countries get the abysmal leaders they deserve and these leaders will show a total lack of both intelligence and statesmanship.”
“We are now at the end of an era of economic and moral decadence in a debt infested world built on false values, fake money and abysmal leadership. All hell will break loose. The consequences will be fatal for the world.”
“There are eras in history which have produced great leaders and thinkers. But sadly, the current era has produced nothing of that kind. The end of an economic cycle produces no great leadership or statesmanship but only incompetent leaders.”
“WEF & Claus Schwab have got more prominence than they deserve. In my view they will lose whatever power they now have as financial asset values and their wealth implode. Thus, I don’t believe that their reset will happen or succeed. Governments might try resets but they will fail. The only real reset will be disorderly and as outlined above.”
“The current financial and economic crisis was neither caused by Covid, nor by what is happening in Ukraine currently. The current crisis started with the problems in the banking system and the Repo market in Aug-Sep 2019 and then exacerbated by Covid in early 2020. The origin of the 2019 banking crisis is obviously the debt bonanza since 1971 and especially since 2006. Also, the problems in commodity, especially food and energy markets, had already started before the war in Ukraine.”
“But in a perfect storm, a number of very ugly catalysts will always occur at the worst possible time in order to trigger one worse crisis after the next. No one knows how this war will end. The Western world is very badly informed about the state of the war since the media is biased pro-West and anti-Putin. But Putin is not likely to give up easily. Therefore, sadly the war will at best be local and protracted, and at worst lead to consequences which I won’t speculate on at this point.”
He may not want to speculate on the future but us normal folks who have to manage businesses and organizations through whatever comes along must have some realistic scenario set to work with. “Who knows”, as they say, doesn’t cut it.
Michael Snyder, publishing in his EndOfTheAmericanDream.com, outlines the case for a nuclear World War III outcome: “’”:
“On Thursday, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service made a statement that should be a major league wake up call for all of us. According to Sergei Naryshkin, Russia is now engaged in a “hot war” with western powers…”
“Also on Thursday the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergei Naryshkin, issued a series of bombshell statements which may reveal Moscow’s broader aims in the war concerning how Russia’s sees its ultimate security aims. Naryshkin said that “for us this is no longer a Cold War with the West but a hot war,” according to Interfax. He said in the rare statement that “Russia now has a real chance to put an end to the war that has been waged in the Post-Soviet space for the past 30 years” – as also quoted in TASS.”
“If that is how the Russians really view things, that is extremely sobering. Because a “hot war” between two sides armed with nuclear weapons has the potential to spiral out of control very easily.”
“In fact, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov just brought up the specter of nuclear war during a rant in which he directly compared the United States to Nazi Germany…’It is clear that World War Three can only be nuclear.’”
Sergey Glazyev, Russian economist and politician, advisor to President Putin, suggests that: “Events like this happen once a century: Sergey Glazyev on epochal shifts and changing ways of life”:
“We are currently working on a draft international agreement on the introduction of a new world settlement currency, pegged to the national currencies of the participating countries and to exchange-traded goods that determine real values. We won’t need American and European banks. A new payment system based on modern digital technologies with a blockchain is developing in the world, where banks are losing their importance. Classical capitalism based on private banks is a thing of the past. International law is being restored. All key international relations, including the issue of world currency circulation, are beginning to be formed on the basis of contracts. At the same time, the importance of national sovereignty is being restored, because sovereign countries are coming to an agreement. Global economic cooperation is based on joint investments aimed at improving the well-being of peoples. Trade liberalization ceases to be a priority, national priorities are respected, and each state builds a system for protecting the internal market and its economic space that it considers necessary. In other words, the era of liberal globalization is over. Before our eyes, a new world economic order is being formed — an integral one, in which some states and private banks lose their private monopoly on the issue of money, on the use of military force, and so on.”
