The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World

As a scientist, I prefer reductionism. I like when someone attempts to explain tough problems using few basic principles. Of course, with this approach, we lose lot of the details but we achieve better understanding of the problem from within. Moïsi introduces emotions as additional variables for explaining geopolitics. Considering that diplomacy is very much rational discipline that aims to provide the order in already irrational world, introducing emotions might make things worse. However, Moïsi defends his theses very well and the geopolitics of the emotions (fear, humiliation and hope) are something that should defenetly be taken into account. The book is very interesting to read and, for my fellow countrymen, there is a translation in Serbian.

Analysis of the world situation in the year 2008, on the basis of the psychological categories fear, humiliation and hope. Such an approach has the advantage to be simple and transparent, the disadvantage is that the complexity of reality is not quite met. This booklet certainly doesn't offer a full explanation of international politics, but the attempt is meritorious.<br /><i>Postscript: I wonder how Moïse would look at the world, right now, in 2022, after Brexit, Trump, Climate Change, the Pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I guess his analysis still is correct: emotions do rule our world, even in geopolitics. But we must never forget that it is the leadership (of every country involved) that must learn to handle these emotions, and (re)direct them to good use, in the interest of the people(s) involved. Even in 2022 that still is the crucial question.</i>

In 1993, Samuel Huntington introduced the theory that conflicts would emanate from frictions along race, ethnic, and religious lines. In particular, he outlined the potential clashes among the western, muslim, Confucian, and orthodox civilizations. I still remember the first time I read that article for my Intro to IR class at the University of British Columbia.<br /><br />Indeed, many debates came about from Huntington’s theory. Some people voiced out views in favor of Huntington, while others thought that his argument was flawed at many levels. Regardless, the “Clash of Civilizations” theory has provided a basis for many studies and analysis of the post-Cold War era. A starting point for practitioners and academics to discuss today’s globalized world.<br /><br />In these times of uncertainty, we are all hungry for ideas that could theorize our complex existence into plain patterns. How can we explain problems in a more simple way, so that we can find ways to solve them? How do we make sense of the world, in a time when we are often unable to differentiate our friends from foes?<br /><br />In The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope Are Reshaping the World, Dominique Moisi tries to explain the state of conflict in international relations through an exploration of human emotions. Our fear, anger, and hate; the feelings that often pushes us to the brink of conflict and war.<br /><br />Moisi wrote: “Who are we? …In an ever changing world without borders, the question is intensely relevant. Identity is strongly linked with confidence, and in turn confidence, or the lack thereof, is expressed in emotions – in particular, those of fear, hope, and humiliation”.<br /><br />The world, the nations and countries of the world, can be divided into groups of people who embrace a culture of fear, humiliation or hope. And we are seeing conflicts emerge along these lines. The humiliated carrying out attacks on those with hope. And those who are fearful lashing out against the hopeful ones.<br /><br />In discussing the culture of hope, Moisi talks about the peoples in China and India, and their striving for a better world, although some times at the cost of frictions with others. In general, Moisi called Asia “the continent of hope”, highlighting that economic progress and the burgeoning of hope has attributed to more peaceful conditions among the countries in the region.<br /><br />The culture of humiliation is represented by feelings emanating from the Middle East. Moisi argues that while the Islamic civilization continues to grow worldwide, the Arab culture is actually in decline. Unable to cope with the advent of modernity, the Middle Eastern people are constantly feeling humiliated by the tragedies and losses that they have suffered, including the creation of the Israeli State and the continued meddling of the United States in regional politics. As a result, this shared sense of humiliation has provided the most potent ingredient for aggression towards others around the world, particularly those thought to be responsible for their current state of existence.<br /><br />In responding to the cultures of fear and humiliation growing in various parts of the world, the West (Europe and the United States) have become regressed, developing a culture of fear. Fear of those with hope, and fear of those humiliated. And this fear has been the main source of the West’s frictions with the rest of the world.<br /><br />Of course, Moisi’s theory is not perfect. He actually doesn’t pretend to develop an infallible way of looking the world. But what he has done is to make us, the reader, view the world through different perspectives, actually, different feelings.<br /><br />Realists say that conflict, or the onset of conflict can be predicted by a calculation of power (be it economic or military) and the imbalances of power among nations. What Moisi tells us is that regardless of power (no matter how powerful or seemingly powerless people are) or the relations among powers in the world, friction and conflict comes from differences in emotions.<br /><br />That, in spite of our culture differences, emotions can unite people to act in one way or another. That, at the end of the day, our world would be a better place if fear and humiliation could be supplanted with the feelings of hope. Simple enough, right? Then again, the simple things in life are often the hardest to achieve.

