I generally trust StratFor to inform me about matters of state. And while I’ve learned a lot about geopolitics itself, their methodology is mostly opaque. That changed, just a bit, in a recent piece by CEO George Friedman.
I try to keep my writing impersonal. My ideas are my own, of course, but I prefer to keep myself out of it for three reasons. First, I’m far less interesting than my writings are. Second, the world is also far more interesting than my writings and me, and pretending otherwise is narcissism. Finally, while I founded STRATFOR, I am today only part of it. My thoughts derive from my discussions and arguments with the STRATFOR team. Putting my name on articles seems like a mild form of plagiarism. When I do put my name on my articles (as Scott Stewart, Fred Burton and others sometimes do) it’s because our marketing people tell us that we need to “put a face” on the company. I’m hard pressed to understand why anyone would want to see my face, or why showing it is good business, but I’ve learned never to argue with marketing. (Friedman)
That’s the start of this series reflecting on his current trip to Eastern Europe. Along with his wife, he’s visiting some former Soviet states and Turkey, among other destinations.
Geopolitics should be impersonal, yet the way we encounter the world is always personal. Andre Malraux once said that we all leave our countries in very national ways. A Korean visiting Paris sees it differently than an American. The personal is the eccentric core of geopolitics.
I am visiting part of the North European Plain, which stretches from France into Russia. It is the path Napoleon and Hitler took into Russia, and the path Russia took on its way to Berlin. Sitting on that plain is Poland, a country whose existence depends on the balance of power between other countries on the plain, a plain that provides few natural defenses to Poland and that has made Poland a victim many times over. I want to understand whether this time will be different and to find out whether the Poles realize that in order for things to be different the Poles themselves must be different, since the plain is not going to stop being flat. (Friedman)
Near the village of Niemirów, on the edge of Masovia (Mazowsze) and Podlachia (Podlasie), where the Western Bug river traverses the Polish-Belarusian border.
Later, he reveals some of the behavioral approaches he uses when in a foreign land:
I should add that I make it a practice to report neither whom I meet with nor what they say. I learn much more this way and can convey a better sense of what is going on. The direct quote can be the most misleading thing in the world. People ask me about STRATFOR’s sources. I find that we can be more effective in the long run by not revealing those sources. Announcing conversations with the great is another path to narcissism. Revealing conversations with the less than great can endanger them. Most important, a conversation that is private is more human and satisfying than a conversation that will be revealed to many people. Far better to absorb what I learn and let it inform my own writing than to replicate what reporters will do far better than I can. I am not looking for the pithy quote, but for the complex insight that never quite reduces itself to a sentence or two.
There is another part of geopolitical travel that is perhaps the most valuable: walking the streets of a city. Geopolitics affect every level of society, shaping life and culture. Walking the streets, if you know what to look for, can tell you a great deal. Don’t go to where the monuments and museums are, and don’t go to where the wealthy live. They are the least interesting and the most globally homogenized. They are personally cushioned against the world. The poor and middle class are not. If a Montblanc store is next to a Gucci shop, you are in the wrong place.
All of this should be done unobtrusively. Take along clothes that are a bit shabby. Buy a pair of shoes there, scuff them up and wear them. Don’t speak. The people can smell foreigners and will change their behavior when they sense them. Blend in and absorb. At the end of a few days you will understand the effects of the world on these people. (Friedman)
So, don’t be a tourist. Go where real people live, shop, and eat. How much do they pay for food? Where do their shoes come from? How do siblings treat each another? Capture the mood. Zeitgeist is the appropriate ten dollar word.
Friedman would rather ditch the reports from the think tanks and read poems and epics. While amusing, it carries a plausible logic. Weighty reports are necessarily political, short-term, and self serving. Old poems and epics are a direct connection to cultural history. Those tell you not what a nation will do, but how it will act.
Add to that all the usual disclaimers. 
Friedman’s advice for geopolitical tourists isn’t personally useful or anything, but it gives me a greater appreciation for his work.
The problem with Friedman’s appproach is that what people say, what people think, what people think they know, is only one component of foreign policy and geopolitics. Everything from government priorities to popular culture to migration to international connections matters. His simplifications are, well.
Thanks for chiming in, Randy.
These factors are not ignored, but regularly examined. Virtually every factor you listed is a standard part of the “Geopolitics of” series (they examine one nation per article). Demographics, also, makes more than a few appearances in their analyses. What people think, say, and think they say is useful only insofar as we understand an actor’s perspective (and why his interviews are amalgams).
Perhaps this is a question of how weighted the factors are. For instance, using an example from another piece, I would argue that government priorities weigh a lot less than geographic endowments.
