Geopolitics () is the study of the effects of Earth's geography on politics and international relations. Geopolitics usually refers to countries and relations between them; it may also focus on two other kinds of states: de facto independent states with limited international recognition and relations between sub-national geopolitical entities, such as the federated states that make up a federation, confederation, or a quasi-federal system.
At the level of international relations, geopolitics is a method of studying foreign policy to understand, explain, and predict international political behavior through geographical variables. These include area studies, climate, topography, demography, natural resources, and applied science of the region being evaluated.
Geopolitics focuses on political power linked to geographic space, in particular, territorial waters, land territory and wealth of natural resources, in correlation with diplomatic history, in particular the context of a larger power relative to its neighboring states of smaller or similar power. Some scholars have argued that geopolitics should serve as "an aid to statecraft." Topics of geopolitics include relations between the interests of international political actors focused within an area, a space, or a geographical element, relations that create a geopolitical system.Vladimir Toncea, 2006, "Geopolitical evolution of borders in Danube Basin" Critical geopolitics deconstructs classical geopolitical theories, by showing their political or ideological functions for great powers. There are some works that discuss the geopolitics of renewable energy. The relationship between geopolitics and geoeconomics is often analyzed by two main schools of thought: the strategic school and the political-economic school. According to Christopher Gogwilt and other researchers, the term is currently being used to describe a broad spectrum of concepts, in a general sense used as "a synonym for international political relations", but more specifically "to imply the global structure of such relations"; this usage builds on an "early-twentieth-century term for a pseudoscience of political geography" and other pseudoscientific theories of historical and geographic determinism.
The Austro-Hungarian historian Emil Reich (1854–1910) is considered to be the first to have coined the term in English as early as 1902 and later published in England in 1904 in his book Foundations of Modern Europe.
United States
Alfred Thayer Mahan and sea power
Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914) was a frequent commentator on world naval strategic and diplomatic affairs. Mahan believed that national greatness was inextricably associated with the sea—and particularly with its commercial use in peace and its control in war. Mahan's theoretical framework came from Antoine-Henri Jomini, and emphasized that strategic locations (such as choke points, canals, and coaling stations), as well as quantifiable levels of fighting power in a fleet, were conducive to control over the sea. He proposed six conditions required for a nation to have sea power:
Advantageous geographical position; Serviceable coastlines, abundant natural resources, and a favorable climate; Extent of territory Population large enough to defend its territory; Society with an aptitude for the sea and commercial enterprise; and The Government with the influence and inclination to dominate the sea.
Mahan distinguished a key region of the world in the Eurasian context, namely, the Central Zone of Asia lying between 30° and 40° north and stretching from Asia Minor to Japan.Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Problem of Asia and the Effects upon International Politics, (Washington and London: Kennikat Press, 1920, p 26–27). In this zone independent countries still survived – Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, China, and Japan. Mahan regarded those countries, located between Britain and Russia, as if between "Scylla and Charybdis". Of the two monsters – Britain and Russia – it was the latter that Mahan considered more threatening to the fate of Central Asia. Mahan was impressed by Russia's transcontinental size and strategically favorable position for southward expansion. Therefore, he found it necessary for the Anglo-Saxon "sea power" to resist Russia.Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Problem of Asia and the Effects upon International Politics, (Washington and London: Kennikat Press, 1920, p 25–27, 167–8, 172).
Nicholas J. Spykman Nicholas J. Spykman was both a follower and critic of geostrategists Alfred Mahan, and Halford Mackinder. His work was based on assumptions similar to Mackinder's, including the unity of world politics and the world sea. He extends this to include the unity of the air. Spykman adopts Mackinder's divisions of the world, renaming some; The Heartland; The Rimland (analogous to Mackinder's "inner or marginal crescent" also an intermediate region, lying between the Heartland and the marginal sea powers); and The Offshore Islands & Continents (Mackinder's "outer or insular crescent").See map in Polelle, Raising Cartographic Consciousness, p. 118.
Under Spykman's theory, a Rimland separates the Heartland from ports that are usable throughout the year (that is, not frozen up during winter). Spykman suggested this required that attempts by Heartland nations (particularly Russia) to conquer ports in the Rimland must be prevented. Spykman modified Mackinder's formula on the relationship between the Heartland and the Rimland (or the inner crescent), claiming that "Who controls the rimland rules Eurasia. Who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world." Spykman died before the end of World War II, but his theories influenced the concept of containment, in that Spykman argued that the United States should support states in the Rimland to balance against a Heartland power (see also Truman Doctrine).