Inasmuch as this book refers to contemporary events and conflicts, it is a pity that it was written before Mubarak’s fall, Arab Spring and the latest exacerbation of Syrian conflict. These events would definitely add noteworthy tone to already enthralling observations of the author. However, “The Geopolitics of Emotion” is a study of global dynamics and their changes with an impact on emotions, which serve as a measure of success, decay, development or stagnation. Dominique Moïsi is offering his analysis of different cultures through assigned emotions: the culture of hope for Asia, the culture of humiliation for the Middle East and Muslim dominated the world, and the culture of fear for Europe and the United States.<br /><br />Notwithstanding that this book takes charge of three primary emotions (hope, humiliation and fear), the author indirectly explores the notion of confidence, “which is the defining factor in how nations and people address the challenges they face as well as how they relate to one another”. He is somewhat positively biased toward Asian development and responds to questions about identity defining the twenty-first century as “the Asian century” and “the century of identity.” Having said that, the large portion of this chapter is still imbued with objective remarks especially about China as a “stultified autocracy” whose confidence is “based partially on its imperial past” and Japan that “shares many strength and weaknesses of Europe” such as “depression, introspection, anxiety and self-absorption.” As a European, Moïsi is expressing typical intellectual aloofness while writing about Europe. Yet, it seems that his outlook on the prospects of the culture of hope and culture of humiliation makes them inevitably dependent on European culture defined as the culture of fear.<br /><br />As historical battle against religious dominance has been won in most of European countries long time ago, excluding Balkans whose concept of religion and democracy is predominantly conditioned by historical lack of identity and culture of humiliation similar to Russia, “The Geopolitics of Emotion” argues that we may see Muslims “as an anachronistic evocation of “our” past between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries…” The chapter about the culture of humiliation is thoroughly written and pervaded by a historical background in its attempt to look into cross-border influences, the challenges of modernity, the glorious past, geopolitical fantasies, ‘we’ versus ‘they’ dichotomy as well as “an exacerbated demand for dignity”. Although optimistic about Asian development, the author does not anticipate that current clash of European and Islamic values will be perhaps shifted from Europe to Asia. He discusses beliefs and judgments of new generations in Europe and the United States whose notion about future has been seized by the question of tolerance and fear of being overruled, overpowered and overpopulated by ‘the others’. Still “…where twentieth-century Europe was built on the idea of transcending history, its special strength and weakness being its ability to evoke or to conjure up its past, America is above all about the future.” He emphasises though “ there is a fine line between the need to respect the values of others and the danger of extreme cultural relativism, which abandons all rules and standards in the name of universal acceptance.”<br /><br />The last chapters of the book are hilarious as Dominique Moïsi offers two visions of the world in 2025 in form of parody: one dominated by the emotion of fear and humiliation and the other one fostered by the emotion of hope. As a reader, I appreciated his optimism, the quintessential faith in universal values and his open attitude towards positive outcomes, which will make this book unforgettable.

What does emotion have to do with geopolitics? Everything, according to Dominique Moïsi, author of The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope Are Reshaping the World (Anchor Doubleday). Moïsi, a French political scientist, Harvard professor, and son of an Auschwitz survivor, argues that we cannot understand the events of history without careful consideration of the role of emotions, “which seem to control us much more than we control them.” The world, he says, is characterized by three key emotions: fear, hope, and humiliation.