1. For starters, he has something of a binary approach to spheres of influence. “Ukraine will be a Russian satellite or a Russian enemy?” Why must it be either? Has the Orange Revolution, in fact, been repudiated, or has there rather been a democratic change in government of the sort one hoped the revolution would produce? Understanding the future depends on subtle details, and he doesn’t seem to get that.
2. What people think they think is all well and good. How they act is another. What they say also counts: I can’t tell that since, with a few references in passing, he may as well be writing in his home office.
3. The “foundation of national strategy is the existence of a nation”? Tell that to countries with weak, very pluralistic, or recently-created national identities like Belgium, Spain, and Macedonia. Even in places like Moldova with weak collective identities, people seem to continue to be invested in the idea of a separate state identity.
4. His proposal solution of Moldovan union with Romania doesn’t make much sense. By his own description, wouldn’t this idea–supported by only a small minority of Moldovans–be not so much hugely divisive as hugely opposed? The question of how Romania’s supposed to afford this is another. For that matter, how will it solve issues of poverty and bad governance in any reasonable timescale? Solutions shouldn’t generate more problems than they’re supposed to solve.
5. I’ve noticed in the past that he has been inclined to take a harsh line towards powers, like France and Germany re: iraq, which don’t support his preferred policies, using the rhetoric of calling them degenerate, weak, et cetera. Curiously, these countries are willing to do remarkable stupid things, like Germany invading Poland as described in _The Next 100 Years._
6. He doesn’t seem to have much of a grasp of multilateral institutions. Why, for instance, does he predict the collapse of the Euro and even renewed armed strife in western or central Europe when no one has demonstrated a desire to do such and no one has an interest in doing such? Yugoslavia collapsed for any number of demonstrable reasons, few of which apply to the European Union. Seemingly wanting an entity that doesn’t fit his categorization to collapse, um.
7. Finally, there’s his own predictions. Leaving aside his 1991 prediction of an impending war with Japan–curiously, a war in which China would play a role mainly as Japanese satellite–many of his predictions in _The Next 100 Years_ strike me as implausible. Why is China supposed to collapse into these pieces? Why is Japan supposed to want to establish a sphere of influence encompassing these pieces? Why is Germany suddenly going to become a country willing to invade its neighbours? What, exactly, are the reasons to think Mexican-Americans will stop assimilating and become part of an irredenta? His arguments depend on too many a priori implausibilities for me.
Hi Randy,
Thanks for the follow-up. I’m going to be brief because, otherwise, I may as well be writing a full-blown post.
I agree that Friedman and company have a pretty binary view. (1) Except when they don’t, of course. So far as the FSU is concerned, I think it’s entirely fair to consider this an either/or proposition. Without Ukraine, Russia loses both its neighbor’s breadbasket and any semblance of geographic depth. The details of their current government’s makeup strike me as less important. As far as (2) is concerned, I have no idea what that means. Have you ever read *any* geopolitical white paper that didn’t sound composed from an office?
Regarding Moldova in (3) and (4), Friedman (so far as I can see) didn’t argue that Moldova isn’t interested in being a state. He argues that being a state is a very difficult path because it is jammed between powers, hard to defend, and can’t generate wealth like so much of the EU.
Your (5) note is perplexing. Having read StratFor regularly for the past ten years, I’ve yet to note a ‘preferred policy’. I’m sure bias creeps in, but (I think) it’s minimal. What is likely and unlikely is not a statement of preference.
I will admit that my differences with regard to (6) are stark. I think he has a pretty good grasp of multilateral institutions. Maybe I’m cynical, but those institutions are a firm part of geopolitical life… right up until they aren’t anymore. There are good reasons for the EU to want to hang on to the Euro and their treaties, but it’ll go straight out the window once national determination rears its head. Multinational institutions are the ultimate opt-in. Once they are in effect, they don’t hang around forever. Just until there’s more to be gained *outside* them than inside them.
So far as his particular predictions, (7) I don’t put much stock in them. For me, they are a useful way to kickstart counterfactual thinking. He flat out explains that he doesn’t expect to be correct in all the particulars. Whether he is right *at all* is certainly a validly open question. The nice thing about it is that time will play its part in revealing the truth and the bullshit.
I’m no fan of a priori assumptions, even though it’s hard for any of us to shake. My read of the book, however, is that he doesn’t just pull these from thin air. He makes these assumptions based upon history, demographics, and – yes – he and his group’s best guesses. But you have perfectly pointed out one of the problems that I continue to have: opaque methodology. For my part, I would love to know who/what you’d recommend in order to balance out my inquiries. I’m a big StratFor fan in spite of my own reservations, but the questions don’t end there, they begin there.