Philosophy of Geopolitics

All competition naturally stems from competition for scarce natural resources.

Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.

Soldiers win battles, logistics wins wars. Or perhaps even better: Soldiers win combat, logistics win battles, and rich old men win wars.

Defense is the first duty of a state.

Peace can only be secured by preparing for war.

Friends don’t let friend declare war on their friends against their will. -Theodore Roosevelt

You can ignore politics, but politics won’t ignore you.

Youtube Channels For Learning About Geopolitics:

• Caspian Report Geopolitics Youtube Channel by Shirvan Neftchi
• History Matters
• Strategy Stuff
• William Spaniel; This channel has good content about the War between Russia and Ukraine, although the content between some of the videos can get repetitive, and he also subscribes to this weird, autistic habit of drawing lines on maps as a way of negotiating land between countries, but this should be disregarded because it has no predictive or explanatory power, nor do countries ever actually think that way.

NOTE: I haven’t finished writing this file yet. I will add more content to this file some more when I have more time.

Mountainous countries are much harder to invade and control. They also often have the advantage of containing water sources that flow downstream into neighboring countries, and they have the luxury of damming said streams for hydro-electric power and/or as leverage against downstream countries.

Countries strive to protect their economic interests, especially those of the elites and powerful companies.

Rules for Rulers - CGP Grey

Wikipedia: Buffer Zones

Wikipedia: Buffer States

Small states that exist because competition from neighboring powers prevents them from getting conquered:

• Switzerland (also due to its mountainous geography)
• Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (buffer zone between Germany, France, and Great Britain)
• Uruguay (buffer zone between Argentina and Brazil)
• The Appalachian Mountains (historical buffer zone between the British-American colonies and the Native Americans)
• France wasn’t partitioned up between the powers of Europe after Napoleon was defeated, lest any country that took over France’s territory could be become too powerful against everybody else.
• Afghanistan (historical buffer zone between the Russian Empire and the British Empire)
• Alaska (buffer zone between the Russian Empire and the British Empire)
• Finland (historical buffer zone between Russia and various Western powers)
• The Democratic Republic of the Congo (buffer zone between the British, French, Portuguese, and German Empires in Africa)
• Thailand (buffer zone between the British and French colonial empires)
• The Balkans (historical buffer zone between the Ottoman Empire and various European powers, including Austria-Hungary and Russia)
• Mongolia (buffer zone between USSR / Russia and China)
• The Eastern Bloc (historical buffer zone between the USSR and NATO)
• Austria (between NATO and the Warsaw Pact); instead of partitioning Austria (as was done with Germany after WWII), both sides withdrew from Austria under the condition that it was forbidden from joining either military alliance.
• The Korean Peninsula (historical buffer zone between China and Japan)
• North Korea (buffer zone between China and Liberal South Korea)
• North Vietnam (buffer zone between Communist China and Capitalist South Vietnam)
• The Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, and the First and Second Island Chains between China, the US, and other Pacific countries.
• Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet (buffer zones between China and India)

We don’t want Russia to destabilize because the next oligarchy that seizes power is unlikely to be aligned with the West. It would be nice if there was a way to install a pro-Western government, but it’s unfeasible. It is concerning if anybody takes over of Russia’s nukes, and we should also be concerned about how the ongoing instability in Pakistan could enable the Taliban and other radicals to gain nuclear weapons.

Aside from a pro-Western takeover, the next best thing is a weaker Russia. Russia is an ally of China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, etc. All those countries are adversaries of the United States and the West, especially China. Weakening Russia would dampen China’s geopolitical goals, as well as their odds at winning a war against Taiwan, the United States, and their allies.

