Chaos as an instrument : and if there was a plan after all??

Ever since the Americans followed Israel into this new war on Iran, more than a month ago, the vast majority of observers, journalists ans analysts admit havin a hard time understanding any strategy or objectives behind it. As Trump's statements continue to be inconsistent and contradictory from one day to another, the only thing that is sure, is that the world is worse off than before the war. As Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer wrote about it in Bloomberg this morning, the two so-called goals laid out at the beginning of the war have not been met :

• The nuclear material ? Iran still has it

• The regime? It's still intact

Now, what has changed is the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, and this is a big problem, and thus new... Iran has used its chokehold over the crucial oil and gas transit route to maximum effect over the course of the war. Traffic is at a near standstill. World leaders are orried, bordering on panicking.

To put the world in such a dangerous situation, not only militarily, but essentially economically, there seems to be a total lack of preparedness on part of the US. And what if it wasn't so, but part of a broader plan?

In this blog, I posted, on October 29, Ian Bremmer's "State of the World" address, a stark assessment of our “post-American" order, a strong warning, that the world was changing fast away from a status quo since WWII with its main power refocusing entirely on its own destiny.

On December 7, I published a piece on the publication the US' National Security Strategy 2025, two days earlier, confirming the end of the United States alliances as we have known them for 8 decades.

In this context, I find the piece below, written by an analyst at the Financial markets' site, that I am using on a daily basis, Market Screener, as the most interesting one I've read since the start of this war. It feels a lot like geopolitical fiction, but its logic is very strong! Enjoy and don't hesitate to comment!

Trump and the Strategy of Chaos

At first glance, it all looks like a series of dangerous improvisations: escalation to extremes in the Middle East, tensions with historical allies, aggressive rhetoric on the American continent. Yet, another interpretation exists. It sees this policy not as pure disorder, but as an attempt to provoke a brutal reconfiguration of the global balance of power. In this analytical framework, the objective would not be to stabilize the international order, but to accelerate its fragmentation in order to reposition the United States at the center of a new equilibrium based on resources, production, and continental autonomy.

A ground intervention in Iran appears, from a military standpoint, to be an extremely risky undertaking. The country's size, its mountainous terrain, its desert regions, the difficulty of access routes, and the possibility of a war of attrition make the hypothesis of an occupation particularly hazardous. Added to this is the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway close to the Iranian coast, and therefore exposed to attacks, mining, and prolonged disruptions to maritime traffic.

This was the primary scenario for most geopolitical experts at the beginning of this conflict: Trump has no interest in a protracted war. He cannot risk losing the midterm elections in the United States, nor can he risk losing (even though this has already been partially achieved) the support of the population, which would suffer from soaring energy prices and a corresponding increase in their daily lives (since the economy is essentially transformed energy).

The benefit of escalation would not lie in a conventional military victory. It would lie elsewhere: in the systemic shock caused by a prolonged conflict at the heart of the planet's main energy region. In other words, war would not be a means of conquest, but a lever for global economic destabilization.

The Middle East as a Breaking Point for the Global Economy

The stakes go far beyond oil alone. Certainly, a decisive share of global energy flows transits through the Gulf, with a particularly marked dependence in East Asia, Europe, and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere. But the reasoning goes further: if maritime routes are disrupted, it's not just hydrocarbons that are lacking. Essential agricultural inputs, such as certain components of fertilizers, as well as materials used in strategic industrial chains, particularly in semiconductors, are also affected.

Consequently, a prolonged regional conflict would cease to be a local episode and become an accelerator of global shortages. Energy, food production, the technology industry: everything would be affected in a domino effect. From this perspective, the war in the Middle East would function as a mechanism for the generalized compression of global dependencies. The economic center of gravity would not disappear, but it would shift.

Oil flows from the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia:

Sources : JP Morgan & Kepler

Shifting Dependence from the Gulf to North America

If supplies from the Gulf weaken, the world will not automatically run out of resources; it will simply have to turn to other sources. However, vast quantities of oil, gas, and agricultural resources are not randomly distributed. Canada, the United States, parts of South America, and also Russia, appear to be areas capable of absorbing part of the shock. The regions most dependent on imports (Europe, Japan, South Korea, India, China, Australia) would then find themselves under a new constraint: securing their access to energy, fertilizers, and, more broadly, raw materials outside the Middle East.

