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Critical geopolitics.

• Merje Kuus Merje Kuus Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.137
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 30 November 2017

Critical geopolitics is concerned with the geographical assumptions and designations that underlie the making of world politics. The goal of critical geopolitics is to elucidate and explain how political actors spatialize international politics and represent it as a “world” characterized by particular types of places. Eschewing the traditional question of how geography does or can influence politics, critical geopolitics foregrounds “the politics of the geographical specification of politics.” By questioning the assumptions that underpin geopolitical claims, critical geopolitics has evolved from its roots in the poststructuralist, feminist, and postcolonial critique of traditional geopolitics into a major subfield of mainstream human geography. This essay shows that much of critical geopolitics problematizes the statist conceptions of power in social sciences, a conceptualization that John Agnew has called the “territorial trap.” Along with political geography more generally, critical geopolitics argues that spatiality is not confined to territoriality. The discursive construction of social reality is shaped by specific political agents, including intellectuals of statecraft. In addition to the scholarship that draws empirically on the rhetorical strategies of intellectuals of statecraft, there is also a rich body of work on popular geopolitics, and more specifically on resistance geopolitics or anti-geopolitics. Another emerging field of inquiry within critical geopolitics is feminist geopolitics, which shifts the focus from the operations of elite agents to the constructions of political subjects in everyday political practice. Clearly, the heterogeneity of critical geopolitics is central to its vibrancy and success.

• world politics
• critical geopolitics
• human geography
• political agents
• intellectuals of statecraft
• popular geopolitics
• anti-geopolitics
• feminist geopolitics

Introduction

Critical geopolitics investigates the geographical assumptions and designations that enter into the making of world politics (Agnew 2003 :2). It seeks to illuminate and explain the practices by which political actors spatialize international politics and represent it as a “world” characterized by particular types of places (Ó Tuathail and Agnew 1992 :190). This strand of analysis approaches geopolitics not as a neutral consideration of pregiven “geographical” facts, but as a deeply ideological and politicized form of analysis. Eschewing the traditional question of how geography does or can influence politics, it investigates how geographical claims and assumptions function in political debates and political practice. In so doing, it seeks to disrupt mainstream geopolitical discourses: not to study the geography of politics within pregiven, commonsense places, but to foreground “the politics of the geographical specification of politics” (Dalby 1991 :274). Critical geopolitics is not a neatly delimited field, but the diverse works characterized as such all focus on the processes through which political practice is bound up with territorial definition.

This essay reviews critical geopolitics as a subfield of human geography: its intellectual roots, trajectories, internal debates, and interactions with other fields of inquiry. Its goal is to situate critical geopolitics in the study of international affairs and to highlight its contribution to that study. To underscore the spatiality of world affairs is not to add a token “geographical” perspective to international studies. It is rather to insist that a critical inquiry into the spatiality of world affairs must be central to the study of politics. All analyses of international affairs make geographical assumptions, whether acknowledged or not. Critical geopolitics seeks to make these assumptions visible so as to submit them to analytical scrutiny.

The essay proceeds in four steps. The next section (“Geopolitics and its Discontents”) briefly situates critical geopolitics in the scholarship that preceded it and lays out the principal theoretical and empirical concerns of this subfield. The following two sections discuss some key strands of and debates within critical geopolitics in more detail. Thus, the third section (“Locating Critical Geopolitics”) addresses the debates over the “location” of critical geopolitics in two senses of the term. It first discusses the location of that scholarship within human geography and the social sciences more broadly, and then addresses its geographical scope. The subsequent section (“Geopolitics and Agency”) tackles questions about who produces geopolitical discourses. In particular, it foregrounds the substantial work on intellectuals of statecraft, popular geopolitics, feminist geopolitics, and resistance or antigeopolitics. In so doing, the section seeks to illuminate the role of human agency (capacity to act) in geopolitical practices. The final section (“Critical Geopolitics as the Fragmented Mainstream”) summarizes the position of the field within human geography today. Throughout, the focus is not only on studies that are self-consciously “critical geopolitical,” although these are central to the essay. Rather, the essay takes a broader look at geographic analyses on the spatiality of international affairs, regardless of whether they are commonly labeled as critical geopolitics.

Geopolitics and its Discontents

To understand the intellectual and political concerns of critical geopolitics, we must briefly consider the troubled relationship between academic geography and classical geopolitical thought. Classical geopolitics, taken to mean the statist, Eurocentric, balance-of-power conception of world politics that dominated much of the twentieth century , is closely bound up with the discipline of geography. This is an association of which geography unfortunately cannot be proud. It goes back to the birth of self-consciously geopolitical analysis in the nationalism and imperialism of fin-de-siècle Europe. From the beginning, geopolitics was intimately connected to the competitive ambitions of European states (Parker 1998 ; Heffernan 2000 ). For example, Friedrich Ratzel ’s ideas of living space grew out of the widespread anxiety about the position of Germany in European politics, and Halford Mackinder ’s heartland theory reflected similar anxieties in Britain (Ó Tuathail 1996b ). For many writers inside and outside academic geography, geopolitics promised a privileged “scientific” perspective on world affairs. It appeared as an objective science, a detached “god’s eye” view of the material (or geographical) realities of world politics (Ó Tuathail 1996b ). This so-called classical geopolitics conceptualized politics as a territorial practice in which states and nations naturally vie for power over territory and resources quite similarly to evolutionary struggles. As such, it served to justify interstate rivalry throughout the twentieth century (Atkinson and Dodds 2000 ; Agnew 2003 ). In the 1930s and 1940s, geopolitics acquired an association with the intellectual apparatus of the Third Reich, in part because of the works of the prominent German geographer Karl Haushofer . This episode was subsequently used in American geography and political propaganda to vilify the whole field of geopolitics and to treat is as synonymous with Nazi expansionism (even though there is no evidence of the far-reaching influence on Hitler that Haushofer was said to have had). Geopolitics became one of the most controversial terms in the modern history of the discipline (Atkinson and Dodds 2000 :1).

Because of its negative image in the decades after World War II, academic geographers virtually ignored geopolitics. Geography’s way of dealing with the troubling baggage of the term was to exclude it from the discipline’s historiography (Livingstone 1993 ). Of the numerous books and articles on geopolitics during the Cold War, most have little to do with the discipline of geography. Geopolitical writing of that time was an explicitly strategic analysis closely bound up with foreign and security policies of core states (Ó Tuathail 1986 ; 1996b ; Hepple 1986 ; Parker 1998 ). Its assumption of state-based bipolarity dovetailed neatly with the statism of the postwar social sciences more generally (Herb 2008 ). Although the tradition of “classical” geopolitics had been discredited by its (presumed) connection to the Nazi regime, the everyday use of the term geopolitics treated geography as a stable given – an independent variable of sorts. To speak of geopolitics was to speak of seemingly natural realities. The rhetorical power of geopolitical claims stems in significant part from their link to such supposedly self-evident “geographical” facts.

The end of the Cold War, which had been the containing territorial structure of political thought for over forty years, fueled anxiety about the spatial organization of power (Agnew and Corbridge 1995 ). It spelled trouble to the analyses that were analytically premised on superpower rivalry within the state system, brought increased interest in the spatiality of power across the social sciences, and rejuvenated the subdiscipline of political geography (Hepple 1986 ; Agnew 2003 ; Herb 2008 ). Geographic work concentrating explicitly on geopolitical thought and practice was not long in coming.

This new work was an integral part of a broader rethinking of power in the social sciences. In geography as well as other disciplines, it grew out in particular of the wide-ranging interest in Foucauldian genealogy. This work approaches power not only as coercive and disabling but also as productive and enabling. It contends that power relations are not imposed on already existing subjects: rather, it is within and through power relations that political subjects come into being. Such processes of subject-making are among the key themes of analysis in that broadly Foucauldian scholarship.

In geography, this relational and anti-essentialist work produced a marked interest in the discursive construction of political space and the role of geographic knowledge in this process. Approaching geographical knowledge as a technology of power – both the result and a constitutive element of power relations – it pushed geography out of the illusion of political neutrality and fueled a critical examination of the discipline itself. Whereas traditional geopolitics treats geography as a nondiscursive terrain that preexists geopolitical claims, critical geopolitics approaches geographical knowledge as an essential part of the modern discourses of power. Thus, the 1990s produced numerous analyses of the complicity of geography and geographers in colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, and Cold War superpower enmity (Livingstone 1993 ; Gregory 1994 ; Ó Tuathail 1996b ).

Many of these early analyses were historical. They traced geopolitical theorizing to the emergence of European geopolitical imagination during the Age of Exploration (Gregory 1994 ; Agnew 2003 ; Heffernan 2007 ). They showed how geopolitical thought – the god’s eye view of the world as a structured whole that can be captured and managed from one (European) viewpoint – emerged as a part and parcel of European exploration and colonialism. Highlighting that many of the key territorial assumptions of international politics have European origins – often more specifically northern European origins – this work showed that the history of geopolitics is also the history of imposing these concepts inside and outside Europe. It also reexamined the key writers of classical geopolitics, illuminating the role of geographical knowledge in legitimizing the balance-of-power politics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see Holdar 1992 ; Crampton and Ó Tuathail 1996 ; Ó Tuathail 1996b ).

The critical work on geopolitics was further fueled by the increased popularity of explicitly geopolitical claims in mainstream political analysis. The term critical geopolitics was first coined by Simon Dalby ( 1990 ) in his analysis of the representational strategies of the Committee on Present Danger (a conservative foreign policy interest group) in the 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1990s, after numerous articles and several further books (e.g. Agnew and Corbridge 1995 ; Ó Tuathail 1996b ; Ó Tuathail and Dalby 1998 ), critical geopolitics was a clearly discernible and rapidly growing strand within political geography.

Much of this early self-consciously critical work tackled the legacies of the Cold War. It highlighted the ways in which the Cold War and international politics in general were informed by entrenched geographical and territorial assumptions about East and West, freedom and unfreedom, development and underdevelopment. It showed that these supposedly universal concepts were highly parochial, coming out of a particular corner of Western intellectual and political circles. This early work also situated critical geopolitics in other strands of the social sciences, including International Relations (IR) theory, as well as feminist and postcolonial theory (Dalby 1991 ; Ó Tuathail 1996b ). At the same time, critical geopolitics also differentiated itself from political theory by its more sustained engagement with political economy and the materiality of power more generally.

Although one can tentatively trace critical geopolitics back to the early 1990s, as has been done here, it has never connoted a clearly delimited or internally coherent research program. It is rather a set of approaches that borrow particularly, but not exclusively, from poststructuralist strands of social theory. It is distinct from other themes in political geography not by its empirical focus but by its theoretical and methodological underpinnings. In broad terms, critical geopolitics does tend to differ from other strands of critical scholarship, such as Marxism, by its explicitly Foucauldian underpinnings. Like much of poststructuralist analysis, it pays greater attention to micro-level capillaries of power than to macro-level or global economic developments. However, there is no neat distinction between poststructuralist and other critical approaches. Thus, the subfield includes a range of works that explicitly address economic structures and/or utilize Marxist perspectives, among others (e.g. Agnew and Corbridge 1995 ; Herod et al. 1997 ; Agnew 2005b ). The key trait of critical geopolitics is that it is not a theory-based approach – there is no “critical geopolitical” theory. The concerns of critical geopolitics are problem-based and present-oriented; they have to do not so much with sources and structures of power as with the everyday technologies of power relations. The field’s key claim is that although (classical) geopolitics proclaims to understand “geographical facts,” it in fact disengages from geographical complexities in favor of simplistic territorial demarcations of inside and outside, Us and Them. Critical geopolitics seeks to destabilize such binaries so that new space for debate and action can be established. Conceptualizing geopolitics as an interpretative cultural practice and a discursive construction of ontological claims, it foregrounds the necessarily contextual, conflictual, and messy spatiality of international politics (Herod et al. 1997 ; Toal and Agnew 2005 ; see also Campbell 1993 ). In so doing, it offers richer accounts of space and power than those allowed within mainstream geopolitical analysis. Geography in that conceptualization does not precede geopolitics as its natural basis. Rather, claims about geographical bases of politics are themselves geopolitical practices.

Nearly twenty years later, critical geopolitics has influenced every strand of geographic scholarship. From its beginnings as a primarily historical investigation informed by poststructuralist political theory, it has fanned out to virtually all aspects of human geography. The field is prominently represented in major political geographic journals like Political Geography and Geopolitics . There are now several textbooks that take an explicitly critical geopolitical position as their starting point (Agnew 2003 ; Dodds 2005 ; Ó Tuathail et al. 2006 ). Given the diversity of critical geopolitics, it is difficult and indeed pointless to catalogue its main themes and arguments. Any such themes are subject to voluminous internal debate. With these caveats in mind, and in an effort to nonetheless offer a tentative guide to the field, the essay proceeds to highlight some key clusters of work and lines of debate.

