"Geopolitical"

“The Chairstone recognizes the distinguished Schist from E-stone-ia”

I was listening to NPR on the way to work this morning and realized that I had no idea what the term “geopolitical” really meant. You hear it all the time in discussions of world events and foreign policy. After checking the definition (“The study of the relationship among politics and geography, demography, and economics, especially with respect to the foreign policy of a nation”) I don’t think it’s used in the correct context most of the time. This morning’s story would probably have been better off using “political” rather than “geopolitical” to describe some of the ramifications of Obama’s visit to Germany, but I’m (obviously) not an expert.

As the first sentence of this post shows, I started to think about the confluence of Geo (earth) and Politics. I was going to take the punning a bit further, but then I’d have sounded like an episode of The Flintstones, and that’s just not me.