Geopolitics and Predictions
Last year, George Friedman wrote a book entitled The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 12st Century. I will explore Friedman’s ideas about historical forecasting. All the quotes provided are his assertions and premises from the book. Over the course of the next six days, I will wonder what it all means. While nobody can predict the future with perfect accuracy, he argues that it is possible to discern a general outline in world affairs.
Geopolitics assumes two things. First, it assumes that humans organize themselves into units larger than families, and that by doing this, they must engage in politics. It also assumes that humans have a natural loyalty to the things they were born into, the people and the places. Loyalty to a tribe, a city, or a nation is natural to people. In our time, national identity matters a great deal. Geopolitics teaches that the relationship between these nations is a vital dimension of human life, and that means that war is ubiquitous.
Second, geopolitics assumes that the character of a nation is determined to a great extent by geography, as is the relationship between nations. We use the term geography broadly. It includes the physical characteristics of a location, but it goes beyond that to look at the effects of a place on individuals and communities. In antiquity, the difference between Sparta and Athens was the difference between a landlocked city and a maritime empire. Athens was wealthy and cosmopolitan, while Sparta was poor, provincial, and very tough. A Spartan was very different from an Athenian in both culture and politics.
If you understand those assumptions, then it is possible to think about large numbers of human beings, linked together through natural human bonds, constrained by geography, acting in certain ways. The United States is the United States and therefore must behave in a certain way. The same goes for Japan or Turkey or Mexico. When you drill down and see the forces that are shaping nations, you can see that the menu from which they choose is limited. - pages 12 & 13
The idea of constrained behavior is very interesting. I could decide to quit my job and become a professional mime, but that would probably lead to financial ruin so it’s effectively off my menu of choices. More reasonably, I could decide to become a computer programmer, but that would require going back to school to gain additional training. In that event the change could occur, but it would require the necessary time to reorient my life.
The main question I want to pose is: Can I be mentally prepared when a major geopolitical change affects the world? I will define geopolitical change as redrawing of borders on the world map due to war. How I define fairly prepared still eludes me.
I’ve put together a flowchart of influences that gives a shape to the thoughts poking around my brain. Though ad hoc, it’s fun to look some subjects and authors that I’ve been playing with over the years. The idea is to disclose as many of my relevant biases as possible.
My Geopolitical Influences
There is a sharp distinction between the world as I see it and the world as I want it to be. Neither of these qualifies to be the world as it is. This is where geopolitics is the most frustrating. I accept that there are some collective human forces at work, but I resent that these dominate the available options. An analogy is chess. Newbies see a wide variety of options for an opening move, but pros know there’s really only a handful if you want to win – or at least not lose. It’s an uncomfortable kind of quasi-determinism. While geopolitics fascinates me, it’s like slowing down to rubberneck at a horrible car-wreck.