Locating Critical Geopolitics

Spatiality and subjectivity.

A substantial part of critical geopolitics seeks to unpack the rigid territorial assumptions of traditional geopolitical thinking. Thus, numerous analyses dissect post–Cold War geopolitics to reveal the continued reliance on binary understandings of power and spatiality, on notions of East and West, security and danger, freedom and oppression. More recently, geographic scholarship has foregrounded how the “war on terror” works with these same binaries (Agnew 2003 ; Gregory 2004 ; Gregory and Pred 2006 ).

In particular, much of critical geopolitics problematizes the statist conceptions of power in social sciences – a conceptualization that John Agnew (e.g. 1999 ) calls the “territorial trap.” Along with political geography more generally, critical geopolitics argues that spatiality is not confined to territoriality, either historically or today (Murphy 1996 ). It advances the drift away from rigidly territorialized understandings of politics toward more nuanced understandings of the complex spatialities of power (Agnew 1999 ; 2005b ; Dalby 2002 ; Elden 2005 ; Sparke 2005 ). State power, it shows, is not limited to or contained within the territory of the state; it is also exercised nonterritorially or in space-spanning networks (Kuus and Agnew 2008 ). It is applied differentially in different spheres and to different subjects (Gregory 2006 ; Painter 2006 ; Sparke 2006 ). The argument is not that geography or borders no longer matter. In fact, the celebrations of borderless world also equate spatiality with state territoriality, mistakenly taking the transformations of state power for the “end of geography” (Agnew 2005b ). This applies not just to popular writers like Thomas Friedman (for a critique, see Sparke 2005 ). Proclamations of the transnational governmentality termed “Empire” by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri ( 2000 ) also betray insensitivity to the intricate topographies or power (Sparke 2005 ; Coleman and Agnew 2007 ). Critical geopolitics argues that the emerging forms of global governance do not “flatten” space; to the contrary, they increase spatial differentiation globally (Albert and Reuber 2007 :550). In terms of the state, the key questions to address are not about the “real” sources, meanings or limits of state sovereignty in some general or universal sense, but, more specifically, about how state power is discursively and practically produced in territorial and nonterritorial forms (Kuus and Agnew 2008 ; Painter 2008 ). The task is to decenter but not to write off state power by examining its incoherencies and contradictions (Coleman 2005 :202). Such investigations must also be mindful of the increasing complexity of regional integration and differentiation (Agnew 2005a ). Regionality here does not refer to any pregiven constellation, such as the European Union (EU) or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It rather refers to the multilayered socioeconomic and cultural processes through which “regionness” is produced and sustained (Sidaway 2002 ; Albert and Reuber 2007 :551).

This drift away from state-based analysis of world politics links up with interest in subjectivity and identity across the social sciences. For the assumption that international politics is a fundamentally territorial (as distinct from spatial) politics of states is closely bound up with the notion that states are the basic subjects of international politics (Kuus and Agnew 2008 ). Critical geopolitics departs from both of these assumptions. It does not examine the identities or actions of pregiven subjects; it rather investigates the processes by which political subjects are formed in the first place. It shows that the sovereign state is not the basis for, but the effect of, discourses of sovereignty, security, and identity. Put differently, state identity and interest do not precede foreign policy, but are forged through foreign policy practices. The enactments of state interest and identity are therefore among the key themes of critical geopolitics. The principal object of this scholarship is not the state as an object but statecraft as a multitude of practices (Coleman 2007 :609).

As a part of this interest in political subjectivity and subject-formation, there has been tremendous interest in identity politics, that is, in the geographical demarcation of Self and Other, “our” space and “theirs.” This strand of work has been so voluminous that critical geopolitics is sometimes accused of overvalorizing culture and identity at the expense of economic issues (e.g. Thrift 2000 ). Much of this “cultural” work has focused on the construction of national spaces and the geopolitical cultures of particular states (e.g. Campbell 1998 ; Sharp 2000 ; Toal 2003 ; Jeffrey 2008 ). It shows that geographical claims about cultural borders and homelands are central to narratives of national identity. There is also an extensive literature on bordering practices (Paasi 1998 ; 2005a ; Newman 2006 ; Rajaram and Grundy-Warr 2007 ; Agnew 2007b ; Kaiser and Nikiforova 2008 ). It argues that international borders are best viewed not as lines representing already existing political entities called states or nations. Rather, these entities themselves are constituted through bordering practices. In John Agnew’s ( 2007b :399) succinct formulation, “borders […] make the nation rather than vice versa.” It is indeed at borders first and foremost where these entities are defined: where the inside is demarcated from the outside and Self is differentiated from the Other. This process is not only about exclusion. It is also about borrowing and adaptation – for example, of the concepts of statehood and nationhood. Borders thus have multiple functions: they serve as barriers, but they must also necessarily allow movement across in order to reproduce the entities they supposedly contain. Statecraft is being activated and transformed at multiple scales at and far away from borders (Coleman 2007 ). Borders do not simply differentiate space. They are spaces where both different as well as similar conceptions of citizenship and belonging are operationalized. State borders are becoming markedly more porous in some spheres and for some groups, while being securitized for other flows of goods, people, and ideas (Sparke 2006 ).

These processes of geopolitical subject-making are not limited to nation-states. On the supranational level, region-building processes, such as the processes of European integration, are deeply geopolitical exercises in the same way (Moisio 2002 ; Kuus 2007 ). European integration, for example, may well overcome nationalist narratives of territory and identity, but it entails powerful claims about Europe as a territorial and cultural unit (Bialasiewicz 2008 ; Heffernan 2007 ). This process is a particularly fascinating geopolitical project because it explicitly moves beyond the state-centered understandings of space. The power of the EU is the governmentalized power of technical and political standards. There is an emerging literature that explores the intricate reworking of political, economic, and juridical borders inside and around the EU. This reworking is richly illustrative of processes of regionalization and the respatialization of borders today (Agnew 2005b ).

Given the large-scale violence engendered by the “war on terror,” the scholarship on subject-making includes substantial work on militarization. It seeks to analyse the current period of militarization without uncritically reifying the role of the state in this process (Flint 2003 ; Kuus 2009 ). It focuses not so much on military institutions and military conflict – although these issues are undoubtedly important – as on the structures of legitimacy on which military force depends. For as Enloe ( 2004 :220) points out, most of the militarization of social life, a process in which social practices gain value and legitimacy by being associated with military force, occurs in peacetime. To understand the dynamics of this process, then, we need to look at the civilian rather than the military. Critical geopolitics documents the explicit glorification and implicit normalization of military force and military institutions throughout society (Hannah 2006 ; Cowen and Gilbert 2007 ; Flusty 2008 ; Gregory 2008 ; Sidaway 2008 ; Pain and Smith 2008 ). It also exposes the intellectual apparatus of militarization; for example, an integral part of academic geography is the development of the US military-industrial complex (Barnes and Farish 2006 ). This work is part and parcel of the growing work on security as a key concept and trope in political life today. The “war on terror” has clearly fueled (uncritical) geopolitical analysis that operates with explicitly militaristic and imperialist language (Retort 2005 ; Dalby 2007 ). This analysis maps some parts of the world in an imperial register as spaces in need of military pacification; understanding that process requires that we first unpack such maps (Gregory 2004 ; Dalby 2007 ). Geographers were latecomers to the critical study of security, but there are now a number of specifically geographic studies on the processes of securitization. They flesh out the inherent spatiality of these processes – the ways in which practices of securitization necessarily locate security and danger (e.g. Dalby 2002 ; Gregory 2004 ; Kuus 2007 ; Dodds and Ingram 2009 ).

Although the bodies of work above do not make up one set of literature, they all investigate the processes by which people are socialized as members of territorial groups, be it at subnational, national, or broader regional level. Their focus is not simply on what various actors think or believe. It is rather on the discursive constructions of ontological claims – the ways in which material reality of politics is problematized within geopolitical discourses (Toal and Agnew 2005 ). The argument in that work is not that objects cannot exist externally to thought or that they are not produced through material forces. The contention rather is that objects cannot be represented as outside any discursive formation (Campbell 1993 :9).

Geographical Scope

Much of critical geopolitics focuses empirically on the core states of the West, especially the US. This is not surprising given that US foreign policy, scholarship, and popular culture have been hegemonic in the exercise of geopolitics for over sixty years now. As Agnew points out (2007a:138), much of what goes for geopolitical writing involves projecting US context and US interests onto the world at large. Geographers have therefore looked closely at the geographs of American political elites and popular culture, as well as the processes through which these are projected onto the world at large.

In parallel, there has been substantial interest in broadening critical geopolitics empirically outside the core states. If critical geopolitics is to disrupt commonsense geopolitical narratives, it must first undermine the tacit assumption of American (or Western) universalism that underpins these narratives. Furthermore, numerous other countries have rich geopolitical literatures. There are now substantial literatures on key states such as Britain, Germany, France, and Russia (see Hepple 2000 ; Ingram 2001 ; Dodds 2002 ; Bassin 2003 ; O’Loughlin et al. 2005 ). In addition to these obvious cases, and perhaps more interestingly, there are also numerous studies of geopolitical traditions of smaller and historically more peripheral states (see Ó Tuathail and Dalby 1998 ; Dodds and Atkinson 2000 ; see also Berg and Oras 2000 ; Megoran 2005 ; Sidaway and Power 2005 ; Kuus 2007 ). This work amply demonstrates both the consistency and diversity of geopolitical thought. In terms of the former, for example, claims of national exceptionalism or external threat are extraordinarily consistent throughout the twentieth century . As for diversity, geopolitical practices are deeply rooted in the specific political circumstances of particular countries. They involve not only the predictable right-wing tradition of geopolitical analyses, but also a critical and radical tradition of geopolitics, as for example in the pages of the French journal Herodote (Hepple 2000 ). Some claims are repeated, but their specific political functions and effects vary considerably. By highlighting such variation, critical geopolitics shows that there is no single tradition of geopolitical thought or practice. There are, rather, different geopolitical cultures owing to specific geographical contexts and intellectual traditions.

These case studies notwithstanding, critical geopolitics still tends to concentrate on North America and Western Europe. This narrow focus has been pointed out repeatedly since the 1990s (Dodds and Sidaway 1994 ; Dowler and Sharp 2001 ; Chaturvedi 2003 ; Kuus 2004 ), but it is still relevant today. The case studies of other countries, as valuable as they are, have not shifted the center of gravity of the subfield as a whole. They tend to be cited mostly as examples of particular empirical contexts rather than as instances of broader geopolitical theorizing. The subfield in this sense mirrors the focus on the Anglo-American realm in human geography more broadly (Paasi 2005b ). This is a problem because it impoverishes our understanding of the very geographical complexities that critical geopolitics seeks to foreground. If critical geopolitics is about geographical context, then it must be empirically and theoretically firmly grounded in contexts outside North America and Western Europe. Ideas move and their political uses and functions change in the process (Agnew 2007a ). Disrupting the hegemonic status of certain geopolitical claims requires that we show their empirical flatness as an integral part of their conceptual primitivism.

This is not simply a matter of cataloging distinct geopolitical cultures: British, Russian, Estonian, and so on. Such glamorization of local knowledge would be as problematic as the assumption of geopolitical universals. Rather, in addition to tracing the geopolitical traditions of different countries, and perhaps more importantly, we must also examine the power relationships between centers and margins of dominant geopolitical discourses. For example, as Sergei Prozorov ( 2007 ) compellingly shows, contemporary Russian geopolitical thought has as much to do with Russia’s relations with the West as it has with any quintessentially Russian identity or interests. At the same time, although Russians work with hegemonic concepts from the West, they do not necessarily adopt these concepts at face value. Geopolitics is not simply written in the concert of great powers and then handed down to the smaller, relatively marginal, states. Geopolitical discourses in central locations, such as North America and Western Europe, are not only constitutive of such discourses elsewhere, but are also in part constituted by these “other” discourses.

