My Seven Rules of Geopolitics

By Rich Kozlovich

For those who are news junkies among my readers this statement will not be a surprise.  Everything going on the world world is complicated, and the news media makes it so complicated issues become incomprehensible.  Because the media is filled with lazy, poorly educated, historically ignorant hacks.  Which is why I subscribe to geopolitical sites with excellent writers and analysts.  I don't always agree with them, but usually their history and their facts are right on.  

It's their conclusions with which I occasionally find fault, but at least their conclusions have some logic behind them.  While conclusions should be predicated on facts, so often the trouble with conclusions is facts can be ignored and their conclusions can be predicated on personal values, preconceived notions, and ideological views of reality.  Some of which will be right on, and, some of which will not.  After all, there really is such things as good and evil, right and wrong. 

Benjamin Franklin said two things in his autobiography I've find myself quoting a lot over the years.   "Truth will very patiently wait for us", and the "nice thing about being rational is we can rationalize so easily."  And both apply when it comes to geopolitics and the conclusions drawn by writers.   

As I read the news alerts I receive from these geopolitical news sources, I find some of them are agonizingly long and convoluted, going off in too many directions.  So, I try to organize all that into some kind of cohesive presentation.  I'm a firm believer that all articles should have a strong "coherence through connectives" component in the framework of my articles.  

So, in order to lay logical foundations for my conclusions, I've developed seven rules for what I think are a pretty good touchstone for my articles.  They blend naturally, and I think are essential to try and make the complex less so, and hopefully easier, to understand.  

If I took all the articles I'm sent in a week and published them at the end of the week, I'd have a book. Clearly that's impossible, so that means I have to perform triage on all these articles.  I pick and choose what I think is necessary to get an understanding of all the events, their societies, and the characters involved, and their goals, stated, unstated, and real goals versus what is being claimed.  That means leaving a lot of information out, and making a great many fact driven assumptions. 

1. First Rule of Geopolitics: All geopolitics is about four factors, geographics, demographics, economics, and that most elusive factor of all, the happiness factor.  
   
2. Second Rule of Geopolitics:  Everything is about the basics.  You have to be able to see issues at their foundational root levels in order to understand and fix complex problems.
   
3. Third Rule of Geopolitics:  History is everything since historical events lay the foundation for the social paradigms of nations, which have been in effect for centuries in most areas of the world.
   
4. Fourth Rule of Geopolitics:  People are like nations, and will act in their own best interests, unless they don't.  
5. Fifth Rule of Geopolitics: Nothing is ever as it appears.  Look behind the curtain, there's always something hidden. 
6. Sixth Rule of Geopolitics:  The patterns of life keep repeating over and over again. 
   
7. Seventh Rule of Geopolitics:  Everyone lies.     

I've been a history buff all of my life, and as I read more history I kept asking:  Why did they do that?  I've asked that over and over again because so often the folly of these historical characters actions was obvious.  Of course, history is all about hind sight, and that's 20/20.   But, none the less, I kept asking that same question:  Why did they do that?  I have the answer.  Patterns! 

The answer is life is about patterns, and eventually I saw the patterns that explains it.  Their motivations were entirely, or in part, predicated on greed, envy, hate, lust, and a total lack of regard for the lost lives perpetrated by the violence they heaped on innocent people.   I find it disturbing historical characters such as Alexander who were in reality monsters who killed millions in order to satisfy their greedy self interest, and yet have been awarded the epithet of "The Great"! 

At any rate, those are my Seven Rules of Geopolitics, and with those rules it's my hope I can find and offer knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.