Geopolitics

• Geopolitics


  A framework that we can use to understand the complex world around us. It explains how state actors try to reach their political goals by controlling geographic features of the world.
• Geopolitics


  • Uses geographical descriptions, metaphors, and templates to generate a simple model of the world, which can be used to advise and inform foreign and security policy making
  • It is future-oriented, by offering insights into the likely behavior of state actors
• Geopolitik


  The problems and conditions within a state that arise from its geographic features
• The term Geopolitics was first used by Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellen


  1899
• Geopolitics studies the relations between international politics and the geographical base (space) on which this politics is carried out
• Early approaches to geopolitics


  • Explained the location of the key states and areas, and analyzed the space in the context of geographic conditionings
  • Did not only consider where states were located but also how the surrounding geography affected their political, economic, and military strategies
• Later generations of geopolitical concepts


  • Began to take into account changes taking place in the international environment
  • Not only geographical conditions decide geo-strategic significance, but also political, economic, cultural and civilization ones
• Periods of Geopolitical Concept

  • Classical Geopolitics
  • Cold War Geopolitics
  • New World Order Geopolitics
• Classical Geopolitics


  • Prominent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
  • Comprising the early theories and approaches in the study of the relationship between geography and politics
  • Scholars focused on the strategic significance of geographic features, such as landmasses, coastlines, and natural resources, in shaping the power dynamics among states
  • Accepted that space, more specifically, vast territories, as one of the attributes of the state's power
• Raymond Aron: 'In the competition among states, the possession of the space is the stake of the most primary character.'
• Important Concepts in Classical Geopolitics

  • The organic State
  • Continental Power (Halford Mackinder)
  • Sea Power (Alfred Thayer Mahan)
  • Peninsula Power (Nicholas Spykman)
  • Air Power (G. Renner and Alexander Serevsky)
• Cold War Geopolitics


  The global contest between the Soviet Union and the United States for influence and control over the states and strategic resources of the world
• The antagonism between the Soviet Union and the United States was a consequence of the geopolitical discourse that became dominant in the United States in 1946 and 1947 and the reaction it provoked from the Stalinist regime
• Truman's Policy of Containment/The Truman Doctrine


  A foreign policy initiative where the United States pledged to offer political, military, and economic assistance to democratic nations facing the risk of communist infiltration, aiming to curb the spread of communism
• Important Concepts in Cold War Geopolitics

  • Containment Strategy (George Kennan)
  • Rimland Theory (Nicholas Spykman)
  • RealPolitik (Henry Kissinger)
• New World Order Geopolitics


  The contemporary geopolitical landscape characterized by shifting power dynamics, emerging global challenges, and evolving patterns of cooperation and competition among states and other actors
• Important Concepts in New World Order Geopolitics

  • Francis Fukuyama's End of History?
  • Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard
  • Huntington's Clash of Civilizations
• Lebensraum


  The geographical surface area required to support living species at its current population size and mode of existence
• Friedrich Ratzel's theory


  • Humans and their social institutions are an effect of the natural world and subject to nature's laws like the animal and plant kingdom
  • To prolong its existence, the state requires nourishment, just as an organism needs food
  • The state is an organism that struggles for Lebensraum
  • The exact boundaries of a species' Lebensraum were relative to its members' metabolic requirements and environment, and expanded as population grew
  • A strong and successful state would never be satisfied by its existing limits and would seek to expand territorially and secure "Lebensraum"
• Migration


  The behavioral consequence of the need to expand (expression of people's need for lebensraum)
• Colonization


  The effective occupation and exploration of new spaces by species
• Geopolitics


  The issues of states in relation to its territory
• Rudolf Kjellen's theory


  • The State shall be studied in 5 dimensions: Geopolitical, Demographic-Political, Economic-political, Social-political, Governance-political
  • The state is an organic unity of land and people
  • The driver of growth was "culture", the stronger and "advanced" the culture, the more right it had to expand its "domain" or control more territory
• Ratzel's Lebensraum and Rudolph Kjellen's refinement of the organic state had an immediate impact among geographers, political scientists in the beginning of the 20th century
• The period of classical geopolitical concepts lasts from the late 19th century until the time of the second world war
• This was a stormy period, particularly in the history of Europe, with conflicts between empires, including two world wars, which constantly changed the world map's political borders
• The British Empire was the main imperial power, steadily growing but struggling to adapt to global changes, especially in the early 1900s
• Other major powers like Russia, France, Italy, the United States, Germany, and later Japan, emerged as rivals seeking to benefit from Britain's challenges and decline
• The three best-known geopolitical concepts that appeared were land, sea, and peninsula ones, laying the groundwork for geopolitics
• Heartland


  Eastern Europe and Central Asia, holding some of the world's greatest resources, raw materials, and agriculture, needed to control a large military
• World-Island


  Afro-Eurasia
• Offshore Islands


  Great Britain and Japan
• Outlying Islands


  Americas and Oceania
• Rimland


  The coastal areas of Eurasia, key to controlling the World Island
• Spykman held that rimland was the key to world power, not Mackinder's Heartland, since seapower and airpower through their domination of littoral's coast would be able to contain and dominate heartland
• Sea power has faster movement and greater accessibility, while land power is inaccessible
• Alfred Thayer Mahan's theory


  • The Influence of Sea Power Upon History - examined the importance of maritime power in its broadest sense to the global balance of power, and identified the elements of sea power that included geographical position and extent of territory
  • Asserted naval and merchant marine assets were the key reasons England, France, Holland, and Spain won wars enabling them to seize overseas colonies, eliminate enemy access to these colonies, and exploit their natural resources
• Geopolitics


  The study of the geographic factors (such as location, size, climate, resources, and population) that influence a country's or region's foreign policy and international relations
• Topic 3: Sir Halford John Mackinder and the Heartland Theory

  Land power
• Sir Halford John Mackinder


  Born in 1861 in Gainsborough, England. Graduated from Oxford University with interests in Natural Sciences, history, and geology. Developed the "new geography" integrating physical and human geography