This foregrounds the role of political actors on the margins – outside the main power centers of the US and Western Europe. These actors do not simply bear witness to dominant geopolitical discourses; they also appropriate these discourses for their own purposes. Put differently, these actors do not only consume geopolitical concepts; they also produce these concepts. We therefore have to unravel the maneuvers of relatively marginal actors vis-à-vis the dominant narratives of the center, and vice versa (Kuus 2004 ). Concepts are not misinterpreted, but they are interpreted in particular ways. For example, the work of Mackinder or Samuel Huntington has been utilized for particular nationalist goals in a variety of contexts (for examples, see Ingram 2001 ; Moisio 2002 ; Dodds and Sidaway 2004 ; Megoran 2004 ; Kuus 2007 ). What functions as state-of-the-art geopolitical thinking in particular social contexts has as much to do with such appropriation as it does with the original objects of appropriation. In the Central Europe of the 1990s, for example, these were not simply “Western” views, but a very narrow range of Western views that were influential there. These views did not present themselves to the people in the marginal states; they were translated, literally and figuratively, by local intellectuals of statecraft. For example, to say that Huntington’s thesis of civilizational clash is influential in Central Europe tells us little. We need to understand how specifically it has been made influential locally. Huntington’s thesis would not be as influential in Central Europe if it was not actively promoted by influential individuals in the region. The Huntingtonian arguments of these individuals, in turn, were legitimized by Huntington’s prestigious position at the center of the Western security establishment. The reverse flow of information and influence is at play as well. Local intellectuals of statecraft are often the main sources of the so-called local insight to Western scholars and journalists. They are key players in mapping places for Western scholars and diplomats alike. Hegemonic discourses of the center are so powerful in part because they are bolstered on the margins. In terms of Huntington, then, being cited at a putative civilizational faultline like Central Europe has greatly enhanced the standing of Huntington’s thesis in the West itself. Both sides – the center and the margin – need each other for the Huntingtonian narrative to work (Kuus 2007 : ch. 3).

This example underscores the need to examine how broad politically charged categories, such as security, identity, and geopolitics, are problematized and used by different groups in different circumstances. In particular, it shows that this process has to do not only with the substance of the ideas but also with the power relationships among the actors who promote them. The task is not only to look at more actors – not only the United States but also Hungary or Morocco, for instance – but also to unpack the power relationships among these actors. In other words, we need to look not at “marginal perspectives” as such, but to flesh out the relationships between centers and margins (Paasi 2005b ; Parker 2008 ). We need to analyze how some Western views become “state of the art” while other views do not even reach political debates in the margins – and vice versa. To do so is not to romanticize “local knowledge” but to acknowledge the complexity of knowledge production.

This highlights the need to investigate the practitioners of geopolitics – from presidents and foreign ministers, through a wide range of journalists, government officials, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, and activists, to the so-called average people. Arguments about the discursive construction of social reality remain flat unless they illuminate how this process is shaped by specific political agents. The agency or capacity to act of all these actors is the realm of numerous debates in critical geopolitics. This is the subject of the next section.

Geopolitics and Agency

Intellectuals of statecraft.

Geopolitics is traditionally conceived as a highbrow matter – too important and too specialized for a lay person. An aura of dignity sets off the statesman from the politician (Kuklick 2006 ). Foreign policy is in substantial measure a realm of elite-level pronouncements and well-established state institutions. Although the practices of modern state are highly diffuse and operate throughout social life, foreign policy has remained a relatively concentrated realm of specialized elites. These elite circles extend beyond elected and appointed officials; they include academics, journalists, and various analysts and pundits who gain social acceptance for their (presumed) expertise in international affairs. Located within the government apparatus as well as universities and think tanks, these intellectuals of statecraft explain international politics to the domestic audience and translate (figuratively and sometimes literally) national debates to foreign audiences. They offer a map of the world as a collection of particular kinds of places, and they narrate the dominant story of the nation’s place in that world.

Not surprisingly, a substantial part of critical geopolitics has focused empirically on intellectuals of statecraft – the academics, politicians, government officials and various commentators who regularly participate and comment on the activities of statecraft. This is the case especially with the early work, which indeed defined geopolitics in terms of that group of professionals – as the study of how intellectuals of statecraft represent international politics (Ó Tuathail and Agnew 1992 :193). In order to unpack the influence of that group in more detail, that work loosely divided geopolitical reasoning into formal, practical, and popular geopolitics. In this division, formal geopolitics denotes formal highbrow analysis, practical geopolitics refers to the reasoning of politicians, pundits and specialized journals, and popular geopolitics encompasses the ways in which world politics is spatialized in popular culture. The three levels are closely intertwined (as will be elaborated below) and none should be treated as primary. This notwithstanding, practical geopolitics – the realm of intellectuals of statecraft – is particularly effective because it combines the clout and authoritative tone of formal geopolitical reasoning with commonsense metaphors from popular culture. Critical geopolitics has thus paid close attention to the production of geopolitical knowledge in these elite circles. Even today, a large share of the critical scholarship focuses on the cultural and organizational processes by which foreign policy is made in states. It investigates the geographs of elected and appointed government elites as well as popular commentators like Robert Kaplan , Samuel Huntington , Thomas Friedman or Thomas Barnett . In one sense, this work dovetails with critical analyses of intellectuals of statecraft within IR (e.g. Campbell 1998 ; 1999 ). Yet it also differs from these other critiques by focusing explicitly on the spatial assumptions underpinning their arguments (Roberts et al. 2003 ; Sparke 2005 ; Dalby 2007 ).

The point of this scholarship is not to uncover what the “wise men” think. It rather dissects the assumptions that enable and constrain elite geopolitical practices. True, even a cursory investigation of geopolitical practices quickly reveals that these assumptions are not homogeneous. Disagreements and power struggles among different state institutions, think tanks, news organizations or schools of scholarship are well known (for geographical analyses, see Dalby 1990 ; Flint 2005 ; Gregory 2006 ). Indeed, as Gertjan Dijkink ( 2004 ) points out, a great deal of geopolitical writing is penned by elites who are frustrated with received wisdom (see also Coleman 2004 ). However, although intellectuals of statecraft do not work in the same end of the political spectrum, they tend to draw on and embellish a loosely coherent set of myths about nature, culture, and geography (Gusterson and Besteman 2005 :2). As a result, vigorous debates are often contained in simplistic unexamined assumptions about geography and territoriality (Campbell 1999 ; Dahlman and Ó Tuathail 2005 ).

A problem with this emphasis on intellectuals of statecraft is that it focuses on a very narrow range of geopolitical actors. In response, recent work has paid greater attention to geopolitical practices outside state structures (and these strands of work will be discussed below). In addition, there have also been attempts to analyze state bureaucracies in more detail. Especially in the context of increased state power in the realms of security, state institutions require renewed scrutiny as sites of geopolitical practice (Agnew 2005b ; Coleman 2005 ; Retort 2005 ). This attention to the fragmented and articulated institutional structures of geopolitics links up with analyses of policy. For policy impinges on all aspects of self and society. It shapes not just societal outcomes but, more importantly, the processes that produce these outcomes. To study policy is to investigate not a ready-made blueprint but a dynamic and unpredictable process. In geography as well as other social sciences, there is today a growing recognition of the need for utilizing ethnographic methods to understand policy (Megoran 2006 ; see also Mitchell 2005 ; Agnew 2007a ; Neumann 2007 ). Ethnographic work is especially helpful for dislodging studies from the stereotype that policy professionals merely execute pregiven political and juridical blueprints without any significant agency of their own.

Ultimately, this closer focus on policy procedures is about sensitivity to specific geographical contexts. Such contexts include the personal backgrounds, interests, and identities of the individuals who actually articulate geopolitical claims. Intellectuals of statecraft are not synonymous with the state and we cannot assume that they merely voice some pregiven state interest. Rather, their geopolitical practices need to be carefully contextualized in their specific societal settings. For example, we cannot understand American geopolitics of the Cold War era without considering the personal anticommunism of some of the leading writers – in some cases because of their personal contacts among Russian émigré circles (Crampton and Ó Tuathail 1996 ; Ó Tuathail 2000 ). We likewise cannot comprehend the culturalist flavor of Central European geopolitics without considering the arts and humanities backgrounds of many of the region’s leading politicians (Kuus 2007 : ch. 5). In that example, humanities backgrounds give these individuals special legitimacy to speak in the name of culture and identity. The culturalist narratives of foreign policy in Central Europe – for example, the “return to Europe” narrative – points to the need to carefully unpack such cultural resources.

In addition to adding nuance and color to analyses, there are at least two further reasons why a close examination of agency in geopolitics must include in-depth studies of intellectuals of statecraft. The first reason has to do with their influence. Other actors undoubtedly contest the dominant geopolitical discourses, but their arguments are still positioned in relation to intellectuals of statecraft. Over the long run, the institutional and cultural resources available to them serve to systematically push the game in their direction. As James Scott ( 2005 :401) puts it, even though the dominant arguments do not reach the ground uncompromised, “can there be much doubt about which players in this […] encounter hold most of the high cards?” The “war on terror” has further highlighted the crucial importance of a few state agencies, particularly those connected to the national security apparatus, in mainstream conceptions of world affairs (Gregory and Pred 2006 ; Coleman 2007 ; Dalby 2007 ). It is easy to say that we need to look beyond elites and beyond the state. Yet this process of producing hegemonic norms outside the sphere of the state is still heavily influenced by state elites.

The second reason why we need more studies of these professionals has to do with their diversity. Simply speaking of power discourses can overlook the conscious manipulation of (geo)political claims by specific well-placed individuals. If we broaden our definition of geopolitics from the narrowest circles of officials in the highest echelons of the state apparatus, we need to analyze more diverse settings of policy. These settings include immigration, trade and aid policies, as well as international and supranational institutions – and all of these in addition to locations like foreign ministries. The study of geopolitics must not be limited to the handful of men at the key nodes of state power, but neither should it exclude these men. Given the relatively closed nature of foreign policy, challenges to dominant geopolitical narratives come as much from the inside as from the outside of policy structures (see Ó Tuathail 1999 ; Dijkink 2004 ). The challenge, then, is not to bypass intellectuals of statecraft, but, to the contrary, to offer more nuanced accounts of them. There is no easy way around the methodological difficulties (e.g. access) in attempting such accounts, but they should be pursued nonetheless. Critical geopolitics is indeed increasingly engaged with fieldwork in diverse empirical settings (Megoran 2006 ; see also Pain and Smith 2008 ).

To argue for a closer engagement with intellectuals of statecraft is not to imply that we should try to uncover their “identities” in some abstract sense disconnected from their social context. It is likewise not an attempt to uncover some “real story” in the corridors of power. It is rather to argue for a closer examination of the interconnections between geopolitical practices and the agents of these practices (Agnew 2007a ). It is to more closely consider the daily production of geopolitical knowledge – the mundane repetition of claims not just in official speeches, but also around the coffee machine (e.g. Neumann 2007 ). This would help us to bring into focus the multiple structures of authority and legitimacy through which geopolitical arguments work.

Popular Geopolitics and Anti-geopolitics

The same air of power and secrecy that seems to set geopolitics apart from “normal boring” politics also feeds popular fascination with it. Although explicitly geopolitical arguments evoke exclusive expertise, the categories of security and danger, community and enmity, Us and Them on which these claims rely are formed at the popular level. The “expert” statements would not hold if they were not legitimized at the popular level. This duality, whereby security and geopolitics excite popular fascination and play on popular beliefs, and yet the authority to speak on them is relatively limited, is a necessary part of geopolitical arguments. To be effective, these arguments need both sides.

Not surprisingly, then, in addition to the scholarship that draws empirically on the rhetorical strategies of intellectuals of statecraft, there is also a rich body of work on popular geopolitics – that is, the geopolitical narratives that circulate in popular culture. Investigating various cultural products as well as their producers and audiences, it offers insights into a range of locations and agents of geopolitics outside the realm of the state: popular magazines, newspaper reporters, cartoonists, film directors, and social activists of various kinds (see Power and Crampton 2005 ). Thus, there is extensive literature on the narratives that animate James Bond films (Dodds 2003 ; 2006 ), the Captain America comic strip (Dittmer 2005 ; 2007 ), or the Readers Digest magazine (Sharp 2000 ). There is also a substantial popular geopolitics scholarship on the “war on terror.” This work situates the spatiality of everyday life and popular culture specifically in the current period of militarization and political violence (e.g. Toal 2003 ; Falah et al. 2006 ; Flusty 2008 ; Pain and Smith 2008 ; Dodds and Ingram 2009 ). In that effort to understand current political violence, geographers are also paying more attention to the linkages between religion and geopolitical thought (e.g. Agnew 2006 and the special issue it introduces). Much of this work analyzes the structure of the texts and the techniques used to make them credible: the metaphors, the repetitions, the claims of authority and authenticity. It thereby brings into relief the broader cultural milieu in which particular geopolitical claims thrive.

