The shambolic diplomacy between US President Donald Trump's administration and Iran provides further evidence that world affairs have become unintelligible. But take a step back and you will see that all of today's major conflicts are of a piece, and that despite the apparent entropy, a powerful logic of adaptation and resilience is at work.
The four biggest flash points today stem from historical processes that made them largely predictable. The ferocity of Russia's invasion of Ukraine may have shocked the world, but the war itself followed from the Kremlin's well-known resentments and insecurities. President Vladimir Putin had long made clear that he abhorred the idea of Ukrainian independence or strategic alignment with the West. As former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned in the 1990s, "Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire".
