Listen: we live an uncertain world. And part of that uncertainty is directly attributable to the increasingly cartoonish cast of the characters upon whose dispositions our fate depends. We gave you a brief overview of what we’ve called “The Austin Powers World” earlier on Sunday. In short, the geopolitical scene is a fusion of a James Bond film and an Austin Powers sequel. There’s real danger but at the same time, the central figures are so laughable that it’s difficult to accept it as reality.

In addition to this, or maybe because of this, it’s nearly impossible for anyone to figure out what everyone else is going to do. In the piece linked above, we quoted Immanuel Wallerstein who, in a recent commentary, described the current state of the world as “chaotic uncertainty.” To wit:

Are you confused about what is going on in the world? So am I. So is everyone. This is the underlying and continuing reality of a chaotic world-system.

What we mean by chaos is a situation in which there are constant wild swings in the priorities of all the actors. One day, from the point of view of a given actor, things seem to be going in a way favorable to that actor. The next day the outlook looks very unfavorable.

Furthermore, there seems to be no way in which we can predict what position given actors will take on the next day. We are repeatedly surprised when actors behave in ways that we thought impossible, or at the very least unlikely. But the actors are simply trying to maximize their advantage by changing their stance on an important issue and thereby changing the alliances they will make in order to achieve that advantage.

The world-system has not always been in chaos. Quite the contrary! The modern world-system, like any system, has its rules of operation. These rules enable both outsiders and participants to assess the likely behavior of different actors. We think of this adherence to the rules of behavior as the “normal” operation of the system.

It is only when the system reaches a point in which it cannot return to a (moving) equilibrium that renews its normal operations that it enters into a structural crisis. A central feature of such a structural crisis is chaotic uncertainty.