Paranoia as a Business Model
Power-Hungry Germans? (photo: senator86)
Businesspeople want to hear about politics, while politicians like to hear about business. At least that has been my experience as a public speaker. I suppose that is the attraction of an outfit like Stratfor Global Intelligence. I check them out once in a while to see what what they are warning about lately. A friend sent me Stratfor’s latest commentary about how Germany should react to Greece’s financial crisis. There are some good points, but it is a good example of the sort of paranoid thinking Stratfor and its competitors indulge in. My friend commented that Stratfor’s analysis is more like a James Bond novel than the Wall Street Journal.
The paper begins in true Germanic style with a “gesamtkonzept” – a lenghty prologue that enables the authors to tell you exactly where they are coming from in history. I have attended two-hour speeches in Germany where it took the speaker until the last fifteen minutes to get to the subject we thought the speech was about. Here’s an example from the Stratfor report:
“The heart of Germany’s problem is that it is insecure and indefensible given its location in the middle of the North European Plain. No natural barriers separate Germany from the neighbors to its east and west, no mountains, deserts, oceans. Germany thus lacks strategic depth. The North European Plain is the Continent’s highway for commerce and conquest. Germany’s position in the center of the plain gives it plenty of commercial opportunities but also forces it to participate vigorously in conflict as both an instigator and victim.”
At least they didn’t go all the way back to the Gutenberg Bible.
The article continues in this vein and analyzes Germany’s possible responses about Greece in security and power-projection terms. Their conclusion is that Berlin will bail out Athens, not for any economic reason, but because this will allow Germany to project the most power within Europe.
Machiavellian stuff. I suppose that is why the corporate world is attracted to this sort of analysis and pays top dollar to hear, read or meet doomsayers. Such analysis has to be gloomy to attract the big bucks. You wouldn’t want to be accused of paying good money for good news, would you? It’s like my friends in the security business – they are paid to be paranoid.
