Chaos as Divide and Conquer Breaks Down

Is 2014 the year of global political chaos? It could seem so if you look at events in Europe, Japan, China, southeast and southwest Asia, tropical Africa, the United States, and elsewhere. If there is a common principle underlying many of these political dramas, it may be that electronic communication has made the classic divide-and-conquer political strategy unreliable. It is harder to divide people if they can get together and compare notes on what you are doing. The plans of the NSA, the Syrian military, and the insurgents in Bangladesh, to cite just three examples, all depended on divide and conquer, and are faltering in spectacular fashion as they find they must take on the world all at once.