Finance, Militaries, and the People in the Middle

Geopolitics is often discussed as if it exists above ordinary life—an arena of leaders, summits, and strategic maps disconnected from the daily realities of working people. This framing is misleading. Every geopolitical decision ultimately resolves itself in the lives of civilians. Wars are not funded by governments alone. They are funded by inflation, debt, reduced public services, and the quiet acceptance of scarcity by populations told these sacrifices are necessary.

From Libya to Ukraine, from the Horn of Africa to Europe, the same structure repeats. Military movement accelerates. Financial systems absorb the cost. The public adjusts downward. This adjustment is rarely framed as payment for war, yet it functions exactly as such.

From the Red Sea Round Table perspective, geopolitics is not abstract. It is lived. The people in the middle—neither decision-makers nor beneficiaries—carry the weight of strategic competition without consent.

Modern warfare relies as heavily on financial architecture as it does on weapons. Sanctions, currency manipulation, debt restructuring, and energy pricing have become tools of conflict. These tools operate invisibly, diffused across economies rather than concentrated on battlefields. Their impact is slower, but broader.

Inflation is not a side effect of war; it is a funding mechanism. As currencies weaken and prices rise, households absorb costs that would otherwise require explicit taxation. Food becomes more expensive. Housing tightens. Transportation costs climb. Wages lag. The gap between survival and stability narrows.

Debt plays a parallel role. Governments finance military commitments through borrowing that will be serviced long after the conflict fades from headlines. Austerity follows. Public investment stalls. Social safety nets thin. These outcomes are presented as fiscal necessity rather than consequences of geopolitical choice.

Militarization extends beyond budgets. Borders harden. Surveillance expands. Policing intensifies. Civil liberties contract incrementally, justified by security concerns that rarely diminish. War abroad reshapes governance at home.

RSR analysis emphasizes that financial warfare distributes pain horizontally across societies while shielding decision-makers from direct accountability.

For those living in the Global South, the burden is magnified. Currency shocks ripple outward from conflict zones. Food systems dependent on global supply chains fracture. Development funds are redirected toward security priorities. External debt grows more expensive as interest rates rise in response to geopolitical instability.

Even in wealthy states, the pattern holds. Middle classes shrink. Labor precarity increases. Young generations inherit diminished prospects while being asked to support prolonged strategic commitments they did not choose. Military spending expands while social contracts erode.

This is not accidental. Sustained geopolitical competition requires a population conditioned to accept decline as normal. The people in the middle are managed through narrative: sacrifice for freedom, security, stability, or order. Yet the promised returns rarely materialize.

From the Red Sea Round Table vantage point, this is the connective tissue of modern geopolitics. Finance enables militaries. Militaries justify finance. And civilians bridge the gap through lowered expectations.

Understanding this cycle is the first step toward breaking it. Geopolitical awareness is not about choosing sides; it is about recognizing cost pathways and refusing to internalize burdens imposed without representation.

The world’s power struggles are real. But so is the quiet extraction from ordinary lives that sustains them. The people in the middle are not collateral. They are the engine.

And engines, once overworked, eventually fail.