One part of this inquiry into popular culture and everyday life is the work on resistance geopolitics or anti-geopolitics. Paul Routledge ( 2006 :234) defines anti-geopolitics as “an ambiguous political and cultural force within civil society that articulates forms of counter-hegemonic struggle.” By civil society, Routledge means those institutions that are not part of either material production in the economy or the formal sphere of the state. By counter-hegemonic, he means resistances that challenge the material and cultural power of dominant geopolitical interests or states and their elites ( 2006 :234). The work focusing explicitly on resistance geopolitics is still relatively slim, but there are studies of activist groups (Routledge 2008 ; Slater 2004 : ch. 8), journalists (Ó Tuathail 1996a ; Dodds 1996 ), as well as the so-called average citizens (Mamadouh 2003 ; Secor 2004 ) who challenge dominant geopolitical representations.

A key challenge in this scholarship, as in resistance studies more broadly, is to avoid glamorizing resistance and the civil society in general: to show the diversity of resistance, the entanglements of domination and resistance, and the futility of looking for the “self-evidently good” (Sharp et al. 2000 ; Kuus 2008 ). For elite discourses are not only resisted but also reproduced by nongovernmental organizations in the civil society. Moreover, resistance involves much more than conscious overt dissent. In today’s society it is increasingly difficult to stand heroically on the edge of the system of power one opposes and to practice dissent as an overt, conscience-driven rejection of an official practice. Rather, we need to look at passiveness, irony, and anonymity as resources for resistance. To do justice to the entanglements of domination and resistance, critical geopolitics increasingly foregrounds the practices that “pursue a certain anonymity, prefer tactics of evasion and obfuscation over those of repudiation and confrontation, and seek a loose or vague or superficial rather than definitive, weighty or substantial identity” (Bennett 1992 :152–3).

Feminist Geopolitics

Critical geopolitics emerged out of the same postpositivist and anti-essentialist intellectual ferment as feminist work. It undermines the “view from nowhere” of the traditional geopolitical reasoning by offering more situated and embodied accounts of power. Yet ironically, the initial wave of critical geopolitics in the 1990s focused empirically almost exclusively on male intellectuals of statecraft at the centers of state power. In part, this focus has to do with its subject matter – Cold War superpower politics was a heavily male dominated affair. However, the effect of studying such a small group of individuals was not only to describe but also to tacitly prescribe geopolitics as a narrow field of male practice and analysis. From early on, feminist research has sought to broaden the conception of agency in critical geopolitics beyond such a narrow field of inquiry. There is now a discernible subfield of feminist geopolitics.

This work – and feminist political geography of which it is a part – argues that the focus on policy elites implies an untenable conceptual division between the public sphere of international relations and the private sphere of everyday life. As a result, even though critical geopolitics compellingly challenges the power relations embedded in dominant geopolitical narratives, it still tends to offer a disembodied “spectator” theory of knowledge (Hyndman 2004 :6; see also Dowler and Sharp 2001 ; Gilmartin and Kofman 2004 ; Staeheli et al. 2004 ). In other words, despite the subfield’s avowed critical stance toward power structures, critical geopolitics to some extent reproduces the view from the center that it critiques.

Feminist geopolitics aims to rectify this gap by engaging closely with actors and locations outside the formal sphere of the state (Hyndman 2007 ). It takes the central tenet of feminist work – that the personal is also political – to posit that the personal is also geopolitical (e.g. Sharp 2005 ). Approaching the so-called average people as political subjects, it seeks to understand “how political life plays out through a multiplicity of alternative, gendered political spaces” (Hyndman 2000 ; Secor 2001 :192). By highlighting the geopolitical practices of those located outside the top echelons of the state apparatus, it brings into focus the institutional structure through which the illusory division between political and “nonpolitical” spheres, or the realm of “geopolitics” and “normal” or “domestic” politics is constructed (Hyndman 2004 ; Sharp 2005 ). As a body of work, feminist geopolitics shifts the focus from the operations of elite agents to the constructions of political subjects in everyday political practice (Kofman and Staeheli 2004 ). It thereby links up with the broader efforts to produce more embodied accounts of power (e.g. Marston 2003 ; Pratt 2003 ; Mountz 2004 ; Staeheli et al. 2004 ). This strand of work is relatively new and there are few empirical investigations to follow up on its theoretical exposés (but see Secor 2004 ; Hyndman 2007 ; Sundberg 2009 ). However, feminist geopolitics is clearly one the growing fields of inquiry within critical geopolitics.

Critical Geopolitics as the Fragmented Mainstream

This essay charted the development of critical geopolitics as a subfield of human geography since the 1990s. It highlighted the field’s intellectual roots as well as its engagements with other strands of inquiry within and beyond geography. To discuss critical geopolitics as a distinct subfield is not to essentialize or to homogenize it. To the contrary, perhaps the principal conclusion of the essay is that we should resist temptations to delimit critical geopolitics by subject matter, theoretical concerns or methodology. Such limitations would create an illusion of internal coherence and external differentiation that this work does not possess or claim. Critical geopolitics is concerned not with power in general but with the operation of power relations in particular places. To treat critical geopolitics as a subfield of human geography is rather to foreground the sustained engagement in geography with the spatiality of power and politics on the global scale.

The essay also highlighted some ongoing debates on the geographical scope and theoretical reach of critical geopolitics. In particular, it has been argued that more work still needs to be done to illuminate the diversity of geopolitical arguments in different countries and in different spheres of social life. Debates on agency in geopolitics – that is, questions about the capacity of various groups to participate in and influence the production of geopolitical discourses – form an integral part of that effort. There has been indeed a discernible shift toward a more explicit analytical emphasis not just on political processes, but, more specifically, on political agency within these processes (Albert and Reuber 2007 :553). The various strands of work on agency all problematize the notion of pregiven political subjects to investigate the processes of subject-making. They all share the sustained attention on nonstate and nonelite actors in the spatialization of world politics. As a field, critical geopolitics has engaged more closely with not just formal and practical geopolitical reasoning but also with the prosaic and mundane geopolitics of everyday life. This line of inquiry requires considerable methodological diversity, as well as sensitivity to the geography of knowledge production (Agnew 2007a ).

The heterogeneity of critical geopolitics is central to its vibrancy and success. This field is not about producing core texts but about questioning the assumptions that underpin geopolitical claims. Through such efforts, critical geopolitics has emerged from its roots in the poststructuralist, feminist, and postcolonial critique of traditional geopolitics to become an integral part of mainstream human geography. To study geopolitics within the discipline of geography today is to study it critically. Even treatments that are not labeled “critical” as such draw from various anti-essentialist nonpositivist approaches to power, be it various strands of Marxism, feminism, or postcolonial work, or world systems theory (e.g. Flint 2005 ; Cowen and Gilbert 2007 ). These analyses may not necessarily seek the label of critical geopolitics, but this is not because they are not critical but because their critical stance can be taken for granted. The debate in geography has moved beyond critiquing mainstream geopolitics; it is now about how specifically such critique can be combined with effective visions for alternative political spaces.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Colin Flint , Klaus Dodds , and two anonymous referees for constructive feedback on earlier versions of the essay. Research for the essay was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Lawrence Santiago provided helpful research assistance.

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Why Geopolitics Matters

• Jeremy Black
• January 17, 2020

Geopolitics has been one of the great strengths of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from the outset, and this strength has been strongly developed by Alan Luxenberg. As such, FPRI is a key organization that not only teaches America about the world, but also the world about the world. Indeed, of all the many prestigious American think tanks, FPRI is possibly the one that is most relevant for those outside America. This is both praise for FPRI and also a criticism of its counterparts. Their concern with partisan audience and ideological clarity can lead, in a global perspective, to a degree of introversion or even irrelevance.

Geopolitics is not inherently global. Indeed, one of its greatest American manifestations was as gerrymandering, which was very much the geographical politics of the locality. Yet, rather like the putative Amazonian butterfly, the locality has of course a wider impact. Most obviously, the unitisation of America in the form of its political configuration had a crucial consequence for its politics, as with the spread of slavery, and continues to have such an impact.

The global dimension, however, is not always ably handled by commentators for whom the detailed impact of local circumstances is subordinated to the alleged exigencies of a model, indeed classically their model. With many commentators, this approach is frequently linked to a tendency to depoliticize the politics of their own country, so that their prospectus also becomes the necessary one. With his characteristically intelligent wry skepticism, Alan Luxenberg is apt to understand this problem, and FPRI has been open, in a most welcome fashion, to different accounts of global developments and American needs.

That openness flies in the face of geopolitics as rhetoric, for the latter, the consciously or unconsciously subjective use of the approach, sits alongside, and as part of a continuum, with the objective use. The key instance is the concept of strategic culture, which is useful, in an objective sense, as an account of the long-term climate of opinion and assumptions that frames policy. As such, it is also inherently political.

This situation does not make geopolitics less significant, not least because it is readily apparent that the full range of the social sciences are inherently political, whether in content, analysis, or exposition. So also with the use of history. Indeed, geopolitics, which is where geography, history, and international relations come together, is affected by the inherently political character of each. To suppose some abstract or pure geopolitics that is not thereby affected is to offer a misleading neo-Platonic approach. For example, we might think we all know strategic over-reach when we see it, but the idea of such over-reach faces the serious conceptual difficulty of assuming a clear-cut measure of strategic reach and geopolitical concern, whether in military or in other terms. From a different dimension, current debates over the value, context, and future of geopolitics can be fitted into the model of geopolitics as a form of response to problems. In short, it is, like most forms of analysis, a way to shape the complexities of existence.

The subject has been made more contentious by the development of an explicitly critical geopolitics from the 1970s. While this offered a homage to post-modernism, it drew in practice more clearly on a Marxisante tradition because such a rival geopolitics had been offered by the Soviet Union from the outset, and notably so with the Comintern. Marxist commentators in the West, such as J.F. (James Francis) Horrabin, provided a wider stage for these ideas, as in his The Plebs Atlas (1926).

The heavily politicized nature of geopolitics under the Third Reich led to the subject falling into disfavor for a while, but to do so was to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In practice, indeed, the idea of “containment” was inherently geopolitical, as was the Cold War as a whole. As an interlinked struggle in many localities between global ideologies and powers, this was axiomatic—even if the relationship in question varied greatly.

What was less so was the situation after the end of the Cold War. The idea of a unipower that had “ended history”—providing a form of isotropic geopolitics, the concept advanced in the 1990s—could not last in the face of the reality and volatility of world affairs. This, indeed, has led to a competition to define the international politics of the world that developed from the beginning of the 2000s. Different accounts of geopolitics were an aspect of this competition, and these differences can be seen between, and within, individual countries.

Obvious contrasts are “national” ones at the level of particular states, but there are also broader conceptual contrasts. A classic instance is provided by that between classical realist geopoliticians and critical geopoliticians who are particularly influential in Western academe, notably that of the United States. The latter tend to reflect an almost axiomatic anti-Western approach and, in particular, to press for change in the world. As such, these critical thinkers differ from the classical school, which sought, and seeks, to appreciate the world as it is, or, in a more hostile light, not only to do so, but also to defend it accordingly. This is presented, by both supporters and opponents, as Realpolitik , but that is a construction as well as an objective description.

In practice, there is political commitment on all sides of the discussion, but Realpolitik approaches tend to seek an understanding of all players in order better to ground their analyses and proposals. In contrast, critical geopolitics frequently rests on a weak and naïve understanding of what it does not like. Adopting an inherently critical approach toward such overlapping categories as American public culture, consumerism, the West (an abstraction that somehow tends not to include the critic in question), neoconservatism, imperialist geopolitics, and claims to objectivity is not only repetitive, discursive, and somewhat exhausting, but also tends to rely on problematic theory, scant use of evidence, and argument by assertion. Alongside Manichaeism in the case of self-styled critical geopoliticians comes the problems posed by projecting their own frame of reference onto others.

More positively comes the value of assessing contrasting realist perspectives. These can relate to particular countries, specific issues, individual time sequences, and so on. These perspectives are most valuable when they engage with the dynamic and contested character of strategic culture, while also reflecting an evidence-based approach. For example, there has recently been much academic discussion of support for Brexit as reflecting a form of regret for British imperialism and great-power status. This has extended to a critique of Brexit alongside that of the interventionism of the “New Imperialism that was concealed behind the War on Terror.” [1] In practice, this analysis is deeply flawed. These policies were associated with the Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron governments, none of them noted for their Brexit sympathies. Moreover, House of Commons’ speakers against interventionism include some prominent Brexiteers such as Julian Lewis. Brexit is/was a matter more of Little Englanders than global interventionists. In short, an engagement with geopolitics can reflect what is by any standard intellectual confusion.

