Retiring Geopolitics

The world government that libertarians fear will never happen. Something else much more interesting might...

I started Unapocalyptic with a couple of goals. Not quite manifestos, these are certainly lines in the sand. One of them has been to imagine what I’ve been calling ‘a science fiction of the 21st century.’ —Not the science fiction of the 21st century, because hopefully we’ll continue our tradition of non-tradition and explore any and every possible world. I’m interested here in a science fiction that, insofar as possible, only speculates about ideas and discoveries made since 2000. It’s kind of a game I’m playing.

So let’s play. What 21st-century political entities could replace the sovereign Westphalian state?

This article explores the convergence of transnational plurinationalism, rights for nature, and ecosystem-based resource management in new constitutional proposals being made, chiefly in South America. Environmental pressures are also moving us towards something I call “Natural MAD,” forcing nations to reconsider extractive capitalism. If these forces gain momentum and influence, they could reshape traditional geopolitical and state frameworks. They’re poised to undermine established notions of the state and geopolitics, potentially paving the way for a radically different global order.

Westphalian Assumptions

The modern nation-state has been with us since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The nation is the atomic unit of geopolitics; territorial sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs define it. When I was growing up, we in the West feared a global communist state that would be such a Westphalian entity, but an inescapable one that ruled the whole planet. We briefly did get global hegemony, under Pax Americana, but that’s waning. What I hear people talking most about these days is an emerging multipolar world, where there are several centers of power—Washington, Brussels, Beijing, Moscow, and New Delhi, in all likelihood. This multipolar world would continue the ‘Great Game’ of geopolitics, with slightly different players than a hundred years ago.

But this is not what I see happening.

The most interesting place in the world right now, politically, is South America. It’s been the leader in political experimentation for quite some time—Salvador Allende’s cybernetic government (1971-1973) ran on a computerized system, called Cybersyn, built for him by Stafford Beer. This “third way” in economics was so far ahead of its time that it had to be crushed. Pinochet did a good job of that, but not before Cybersyn had started an intellectual renaissance in Chile led by public intellectuals like Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana (yes, the originators of the theory of Enactivism that I keep mentioning).

It’s not the admittedly fascinating Chilean experiments (last year’s constitutional referendum, for example) that are likely to be remembered as most significant; I think that prize goes to the Bolivian constitution of 2009. This document gave us the first truly plurinational state (though one wrapped in a unitary state, retaining an outer skin of Westphalian coloration).

Plurinationalism is really interesting; Canada has always been a kind of plurinational state due to federal accommodations to Quebec’s integrity (Quebec’s Sovereignty Association movement in the 1990s bringing that to a head). We face a second round of soul-searching today during Reconciliation with the First Nations of our settled territories. I wrote about that in my short story “Degrees of Freedom,” published in the now-famous Hieroglyph anthology of 2014. (I’m proud to say the story is often assigned reading in Canadian universities.) Canada could evolve into a more complicated but interesting patchwork of plurinational entities because much of its land was never ceded by treaty (95% of British Columbia, for instance). Now the land is being returned to its original owners; for example, much of downtown Vancouver has been given back to the three First Nations that originally claimed it.

Transnational Plurinationalism (say that five times fast)

There are plurinational movements that are also transnational, particularly among indigenous groups whose traditional territories and cultural ties span national borders. These movements often focus on environmental protection, cultural preservation, and political rights, leveraging their transnational character to forge stronger alliances and advocate more effectively on the international stage. Examples include the Mapuche people, who are indigenous to regions in both Chile and Argentina. They’re looking for autonomy and the preservation of their cultural and land rights across both countries. Similarly, the Maya are indigenous to Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras, and are seeking similar recognition. The Sámi are indigenous to Arctic areas of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. They have organized across these national borders to advocate for their rights as an indigenous people. They have established the Sámi Council and other bodies to coordinate efforts across countries, focusing on issues like reindeer herding rights, cultural preservation, and environmental concerns. In North America we have groups like the Blackfoot Confederacy, whose territory extends from Alberta down into the Great Plains of the USA. If you base your notion of territorial rights on history, be aware that some Blackfoot people have called this region home for 18,000 years.

The Sámi flag. Courtesy of Wikipedia

The tenacity of indigenous peoples in the face of colonialism implies a reckoning at some point. At the very least we are likely to see more irridentism (the redrawing of political boundaries); but there’s more to it than that. Irridentist movements tend to still accept the Westphalian illusion of firm boundaries. What the examples above suggest is that the very notion of borders has become untenable in the face of the continued existence of ethnicities that four hundred years of colonialism have failed to erase.

Meanwhile, In the Nonhuman World…

The thing about futures work is that it’s easy to fixate on one trend and project that forward. This isn’t how the real world works: everything is always changing, all at the same time. Everything, everywhere, all at once. So, while these interesting constitutional changes have been going on in the political sphere, a parallel process has been happening in the rights of nature legal movement.

