Geopolitics

Even though my professional life has revolved around finance, geopolitics is a space that I keenly follow. Perhaps this has roots in my obsession with maps, which goes all the way back to my years as a child pouring over any map my parents would find for me. These were all kinds of maps – physical, economic, political, historical, geodesic, topographic, etc. I was especially curious about national borders, wondering how they’d come about, how they had changed over the centuries, which historical events caused these changes and what impact they had on the development of nations. Over time, this curiosity spurred my appetite for learning geopolitics and trying to make sense of global events through the prism of my learning.

Another factor that to some extent explains my curiosity in geopolitics is the series of major geopolitical events that I’ve witnessed throughout my life. As a young boy, I experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union, considered one of the two world superpowers at the time. This development naturally sent countless geopolitical shocks around the globe – the world order had changed radically and permanently. Living in Baku, near the epicentre of this event that had such a profound impact on the flow of world history, I also experienced first-hand what it meant ‘on the ground’ in the lives of ordinary people. From standing in long queues for staple products to realizing that people’s entire life’s savings had gone to zero – the list of hardships is endless. I was just one among hundreds of millions whose life was shaped by this global event.

Another geopolitical event that left a permanent mark on my formation was the First Karabakh War in the early 90s. I was too young to be drafted, but quite a few of my slightly older friends, with whom I used to play football in our neighbourhood, perished in that war. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed, often with unspeakable cruelty, while hundreds of thousands became refugees, some having to flee barefoot over the mountain passes to save their lives. The sense of loss and humiliation in the aftermath of that devastating war left a scar in the soul of every Azerbaijani. On the surface, the conflict looked local, but in reality it was linked to a much larger geopolitical game with major regional and global powers pursuing their agendas and directly influencing the events on the ground.

To make sense of these developments, so significant and dramatic in their nature and consequences, one would need to understand the geopolitical context, so it is not surprising that my initial curiosity grew to become a keen lifelong interest.

Today we are witnessing many more geopolitical events that are shaping the future of our world. Inter-ethnic struggles, migration, regional conflicts, military coups, nationalisation and de-globalisation – they all make geopolitics an increasingly important topic, requiring that we all constantly educate ourselves to be better prepared for the consequences of these events – and sometimes even to try influencing them for the better.

Everyone has their own way of learning. I tend to combine literature with social media. Since getting a list of popular and relevant authors is not difficult with the help of Internet resources, I will just share a few whose work I found to be most impactful on me.