There are several geopolitical reasons why the US government should want Russia to lose the Russo-Ukrainian War:

• Russia is still an empire with an imperial mindset. It is the last European country to still maintain most of its colonial territory, and the Russian head of government (Vladimir Putin) is well-known for wanting to restore the USSR. It is therefore in the US’s interest to weaken the Russian state.
• Russia is China’s greatest ally, and China is currently the main geopolitical opponent of the US. Arguably, the Cold War was tri-polar (between the US, the USSR, and China) instead of bipolar. Although the USSR collapsed, China never did, so in a sense, the Cold War never really ended because there’s still two global factions competing against each other: The US and its allies versus China and its allies.
• Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, which was a clear violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
• Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 because they were afraid that Ukraine would join NATO, because they wanted more buffer space between them and Europe, because they saw Ukrainians as belonging to the same ethnic group, because Putin wanted a distraction to boost his popularity, etc, among other reasons.
• If the world wants the Russo-Ukrainian War to end as fast as possible, then the fastest way to make that happen is if the Russians lose sooner rather than later.

I strongly disagree that Poland and the Baltic states joining NATO was the work of government elites in the US and NATO. Every country that ever joined NATO did so with the strong democratic approval of all its citizens and all the member states of NATO. Poland and other Eastern European countries joined NATO because they wanted to protect themselves from Russia, who has a long history of invading its neighbors. Gaining NATO membership guarantees that a country will never be attacked ever again, since it controls a strong nuclear arsenal and is the most powerful military alliance in the World.

I’m sure that there’s corrupt and ulterior motives why the elites in the US want to give aid to Ukraine, like how it would benefit the military industrial complex to supply Ukraine with more weapons and equipment, but I still believe that most of the reasons the US has for opposing Russia since the fall of the USSR are geopolitical in Nature, not so much for supporting the interests of the deep state.

As for why Russia didn’t join NATO, there are multiple reasons for that. One is that Russia is so large that if they did join NATO, they might have too much influence in it. Another is that the CSTO was created after the Soviet Union fell, and that probably made it harder to join Russia join NATO since it was already in a potentially opposing military alliance. An of course, there were already the known geopolitical factors for why Russia has historically been opposed to NATO.

There are also many reasons why the US should want to replace the Russian oligarchy with a Western-aligned government, if it’s possible:

• A Western-aligned Russia would increase the geopolitical security and stability of all of Europe.
• Since Russia is the successor of the Soviet Union, Russia holds one of the five veto votes on the UN Security Council and has the largest nuclear arsenal of any country in the world. If the Russian oligarchy were to be replaced by a Western-aligned government, that would make it easier for the US to lead a global government.
• Russia is the only other country in the world besides the US that reserves the right to make a claim to Antarctica. If Russia re-ailigns, then it will be easier for the US to make a claim to Antarctica that is harder to oppose. The US has the strongest claims to Marie Byrd Land, which just happens to be the most colonizable region of Antarctica if climate change continues to warm Antarctica and make it more habitable by humans.
• Russian airspace is among the most valuable airspace in the world since the country is so large and in a strategic location for airspace. Re-aligning Russia with the West would make it easier to route airlines through that airspace if it doesn’t violate Russian sovereignty.
• Re-aligning Russia will be easier to access natural resources in Russian territory without strengthening the Russo-Chinese sphere of influence.
• Re-aligning Russia with the West would be a huge blow to North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, other opponents of the US, and especially China.

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The main concern with destabilizing Russia is the power vacuum that it would create.

The first time Russia experienced a power vacuum, the Communists seized power. And we all know how well that turned out for the entire world.

If Russia has a power vacuum that deposes Vladimir Putin, how can you be sure that someone else in the Siloviki won’t gain power instead? And how would that be any better? It’s more likely that someone from the Siloviki would take power, rather than someone aligned with the West.

The most dangerous countries to destabilize are the nuclear ones.

Russia breaks up, couldn’t that enable breakaway states to get their own nukes?

Power Vacuums That Went Wrong:

• The Bolsheviks seizing power during the Russian Civil War, and later creating the Soviet Union.
• The death of Vladimir Lenin, and the installment of Joseph Stalin.
• The USSR’s conquering of Eastern Europe, and installment of Communist governments.
• The overthrow of Muammar Qadafi, and the Anarchy in Libya.
• The overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the rise of ISIS in Iraq.

