The Cost of Chaos

Capriciousness destroys the United States’ strategic edge.

“Because I said so” is an assured path to long-term failure when dealing with other human beings. It may work for an hour, a day, a week, or even some number of months. But it ultimately breaks down. Dictating demands doesn’t buy trust and confidence–the two most important currencies of any relationship. Instead, it alienates.

People need a reason to “buy in.” This is true even with a parent-child relationship–as I’m reminded daily in my own life. It is doubly true when dealing with countries and groups outside the US who possess significant power and their own robust will, intent, and goals.

The most powerful form of buy-in comes when the people dealing with each other develop a common, positive vision to shape their path forward. This is the rare and magical realm of the big idea. The post-World War II order that the United States led the creation of is a great example. We advocated forcefully for our interests as the concept took shape, but we also took great care to bring our allies into the process.

We treated those societies (generally) with dignity and respect and in more than a few cases, were willing to subordinate some of our own parochial immediate interests in exchange for longer-term shared gains. When you work that way, the folks on the journey with you are inspired by you–even if they don’t agree all the time.

Competence Fosters Confidence

It’s the foundation of a powerful partnership based on trust that you will be a steady, competent hand—resolute but also operating with judgment and a process of discernment that others can see and often, participate in. That is the “due process” that fosters the trust that bonds partnerships powerfully together through tough times and ultimately, sets the conditions for us to progress and prosper as a species.

Resolutely and steadfastly executed competence also gets a form of buy-in from adversaries. Respect fosters deterrence and restraint because a foe who respects your capabilities and perceives a steely will to act will be less likely to risk the consequences of testing you.

To that point, the United States and its partners did not prevail in the Cold War by having leaders cause global chaos and look for personal profit opportunities in the turmoil. To the contrary, they crafted strategy, executed consistently, studied the results, and made adjustments when things did not work. This work spanned 8 presidents and roughly 1/3 of our total time to date as an independent nation.

These leaders’ discipline, temperance (generally), and commitment to ideals bigger than themselves attracted the dedicated and supremely competent executors they needed to make their policies work–people with names like Baker, Dulles, Kissinger, and so forth. In turn, this combination fortified our allies and sobered our adversaries. Our track record convinced both that the US approach was rooted in values and capable institutional machinery of state helmed by Presidents who would embrace the power of their office with the gravity it required.

Confidence and Trust Speak to Friend and Foe Alike

Confidence borne of the belief we would do the right thing fortified allies and dissuaded adversaries who recognized we would endure and challenge them for years.

The generally steady and unyielding character of our actions generated a grudging respect and the knowledge that even if we lost in a particular conflict, we would stand with our partners, regenerate, and return to the field of competition. Other countries bestowed upon us a AAA blue chip strategic credit rating. Geopolitical and financial dividends reinforced each other, to our great benefit.

Chaos would have yielded an entirely different outcome and left us inheriting a far darker and more dangerous international environment. We can try to put lipstick on a pig and call capriciousness and chaos “unpredictability.” Some can even liken it to a form of multidimensional chess that only a few rarefied players understand. But the reality is more stark.

There is a huge difference between shaking up the system–which can be a healthy periodic exercise in any partnership–and the wholesale incineration of trust built over decades with mere months of arbitrary and capricious actions. Shaking up a strategic system with unorthodox, calculated moves–like Nixon’s embrace of China in the 1970s can yield real benefits. But erratic moves erode partner trust while emboldening adversaries. Indeed, it is no accident that the Putin Regime feels zero need to respect energy ceasefires or any other restraint the White House might now propose.

A bully approach that beats up on ally countries, pressures victims of aggression, and shrinks away from confronting powerful aggressors like Russia inverts logic. It is not a sign of special strategic acumen, but rather, reveals serious misalignment with core American national interests and ultimately amounts to policy malpractice.

Approaching the world with chaos and avarice rather than ideas and partnership ultimately leaves us standing alone and saps our power. Each successive grand announcement of a peace deal or ceasefire that events soon show to be foreign policy vaporware just reinforces this reality. We need urgent action to stem the damage.

The stakes are extraordinarily high. The People’s Republic of China is by a wide margin the most formidable strategic competitor the United States has faced in its 250-year history.

The USSR was a Potemkin Village built behind a pile of nuclear weapons and tanks. The PRC is a different creature altogether. It has built the world’s largest industrial base, continues developing a world-class science and technology complex, and is putting its economic heft to work on the largest peacetime conventional military buildup the world has seen since Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

It buttresses this with the fastest nuclear weapons stockpile expansion anywhere in the world since the 1960s. And by all accounts, even if its economy has slowed as much as I believe it has, it still has the wherewithal to challenge us across multiple dimensions for decades to come and potentially, reshape the world to our detriment in the process.

Indeed, because the PRC commands the world’s largest industrial base, the U.S. mathematically cannot out-produce or deter it solo. This makes attracting allied “buy-in” and mobilizing industrial capacity across North America, Europe, Australia, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan a hard-power necessity, not diplomatic charity.

Ending Chaos and Rebuilding Confidence

To rebuild a world defined by shared values, cooperation, strategic clarity, and partnership with current and future friends against the Axis of Autocracy we now face will require years of work. Here are three concrete things to start with:

1. Executive Action (now)–Full support for Ukraine (including strict imposition of sanctions on Russia using the full authorities contained in the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act)
2. Legislative Action (within 6 months)–A $25 billion Congressional appropriation for underpinning a multi-lateral manufacturing fund aimed at reshoring and friendshoring key industrial supply chains to reduce PRC influence over key sectors.
3. State Action (within 18 months)–Create state-level ‘Invest in America Acts’—tailored to each state’s unique legal and fiduciary constraints—under which public pension funds invest a certain proportion of their assets under management in either education (like community college and vocational training programs to build the manufacturing workforce) or key facilitating infrastructure such as electricity and water systems.

Competence, Executed Humbly, Yields a Better World

Chaos breeds contempt. Incompetence and inconsistency invite greater and more dangerous tests. Alternatively, steadfastness brought to life with competence and discipline, earns respect. Political stability also fosters productive dynamism in every other space, be it economic, scientific, or social. “Because I said so” more accurately means that either I failed to persuade you or worse, that I’m too arrogant to even try. Both pave the road to failure.

Superpower status does not arise from our military might or the power of our dollar. Rather, it is the compounded returns of 80 years of hard, steady, often unglamorous, but vital work and strategic commitment that led partners around the world to lend us their confidence and trust–the most precious commodities behind only time itself.

What was built over three generations can be squandered in a few years and the accounts are being drawn down fast. The costs of chaos go on the ballot in the U.S. on November 3–and the results will help define how we rebuild our power and standing.

Note:Syndicated from the Sinews of Civilization Substack.

Suggested Citation: Gabriel Collins, “The Cost of Chaos: Capriciousness Destroys the United States’ Strategic Edge,” The Sinews of Civilization: Fire, Food, Water, Force, Substack, October 19, 2026, https://gabrielcollins.substack.com/p/rebuilding-us-foreign-policy-beating-china.