Homer Lea Homer Lea, in The Day of the Saxon (1912), asserted that the British overseas possessions faced a threat from German (Teuton), Russian (Slav), and Japanese expansionism: The "fatal" relationship of Russia, Japan, and Germany "has now assumed through the urgency of natural forces a coalition directed against the survival of Saxon supremacy." It is "a dreadful Dreibund". The title of the book is somewhat misleading as the "Day" is implied only for the British Saxon, not the American one, and only for the British Saxon overseas. Britain itself is not doomed.Homer Lea (1912). The Day of the Saxon. (New York: Harper), p 140, https://archive.org/details/dayofsaxonhomer00leahuoft/page/139/mode/1up?q=Europe Lea believed that while Japan moved against Far East and Russia against India, the Germans would strike at England, the center of the British Empire. By allowing the "amalgamation of the Germanic race", the British Empire "prepared the plans to its own sarcophagus".Homer Lea (1912). The Day of the Saxon. (New York: Harper), p 140, https://archive.org/details/dayofsaxonhomer00leahuoft/page/139/mode/1up?q=Europe Writing before the First World War, Lea predicted wars between Britain and Germany and between Japan and the United States, but precluded the war between Germany and Russia before their common defeat of the British Empire because such a war would be mutually defeating for both.
Edmund Walsh
Edmund Walsh, established the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1919 to support the study of international relations in the United States. Walsh strongly criticized the work of Haushofer and the danger of Nazism, arguing in favor of a new and uniquely American geopolitics. After the end of World War II, Walsh served as an advisor to the Nuremberg Trials and interviewed Haushofer in captivity.
Kissinger, Brzezinski, and the Grand Chessboard
Two national security advisors from the Cold War period, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, argued to continue the United States' geopolitical focus on Eurasia and, particularly Russia, despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Both continued their influence on geopolitics after the end of the Cold War, writing books on the subject in the 1990s—Diplomacy and The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. The Anglo-American classical geopolitical theories were revived.
Kissinger argued against the belief that with the dissolution of the USSR, hostile intentions had come to an end and traditional foreign policy considerations no longer applied. "They would argue … that Russia, regardless of who governs it, sits astride the territory which Halford Mackinder called the geopolitical heartland, and it is the heir to one of the most potent imperial traditions." Therefore, the United States must "maintain the global balance of power vis-à-vis the country with a long history of expansionism."Kissinger, Henry, (1994). Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 814
After Russia, the second geopolitical threat that remained was Germany and, as Mackinder had feared ninety years ago, its partnership with Russia. During the Cold War, Kissinger argues, both sides of the Atlantic recognized that, "unless America is organically involved in Europe, it would later be obliged to involve itself under circumstances which would be far less favorable to both sides of the Atlantic. That is even more true today. Germany has become so strong that existing European institutions and organizations cannot strike a balance between Germany and its European partners all by themselves. Nor can Europe, even with the assistance of Germany, manage […] Russia" all by itself. Thus Kissinger believed that no country's interests would ever be served if Germany and Russia were to ever form a partnership in which each country would consider itself the principal partner. They would raise fears of condominiums. Without America, Britain and France cannot cope with Germany and Russia; and "without Europe, America could turn … into an island off the shores of Eurasia."Kissinger, Henry, (1994). Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 821-2
Nicholas J. Spykman's vision of Eurasia was strongly confirmed: "Geopolitically, America is an island off the shores of the large landmass of Eurasia, whose resources and population far exceed those of the United States. The domination by a single power of either of Eurasia's two principal spheres—Europe and Asia—remains a good definition of strategic danger for America. Cold War or no Cold War. For such a grouping would have the capacity to outstrip America economically and, in the end, militarily. That danger would have to be resisted even if the dominant power was apparently benevolent, for if its intentions ever changed, America would find itself with a grossly diminished capacity for effective resistance and a growing inability to shape events."Kissinger, Henry, (1994). Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 813 The main interest of the American leaders is maintaining the balance of power in Eurasia.Kissinger, Henry, (1994). Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 810
Having converted from an ideologist into a geopolitician, Kissinger retrospectively interpreted the Cold War in geopolitical terms—an approach which was not characteristic of his works during the Cold War. Now, however, he focused on the beginning of the Cold War: "The objective of moral opposition to Communism had merged with the geopolitical task of containing Soviet expansion."Kissinger, Henry, (1994). Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 804 Nixon, he added, was a geopolitical rather than an ideological cold warrior.Kissinger, Henry, (1994). Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 703-732