When Geopolitics Meets Evil
Geopolitics was born as a rational discipline. It studies power relations, territorial dynamics, and strategic behavior. It is the science of control — cold, objective, impersonal. Yet, what often escapes this analytical lens is the demonic dimension of power, that dark, primal force that has accompanied humankind since the dawn of civilization.
Behind the rationality of maps and military doctrines lies a more obscure reality: an insatiable desire for control, a limitless ambition, and a will to power that defies moral boundaries. Geopolitics can explain how states act, but it rarely explains why they persist in destruction, even at the cost of their own survival.
In every empire, every regime, every economic or military order, there exists a force that transcends logic — what Carl Gustav Jung called the shadow: the repressed, unconscious drive toward domination and destruction. This is the demonic essence of power, both creative and catastrophic.
2. Power as a Mask: The Violence Behind Reason
All political power wears a mask of reason. Kings spoke of order and justice; governments today speak of freedom, democracy, and progress. But behind these noble ideals lies the primordial truth of power: the right to decide over life and death.
Carl Schmitt, one of the most lucid political theorists of the 20th century, defined sovereignty as “the ability to decide on the state of exception.” In that moment — when law is suspended and violence becomes legitimate — power reveals its true nature: to dominate, not to govern.
Geopolitics, with its language of “strategic necessity” and “national interest,” often hides this brutal foundation. Beneath every justification lies fear — the fear of the Other — and the will to subjugate it.
Every war, every conquest, every economic sanction expresses this same dark impulse: the will to power that mutates into the will to destroy.
3. The Demonic Face of Power in History
From the Roman Empire to modern totalitarian regimes, history is filled with examples of power disguising its brutality as a civilizing mission.
Rome conquered in the name of order and civilization. European colonialism expanded under the banner of progress and faith. Yet beneath every empire’s rhetoric burned the same instinct: the pursuit of dominance.
In the 20th century, dictators like Stalin, Hitler, and Mao perfected this fusion of reason and savagery. Their regimes embodied the cold logic of absolute power, where the individual was merely raw material for ideology.
Today, the brutality of power is subtler but no less lethal. “Humanitarian wars,” economic blockades, digital propaganda, and proxy conflicts are all expressions of the new, sanitized violence — cruelty without blood, domination masked as benevolence.
4. The Limits of Geopolitics: What It Cannot Explain
Geopolitics explains how power moves, but not why it so often turns destructive.
It excludes the element of evil, because evil cannot be quantified. It has no metrics, no GDP, no index.
Yet without understanding evil, geopolitics remains blind to the deeper tremors of history.
Empires collapse not only due to material constraints but due to hybris — the arrogance of power.
Leaders who come to believe themselves infallible, messianic, or destined to rule the world embody this pathology.
For Hegel, history was the unfolding of the Spirit; for Marx, a struggle of classes. But both overlooked the psychological dimension of power — its capacity to become a living force, feeding on human ambition and fear.
5. The Madness of Domination: When Power Devours Itself
Every form of power expands until it consumes itself. Beyond a certain threshold, domination becomes self-destructive. Nietzsche saw this clearly: the will to power inevitably turns inward, destroying its bearer.
Dictators, conquerors, oligarchs, and corporate magnates all share the same fate — they become slaves of the very power they command. Rationality decays into paranoia; strategy becomes obsession.
From the war in Ukraine to the U.S.–China rivalry, from Middle Eastern conflicts to the global race for artificial intelligence, geopolitics today often resembles a contest for total domination, where logic gives way to obsession.
It’s no longer about balance or negotiation — it’s about annihilation.
This is the madness of modern power: victory defined not as survival, but as the destruction of the Other.
6. Evil as a Structure of Contemporary Power
In today’s globalized world, power has become invisible, networked, and systemic. It no longer needs thrones or armies; it operates through digital networks, financial systems, and data control.
The demonic face of power is now technocratic.
Violence is no longer physical but algorithmic, economic, psychological. It operates through markets, media, and the invisible architectures of control.
Information warfare, digital propaganda, and mass surveillance are the new forms of soft domination. Superpowers like the United States, China, and Russia weaponize them to shape perception itself.
This is the democratization of demonic power: whoever controls collective imagination controls reality.
7. Power, Evil, and Dehumanization
Power always requires dehumanization. To justify domination, the enemy must cease to be human.
Recognizing the humanity of the Other makes violence impossible. Hence, every empire, every government, constructs narratives of moral superiority.
Geopolitical rhetoric — “defending democracy,” “fighting terrorism,” “protecting freedom” — masks a single truth: power never defends values; it defends itself.
The “war on evil” is often the most sophisticated form of evil.
Because when power claims to define good and evil, it repeats the oldest sin — the desire to play God, to impose order upon chaos by force.
8. The Shadow of Power: Psychology and Symbolism
Carl Jung taught that evil arises from the repression of the shadow — the part of ourselves we refuse to acknowledge.
Political systems work the same way. The more a regime or ideology presents itself as moral, the more darkness it conceals.
Modern democracies are not exempt.
In fact, democratic power is often more dangerous precisely because it hides behind consent, legality, and moral justification.
But beneath this surface lies the same will to dominate — only made more efficient and acceptable.
Western geopolitics speaks of a “rules-based international order.” Yet who makes those rules? And for whose benefit?
The shadow of power persists, even beneath the rhetoric of freedom.
9. Invisible Brutality: The Normalization of Evil
The most disturbing feature of modern power is its banality, as Hannah Arendt warned.
Evil no longer needs tyrants; it operates through impersonal systems — markets, algorithms, bureaucracies, financial boards.
Power today is faceless, and precisely for that reason, it is more dangerous.
Traditional geopolitics, obsessed with borders and alliances, often overlooks this new invisible brutality — the kind that kills without blood.
Economic crises, artificial shortages, and financial collapses are not accidents; they are weapons.
Hunger, poverty, and climate disasters are geopolitical instruments of domination in a world where the battlefield is everywhere and nowhere.
Behind every embargo, every energy crisis, every speculative bubble lies the same dark instinct — the will to dominate, refined by technology and global finance.
10. Conclusion: Beyond Geopolitics — Understanding the Dark Core of Power
To understand the dark side of power is not to surrender to pessimism, but to see clearly.
Geopolitics, as it stands, is a map of surface movements; it charts forces but not motives. It forgets that every political order rests upon hidden violence, and every stability conceals conflict.
Power is demonic because it springs from humanity’s dual nature — the urge to create and the urge to destroy.
Until geopolitics integrates this inner dimension, it will remain incomplete — a science of geography that cannot map the human soul.
Recognizing the invisible brutality of power — its psychological roots and destructive hunger — is the first step toward a more conscious political thought.
True peace will never emerge from strength alone. It begins with the acknowledgment of the darkness within.
Only by confronting the demons of power can humanity hope to build an order less cruel, less blind, and perhaps, finally, more human.
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An in-depth exploration of the dark side of power — the invisible brutality that geopolitics often fails to reveal. From reason of state to the madness of domination, a journey through the demonic nature of human power.
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