The Psychology of Geopolitics

For those of you who don’t know what geopolitics is, it’s the complex web of relations, agendas, strategies, and the eventual execution of these strategies that ALL countries are involved in in order to maintain and expand their piece of the earth. Some countries have small or insignificant pieces and some have large and significant pieces. Which ever one your country has, you can bet it’s working hard to maintain it’s current level and possibly expand it to the next level.

Geo-politics and their nation-states are simply macro versions of any other system. All systems are composed of players, and the players have to earn their place in the system. Don’t want to be in the system? No problem, you may leave. And your role will be promptly recast to someone who does. There’s a little bathtub book I read to my children about a pond and the various animals who live there. You’ve got the minnows, the salamander, the frog, the beaver, the heron, etc. Every one of these animals must work and develop to stay alive (I don’t mention that part to my kids). If they don’t, natural selection will see to it that they are replaced by animals who do. “If you don’t want to play, get off the field.” This is so fundamental to nature, and of course to human nature, that I don’t know if we will ever reach some zen-like state where we have transcended this biological drive. And so it plays out in geo-politics.

Why do people want to rule the world? I don’t know that people do, but there is a drive to expand on what you have - to get more. It is a subconscious drive - ie. we can’t easily control it. We can tell ourselves we are giving 10 billion dollars to African nations to help fight AIDS, but maybe there’s a part of us that knows “now they owe us one”. Or that we are invading Iraq to “liberate the Iraqis”, not to gain significant influence in a strategically vital and relatively accessible part of the world. I honestly believe that George Bush believes he was doing something positive for the Iraqis. That’s how strong your subconscious mind is. And we can all draw our own conclusions as to what Bush’s subconscious mind wanted. And then, of course, there are blatant admissions of these aspriations - ex. “I’m gonna invade Poland”.

Now, I live in Holland - where America is often criticized for it’s foreign policy. The perspective that I often see missing from these criticisms is the geo-political side of the things. Everything America does is to maintain and expand it’s current status. And every country does this. Holland doesn’t make too many world headlines with it’s foreign policy simply because it’s level is not sufficient enough to have much effect on the rest of the world.

If we were all tennis players, you could say that we were all out to develop our game - but only a few are out to win the tournaments. And the ones who are, will train differently and more intensely, and fight harder in matches than the rest of us who are just playing on a more recreational level. And, rest assured, we all want to win tournaments, it’s just that some people have the talent, the motivation, the confidence, and the rich parents to pay for tennis lesson, and other people do not. So for some people, the effort involved in training has a better chance of paying off than for others. And that’s a big part of natural selection: good risk management.

In short, Holland, and other mid-range countries are not employing the harsh tactics of American foreign policy, ie don’t make moves to strategically take over the world, simply because they are not in a position to do so. From their current state, such efforts would most probably fail. This is why lions don’t attack elephants - the risks outweigh the rewards. Were Holland a global super power, they would be acting much like the American government. (Doesn’t mean what America is doing is right and beneficial to the world, it just means that these motivations are a natural part of the human experience. Thankfully, so is disgust and opposition to such an imbalance of power and its irresponsible use. )

So the subconscious mind wants to help you and your country grow. If you’ve woken up one day and you’re the biggest fish in the pond, it wants to keep things that way too. And it’s a good thing - if approached with benevolence and competence. What if we were all like Ghana? There must be an innate drive to develop or else life stagnates. Geopolitics means each country is playing a little game of chess with the rest of the countries - trying to position itself to maximize its potential and allthewhile maintaining popular support for its actions. These drives go way back to when your ancestors were single-celled and swimming in a pool of goop. We cannot fight these drives but can only hope to grow more conscious of them, in the process analyzing which drives are furthering the human condition and which ones are holding us back. This “enlightenment” will provide the base for humanity’s most enduring struggle - against human nature.

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