If there is a power vacuum, anyone could win, even people who might dislike. In most cases, they are not worth the trouble they cause.

Taiwan obviously won’t be able to defend itself against the much larger People’s Liberation Army.

If Taiwan falls, not only does that country fall, but South Korea and Japan also become at risk of falling to Chinese hegemony because their trade routes flow through the Taiwan Strait between China and Taiwan. If China conquers Taiwan, they could block off Japan and South Korea’s national trading routes from the rest of the world, which would endanger their sovereignty and all the people living in those countries. With the combined population of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, that is ~200 million people of the free world who will be at risk of falling under authoritarian rule, if the United States does not intervene to defend Taiwan.

Additionally, if the United States does end up going to war with China over Taiwan, the US won’t have to fight alone. In the event of a war, India would definitely seize the opportunity to invade Tibet with full force at the same time to open another front in the War against China since: 1. the countries have a contentious border dispute, 2. they are strong enemies against each other, and 3. the best time to attack China is when they’re distracted with invading Taiwan. Japan, South Korea, and maybe even the Philippines would also be strongly incentivized to defend Taiwan as well since it would be in their national security interests. And if China attacks the US, the United States could summon Article 5 of NATO. So not only defending Taiwan make sense in the name of freedom, but if China were to attack Taiwan, the odds would be strongly in favor of the US.

The Soviet Union was essentially a Communist Empire that was a continuation of the earlier Russian Empire. That being said, it can and should be argued that the although the European colonial empires lost all of their colonies by the 1980s, with the exceptions of Macau and Hong Kong during the late 1990s, that the USSR was actually the last European-founded empire to lose most of its territory, since the USSR didn’t fall until 1991, and didn’t start losing most of its territories / puppet states until 1989-1991.

Although each member of the Soviet Union was called a Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), each SSR was equivalent to a colony, albeit the colonies were not separated by oceans, and were all continuously connected by land mass.

When viewing the Soviet Union as a Communist Empire, and knowing that the Siloviki of the Russian elite still strongly adhere to an outdated geopolitical strategy from 1900 that focused on world domination by aiming to dominate as much of the Eurasian continent as much as possible, it becomes more clear that the Siloviki of the Russian Federation’s political elite are basically trying to apply a colonial geopolitical strategy to a modern world where nearly every country has advanced technology (and thus can’t be easily conquered without a fight, also depends on geography), where peace/influence/diplomacy are the usual norm in geopolitics, where many countries are allied with nuclear weapons, and where globalization makes colonization less feasible. The massive failure of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a clear indication that applying a colonial geopolitical strategy simply won’t work anywhere in the world anymore.

It should be noted that the Portuguese Empire held on to its overseas colonies considerably longer than other colonial powers did, and this was because the Portuguese Empire was ruled by a dictator who held an iron fist over the Empire, which didn’t cease until he died in 1974/1975. The Soviet Union was also ruled by an iron fist, and it didn’t fall until 1991, thus making it the last European-founded empire to fall in the 20th century.

With these factors being said, one can analyze that ruling an empire with an iron fist will absolutely help the empire last longer. This is the same reason why other countries ruled by dictators like China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Russia, Cameroon, etc have not fallen. Even though other regimes ruled by iron fists have collapsed, that doesn’t imply that every regime that is ruled by an iron fist must collapse, especially if said regime is very strategic and mindful about what it must do to maintain its reign and power.

Given the Sino-Soviet Split that happened in 1961, and also given that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) never fell after the Soviet Union fell in 1991, it can be argued to an extent that the Cold War never ended.

Yes, most of the Communist countries around the world did collapse after the Soviet Union fell in 1991, but Communist China never fell, so the Tri-Polar World Order that had existed ever since 1961 got reduced to a (dual) polar world order in 1991 between China and the United States, which still continues to this day (2022).

There is also the great possibility that China and the Russian Federation will ally together to form an alliance of their own, which would be a continuation of the old Cold War conflict, but this time lead by China with Russia following behind as the junior partner of the alliance.