(Keep in mind that our goal here is not to provide a particular explanation of certain geopolitical actions, but to provide a framework of understanding of geopolitics, and a springboard to further analysis as makes sense with the particular subject you’re pursuing. In Jan-Feb, that subject would be the possession of nuclear arms. We’ll only be touching on nuclear issues in this essay, and not evaluating them in the preemptive strike context.)
As we said in the last section, the world does not neatly fall into a pattern of cooperative trading partners, nor for that matter does the world fall into neatly fitting economic pieces that only want for a master puzzle solver to put them together. But more importantly, there is more to international relationships than economics and trade (although there do seem to be some who believe that open trade is the panacea for all the world’s problems). Nations are, by definition, groups of people with something in common (and if that’s not the loosest definition of nation ever, than listen to my podcast on Sovereignty, or read the accompanying pdf on my podcast page, or eventually here on the Coachean Greatest Hits). There are numerous schools of thought about why nations come to exist, and what it is that makes a group of people a nation rather than just an odd conglomerate of individuals accidentally in one place. Of course, geography is certainly a prime determiner. Island nations are the easiest example of this. One of the easiest ways to get a nation going is to set an area off from other areas, and an island is the best way to doit. Other examples are mountains and rivers and deserts, but nothing seems as pure as an island. An island has a natural protection against invasion because of its surrounding water (more important historically the further back you go), so the people on an island, if they come together as a cohesive group, immediately gain one of the first benefits of nationhood, which is defensive safety, not only in this case safety of numbers but safety of geography. Usually islanders are there in the first place as already connected tribes or families or political groups, maybe emigrating from some other nation originally, and one way or the other they are of a piece. Islands in other words present a uniformity of polity that, at least in theory, seems clean and refined. It’s not necessarily true in reality, as some islands are split between two or more unique political entities, but you get the picture.
So we begin to perceive a nation as a physical place. Some places actually feel a physical determination be be a nation. An island feels like it should be a nation. A large area entirely surrounded by mountains feels like it should be a nation. An area set off by rivers should be a nation. Whatever natural boundaries exist add to the feeling of national determination. In the US, our national determination is given the name Manifest Destiny, meaning that we were “destined” to become a nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. National determination, therefore, may or may not be a reasonable longing.
Shared ethnicity is another aspect of national cohesion. It’s hardly essential but historically it’s been quite a biggie. Think of the concept of a homeland. Who is it that wants that homeland? The Jews want a homeland. The Palestinians want a homeland. The German Third Reich wanted an ethnically cleansed homeland. Every nation at the Olympics has an anthem proclaiming the existence of (and often the primacy of) homeland. The French are the French, the Italians are the Italians, the Brazilians are the Brazilians. Their ethnicities are a combination in various measures of race, religion, history, and any other generally shared beliefs or traits, which can include a shared belief in non-uniformity of all traits, i.e., freedom to be or believe anything, which is what the US is theoretically built on. (The proof of the viability of this American concept is the belief held in some nations that the US is evil, based on its lack of a pure religious underpinning, that we are godless entities with no belief except in the almighty dollar–all right, the formerly almighty dollar nowadays–that we are anti-them at the core and therefore they must be anti-us at the core, for whatever reason.)
So now we begin to see a few items that we can mix and match in our understanding of geopolitics. There’s the pure economic well-being of a nation. There’s the physical location of the nation. And there’s the nature of the people of a nation. What do these items describe?
1. Poor nations want to be less poor. Rich nations want to stay rich. Everyone at any level either wants more or doesn’t want less, which means something’s got to give. Conflict! Rich nations can use poor nations to stay rich. Poor nations will view charity in a different light from investment. But who would invest in a poor nation, with virtually no likelihood of a decent return on investment? Resource-rich nations can use that richness as a bribe or a threat.
2. People are where they are physically sometimes for reasons those people do not approve of, or other people do not approve of. Multiple entities claim that spot as their historical possession. Israel and Palestine. The Alsace-Lorraine. Native American land. Tibet, Taiwan, China. Northern Ireland.
3. We don’t like you, and/or you don’t like us. Islamic vs Western nations. Endless Catholic/Protestant battles in Europe for hundreds of years. The French vs the English. All the historical European conflicts involving dynasties you can barely remember (although these also usually included land grabs and even fiscal goals).
In the world as a perfect place, the nations would peaceably coexist despite these factors. But the world is not a perfect place, and so we have seemingly endless conflict from the dawn of recorded time. Our globe today is definitely Islamic and non-Islamic nations at various levels of conflict, Africa a horrible mess that includes warlords ripping off the populations of their own nations (or the neighboring nation), China positioning itself for future superpowerhood, Russia reinventing itself presumably with regained superpower status, the US held hostage in the hands of an unpopular regime until 1/20/09, independent non-national (or rogue nationalist or separatist or whatever) movements resorting to terrorist techniques to achieve their goals… What a mess!
One clear thing from a geopolitical perspective is that few nations feel that everything with their position is fine. And even the happiest of nations would not be dumb enough to think that with all this confusion going on around them, they don’t need to protect themselves just in case. So everybody has arms, buys arms or develops arms. Or, they obtain protection from a country that already has arms. Japan, for instance, is not particularly well-armed and if, let’s say, they were attacked by North Korea (which would be likely if North Korea wished to attack “the West” since that’s about as far as NK’s missiles could reliably fly), it would be up to the US to respond as Japan’s protector (cf. WWII); NK, Japan and the US all know this. Some countries feel a need to defend themselves against the US, which is why NK develops its arms in the first place. Countries that perceive of the US as an enemy act accordingly. Any country that sees any enemies anywhere acts accordingly. Everybody makes sure that they can defend themselves.
And some countries go even further, and attack somebody offensively. Some attack people within their own borders, i.e., ethnic cleansing. Some attack across borders, e.g., the US in Iraq or Al Qaeda on 9/11 (Al Qaeda being an ad hoc country, but we won’t bother to analyze the extraterritorial nature of terrorist organizations, and we’ll simply accept that terrorist organizations share most traits of nations short of national boundaries, which they are usually seeking to attain or regain).
All of this military action, defensive or offensive, is overlaid on the very complex issue of firepower. And that will be our next installment.
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