Understanding Geopolitics in 2026: The Frameworks That Actually Help

Geopolitics — the relationship between geography, power, and international relations — is consistently misunderstood both by people who think it is predetermined (geography is destiny) and by people who think it is entirely contingent on individual leaders' decisions. As a journalist who has covered international affairs for 12 years, here are the frameworks that I have found most useful for understanding why events unfold as they do.

The Geographic Framework: What Mearsheimer and Mackinder Get Right

The geographic or realist tradition in international relations argues that the structure of the international system — the distribution of power among states, their geographic relationships, and the absence of a world government — creates incentives that constrain what leaders can do regardless of their individual preferences. States in an anarchic system (without a higher authority to enforce agreements) have strong incentives to prioritize their own security, to be wary of other powerful states, and to seek to prevent any single state from dominating their region. This framework explains consistent patterns: why the US has consistently opposed any power that seeks to dominate Europe or Asia (preventing any regional hegemon that could then project power globally), why China and Russia have consistently resisted what they see as US encirclement, and why regional powers consistently resist the rise of potential regional competitors. The strength of this framework: it explains historical patterns across very different leaders and ideologies. The limitation: it treats states as unitary rational actors and underestimates the role of domestic politics, ideology, individual leaders, and information problems in producing international outcomes.

The Domestic Politics Framework: Why Internal Dynamics Matter

International events frequently have domestic political explanations that geographic frameworks miss. Leaders make foreign policy decisions partly based on what serves their domestic political position — a leader facing economic difficulty may pursue nationalist foreign policy to consolidate domestic support, a behavior that pure realist frameworks attribute to external threats but domestic politics frameworks attribute to internal vulnerabilities. The democratic peace theory — the observation that liberal democracies very rarely go to war with each other — is among the most robust findings in international relations research. It suggests that domestic political structure, not just the distribution of power, substantially affects international behavior. The framework's insight: understanding domestic political dynamics within countries explains many international behaviors that appear irrational from a pure national interest perspective.

What the Frameworks Together Suggest About the Current Period

The combination of geographic and domestic political frameworks suggests the current period of great power competition is structural — driven by China's rise to near-peer status with the United States, which geographic frameworks predict will produce competition regardless of which specific leaders are in power, combined with domestic political dynamics in both countries that reduce the constituencies for cooperation. The US-China relationship is probably the most important relationship in international politics for the next generation, and the frameworks suggest it will be competitive regardless of individual leaders. The factors that could shift the outcome: economic interdependence (which raises the cost of conflict for both sides), institutional relationships (which provide channels for managing competition without escalation), and domestic political changes within both countries (which affect the intensity of competitive behavior). None of these are sufficient to override the structural competitive dynamic, but they affect how it plays out.

Honest Bottom Line: Geographic/realist frameworks explain why the structure of the international system (anarchy, power distribution, geography) creates competitive incentives that constrain leaders regardless of individual preferences — explaining historical patterns across very different personalities and ideologies. Domestic politics frameworks explain why leaders make foreign policy decisions based partly on internal political needs, and why democratic peace theory holds across diverse contexts. Together: current US-China competition is structurally driven by China's near-peer rise, making it likely regardless of individual leaders. Economic interdependence, institutional channels, and domestic political changes affect how the competition plays out without overriding the structural dynamic.