Managing Disorder as Strategy: Islam, Security, and the Post–Cold War Architecture of Power

Murat YILDIZ

Debates on security and alignment are often framed as responses to immediate crises. New labels appear, alliances are announced, and threats are condensed into familiar shorthand. What follows is usually presented as adaptation to a changing world.

Look closer, and the pattern is less dramatic. Power does not abandon its objectives. It adjusts the language through which those objectives are pursued.

Religion as a Governable Domain

Religion has never been peripheral to strategy. During the Cold War, it operated as an ideological counterweight to atheistic communism. When bipolarity collapsed, this role did not disappear. It was reconfigured.

Belief systems moved from being instruments of mobilisation to objects of governance. The strategic question was no longer whether religion could confront an external enemy, but whether it could be rendered compatible with an evolving security order. Faith ceased to be evaluated for conviction and began to be assessed for predictability.

When Confrontation Ends, Structure Seeks Replacement

The end of bipolar confrontation produced not equilibrium, but disorientation. Institutions built around opposition struggled to justify their continued relevance once their organising adversary vanished. As the analysis itself observes:

“With the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from the stage, the United States was left without an enemy, and NATO without a function. A new adversary for Washington and a new purpose for NATO became an urgent necessity.”

This was not a passing discomfort. It was structural. Systems designed for opposition require contrast to function. When a defining enemy disappears, another must be reframed or produced to restore coherence.

Civilisational Coding and the Reduction of Politics

It is within this structural shift that Islam became securitised. Political violence was progressively detached from its historical, social, and geopolitical contexts and reinserted into a civilisational frame. The goal was not explanation. It was reduction.

As Samuel Huntington’s argument, cited in the text, makes explicit:

“In the absence of an external ‘other,’ a society’s internal cohesion and focal points begin to erode.”

In this framing, Islam ceased to be one variable among many. It became a structuring category of threat perception. Theology mattered less than function.

Fragmentation as Control, Not Failure

As direct confrontation became costlier, conflict was redirected inward. Sectarian, ethnic, and identity-based divisions were elevated from social realities into strategic tools. Fragmentation weakened cohesion without requiring permanent occupation or sustained presence.

Disorder did not need to be resolved. It needed to be kept within bounds.

Thomas P. M. Barnett captured this logic with unusual candour:

“When the Cold War ended, we thought the world had changed. It had—but not in the way we wanted.”

When outcomes diverge from expectation, strategy does not retreat. It recalibrates.

Why the Middle East Remains Central

This logic explains the Middle East’s persistent centrality. The region is not unstable by accident, nor central by habit. Energy routes, maritime access, and strategic corridors anchor it firmly within global power calculations, regardless of doctrinal shifts.

Zbigniew Brzezinski articulated this positional reality without ambiguity:

“The global primacy of the United States depends on how long and how effectively it can sustain its dominance over the Eurasian continent.”

And more directly:

“If the United States is not positioned ahead of events in the Middle East, it will find itself reacting from behind.”

These are not situational observations. They reflect a worldview in which geography precedes narrative and structure outweighs rhetoric.

Compatibility as Strategic Filtering

As governance replaced confrontation, attention shifted from suppressing belief to reshaping it. Concepts such as “moderate” or “compatible” religion emerged not as theological inquiries, but as strategic filters.

The objective was alignment, not eradication. Belief systems were acceptable insofar as they integrated into existing power structures and security frameworks. Autonomy was tolerated only when it remained manageable.

Türkiye and the Cost of Optionality

For regional powers, this environment produces enduring trade-offs. Alignment offers access and leverage, but increases exposure. Strategic autonomy preserves discretion, but carries economic and diplomatic costs.

Türkiye’s challenge has long been navigating this balance: engaging without surrendering escalation control, cooperating without importing external conflicts into its own strategic calculus. Expectations that Ankara would exchange autonomy for symbolic alignment consistently underestimate both its risk sensitivity and its historical memory.

When Disorder Travels

The most consequential insight in this framework concerns spillover. Fragmentation does not remain local. The effects of provocation and managed disorder propagate outward, often beyond the control of those who initially design them.

Said Halim Paşa’s warning retains striking relevance:

“The suffering caused by Western powers provoking these societies will not be borne by Muslims alone. The entire world will pay the price.”

This is not moral rhetoric. It is a strategic observation.

Conclusion

What defines the present is not rupture, but recalibration. Labels change. Alliances are renamed. Threats are reframed. The mechanics endure.

To mistake adaptation for transformation is to misread power itself. Strategy remembers. The real vulnerability lies in forgetting.