In this scenario, the United States would not need to win the war to benefit. It would suffice for the conflict to make its resources more essential. The strategic advantage would no longer come from an empire tasked with protecting global trade, but from its position as an indispensable supplier in a more fragmented world. The idea is no longer to manage globalization, but to take advantage of its disintegration.

From Financial Empire to Productive Fortress

According to this view, a model centered on finance, debt, consumption, and the American military guarantee of global trade has reached a point of exhaustion. In this interpretation, the United States can no longer sustain a system in which it finances collective security while its productive base shrinks and its internal imbalances worsen.

The project attributed to Trump, therefore, consists of breaking with this architecture. It is no longer a question of preserving the Pax Americana, but of rebuilding a more closed power, more firmly rooted in industry, resources, manufacturing chains, and the geographic depth of the North American continent. Frictions with Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Panama, Cuba (article on the subject), and several Latin American countries then take on a new meaning: no longer scattered provocations, but elements of a continental vision seeking to transform North America into a self-sufficient bloc.

What if the world were to enter a period of protracted conflicts, resource stress, and fiercer competition between geographical areas? In such a world, power would belong less to those who dominate abstract flows than to those who control energy, water, food, industrial capacity, and access routes.

The Russian precedent: surviving collapse rather than preserving order

One of the most important aspects of this argument is the comparison with Russia. In this view, Moscow would not have launched the war in Ukraine solely for tactical or defensive reasons, but as part of a long-term strategy to prepare the country for a more unstable world. The Russian economy would be progressively reorganized around the war effort, the arms industry, drone production, and a logic of endurance.

War would then become a tool for national transformation. Not only would it support an industrial base, but it would also strengthen political cohesion, the national narrative, and a country's ability to see itself as a fortress rather than as a player in a harmonized global market. Russia would thus be betting on a simple idea: when the international order falters, the most resilient societies are not necessarily the richest, but those that remain cohesive, armed, autonomous, and capable of exporting vital resources to more fragile regions.

If Moscow attempts to weather the storm by consolidating a Eurasian space, the United States would seek to do the same on a North American scale. The two powers would not share the same ideology, but they would share a common intuition: the era of open blocs is giving way to that of protected blocs.

The Brutal Return of Geography

This interpretation of the world gives decisive weight to three variables: energy, food, and water. They map out a picture of future stability. Territories with significant reserves, robust agricultural capacity, and relative water security appear best equipped to absorb crises. Conversely, those experiencing energy dependence, water tensions, and logistical vulnerabilities would be more exposed to conflict.

In this picture, North America and Russia stand out as structurally advantaged regions, while Europe, the Middle East, several regions of Africa, and parts of Asia appear more fragile. China occupies an ambiguous position: vast and powerful, yet embedded in a sensitive regional environment, particularly regarding water upstream in several major basins upon which its neighbors depend.

The overall message is clear: globalization has long fostered the illusion that technology, finance, and networks had relegated geography to the background. In reality, geography is returning to the forefront with a vengeance. When flows seize up, the old constants reappear: access to the sea, control of straits, buried resources, soil fertility, water availability, and territorial depth.

A policy of deliberate disorder

What gives coherence to the whole is the idea that chaos is not an accident, but a tool. An unwinnable war can become rational if its true aim is not conquest, but the reorientation of global dependencies. Tensions with allies can cease to be absurd if the objective is no longer to preserve a coalition, but to break with the old system. A policy deemed incoherent can even appear orderly when interpreted as a transitional strategy between two eras: that of the financial empire and that of the continental fortress.

First, we must accept the initial premise: the global system is already doomed to collapse. From this point on, the question is no longer how to prevent it, but how to choose who will suffer the consequences and who will benefit. The entire argument hinges on this shift.

Tommy Douziech for Market Screener

Published on April 02 2026