Why do I write about geopolitics?

Because geopolitics is the matter furthest from us, yet it is also closest to us, and our destiny is determined by it. Having said so, what I actually wanted to write now is just about the movie The Greatest Beer Run Ever.

The plot of the movie is not complicated, and it is based on a true story. During the Vietnam War in the last century, Americans in a bar were divided into two groups. The first was veterans who participated in the Second World War and felt that since they had participated in the war before, they understood how war works so they supported the American government's war in Vietnam and the United States as the savior of the world. This may be merely their intuition, and I do not believe they actually understood the geopolitics behind it. Another group was of course anti-war. Seeing that many had died, they were frightened by the war, and they cared nothing about the world. While they did not understand geopolitics, they held street carnival-like demonstrations, and that was considered a cool thing.

In the movie, the protagonist John "Chickie" Donohue, played by Zac Efron, often frequented such a bar. Some of his friends had died in the Vietnam War, while others were still alive. He harbored the crazy idea of delivering beers from where he lived to his friends on the battlefields of Vietnam, and that was what he did.

There he saw the real war, of death and destruction, where truth and lies became indistinguishable. He saw the difference between the geopolitics of the elites and the flesh and blood of the common folks. In the end, Chickie remarked that, "I know our grand-dads and our dads—they went over to Europe to save the world. And I would put today's guys up there any day. But I'm not so sure we're saving the world this time".

The reality is just like that, there is a huge gap between geopolitics and ordinary people. Joe Biden decided that the American army would not directly fight in Ukraine, as they would in Vietnam. His decision was based on political considerations of the grassroots level, which influenced him through public opinion. However, during the Second World War, public opinion on grassroots politics was just the opposite.

Regardless of how much ink has been spilled over it, geopolitics is actually the most incomprehensible topic for ordinary people, because it is too distant from them. Usually, it is a group of well-dressed "thugs" who decide the state of affairs with their words in books, reports, and PowerPoint presentations in offices or conference rooms. The ordinary folks do not understand this, nor do they care. Only when geopolitics turns into war and people are required to sacrifice their lives, will the common people understand that this matter is really related to their own fate.

Therefore, geopolitics is a high-level matter, and it has always been so. Did the Vietnam War make sense? It certainly did, and for that reason, both sides of the war fought over interests and values. Otherwise, neither of the warring parties would risk their lives for it. Yet, politics at the grassroots level can be completely different from that of the elites, and the common people care little about geopolitics. High-level politics speak of "the rise and fall of empires in this war", and grassroots-level politics speak of anti-war.

The huge gap between geopolitics and public opinion at the grassroots-level is the key to the difference between these two. Sometimes this difference can be bridged through political manipulation, such as what Franklin Roosevelt did during the Second World War. However, sometimes, or for most politicians, this is an impossible feat. So, I think the real meaning of modern geopolitics lies in dialogue, in the micro-influence of geopolitics, in closing the gap.

Some think that there are so-called good geopolitics and bad geopolitics. What this means is that geopolitics can theoretically handle the relationship between the topmost and the grassroots-levels, and that there is a geopolitical theory that represents and reflects public opinion. In reality, such a thing does not exist. The fundamental interests of the grassroots of society only seek peace, and real geopolitics is about conflicts. For this reason, Putin came into existence.

To cite some examples, although the title of American political scientist Nicholas J. Spykman's book is The Geography of The Peace, it is not really about peace, but concentrates on the "marginals" and is about wars and conflicts. The French philosopher Raymond Aron's huge book Peace and War only mentions "justice" passingly. These geopolitical scientists rely on "value neutrality" to engage in learning. What is just or unjust only exists in grassroots-level politics, that is, only in public opinion, and is merely rhetoric to the common people.

This is obviously wrong.

Someone has to fill the huge gap between geopolitics and public opinion, which is why I write about geopolitics. I do this not to make money out of it, but for the bottom-level politics that need logic and something real, something that can be proven by time.