The Psychology of Foreign Policy Meets the Sociology of the Streets

A close-up black and white photograph captures the tension of a chess game, with intricately detailed pieces standing poised on the board.

People ask me all the time what I study. Over the years as I’ve spent time thinking about it, I think the best answer is history, sociology and psychology. When you boil down International Relations, you are analyzing history. But you’re also watching sociological and on occasion psychological dynamics unfolding on the world stage.

When we look at a country, we often view it as one entity. But, in reality, we should be viewing it as two. A country is made up of two components: the government and the citizens. In western democracy, the government gets its power from the people. However, this doesn’t mean that the people always agree with the government or vice versa. For example, two heads of government could meet for a meeting and decide to sign a trade deal. These two heads of state see this deal as a benefit for both nations. Perhaps they even have a close friendship as people, maybe they both like golf. The closeness with their trade deal and personal friendship may not reflect back on how their citizens see each other. Citizens are not as well traveled as government officials and so they may not have an accurate understanding of how friendly or hostile another nation’s citizens are.

The same is true of two heads of state declaring a trade war. Even though the two governments are hostile in their policies towards each other does not mean the citizens of each country view each other negatively.  While, it would be nice if the government and the citizens agreed on how to see a foreign “country”,  this discrepancy happens because often government leaders interact with other government leaders and it's rarely reported that a visiting government official is interacting with citizens. Adding to the fact that most countries have populations in the millions and governmental policies such as trade deals, aren't guaranteed to last with the transfer of power to a newly elected head of government. It becomes hard to update viewpoints within.

This disagreement dynamic is why we need to remember in cross-cultural interactions  that the government is not the people.

Governments will occasionally lie to their citizens because they believe it the best move to win at geopolitical chess. This is often the case with powerful countries that feel threatened that the status quo might change. So governments try to anticipate the next move from other countries all in an effort to maintain the status quo.

Countryballs

The relationships between governments often reflect sociological dynamics. There are plenty of comics online that take these Dynamics and put them in Satirical scenarios. Sometimes these scenarios aren't historically accurate and other scenarios poke fun at jokes  based on historical events. These comics only came about with social media and are known as Polandball or Countryball Comics. There are some online creators that use this art style to  teach historical events in a video. The series certainly has its own creative liberties in how  each country is represented,  some of this is based on internet memes and some of it is based on the earliest comics that first popped up over 15 years ago. It is important to note that in most representations of these satirical scenarios, the “countryball” represents the government of the country, and on occasion the character will have extra details to distinguish themselves as a specific historical person.

These comics often portray governments as having human relationship dynamics with other governments. For example, because the British Empire had such a cultural impact on many places and that culture helped to establish modern countries, the United Kingdom is seen as a “father”  to its former colonies, especially the Anglo-speaking countries such as the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Another relationship dynamic is France and Germany being the parents of the EU  because when the predecessor to the EU was established France and Germany had the most influence. Many of these comics portray Russia as a playground bully or Big Brother,  especially to the countries in the former USSR.

Despite the seemingly complex nature of international relations, many aspects of how countries interact are based on human relationships, dynamics and even scenarios. There are two  parties in international relations: the people and their government. Diplomacy is not just trade treaties,  it is also the cultural exchange of visiting delegation or tourist. Human behavior drives the outcome in both contexts. At the end of the day, international relations is just human dynamics scaled up by 8 billion people and over 150 countries. When we interact with new people from new cultures, we must remember that a state's geopolitical chess moves are not the same as the will of its population. The government’s moves aren’t the same as the citizen’s will. Understanding this distinction is the first step to open-minded cross-cultural understanding.