I'm only giving this book three stars because I'm glad topics like this are finally being treated in somewhat mainstream literature. Otherwise, I found this book rather superficial. In his attempt to make the book accessible by many, Moïsi fails to provide any sort of ontological and methodological justification for his project. I'd say the success of the book is partly due to the convincing writing style, which does present the book as a thesis that partly goes without saying. In fact, I find the style of writing too Anglo-Saxon for its own good. As I understand it, Moïsi tried to give the book a non-French touch, rightly so, as French writing is notoriously inaccessible. However, I feel that the frequent usage of terms that seem to very popular in Anglo-Saxon pop philosophy make the book sound more like an extensive and entertaining blog post, rather than a serious conceptual proposal.<br /><br />Speaking of the conceptual proposal, Moïsi fails to provide any adequate backing for his thesis. I am saying this from the perspective of an aspiring scholar already convinced of the relevance (and primacy) of emotions in international relations, both theoretically and practically. In fact, one of my main research interests concerns the union between psychoanalysis and international relations. It is in this light that I found this book lacking. No rationale is provided for the undertaking of this thesis beyond simplified parallelisms, as well as anecdotal observations. I would have found this approach perfectly acceptable had Moïsi constructed a methodology based on this particular reading of the world. However, at this stage, the book is merely reduced to a series of very short accounts of emotional placements. This latter issue is also what adds to the superficiality by providing nourishing grounds for generalizations, in my view completely inappropriate.<br /><br />Furthermore, for a book written as a somewhat deconstructivist attempt of the hegemony of a Western mode of thinking in geopolitics, the thesis remains surprisingly Western. And in that framework, Moïsi's analysis of the West as an emotional unit is also what resonates the most with me as a reader. Beyond this, his generalizations on the cultures of hope, fear and humiliation ignore most complex realities. Even in his case studies Moïsi does not remedy for this.<br /><br />All in all, I feel that this book tries to present a social constructivist thesis that sometimes aspires towards post-modern readings, but more often falls into considering classical realist conceptions of power. If one finds time and energy, this is still a book to read, as it attempts to introduce the subjectivity that both the theoretical and practical aspects of world politics are in dire need of.

Well. This was, um, different. <br />I am really taken with the basic premise, that of finding a way to analyze emotion as an element of international relations. There was some thought-provoking content here, and some real potential in adding this as a tool to the way we look at the nations in the world around us.<br />That said, the book has some glaring weaknesses. I feel Moisi really left a lot of the potential of the topic untouched; in the introduction he outlined some possible ways to begin to study and quantify emotion in different countries, but his analysis barely touched these. He failed to mention, for example, things like birthrate as he discussed the various nations. And the possible quantifiers he mentioned, even if he had analyzed them thoroughly, are very weak. This is an area needing some work if he wants to get his work widely noticed by political scientists in the US. <br />Moisi constantly warned against oversimplification in his analysis, but then he dramatically oversimplifies himself--a real problem with this subject matter. How can it NOT be an oversimplification to assert that all of Asia is hopeful, or all of the West is fearful? <br />Also, at times his discussion especially of the US is extremely shallow. He seems mired in the "Bush-bad cowboy, Obama=Hope for the Future" hogwash the media puts out. It seems to me someone at Harvard ought to be able to put some real thought into US politics beyond this trite level. One glaring example--on page 118 he says of Obama that he seeks to restore "an instinctive faith in moderation" to the US. Huh? <br />Sadly, Moisi turns the last chapter into an exercise in silliness, "imagining" what the world would be like in 2025 if we choose "fear" and alternately of we choose "hope" then utters some amazingly mindless statements, like this example from pabe 158: "A realist in the world of idealists, I may also be seen as an idealist in the world of realists." Come again? I am having a hard time imagining a universe in which this sentence makes any sense whatsoever. <br />Good basic ideas, but the follow-through could use some work.

Ljudi moji, mislila sam da je nemoguće, ali desilo se. Clio je izdao lošu knjigu.<br />Ukoliko vapite za snobovskim pogledom na svet, molim vas, dajte svoj teško zarađeni novac za ovo i čitajte kako se određeni narodi nazivaju sirotinjom. Cela knjiga je bazirana na antinomiji strah-nada, koja ne samo da je glupa, već je i netačna. Neke delovi su toliko šuplji i logički nedosledni da ne znam kako se prevodilkinja nije samoosakatila tokom rada na ovom tekstu samo da ne bi morala da završi.

