Read "The Guns of August" and/or go see the movie, "Thirteen Days". Both suggest why nations can blunder into war even when the national leaders are basically well-meaning people.

As you suggest, ill-meaning people take advantage of political chaos. So the problem is to prevent such chaos. The solution is rule by law. A situation that we recently saw played out in the USA yielded to rule by law. Of course, we now have to live with the consequences.

Sometimes revolution is the only means to revoke bad laws. But the risk is getting through the resulting chaos without obtaining a dictatorship. Or in other words, the bad laws are not replaced by any laws at all. So the next step in this agenda is to find a means to replace bad laws peacefully. Democracy is one such means. Probably not the only. But it works well in nations with a highly educated population such as Russia.

• Re: Re: Chaos theory in action? - alexander - March 1, 2001 - 00:16 UTC