I wrote about this in Reimagining Rights, so I won’t dwell on it here. Briefly, the rights for nature movement extends legal rights to natural entities—rivers, forests, and landscapes—challenging the anthropocentric approach that sees nature primarily as a resource for human use. Countries like Ecuador and Bolivia have incorporated these rights into their constitutions, recognizing ecosystems as rights-bearing entities. This legal shift fundamentally challenges traditional state sovereignty over natural resources, proposing instead a stewardship model. If more countries adopt similar statutes, we might see an international system that prioritizes ecological sustainability and rights over resource exploitation. If you doubt that this is likely, consider how last year was the hottest year in recorded history, and this year is likely to make the effects of human resource overshoot even more starkly visible. It’s literally inescapable, so the impacts of climate change are a plausible driver that could accelerate this trend.

Ecosystem-Based Resource Management

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) prioritizes ecological balance and sustainability, managing resources according to the natural capacities of ecosystems rather than arbitrary political boundaries. This approach necessitates collaboration across borders—and here’s the thing; like I said above, global warming has quickly changed from being an abstract issue we leave in the lap of distant policy bodies, to being the lived experience of every single person on the planet. It is forcing every single one of us to turn our attention away from parochial, local, traditionally nationalistic concerns. We can no longer pretend that anything we do has only local implications. (Well, we can, but the results of doing so will be disastrous, and others are going to call us on it. In Canada, the provinces and parliamentary opposition are pushing back against the federal carbon tax. The problem is, they have no credible alternative to it, and if we abandon it then Canada becomes a freeloader, relying on the rest of the world to live up to their Paris Agreement commitments while we continue pumping out oil like there’s no tomorrow. We will be absolutely killed in the international arena if we do that.)

Ecosystems often cross borders and require integrated management strategies. EBM could lead to a reevaluation of economic and strategic priorities, where states cooperate based on shared ecological interests rather than competing for resources. This shift could reduce resource-driven conflicts and help foster a global economy that prioritizes sustainability and resilience over short-term gains. Recognizing this, the UN has adopted new principles around the conduct of warfare that center environmental stewardship.

This particular pressure is the most important one shaping 21st-century global politics. We stand together or we die; the Great Game of geopolitical maneuvering is no longer tenable. Climate change and the resource overshoot that is resulting in a sixth mass extinction impose a new version of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction on humanity. This new MAD says that we either cooperate and coordinate with our economic priorities set for us by the needs of the natural systems in which our civilization is embedded, or we all go down.

After Geopolitics: Natural MAD and The 21st-Century State

Put it all together and we can envision a successor to geopolitics, which I’ll call Natural MAD. Natural MAD demands environmental sustainability as the fundamental economic principle, and sustainability in turn demands, if not a dissolution of national borders, a recognition that some of traditional Westphalian sovereignty is no longer tenable. Insisting on absolute control over internal resources triggers the logic of MAD: it makes you an enemy of the planet.

In this political environment, transnational and plurinational arrangements are natural, and could become central to international strategy. Such a framework might obviate the multipolar geopolitical model, re-centering indigenous cultures as major players as countries align to tackle global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainable development. A new kind of MAD means traditional geopolitical alliances based on power dynamics have to give way to new alignments based on shared ecological and cultural goals, and many of these are built into the traditional cultures of indigenous peoples.

Of course, this shift could also spawn new types of conflicts, especially where environmental and cultural interests clash with capitalistic demands for growth.

The Paradox of Natural MAD

The forces of transnational plurinationalism, rights for nature, and ecosystem-based management are more than mere ideological shifts; they represent a foundational challenge to the principles that have governed states and international relations for centuries. At the same time, a new kind of Mutually Assured Destruction has emerged, this one environmental. As these forces gain traction, they could transform global governance, leading to a world where diversity in identity and unity in environmental stewardship are the cornerstones of international relations.

Oddly enough, the new MAD offers us a path to a better world—one where capitalism and colonialism have been forced to accept that they operate inside a larger system, and that it is that larger system—the objectively real physical world and biosphere of Earth—that has the final say in all our endeavors.

So This’ll Happen

—Or not. Remember what I said at the top: this is a game I play, worldbuilding in a science fictional mode by considering the implications of the newest forces at play in the world. There is plenty of inertia in the old world, and while Natural MAD is likely a real thing, there’s no guarantee that humanity will recognize it in time. So many other factors are at play in the swift evolution of our global political landscape that all this can be is a worldbuilding experiment. In other words, don’t believe anything I just said—but think about how you can use it when you do consider the future. That’s what I’m doing.

My personal takeaway is this—an interesting angle when worldbuilding stories about a better 21st-century:

Just as science flowered when we learned how to ask questions of nature rather than assuming we knew how it worked, a new politics could flower as Natural MAD forces us to live together within the boundaries of Earth’s natural systems.