Finally finished it (it has taken a while...). Interesting to read in 2018 - and to wonder about optimistic/pessimistic scenarios, outlined by the author in 2009... Overall, a very good book and ideas to think about.

Я дізнався про книгу "Геополітика емоцій" досить давно. Спробував знайти її в електронному вигляді, але дуже швидко зрозумів, що то марна справа. Тож я просто додав цю книгу до безкінечного списку книг, які я маю прочитати і трохи навіть забув про неї. Яким же ж було моє здивування, коли я випадково побачив її в книгарні! Звісно мені довелося придбати її в ту ж секунду і взятися читати.<br />Головну концепцію цієї книги я знав ще до того, як почав її читати. Автор, висуває дуже цікаву теорію, згідно якої поведінка того чи іншого суспільства керується якоюсь емоцією, або сумішшю емоцій. Ці емоції ніби узагальнюють загальне прагнення всього суспільства, вони ніби риса характеру. Це можна порівняти з тим, як в певні періоди часу людиною теж керують певні почуття, які не зникають. Попереджаючи, що він дуже примітивізує, що його теорія потребує уточнень і доповнень, Муазі все ж бере на себе сміливість і розповідає свою теорію. Він стверджує, що основною емоцією, яка керує азіатами є "надія". Як би вони не жили, щоб у них не відбувалося, хороше чи погане, вони завжди сподіваються на краще майбутнє. І заради цього майбутнього вони готові працювати все більше і більше. Араби керуються емоцією "приниження" вони постійно переживають це відчуття, ніби хтось намагається принизити їхню релігію (звідси така гостра реакція на речі, які для нас просто виглядали б як невдалий жарт) Для арабського світу не так важливо жити краще в майбутньому, як покарати тих, хто змушував їх жити погано в минулому. Для європейців (хоча правильніше було б сказати людей "західної культури") характерна емоція "страху", адже їм треба зберігати своє лідерство в світі, на яке постійно хтось зазіхає. Зазіхають чи то а��аби, які хочуть помсти, чи то азіати, які з надією дивляться в майбутнє і у яких все виходить. <br />Така концепція безумовно цікава, мені вона дуже сподобалася ще тоді коли я не читав книгу. Тому я сподівався, що зможу дізнатися з книги трохи більше. Я жадав поясненнь, чому саме такі емоції на думку Муазі керують світом. Але пояснення в книзі відсутні. Він наводить лише якісь незв'язні розрізнені фрагменти, які більше засновуються на його власних суб'єктивних враженнях, аніж на якомусь науковому аналізі. Це дещо демотивувало мене під час читання. У мене склалося враження, що матеріал, який ідеально підходив для розлогої статті, розтягнули на книжку і це стало дуже нагадувати загальновідому конструкції з совою і глобусом. Я звісно розумію, що це книга розрахована на широке коло читачів, а не на спеціалістів, але трошки деталей і аналізу точно б не завадило. <br />Проте навіть окрім цих очевидних мінусів у книзі є дуже багато "незрозумілих моментів", які не пояснює теорія Муазі. Так "проблемними країнами" в яких на думку автора діє суміш всіх трьох емоцій є Іран, росія, країни Південної Америки, Африканські країни. Я сподівався що може хоч тут пан Муазі дозволить собі трошки прикладів, але де там. Певно вирішив, що читачі його книги розумні і самі розберуться. Але якщо з росією мені ще трохи ясно (важко мати такого сусіда і не розбиратися якими емоціями він керується) то наприклад, з латиноамериканськими країнами ситуація набагато заплутаніша. Було б цікаво почути що автор думає про емоції цих країн, але він як примхлива панянка просто каже "всьо сложна" і "думай сам". <br />Окей, я думаю. Думаю, що вхопивши за хвоста дуже цікаву ідею Домінік Муазі замість того аби провести серйозні дослідження на цю тему вирішив обмежитися статтею. Стаття була гарно сприйнята і автор написав цілу книгу, яку взявся активно продавати. Але де ж дослідження? Де науковий метод? Де розвиток ідеї? Немає. Але є гонорари за книгу, яких вистачить на заможну старість… Що ж, інколи буває і так.