China is of much greater significance than Britain and the state that appears to be pursuing geopolitical ideas most aggressively. Resting on the Maoist perception that foreign pressure had held China’s development back, there was a determination to project power, both in order to prevent that situation and so as to be able to impose it on others. The traditional land-based focus on the development of expanding rings of security around a state’s territory has been applied to the maritime domain in a major expansion of geopolitical concern. “Near China” has been refocused to include the East and South China Seas. Xinjiang and Tibet similarly reflect the ambition to extend power.

Yet, the former leads to a clash with the United States as the land-based policy does not. Moreover, while the sea can seem a buffer in the way that frontiers do not, the Chinese use of the situation is not operating in this fashion. Indeed, in part as a consequence of significant domestic interest, naval strength has become symbolic, ideological, and cultural, as much as based on “realist” criteria of military, political, and economic parity and power. Again, the strategic culture dimension of geopolitics has been ever thus, but it is all-too-easy to forget the point.

This is also the case with the extension of Chinese ambition to more distant locations. However conceptualized, this is a development of Cold War policies, notably in the 1960s and early 1970s, but with more edge and with the support of a strong navy, an element absent until relatively recently. There is also a greater degree of geopolitical coherence than that offered by competition with the Soviet Union as a result of the Sino-Soviet rift. Indeed, the very different context then and now of Chinese-Soviet/Russian geopolitics is a reminder of the inherent volatility of the issue as well as its relationship with a wide range of what can be seen as total politics/history.

So also with the analysis of geopolitics. That also is inherently a product and aspect of this totality, rather than an element that can be readily separated out. This is apparent, for example, whether the frame of reference is the United States, China, or a lesser power. As a consequence, analysis has to consider the porous nature of government processes and the extent to which politics leads to a tendency to draw on a wide range of influences and to entail the perception of these influences.

FPRI offers a bridge to consider these and other different accounts of geopolitics. It will work best if it can maintain a humane skepticism toward any supposedly universal account of the subject.

[1] R. Gildea, Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present (2019); and S. Ward (ed.), Embers of Empire in Brexit Britain (London, 2019).

Davos 2020: Here's what you need to know about geopolitics 

The geopolitical landscape is increasingly fragmented and ever more vulnerable to disruption. Image:  REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

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Stay up to date:, beyond geopolitics.

• The geopolitical landscape is unsettled, while the traditional Western-led order is being challenged by new centres of power.
• Risks to the international order abound, from the re-emergence of nationalism to climate change to the growing risk of military confrontation.
• Amid the upheaval, there is an opportunity for actors to forge a more co-operative world order.

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the geopolitical landscape is increasingly unsettled. The US-led Western world order – which emerged in the post-War period and then prevailed following the collapse of the Soviet Union – is being challenged by new centres of power and new sets of issues.

Challenges to the international order abound: the re-emergence of nationalism, the undermining of democratic institutions, unprecedented migration, cyber attacks, terrorism, climate change, trade disputes and the growing risk of military confrontation.

The "rules-based international system proved successful beyond even the expectations of its architects. Over the past seven decades, the world has become much more peaceful, prosperous, and democratic than at any time in history," the Atlantic Council's Ash Jain and Matthew Kroenig wrote in a recent essay presented on the World Economic Forum's Geostrategy platform .

But they added: "The global distribution of power is shifting. Revisionist, autocratic states seek to disrupt or displace the existing system. Authoritarian state capitalism is challenging the Western model of free markets and politics as the best way to order society."

Despite the geopolitical upheaval, there is still an opportunity for actors to forge a more collaborative world order.

“As the world becomes even more interconnected in terms of flows of information, capital and people, states will be more reliant on one another to realize positive outcomes for themselves and the global community," World Economic Forum President Børge Brende writes in the opening of the Forum's upcoming geopolitical report: Shaping a Multiconceptual World.

He argues that "at a time when power dynamics are in flux, there is an opportunity for stakeholders to make the decision to shape geopolitics in a co-operative, rather than competitive, manner.”

At the Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos from 21-24 January, stakeholders will explore the current geopolitical environment, identifying opportunities for coordination and partnership.

Here are three key sessions to look out for:

• Geopolitical Outlook: The Middle East and North Africa , Wednesday 22 January 09:00 - 09:45
• The Future of American Foreign Policy , Wednesday 22 January 16:30 - 17:15
• Special Address by Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany , Thursday 23 January 13:15 - 14:00

And here are some of the key participants for our geopolitics agenda at Davos:

• Donald Trump, President, United States
• Angela Merkel, Chancellor, Germany
• Imran Khan, Prime Minister, Pakistan
• Ursula von der Leyen, President, European Commission
• Jane Harman, Director, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• Robin Niblett, Director, Chatham House
• Gideon Rose, Editor, Foreign Affairs

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• Geopolitics of International Relations
• Geopolitics as Political Ecology
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Another Geopolitics? International Relations and the Boundaries of World Order

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Regan Burles, Another Geopolitics? International Relations and the Boundaries of World Order, International Studies Review , Volume 23, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 2108–2123, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viab038

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Geopolitics has become a key site for articulating the limits of existing theories of international relations and exploring possibilities for alternative political formations that respond to the challenges posed by massive ecological change and global patterns of violence and inequality. This essay addresses three recent books on geopolitics in the age of the Anthropocene: Simon Dalby's Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability (2020), Jairus Victor Grove's Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World (2019), and Bruno Latour's Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climactic Regime (2018). The review outlines and compares how these authors pose contemporary geopolitics as a problem and offer political ecology as the ground for an alternative geopolitics. The essay considers these books in the context of critiques of world politics in international relations to shed light on both the contributions and the limits of political ecological theories of global politics. I argue that the books under review encounter problems and solutions posed in Kant's critical and political writings in relation to the concepts of epigenesis and teleology. These provoke questions about the ontological conceptions of order that enable claims to world political authority in the form of a global international system coextensive with the earth's surface.

La geopolítica se ha convertido en un lugar clave para expresar los límites de las teorías existentes de relaciones internacionales y analizar las posibilidades de formaciones políticas alternativas que respondan a los desafíos que plantean los cambios ecológicos masivos y los patrones globales de violencia y desigualdad. Este ensayo aborda tres nuevos libros sobre la geopolítica en la época del Antropoceno: La geopolítica del Antropoceno: globalización, seguridad y sostenibilidad [Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability] (2020), de Simon Dalby; Ecología salvaje: la guerra y la geopolítica en el fin del mundo [Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World] (2019), de Jairus Victor Grove; y Con los pies sobre la tierra: la política en el nuevo régimen climático [Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime] (2018), de Bruno Latour. El análisis resume y compara de qué manera estos autores plantean la geopolítica contemporánea como un problema y ofrecen la ecología política como la base de una geopolítica alternativa. El ensayo considera estos libros en el contexto de las críticas de la política mundial en las relaciones internacionales con el fin de aclarar tanto las contribuciones como los límites de las teorías político-ecológicas sobre la política global. Sostengo que los libros analizados descubren problemas y soluciones planteados en los escritos críticos y políticos de Kant en relación con los conceptos de la epigénesis y la teleología. Estos provocan preguntas sobre las concepciones ontológicas del orden que posibilitan los reclamos a la autoridad política mundial en forma de un sistema internacional global coextensivo con la superficie de la Tierra.

La géopolitique est devenue un domaine clé d'articulation des limites des théories existantes des relations internationales et d'exploration des possibilités de formations politiques alternatives répondant aux défis présentés par le changement écologique massif et les schémas mondiaux de violence et d'inégalité. Cet essai aborde trois livres récents sur la géopolitique à l’ère de l'antrhopocène : Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability de Simon Dalby (2020), Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World de Jairus Victor Grove (2019), et Où atterrir? : comment s'orienter en politique de Bruno Latour (2018). Cette analyse explique et compare la manière dont ces auteurs présentent la géopolitique contemporaine comme un problème et proposent l’écologie politique comme base pour une géopolitique alternative. Cet essai examine ces livres dans le contexte des critiques des politiques mondiales en relations internationales pour apporter un éclairage à la fois sur les contributions et les limites des théories écologiques politiques des politiques mondiales. Je soutiens que les livres examinés rencontrent les problèmes et les solutions présentés dans les écrits critiques et politiques de Kant en relation avec les concepts d’épigenèse et de téléologie. Cela suscite des questions sur les conceptions ontologiques de l'ordre qui permettent de revendiquer une autorité politique mondiale sous la forme d'un système international global coextensif à la surface de la terre.

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Rethinking Geopolitics: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft

Jaehan Park PDF Download -->

Geopolitics has become marginalized in modern international relations scholarship despite its foundational role. This essay seeks to bring geopolitics back to the mainstream of international relations through conceptual, historical, and theoretical analyses. I make three arguments. First, definitional confusion about geopolitics comes from an overly broad understanding of geography. Notwithstanding various uses, however, geography itself should be re-centered as the analytical core of geopolitics. Second, classical geopolitics sought to inform grand strategy using geography as an explanatory variable and was thus institutionalized in U.S. strategic education. To wit, geography was used as “an aid to statecraft.” Finally, although largely ignored in mainstream international relations, the basic premise of geopolitics still undergirds much of its research. But the asymmetry, relativity, and comprehensiveness of geography have not been well explored. Drawing from classical geopolitical works, I offer some suggestions for future research on how to use geography in international relations scholarship.

Geopolitics has become an increasingly trendy subject over the past decade. A number of popular books on the subject have been published; 1 savvy investors and businessmen are looking for “geopolitical” consultants; 2 and research centers and programs committed to “geopolitical” analysis are emerging. 3 However, the precise definition of “geopolitics” remains vague. One observer lamented some time ago that geopolitics means “everything from geographic determinism … to merely an analytical way of thinking.” 4 This criticism remains valid today. Academic works embracing the term “geopolitics” offer ingenious, yet somewhat deflective, interpretations, from realism to post-modernism. While this definitional plasticity likely contributed to the widespread use of the term, such a sweeping conceptualization makes productive discussions of the topic difficult. 5

Since the term “geopolitics” is often used almost synonymously with “international affairs,” and given the topic’s recent prominence, one would surmise that international relations scholars are familiar with the subject — especially since the “classical geopolitics” of the late 19th century effectively “inaugurated” modern international relations scholarship, according to one prominent scholar. 6 But this is not the case. As intellectual historian Lucian Ashworth observed, geopolitics is “largely ignored” in the field. 7 The discussion of early geopolitical writing is confined to a small group of defense experts, geographers, and historians. 8 Yet, their fixation with specific concepts, such as the “heartland” and the “rimland,” discouraged engagement with the field. 9 This is unfortunate, because classical geopolitics has much to offer. Understanding classical geopolitics and its relationship with international relations will help scholars to be more conscious of their own disciplinary history, to examine geographical assumptions underlying their scholarship, and ultimately to better incorporate geographic features into their research. This last point is especially important, since policymakers and strategists in Washington are debating where to draw defensive parameters against strategic competitors. Their answers, by and large, will depend on the value they assign to different geographic locations. 10

This essay, therefore, seeks to re-establish the lost connection between geopolitics and international relations. It proceeds in three parts. The first order of business is to clarify the definition of “geopolitics,” given the habitual conceptual over-stretching of the term. After examining various uses of geopolitics in contemporary discourses, the first section will show that commentators generally equate it with international affairs in general or power politics in particular. This is understandable given the fundamentally territorial nature of states and their interactions — especially competition over geographic objects. In contrast, scholars tend to have more focused definitions of the term, but these are no less confusing. This section shows that this definitional confusion in scholarly works comes from different conceptualizations of the term’s analytical core, geography.

Even if we adopt a literal definition of geography, however, a question remains on the relationship between “geo” and “politics.” Thus, the second section briefly examines the history of geopolitics. Since the general story is well told elsewhere, 11 it will focus on two particular aspects of the history of geopolitics. The first is the ideas of three key thinkers in what is often called the Anglo-American “geostrategic” school — Halford Mackinder, Alfred Mahan, and Nicholas Spykman — both their substance and context. 12 This will not only clarify distinctions between geopolitics and political geography, conceptually if not substantively, but also show why classical geopolitics was essentially a precursor to modern international relations. In turn, the second aspect is the historical relationship between the two. While recent scholarship has started re-establishing the connection between geopolitics and international relations, how exactly the former influenced the latter remains somewhat unclear. 13 By tracing the institutionalization of geopolitics in U.S. strategic education, we can gain a better understanding of how it actually contributed to the birth of international relations.

