Note: Behind the green door I have a post about how the primary goal of American foreign policy is to create chaos, a post about the challenge of buying an old truck, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

One of the more difficult things for people to accept is that sometimes things happen that benefit no one and for reasons under no one’s control. Other than natural disasters, people just assume that everything happens for a reason and someone wanted it to happen because they gain to benefit from it happening. Conspiracy theories are born when it is not clear who made something happen. This need to know the who and why for everything gets filled by the conspiracy theory.

The collapse of Syria is a great example of this. Everyone just assumed this was another American regime change operation. Then we got stories about how it was the Turks who backed the rebels and wanted Assad gone. Once the Israelis started grabbing land, the usual suspects came in with their usual theories. There is even a theory that the Russians wanted Syria to collapse to create a quagmire for the Americans to manage in the Middle East.

All these theories make some sense, if you ignore the things that make no sense whatsoever, like the dangers of creating chaos in the region. The Israelis might be happy Assad is gone for emotional reasons, but having a bunch of Islamist warlords operating on their border just added a lot of new costs to their budget. The United States now has a new problem to manage. Guarding those Chevon oil fields suddenly got more expensive and more complicated.

Then you have the fact that there are many players on the Syrian board. Before you get to the big players, you have six factions within the rebel coalition. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, called HTS in Western media. They are backed by Turkey, Qatar, the CIA and led by a guy who looks like the main character from the move The Dictator. He wants to create an Islamic state in Syria. This group used to be called ISIS of Syria but now is pretending to be a kinder, gentler ISIS.

Remnants of the Assad Regime are now forming up in the Alawite areas they still control and presumably they will get support from Russia and Iran. Then there is FSA/SNA and allied groups, that have been supported by Turkey, Qatar, the U.S. State Department, and the CIA. The Kurds, called SDF, have the protection of the American military operating in the region. ISIS still exists, with backing of pro-Islamic forces, along with regional tribal and Islamic groups.

What we now have is an area a little bigger than the state of New York controlled by a collection of war lords that do not like one another very much. The most likely outcome of this arrangement is a civil war between the groups. The only reason anyone would want such an outcome is if they have no exposure to it. In other words, there is no reason to think that anyone wanted this outcome, at least none of the countries exposed to whatever comes out of Syria.

This brings us back to that default formula. Everything happens in the world for a reason because someone stands to benefit from it. The cost-benefit for everyone with an interest in Syria is already negative and promises to get much worse as things travel their natural course. In the end, someone might make something of it, but right now it is a chaotic mess. Who would want this result? The answer is no one because no one saw it as a possible outcome.

Instead of a game of four-dimensional chess, Syria is an example of the lack of second order thinking by the Turks and Americans. Since 2011 both sides have supported anti-Assad groups for different reasons. Erdogan is obsessed with the Kurds, who operate in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The United States backed anti-Assad group because Assad was tight with Russia and Iran. Their goal was to put pressure on Russian and Iran with a slow bleed of Syria.

Based on the associated media campaign, it is clear the United States and Turkey thought this would be a repeat of past flare ups. The rebels would make some attacks, but the Syrian army would push them back. After all, the Syrian army was a quarter million men with the support of Russia and Iran. The rebels numbered around thirty thousand and lacked air power and modern equipment. Instead, the Syrian army collapsed and Russia and Iran did not come in to save them.

Like all large-scale human societies, Syria was a complex system made more complex by relentless pressure from outside. Those outside failed to appreciate this complexity, so they did not plan for what would come from it once they started making changes to the conditions in which that complex system existed. Like a bomb disposal crew randomly cutting wires, the whole thing blew up and now everyone with a connection to the region is scrambling to adjust to a new reality.

Instead of being an example of the cleverness needed for the popular explanations about why Syria collapsed, especially the more conspiratorial ones, Syria is an example of a lack of those things. No one seems to have understood what was happening inside the Syrian system and no one thought much about what could come from monkeying around with the conditions inside Syria. It is the result of a lack of second and third order thinking, not four-dimensional chess.

The thing about this situation is it should have been obvious to all concerned that collapse was a possibility even before the rebel attack. In other words, this scheme was obviously stupid, but the main players did it anyway. This is not the first time the United States has been this stupid. Libya, Tunisia, Egypt are three great examples of the same poorly conceived scheme. If not for the Egyptian military, the Muslim Brotherhood would be controlling most of North Africa.

It is a good reminder for those who love chanting about the Deep State. The same people who create these debacles around the Muslim world are making decisions about all sorts of things, foreign and domestic. In a complex world, the default assumption about why anything happens is Hanlon’s razor. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence, neglect, or ignorance.” What we are seeing In Syria is a combination of all three.

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