The first interesting fact I learnt as a teenager was that, in Russian, the word ‘safety’ means ‘not in danger’. The second interesting fact I learnt as a teenager was that the traditional goal of British foreign policy was to make sure that the European continent remained divided. The third interesting fact I learnt as a teenager was that Napoleon Bonaparte had been foolish to invade Russia – especially during the winter.
In the 2010s and 2020s, these three facts – along with the rare insight that Germany became a unified country in 1871, and was not so beforehand – would, amazingly, have allowed me to sustain a reputation as an educated man of letters for the rest of my life.
I knew these things; I could say them; I could recite them on request. Everyone was suitably impressed.
But why? In the 2010s, these historical facts seemed somehow timely. There was a savvy to them, and a smirk. It wasn’t a coincidence that kids and adults alike started to come out with these facts around the time that the failure of liberal interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan had – rightly or wrongly – become universally acknowledged. Factoids, or anecdotes, or tropes like these seemed to speak to the deep grooves in human history that liberal internationalism had forgotten in its hubris. Ties of religion, ties of nationality; deep historical grudges; deep strategic imperatives – these hinted at what could, wincingly, be referred to as an old spirit of ‘Blood and Iron’ that had more staying power than many would have liked to admit.
The basic idea was that ‘history’ had been forgotten, and it was now taking its revenge on us in the heedless present. This worldview also came with a new slogan. This was: That in light of recent events, Francis Fukuyama had been wrong to pronounce the end of history in 1989. You didn’t need to be clever to say this, or even to have read Fukuyama’s book. After the mid-2010s, this was joined by another slogan: ‘Liberal international order’, and its antagonists.
The new realism has spawned a new type of public intellectual. The typical aesthetic of a consciously post-Fukuyama commentator is someone who is pained by forbidden knowledge. They seem to carry the weight of returned ‘history’ on their shoulders. They are able to see past the liberal pieties, and this makes them uniquely capable of showing us how things really are. One example is Ian Bremmer, whose cynical, monoglot, Bill Maher-style gave him the air of a jaded Foggy Bottom insider, who can dispense pearls of hotel bar wisdom. Another is Bruno Macaes, a true sphinx without a riddle. Also part of the new realism was the return of Henry Kissinger to public life. His books and leading articles became ever more frequent, as did his trips to the Oval Office. To observers there was something slightly arch about consulting Dr. Kissinger – but it was assumed, after an era of liberal overreach, that his dark insights could no longer be done without.
Clearly, there was a need for a new way to look at international affairs. Enter ‘geopolitics’. Geopolitics is premised on the idea that a country’s foreign policy, and even its forms of political and social order, can be extrapolated from its topography. Liberal ideas had proven an insufficient means to make sense of the world; hills, rivers, mountains, gorges and straits would evidently do so much more.
Geopolitics was an attractive school of thought in the middle of the 2010s. It had a frisson of pragmatism, and a hard edge. It claimed to deal in objective reality, not big ideas. At times it almost resembled a science. To its proponents, geopolitics was a cold corrective slap after the hubris of the 1990s and early 2000s.
Geopolitics offers us hard and perennial truths about states and their interests. These truths do not change, and outlast mere diplomacy. Unfortunately, in the hands of incurious people, this was just an invitation to a new kind of intellectual complacency. And so it proved. In the 2010s, supposed perennial truths of geopolitics quickly devolved into a series of folksy just-so stories. “Don’t start a land war in Asia.” “Russia is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma.” “Britain has lost an Empire, but has not yet found a role.” “Russia’s search for a warm-water port.” “The Eastern concept of ‘face’.” Popular geopolitics in the 2010s has created the kind of educated person who is reasonably clued-up on the Suwałki Gap, but cannot – for example – tell you what happened in England in 1688, or who Talleyrand was.
In hands like these, it’s no surprise that the concept underwent, not so much a semantic drift, but a collapse into complete mush. Here’s how the Times recently used the term:
This is a serious risk for universities, and Britain. For universities’ [reliance on foreign students] makes their income dependent on geopolitics.
And here’s a line from its idiot cousin, the Evening Standard:
This is the geopolitics of AI that we should be getting. Instead, the geopolitics of AI we are about to get is the exact opposite.
None of this has anything to do with mountain ranges, or rivers or geographic choke points. What these authors mean here is ‘foreign policy’, or, even, ‘diplomacy’. But this scarcely matters. The term is being used because of its vague air of worldliness. This is geopolitics as an aesthetic; as a lifestyle choice.
Nor is geopolitics being applied consistently as a method. The rivers and mountains keep popping in and out of the story. China’s dash for the first island chain is a geopolitical necessity, but Britain’s fear of a united Europe – a very old fear – can safely be dismissed as a sad example of imperial nostalgia. Indeed, the modern United Kingdom virtually discredits the entire field of geopolitics. Britain has sat mouse-still as its geopolitical position has completely fallen apart. In the 2020s, the two old strategic fears have been realised: the ‘backdoor’ of Britain – Ireland – is now controlled by a Government with designs on British territory; this Government is in turn being encouraged by a European continental superstate which has its capital in the Low Countries – a part of the world that Britain had fought for centuries to keep neutral.