Not only did geopolitics help form the bedrock of modern international relations, but its intellectual premise — that geography affects state behavior — although under-appreciated, still undergirds much of contemporary research. Thus, the third and final section will illustrate this point by surveying geopolitical propositions in international relations scholarship, broadly defined. It will examine how leading works on foreign policy and grand strategy have used geography as a key explanatory variable. The list presented there is by no means exhaustive. Rather, the purpose is to identify the broad tendencies in the field. As will be shown, the use of geography as an explanatory variable in these works falls under one of the three pillars of strategy: the ends, means, and ways. 14 Despite modern scholarship’s contribution, this essay finds that these works have fallen short of capturing the asymmetry, relativity, and comprehensiveness of geography. A more serious engagement with classical geopolitics, especially with how the three founding figures of the field conceptualized geography, would help scholars improve on these points. The paper closes with a brief remark on future research.

Together, these findings form three arguments about the concept, history, and theory of geopolitics. First, the meaning of the term “geography” itself should be reclaimed as the analytical core of geopolitics, as a concept , to avoid definitional confusion and to develop a constructive research program. Second, historically , geopolitics was conceived of as a group of grand strategic theories, akin to contemporary international relations scholarship, with geography serving as a key explanatory variable — in other words, geography was used as “an aid to statecraft.” 15 Finally, international relations scholars can benefit from engaging classical geopolitics, especially its theoretical components, by paying attention to how geography interacts with human factors, such as technology and institutions, to dynamically shape the strategic environment, as opposed to fixating on particular geographies or geopolitical maxims.

The broad scope of this essay by default makes it interpretative and synthesizing in its approach. However, it relies on diverse sources, from published monographs to heretofore neglected unpublished works and recently released documents. It also draws from various disciplines across time, from the writings of classical geopoliticians of the late 19th century to contemporary scholarship in social sciences and intellectual history. Its purpose is less about breaking new theoretical or empirical ground than about bringing together compartmentalized knowledge in a holistic manner, thereby bridging the gap between the disconnected fields of geopolitics and international relations.

Geopolitics as a Concept

The term “geopolitics” has been rather loosely defined and used somewhat haphazardly. Commentators often use “geopolitics” as a substitute for international affairs in general. A corollary is that anything involving political and strategic rationale is deemed “geopolitical.” 16 As Colin Gray argued, “all politics is geopolitics.” 17 Although such an expansive definition of geopolitics omits “geo” altogether, it is not entirely wrong. Because states — the main actors in the international arena — are territorial entities by nature, their political relations are inherently geopolitical. 18 But this excessively broad definition is unhelpful for analytical purposes. If everything is geopolitical, nothing really is. One intuitively knows that it would be absurd to describe a congenial meeting of heads of state discussing mundane issues as “geopolitical,” even though it involves interstate exchanges.

A related, yet more focused, definition of geopolitics is great-power competition. 19 This is arguably the most common use of the term. Its progenitor, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, used “geopolitics” to denote “an approach that pays attention to the requirements of equilibrium,” understood as the balance of power. 20 He popularized this conception during the 1970s, when the term itself had largely been forgotten in the United States. 21 There is some truth to this way of conceptualizing geopolitics because great-power competition is often a competition over territory, resources, or other geographic objects. Kissinger himself is generally attentive to the importance of location throughout his works. 22 Still, Kissinger as a theorist, much like his contemporary Hans Morgenthau, was an ontological “idealist” concerned with moral — not material — forces, and his equation of geopolitics with high politics led later generations of commentators to omit “geo” from their analyses. 23

Conceptually, however, realism and geopolitics are different: The former is defined as a philosophical position that assumes the primacy of power and security in the struggle among self-interested political groups, whereas the latter does not necessarily have to make these assumptions and focuses instead on spatial dimensions.

If pundits have neglected the prefix, academics have either creatively overstretched the definition of “geopolitics” or reversed the order of “geo” and “politics.” Broadly speaking, in academia “geopolitics” means either “politics of geography” or “geography of politics.” 24 The former is used in the “critical geopolitics” literature where assumptions underlying cartographic concepts and discourses are examined. 25 While offering fresh perspectives, critical geopolitics has effectively gotten rid of the “geo” part — i.e., physical geography — and thus is more appropriately called the etymology or sociology of cartography. 26

The latter approach, “geography of politics,” is more common. It is uncontroversial to state that geography constitutes the basic context, or milieu, of politics. But even those who take the “geo” component more seriously conceptualize geography differently. To Robert Kaplan, for instance, geography is synonymous with the realities of international politics, and geopolitics with political realism. As Kaplan wrote, “realism is about the recognition of the most blunt, uncomfortable, and deterministic truths: those of geography.” 27 In fact, classical geopolitical thinkers, such as Mahan, Mackinder, and Spykman, regarded international conflicts largely as a reality to reckon with, and earlier realists did take geography seriously. 28 One could also blame Mackinder for Kaplan’s conceptual overstretch, because he essentially contrasted geographic reality with democratic ideals . 29

Conceptually, however, realism and geopolitics are different: The former is defined as a philosophical position that assumes the primacy of power and security in the struggle among self-interested political groups, 30 whereas the latter does not necessarily have to make these assumptions and focuses instead on spatial dimensions. Moreover, both realism and geopolitics have different analytical focal points: power and space, respectively. This point is best illustrated in their different conceptions of the balance of power. As Jeremy Black wrote, “For realism, the relative physical strengths … are measured in terms of physical-balance relationships. In contrast, for geopolitics, balance-of-power relationships come, in part, in terms of spatial positions or patterns.” 31 More intuitively, as Or Rosenboim analogized, if realism weighs the balance on a mental “scale,” geopolitics expresses it spatially on a map. 32 In short, realism and geopolitics are two different schools of thought, albeit with some areas of overlap.

Another related conceptual cousin is historical materialism. Daniel Deudney defined “geopolitics” as a “historical security materialist theory,” equating geography with the material environment. Specifically, he argued that geopolitics explains the creation of the world order in terms of “violence interdependence,” which is determined by geography and technology. 33 Geography does constitute the basic feature of the material world. At one level, geopolitics and materialism seem similar. Not surprisingly, E. H. Carr mentioned Geopolitik , albeit in passing, alongside other prominent historical materialists such as Georg Hegel and Karl Marx. 34 In fact, communists were some of its earliest critics, because, according to them, the German “portmanteau science” essentially “stole” Marx’s materialism. As one scholar wrote, “For the economic materialism … the Geopolitikers had merely substituted the geographic materialism … . What the class struggle is to the Marxist the struggle for space is to the Geopolitiker.” 35

On a closer examination, however, their difference is stark. While historical materialism, as manifested in classical Marxism, generally takes the “inside-out” approach, privileging domestic factors, 36 geopolitics focuses primarily on international issues. Relatedly, Marxism presupposes the primacy of economics, or the “mode of production,” as opposed to geopolitics which does not make this assumption. Also, Deudney’s specific claim that geopolitics is a form of historical security materialism should be qualified. Classical geopoliticians did not periodize history according to the development of destructive capabilities. Mackinder’s “Columbian Epoch” and Mahan’s periodization had little, if anything, to do with weapons technology. 37 Finally, geopoliticians do not share historical materialists’ determinism. They treat geography as a condition, albeit a major one, under which states operate. A wise statesperson can exploit geography to his or her advantage. 38 Thus, geopolitics and historical materialism are profoundly different, despite some similarities. 39

In short, geography itself, not its abstractions, should be returned as the conceptual core of geopolitics. This leads us back to a more traditional definition. Geographer Saul Cohen defined geopolitics as “the relation of international political power to the geographical setting.” 40 While a useful definition, a question remains. How is geopolitics different from political geography? Is the distinction, as Franklin Roosevelt’s geographer Isaiah Bowman argued, one of purpose, where geopolitics is a pseudo-science that advances a particular agenda and political geography is a legitimate science that advances human knowledge? 41 In contrast, political scientist Harold Sprout considered political geography as a subset of geopolitics, containing the latter’s best insights. 42 Still others believed that the difference is one of methodology and ontology. 43 Although unclear at the outset, they have different intellectual points of focus. Urban planning, for instance, is considered in political geography, but not necessarily in geopolitical analysis. To illustrate this point, some intellectual archaeology is in order.

The Rise and Fall of Geopolitics: A Short History

Background of Geopolitics

Historians and philosophers sought to explain human affairs with geographic referents long before the terms “political geography” and “geopolitics” entered the lexicon. Thucydides’ history, for instance, begins with “political archaeology,” describing how geography affected the domestic structure of Athens. 44 Similarly, Montesquieu argued that the physical environment of the land affected not only its inhabitants’ physiology but also their political system. 45 These early “physio-politicians,” who examined the interaction between humans and nature, were generally more interested in how the natural environment affected political organizations. 46 During the Age of Discovery, geography served raison d’état by providing knowledge that was necessary to explore and, as new places and things were discovered, begat scientific disciplines. 47

With the industrial revolution, the focus of physio-politicians shifted from domestic to international politics, influenced by technological developments that were shrinking the globe. Meanwhile, geography became an established discipline. 48 This gave birth to political geography and geopolitics, both the terms and the substance of each. In the mid-18th century, French philosopher Anne Robert Jacques Turgot used “political geography” to refer to “the relationship between the facts of geography … and the organization of politics.” 49 About a century and a half later in 1899, Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellen coined the term Geopolitik , which denotes “the harnessing of geographical knowledge to further the aims of specific nation states.” 50 Kjellen, who had been influenced by German geographer Friedrich Ratzel, saw the state as a living organism. This line of thinking, often called the “organic state theory,” would in turn become prominent in Germany after World War I. 51

Founding Figures: Mahan, Mackinder, and Spykman

Unlike in continental Europe, geopoliticians in the Anglophone world had a different set of concerns and analytical points of focus. 52 Three key theorists in the “geostrategic” school are Mahan, Mackinder, and Spykman. In The Influence of Sea Power Upon History , Mahan argued that sea powers, 53 defined as those that exert control over key waterways, played a decisive role in the military history of Europe, which he saw as marked by clashes of interests among nations. Because waterborne shipping is cheaper and easier than overland transportation, maritime powers have an advantage over land powers in trade and commerce. In addition, the strength of continental states is sapped by the requirements of territorial defense. Thus, sea powers have had an overbearing influence on strategic questions throughout history. This “essential” principle of statecraft was still applicable at the strategic level, Mahan argued, regardless of technological changes that might affect tactics. 54

According to Mahan, sea power has three components: commerce, shipping, and colonies. While maritime trade is dependent on commercial shipping, the wealth generated should be protected by a capable navy. Also, the government should secure overseas stations and markets — what Mahan referred to as “colonies” — to fuel and maintain commercial and naval vessels, and to sell industrial products. Mahan argued that whether a country could become a sea power depended on six elements: “geographical position” (insular vs. continental), “physical conformation” (access to the sea and harbors), “extent of territory” (populated coastlines), “number of population” (seaworthy population), “national character” (commercial aptitude), and “character of the government” (regime type and policy). The first three are “natural conditions,” whereas the latter three pertain to human conditions. Their successful combination is subject to human agency, as illustrated in Mahan’s lengthy discussion on how Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s naval policy affected French sea power. 55

Writing at a time when the U.S. Navy was smaller than that of most European great powers, Mahan’s initial concern was with the near seas, especially the Caribbean. 56 However, he certainly believed that the Pacific Ocean would become a strategic focus in the future. For instance, Mahan noted that the Pacific frontier is the weakest, although at the time it was “far removed from the most dangerous possible enemies.” 57 Having in mind the likely construction of an isthmian canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Mahan wrote: “The military needs of the Pacific States, as well as their supreme importance to the whole country, are … so near that provision should immediately begin.” 58 After the annexation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War, Mahan thought that the most pressing problem was the fate of the Chinese empire, which was increasingly threatened by the land power of Russia. To protect America’s interests there, Mahan recommended the construction of a powerful navy and an isthmus canal in either Nicaragua or Panama, a quasi-alliance with other maritime powers that shared common interests — Britain, Germany, and Japan — and, finally, retrenchment from the area south of the Amazon valley to focus on the Caribbean and the “problem of Asia.” 59

The most fundamental geographic fact of Europe, Mackinder argued, lay in the divide between Western and Eastern Europe with Germany positioned at the center.

