Credits<\/p>\n
Nathan Gardels is the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine. He is also the co-founder of and a senior adviser to the Berggruen Institute.<\/p>\n
Like the global Covid pandemic and the energy shock in Europe after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, the winding down Iran war offers yet another lesson in the fragility of complex systems and the unexpected outcomes the rupture of these systems generate.<\/p>\n
Instead of Trump\u2019s America and Netanyahu\u2019s Israel proving to the na\u00efve that hard power military might is the way the world really works, its limits have been revealed. Despite all the shock and awe aimed at toppling the theocratic regime and obliterating Iran\u2019s nuclear assets, the regime and its uranium stockpile both remain. The notion that only war could achieve what diplomacy could not has been refuted.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the effective Iranian drone and missile attacks on the integral energy infrastructure of the Gulf states, combined with the unanticipated closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have spread the virus of inflation and shaken economies everywhere.<\/p>\n
Like the famous chaos-theory trope of flapping butterfly wings influencing weather patterns on the other side of the planet, the fossil-fuel energy shock from the Hormuz shutdown occurred at the very moment of China\u2019s arrival as the dominant global purveyor of renewable energy technology. Burned by yet another energy shock, the world is sensibly turning away from fossil fuels endlessly associated with the disruptions of war \u2014 and turning to China for the very wind turbines, solar panels, storage batteries and electric vehicles the Trump administration is so fervently laboring to kill.<\/p>\n
Paradoxically, historians may well look back to the Iran war as the midwife in the pivotal transition to the global renewable energy economy.<\/p>\n
Small Inputs, Big Effects<\/p>\n
It is worth revisiting in this new context earlier reflections<\/a> in Noema concerning previous systemic shocks. If civilization advances by challenge and response, we will sooner or later learn from experience how to navigate the labyrinths of our own construction.<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s Middle East oil, China\u2019s rare earth minerals or Taiwan\u2019s semiconductor supremacy, the specialization of supply chains combined with just-in-time logistics has created disequilibrium in the world economy. When a disruption occurs, production and distribution across a vast but shallow system stalls. Critical nodes of connectivity in otherwise efficient networks become chokepoints. As the Nobel chemist Ilya Prigogine pointed out, in complex systems far from equilibrium, even small inputs can have disproportionately large effects. The black swans of disorder are always waiting in the wings. Stability is never a given.\n <\/p>\n Starting with the Covid pandemic, the shock of these unexpected, random events prompted belated policies to re-shore production and retool supply chains from just-in-time to just-in-case for critical items from medicine to microchips, so that countries, communities and companies become more resilient, robust and reliable in the face of shocks.<\/p>\n