On Geopolitics

There is a theory of international relations - extremely popular among the popular masses - that I would characterise as the geopolitical interpretation of history.

What the geopolitical interpretation implies is that the whole point of wars and conflicts, and schemes, and intrigues is about states fighting for territory.

Everything else is just a disguise

So, basically, if we start a war, the real point of it would be land and its derivatives (resources, strategic locations, zones of interests). But, as we cannot say this openly, we must feed the populace some sort of idealistic lies (“we fight for freedom” “for all the oppressed” “for our brethren in faith”)

Geopolitical interpretation in history presents itself an an ultimate redpill, a short of reality

Based on the naming alone, that makes total sense

If idealism (= values) sounds idealistic

(you can already smell the naive BS)

Then realism sounds, well, real

The final truth

There is, however, a problem with this argument

And the primary problem is that it is popular

The fact that it is so popular, and sells so easily implies that it is probably not true

Accurate beliefs, close to reality tend to scale poorly

And vice versa, to scale well, an idea must be really, really simple

In most cases, that means dumb

It must be so stupid, that even a complete moron can grasp the concept

Then it can acquire a wide, nearly universal popularity

Still, merely pointing to the stupidity (or simplicity) of an idea does not explain how it became popular

There must be something else

In case of geopolitics, that would be the fact that primary concepts of geopolitics are hardwired into our brain

We are only semi sapient but highly territorial animals

Our pack, our land, our boundary, it is all wired into our consciousness

And that explains success of the geopolitical interpretation

Geopolitics are popular, because they work well with masses

It is an idea simple enough to be translated to the masses

Which makes it popular for the utilitarian reasons