If Mahan believed that America’s future lay in the world’s oceans, Mackinder thought that the era of Europe’s maritime dominance — the “Columbian Epoch” — might be over due to technological changes and geographic discovery. 60 In his lecture delivered at the Royal Geographical Society in 1904, Mackinder observed that the wealth and power of nations historically depended as much on natural resources and mobility, which were in turn determined primarily by topography, terrain, and animal power, as it did on national characteristics, such as socio-economic organizations. For Mackinder, that there was no more new territory to occupy meant the “closure” of the international political system, which would intensify competition among states. With the development of transportation and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Mackinder speculated that the “pivot” state, Russia, would now pose a threat to Britain that was analogous to the Mongol threat to Europe several centuries prior. Because Russia’s large swath of land is inaccessible from the sea, it could tap continental resources with which to build an unmatchable navy. The post-Columbian period, therefore, would see a return to the status quo ante with the “pivot” of Eurasia once again overshadowing world affairs. 61

While he did not make any specific recommendations then, Mackinder developed his geopolitical outlook further for a post-World War I world in Democratic Ideals and Reality . The most fundamental geographic fact of Europe, Mackinder argued, lay in the divide between Western and Eastern Europe with Germany positioned at the center. Eastern Europe could be used as a springboard for the “Heartland,” a wider region outside Europe extending from Siberia to Persia. While a maritime power’s fleet could not penetrate into the “Heartland,” a continental power could launch a navy from it, thereby potentially dominating the entire “World Island,” a joint continent of Europe, Africa, and Asia. 62 In his view, World War I was essentially an attempt by Germany, organized by the “Going Concern” — the statist political-economic organizations — to subdue the Slavic people who would “grow food for her and … buy her wares” for “the occupation of the Heartland.” 63 In a Thucydidean sense, Mackinder argued that great-power war was caused fundamentally by the “unequal growth” of nations, which resulted largely from different resource endowments and strategic opportunities. 64 To construct a durable peace, the fundamental reality of political and economic geography should be factored in. A zone of viable buffer states, Mackinder advised, should be established in Eastern Europe to separate Germany from Russia. 65

Mackinder’s outlook was not static, however. He was agnostic about which nation would occupy the “pivot” or the “heartland,” thereby commanding Eurasia. Mackinder’s nightmare as described in his “pivot” lecture was a Russo-German alliance. That talk closed with an interesting speculation about the possibility of Chinese domination of Russia under Japan’s tutelage, which would be equally menacing. 66 Likewise, Mackinder distinguished the purely geographic from the strategic heartland. Because land powers could close the Black Sea and the Baltic with the development of transportation and weapons, the strategic heartland should include their basins. 67 His last work, published in Foreign Affairs in 1943, equated the heartland with the area occupied by Moscow excluding “Lenaland,” the surrounding area of “the transcontinental railroad from Irkutsk to Vladivostok.” 68 Therefore, his infamous aphorism evoking the Elizabethan statesman Walter Raleigh —“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island: Who rules the World-Island commands the World.” — should be seen as a rhetorical devise, not a deterministic vision. 69

Eschewing grand theorizing about the fate of nations, Spykman focused his attention more narrowly on strategic problems at a time when international relations in the United States was predominantly idealistic. Spykman laid out his geopolitical outlook in a series of articles written in the interwar years and in his magnum opus, America’s Strategy in World Politics . Presaging modern structural realists, Spykman argued that the absence of “governmental organization … preserving order and enforcing law” necessitates the formulation of geographically informed foreign policy. This was because “[g]eography is the most fundamental factor … it is the most permanent. Ministers come and ministers go, even dictators die, but mountain ranges stand unperturbed.” 70 A nation’s size and location are two of the most important factors informing its foreign policy. The former approximates “potential strength” — a large territory gives a country advantages in defense and national power only if it is well endowed and effectively controlled by a centralized government. The latter is again divided into its location in the world, in relation to “the land masses and oceans of the world,” and its regional location, in relation to other regional competitors. The location itself does not change, but its significance — or relative value — does: with changes in the center of world power, routes of communication, and military and transportation technologies. 71

Spykman outlined what is perhaps his most well-known contribution, the “rimland” theory, in his posthumously published work, The Geography of the Peace . It is essentially an extension of America’s Strategy , in which he argued that the security of the United States depends neither on insularity nor on a “world federation,” but on the country’s active participation in Eurasian power politics. The “rimland” is the intermediate region along the littorals of Mackinder’s Heartland, which serves as “a vast buffer … between [sea power] and land power.” 72 Should this area be occupied by the Axis powers, the western hemisphere would effectively be encircled. This may not be an immediate and insurmountable military problem, given logistical difficulties. But further developments of airpower might change the situation. Moreover, the Old World’s combined resources would overwhelm the New World’s: The United States could face a significant challenge supplying essential raw materials from outside the western hemisphere. To forestall such a possibility, Spykman argued that America should maintain the balance of power in the rimland. Seen in this light, World War II was fought over “the rimland littoral of Europe and Asia.” Looking ahead, Spykman argued that who controls the rimlands would continue to be America’s most important strategic question. 73

Although misunderstood at times, Spykman was not a determinist. He knew well the changing value of geography depending on such factors as technology, demography, and the distribution of power. Spykman argued that “special ‘geopolitical’ regions are not geographic regions defined by a fixed and permanent topography but areas determined … by geography and … dynamic shifts in the centers of power.” 74 Moreover, Spykman explicitly distinguished his geopolitics from the “organic state” theory, which rejects individual freedom. 75

This brief examination of classical geopolitics reveals distinctive characteristics of geopolitics in three interrelated areas: the subject of analysis, its causal mechanism, and its ontology. First, these theorists were concerned, above all, with the most pressing politico-strategic question of their time, namely, how to safeguard their nations’ security in the face of international conflict. Specifically, they tried to identify where to direct foreign policy: for Mahan it was the Caribbean and later Asia, for Mackinder the heartland, and for Spykman the rimland. In other words, the three geopoliticians were essentially developing theories of foreign policy with a particular focus on the spatial dimension. This makes them “grand strategists” in modern parlance. Seen as such, classical geopolitics in its original form, whose interest lay with politics, was certainly different from political geography, which concerns itself primarily with geography.

Relatedly, classical geopolitical theories contained unique causal mechanisms. Mahan, Mackinder, and Spykman argued that their respective nations should focus on particular areas as “natural seats of power,” 76 due to natural resources, terrain, population, and the like — that is, geography. To wit, geopolitics posits geography, especially physical geography, as an independent variable in order to understand the strategic environment. This distinguishes geopolitics from not only political geography, where geography is the dependent variable, but also those theories often described as “geopolitical.” For instance, Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis is only half- geo political, because “civilizations” predict the locus of international conflict. 77 In contrast, Immanuel Wallerstein’s “World-System” theory is perhaps more geopolitical, given that the international division of labor between the “core” and the “periphery” is at least partially explained in spatial terms. 78

However, classical geopoliticians were not geographic determinists whose focus was only on physical features of the earth. As illustrated above, geographic features were always combined with other variables, including technology, political structure, and the distribution of power. The same geographic features, combined with human factors, are manifested differently across time: Large territories, long coastlines and inland waterways, and a central location can be good or bad, depending on the historical circumstances. In other words, Mahan, Mackinder, and Spykman considered human factors to account for how the meaning of the Earth’s physical features changed over the long term.

These three characteristics — the subject of analysis, the causal mechanism, and the ontology — flow from the fact that the classical geopoliticians used geography as “an aid to statecraft.”

This emphasis on the material environment constitutes the final characteristic of geopolitical theory: a structural-materialist ontology. It has already been suggested that geography, an ontologically material factor, is the independent variable from which to deduce foreign policy. Geography is structural, that is, it exists independently from, and at times shapes, the agents — in this case, states. All three thinkers acknowledged the possibility of the agent altering the environment, most significantly with the aid of technology. But there is more to it. They all attributed the cause of conflict, for which nations need foreign policy, to structural factors: Mahan to the clash of commercial interests, Mackinder to the “unequal growth” of nations, and Spykman to “anarchy.” From the theoretical standpoint, classical geopolitics was a structural-materialist approach that derived the explanation for foreign policy from the geographic structure of the world. These three men eschewed, by and large, analysis of individual statesmen and their psyches. For this reason, as some scholars have pointed out, geopolitics represented the first attempt to move away from the agent to the structure. 79

In sum, classical geopolitics, as conceived by Mackinder, Mahan, and Spykman, was essentially a group of theories on the geographic/spatial orientation of foreign policy. To locate their strategic points of focus, these geopoliticians used geography as a key explanatory variable. But since the value of geographic features depended on context, they examined human factors together with physical geography. Their emphasis on geographic factors as given makes geopolitics ontologically structural-materialist. These three characteristics — the subject of analysis, the causal mechanism, and the ontology — flow from the fact that the classical geopoliticians used geography as “an aid to statecraft.” Also, they make geopolitics a sort of applied social science compatible with modern international relations. Not surprisingly, geopolitics quickly became institutionalized in U.S. strategic education, especially during and after World War II.

Institutionalization of Geopolitics

The second half of the 20th century is often described as a period in which geopolitics declined. To be sure, the use of the term “geopolitics” went down significantly in public discourse after World War II. 80 Scholars have identified various personal, domestic, and international causes for this decline, from Spykman’s early death and the closure of geography departments to the development of strategic nuclear weapons systems and superpower bipolarity during the Cold War, which seemingly diminished the importance of geographic knowledge. 81 Above all, German Geopolitik ’s somewhat unfair guilt-by-association with the Nazis is often credited as the major contributing factor. 82 Edward Mead Earle, one of the major proponents of the geopolitical approach in the 1940s, cautioned U.S. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal to “stay away from any word like geopolitics.” 83 Although the term disappeared from public discourse, geopolitical analysis, informing national strategy with reference to geographic features, was still relevant and therefore on the minds of American strategists and educators for some time after World War II. Several elite institutions — in particular, Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies, and Yale’s Institute of International Studies — made geopolitics the foundation of their approaches to international affairs. In the late 1930s, for instance, Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service started offering two courses on geopolitics at the behest of the school’s founder, Reverend Edmund Walsh. Walsh himself was a geopolitician in his own right. His book Total Power was based on his interviews with Karl Haushofer. After returning from Nuremberg, Walsh hired experts on geopolitics at Georgetown. In fact, his vision for the school was to be like Haushofer’s geopolitical institute, producing geographically informed assessments of world politics. Seminars on geopolitics lasted at Georgetown until the 1950s. 84

At Princeton, several individuals advocated geopolitical analysis. Earle was one of them. According to one historian, he “whipped [eclectic ingredients] to create … security studies,” a subset of the broader field of international relations. 85 For our purposes, he incorporated the geopolitical approach into the study of strategy. Notwithstanding his reluctance to use the term “geopolitics,” Earle occasionally invited geographers such as Derwent Whittlesey to his seminar on military strategy. He also suggested to Henry Holt & Company that the publisher reprint Mackinder’s Democratic Ideals , for which he wrote the introduction. 86 Moreover, the first edition of Makers of Modern Strategy was based upon Earle’s seminar and included chapters on Haushofer and Mahan. 87

Generally considered pioneers of foreign policy analysis, Harold and Margaret Sprout also showed keen interest in geopolitical analysis throughout their long careers. 88 The Sprouts had already written an important book in the 1930s on the U.S. Navy that displayed Mahan’s influence. 89 Their lectures for the Navy’s V-12 program resulted in the publication of Foundations of National Power , a textbook on international politics that included excerpts from geopolitical writings. 90 After World War II, the Sprouts, both together and individually, kept publishing on the influence of geography on international politics. 91 Margaret wrote the Mahan chapter in Earle’s edited volume. 92 Harold, who had taught political geography at Stanford, ended up managing the relocation of the Institute of International Studies, arguably the most important institute for geopolitical studies in America, from Yale to Princeton in 1951. 93

Created in 1935 under Spykman’s leadership, the Institute of International Studies promoted policy-relevant and interdisciplinary research, advocating for an interventionist approach based on power-political analysis. This went against the idealistic and isolationist intellectual currents in U.S. universities, which relied on international law and America’s insular position to safeguard national security. The Institute of International Studies brought together an impressive group of scholars — in George Kennan’s view, “the best and soundest” in the field. 94 Since geography affected national power, geopolitics naturally became a major research theme at the institute. 95 In addition to Spykman’s work, Brooks Emeny wrote The Strategy of Raw Materials , which caught the War Department’s attention. 96 Arnold Wolfers emphasized the importance of geography as it relates to national power. His co-edited volume on Anglo-American foreign policy tradition is essentially predicated upon the dichotomous nature of land and sea powers, a classic theme in geopolitics. 97

Later, Institute of International Studies members went on to lead similar power-focused and policy-oriented research initiatives across the nation, essentially laying the foundation for modern international relations. Wolfers was recruited by the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies to run the Foreign Policy Institute in a similar manner to the Institute of International Studies. William T. R. Fox, who had brought in University of Chicago scholars such as Gabriel Almond and Bernard Brodie, moved to Columbia University, where he founded the Institute of War and Peace Studies. This institute would later feature many prominent international relations scholars, including Huntington, Robert Jervis, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard is considered a modern classic of geopolitics and American foreign policy. 98 Brodie, one of the most influential nuclear theorists of the 20th century, went to RAND, only to be joined by other Institute of International Studies alumni such as William Kaufmann. At Princeton, the Institute of International Studies became the Center for International Studies and continuously hosted the who’s who of the field: Gordon Craig, Peter Paret, and George Modelski, among others. 99 In short, it served as an academy of American international relations during the early Cold War years.