To its fans, geopolitics is deliciously dark. It is svelte, and lean. It is old-school cool. It carries something of Nixon in China, or of the drawing rooms of the Congress of Vienna. Ideology is left at the door, and people are free to get down to brass tacks. How odd, then, that this kind of performative cynicism would come into fashion in the 2010s and ’20s. No period in human history has been so lacking in diplomatic suave. This is, after all, the age of the big red reset button, and of pot-banging ‘wolf warrior’ press releases that offend everybody, mostly by mistake. Diplomatic negotiations seldom occur at all, and when they do they are to construct plodding new systems of global rules – not to cut deals.
Geopolitics and liberal international order; these two terms are ever more allied. But they are in many ways opposites. One feature of liberalism is a basic faith in the idea that people can be reasoned with. Geopolitics – or at least the crude essentialist tropes that wear its guise – does not concede anything of the sort. According to popular geopolitics, the verdict of geography means that Russia will always be an aggressive power, and therefore cannot be reasoned with. Russia has been driven mad by insecure frontiers – and Putin is the maddest of them all. This does not inform negotiations; it is an excuse to not negotiate. Geopolitics does not temper the liberal international order with realpolitik, but drives its worst impulses on. Conflict is no longer something contingent and negotiable, but is now an expression of the immovable currents of history. This all owes more to tarot cards than to Talleyrand, and we shouldn’t let its practitioners claim the mantle of realism and suave.
J. Sorel is a pseudonym.
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“above baseless conspiracy theories”
Sigh.
Come on Tony, I know you’re trying a different tact this time, but you’re not fooling anyone here. Still, these articles always put a smile on my face.
Not a single mention of the BSV BLOCKCHAIN. Must do better.
Privately produced cryptos are actively suppressed and sabotaged. And that’s to be expected. The state has monopoly over the production of cash and has every intention of holding on to it. So they suppress private digital options while rushing to produce their own. The state isn’t about to allow the free market of money any time soon.
And as I’ve said repeatedly when commenting on the articles of this author, the idea that the state will not abuse this extra new power as it does all other powers it has is naive to say the very least.
Worse still, this expanded state power granted by CBDCs will be captured by powerful private oligarchal interests, as always happens.
The last thing the state needs is more power, regardless of what the theoretical benefits of granting it might have.
Exactly
There you go indulging in baseless conspiracy theories
…the idea that the state will not abuse this extra new power as it does all other powers it has is naive to say the very least…
-is being generous, when you consider that they’re already actively accessing and monitoring benefit claimant accounts ‘for fraud’ [sic], no doubt soon to be rolled out to state pensioners and then everyone else.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/dwp-confirms-every-bank-where-benefit-claimants-accounts-will-be-monitored/ar-AA1mZDHh
I recall this author trying to convince us that Up as Down, and Left was Right before.
Let me say it. For cashless to work requires absolute trust between bank and client, and a government that keeps itself out of our lives to the maximum extent…and that’s where the theory all goes wrong. Witness the Labour push on teeth cleaning for kids. Are we to be fined if toothpaste isn’t in our purchases this month.? Well that’s exactly the sort of authoritarian over-reach that CBDC will make all too easy. Will politicians be able to resist..? Of course not. Just like bankers wont be able to stop themselves ‘printing’ more money, and devaluing everything like they have for the last century.
Bank Closures are speeding up at an alarming rate !
All the profits Lloyds Bank make and they’re closing local branches at a fast pace. Something sinister is at play.
I have asked this question before;
What happens when there is a power outage? Also what about places with patchy/non-existent internet coverage? My Alaskan friend is frequently out of internet range as her works in very remote places.
Think also about the internet blackout in Gaza. What happens then.
What happens when there is a problem with the bank being overwhelmed with transactions? – this happened to a friend of mine paying by a ‘qr’ app.
Apart from minimal on-line shopping I always pay in cash.
Isn’t it strange how, over the past 3 years or so, the “baseless conspiracy theories” have one-by-one turned out to be accurate.
I don’t doubt that the “baseless conspiracy theories” about CBDCs, surveillance, a social credit system and time-limited tokens, instead of money, will also prove accurate. Give the authoritarians an inch and they will take a mile.
I use debit and credit cards but I am also withdrawing and using cash far more than I was, even four years ago. Most fairly small, in-person transactions are now done using cash.
Use it, or you’ll lose it – and then you’ll be completely at the mercy of the Banksters and the authoritarians in the Establishment.
Hear, hear.
Absolutely spot on. I always make a point of using cash in the supermarket for our weekly shop I also make sure we use the manual checkout. Unfortunately one doesn’t seem to be able to get away from debit/credit cards but I try and keep it to the minimum.
Yes and over the last three years or nearly four now so called conspiracy theories seemed to have become spoiler alerts!
Not having a smartphone/personal tracking device by which to enforce payments and/or biometric identification (being implemented for everything from libraries to banks to govt) should be a protected characteristic.
“We have been made aware of instances where consumers have been told by their bank that, for example, they will not be able to shop online or access their account without a smart phone. This is not acceptable.”
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/new-online-security-measures-what-if-you-dont-have-a-smartphone/
https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-registration-laws/
“Has an Austrian or libertarian version of money been demonstrated to work anywhere? If not we are stuck with state and central bank backed currencies for now.” Crypto surely meets this criteria and is working despite the onslaught of the world’s govt’s! If it wasn’t working, then why attack it and why try to copy it?