The marginalization of geopolitical analysis in mainstream international relations scholarship is not surprising given their important differences.

An equally important development was the inclusion of geopolitics in professional military education, which indirectly affected strategic planning. U.S. military organizations had already been collecting geographic data to inform military strategy and foreign policy since the end of the 19th century, beginning with the creation of the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1882 and the Military Information Division in 1885. 100 During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson created “The Inquiry,” headquartered at the American Geographical Society, to collect geographical data and prepare maps for peace negotiations. Wilson’s brain trust took part in the preparation for “The Fourteen Points” speech. Later, many of its members, including Bowman, joined forces with Elihu Root’s dinner club to form the Council on Foreign Relations. Bowman would later ask Mackinder to write a reflection on his “Heartland theory” in its publication, Foreign Affairs . 101

But it was geopolitical theories that connected geographic data with national policy. 102 During and after World War II, therefore, Walsh, Earle, the Sprouts, Spykman, and Wolfers, as well as Robert Strausz-Hupé, another prominent scholar of geopolitics, either served in military organizations, such as the Office of Strategic Services, or lectured at various professional education institutions. 103 At West Point, Col. Herman Beukema, who led the Department of Economics, Government, and History from 1930 to 1947, promoted what can be essentially described as geopolitical analysis. Civilian scholars started developing a program on international affairs for naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps students, resulting in Harold Sprout’s course at Princeton in March 1944, which began with a quote from Mackinder’s “Pivot” article. By the mid-1950s, U.S. military schools had essentially “institutionalized geopolitics.” 104

Paradoxically, the rise of Morgenthau’s classical realism, made possible partially by the institutionalization of geopolitics, resulted in the decline of geopolitics in U.S. academia. By the mid-1950s, the discipline of international relations was going through an identity crisis. At issue was how the field could distinguish itself from more established, traditional disciplines, such as diplomatic history and international law. To many, the answer was grounding the field on a firmer theoretical footing. 105 As late as 1954, geopolitics was still a venerable tradition in academia, as witnessed by a Council of Foreign Relations meeting where Spykman’s geopolitics was considered as a major theoretical approach to the study of international relations. 106 By then, however, no scholar had come after Spykman to produce another major theoretical work on geopolitics. 107 In this context, the Rockefeller Foundation’s “gambit” to promote Morgenthau’s realism marginalized other approaches, including geopolitics. 108

The marginalization of geopolitical analysis in mainstream international relations scholarship is not surprising given their important differences. First, classical realism and geopolitics had fundamentally different ontological focal points. For Morgenthau, key variables were ideational, as exemplified by his emphasis on the timeless concepts of “interest” and “power.” 109 Later, academic realism became even more abstract when it took a systematic turn, further neglecting geography and geopolitics. 110 Kenneth Waltz’s structural realism privileges the distribution of material capabilities, but reduces the complex strategic environment under which states operate into a simple diagram. Thus, what becomes important is “polarity,” or the sheer number of great powers, in an imaginary and aspatial “international system.” 111 In contrast, geopolitical analysis differentiates strategic spaces depending on their geographic features. 112

Geography in International Relations

Geopolitical Hypotheses

If geopolitics as an intellectual paradigm has declined, its basic premise still undergirds much of international relations scholarship. At the deepest level, the fact remains that states, arguably still the most important units in international politics, are fundamentally territorial entities and that their most important activities — maintaining internal security and order, defending borders and territories, and protecting citizens abroad — take place on land and at sea. The key components of their power — military hardware, economic resources, and population — are distributed unevenly and transported across various geographies. As the geographer Jean Gottmann observed long ago, “The political divisions are the raison d’etre of international relations.” 113 Technological developments have not changed this fundamental reality. Not surprisingly, geography, the core of geopolitics, still occupies an important, if unsatisfactory, position in the study of international relations.

Accordingly, it is worth examining the ways in which international relations scholars have used geography to explain foreign policy and grand strategy. Below, I identify the concepts or theories in international relations scholarship that imply some causal mechanism involving geographic features. Broadly speaking, there are three lines of inquiry. Geography is understood in international relations as an independent variable that conditions a state’s objectives, capabilities, or strategic orientation. To wit, these three elements can be conceptualized, respectively, as the ends, means, and ways of statecraft (Table 1).

Table 1. Geography in International Relations

First, if a state’s ultimate goals ( ends ) are security and power, 114 they are manifested in the real world more concretely as “buffers” and “resources,” respectively. 115 Perhaps this line of scholarship constitutes the most well-developed body of literature making use of geography as an explanatory variable. 116 The strategic value of a place may primarily lie in its ability to deny an opponent access to major lines of communication, territory, and resources. Historically, Britain sought to preserve the independence of the Low Countries so that they could act as buffers against territorial threats from continental powers of Europe. 117 In addition, as Morgenthau notes, the sheer size of its territory allows a state to absorb damage from strategic bombing in wartime. 118 Alternatively, occupying a piece of fertile or resource-rich land can add material power to the state controlling it. Throughout much of human history, the possession of, or easy access to, forests — which supplied timber with which to build weapons and buildings — was a major factor that determined the fates of empires. 119 In the early 20th century, the transition from coal to oil, ushered in by the development of the internal combustion engine, fundamentally altered resource requirements for the British Royal Navy, thereby increasing the importance of Persia. 120 Other resources, such as food and water, are also crucial for national survival. 121

In addition to affecting national power, geography also shapes the strategic domains in which states operate, conditioning their overall capabilities ( means ). Political scientists have been keen to use distance as an explanatory variable for force projection. As Kenneth Boulding wrote, a state’s “military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its home base.” 122 During the Russo-Japanese War, for instance, Russia’s massive manpower and fleets could not reach the distant theater in the Far East on time, thereby contributing to its eventual defeat. 123 Another geographic factor that explains the power-projection capabilities of states is terrain. Geographic factors can even modify the effects of distance at times. China and India, although close to one another, did not have much interaction until relatively recently due to the mountain ranges that separate the two. 124 Similarly, John Mearsheimer argues that oceans hinder the movement and power-projection of armed forces — hence the “stopping power of water.” According to Mearsheimer, the late 19th-century power transition between Britain and the United States did not lead to conflict due to the buffering effects of the sea. 125

Lastly, international relations scholars have not completely forgotten the contrast between sea and land powers, a major theme in classical geopolitics.

Some recent works have combined both physical geography with human factors to assess power-projection capabilities. Patrick Porter has developed a more sophisticated concept — “strategic distance” — which contrasts with physical distance. Combining geography with technology, Porter demonstrates how strategic distance, a state’s ability to project power affordably , still constrains the “Global Village” theory that the United States can project power and fix problems anywhere on earth. In addition to the logistical limits posed by geography, Porter considered two factors: technology and human agency. The development of defensive technology partially cancels an opponent’s offensive capabilities. Meanwhile, states resist outside intervention to maintain their sovereignty, thus limiting the power of weapons technology. Porter thus concludes that “the offensive shrinking power of technology-driven globalization is grossly overstated.” 126 Similarly, Øystein Tunsjø has built on the “stopping power of water” to account for the interplay between geography and the distribution of power. In brief, he posits that Asia’s maritime geography would make an emerging bipolarity between the United States and China different from the U.S.-Soviet competition during the Cold War which took place primarily in continental Europe. Specifically, Tunsjø predicts that the “stopping power” would delay the balancing behavior of China’s neighbors, increase the likelihood of a limited conflict between the United States and China, and stabilize peripheral areas. 127

Finally, geography, especially the location and the lay of the land, affects a state’s overall strategic orientation, or its preferred ways to achieve ends with available means. 128 A large body of work on the “offense-defense” balance, pioneered by Jervis, takes into account geography and technology in determining a state’s overall military posture, or the “relative ease of attack and defense.” 129 While some analysts have argued for its exclusion, geography still looms large in the “offense-defense” literature. 130 But there is a flip side to this equation: Ease of attack for one state translates to an opponent’s vulnerability. Building on this insight, Stephen Walt argues that proximity, along with other variables (aggregate power, offensive capabilities, and intent), shapes a state’s threat perception and therefore affects its strategic behavior, e.g., balancing or bandwagoning. 131 Barry Posen found that geographically encircled countries may develop offensive military doctrines, but ultimately he argued that geography’s overall influence is not as pronounced as that of the balance of power. 132 Lastly, international relations scholars have not completely forgotten the contrast between sea and land powers, a major theme in classical geopolitics. This land-sea dichotomy is often used to explain the differential balancing behavior between continental and maritime states. 133 By the same token, the argument for “offshore balancing” is predicated on the fact that Britain and America are both maritime powers insulated from the Eurasian continent. 134

Assessments

These scholars’ collective efforts have contributed to advancing our understanding of international politics in general and the role of geography in it in particular. Still, there are three broad shortcomings. First, scholars often use easily quantifiable or codable variables, such as physical distance or the allocation of resource and personnel. One flaw with this approach is that distance and terrain manifest themselves asymmetrically . Before the age of steam power, a ship bound for South America had to sail from New York all the way to the Azores to catch winds for a westward voyage. 135 Likewise, the English Channel might have prevented the invasion of the British Isles by a continental power, but it did not stop Britain’s expansion throughout the world. 136 After all, the superiority of waterborne transportation was the predicate for Mahan’s argument for sea power. “It is,” Mahan wrote, “facility of transmission, that has made sea power so multifold in manifestation and in efficacy.” 137

A closely related issue is the question of determinism. While geography remains constant, its meaning changes, as classical geopoliticians knew so well. This aspect — the relativity of space — is underexplored in international relations scholarship. 138 Location A may be three kilometers away from location B in absolute terms, but the time, cost, and possibility of traversing this same space varies. For instance, the development of the steam engine reduced the total distance of a voyage by a significant margin. 139 But its effects were not merely one of “time-space compression.” 140 In fact, steam-powered vessels required an extensive network of coaling stations and maintenance facilities, without which their movement would be restricted. 141 Another factor is the socio-political context. During the Spanish-American War, Britain denied fuel to the Spanish fleet at Port Said pursuant to international law, complicating Madrid’s already cumbersome logistics. 142 Similarly, as Strausz-Hupé observed, Asiatic empires were able to maintain a high degree of efficiency in communication even without modern technology, due in part to their organizational finesse. 143 In short, the meaning of geography is relative , depending on various human factors.

Finally, these disparate studies deal with the ends, means, and ways separately. Geography, however, underlies all three elements of statecraft, as long as states remain territorial entities — in other words, geography is comprehensive . For instance, the Habsburg Empire’s rivers, vast territory, and precarious location at the center of eastern Europe circumscribed available resources, security requirements, and, therefore, grand strategy. 144 Likewise, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, complicated by the problem of moving fleets between the two oceans, shaped War Plan Orange, America’s strategy to protect its Pacific holdings from Japan. 145 Spykman explained this best when he wrote,

Security must … be understood in terms of the integrity of control over the land … . [T]he physical characteristics of the territory will influence directly the manner in which that security is maintained because power is determined to a great extent by geography and natural resources … . [T]he nation has to act on the basis of the strength it can mobilize, either within its own territory or through its allies and protectors. 146

Scholars, therefore, should consider geography in a comprehensive manner.

Future Research

Accordingly, future research in international relations should address the comprehensiveness, relativity, and asymmetry of geography to complement the existing research. Here, some suggestions are offered. First, scholars need to pay attention to the broader environment in which states and state systems are embedded. For instance, the offense-defense theory has been mostly applied to land battles. How this dynamic works out at sea merits further exploration. 147 More broadly, the concept of the “international system” in the neorealist tradition is based on continental Europe’s experience. Thus, various theories deriving from this paradigm may not apply to different geographic conditions. 148 William Wohlforth and others found that the balance-of-power theory, a key pillar of realism, has not held in past state systems outside of Europe, especially when these systems stopped expanding their geographic scope. 149 Historian Ludwig Dehio argued that, even in Europe, the balance of power was maintained not within itself, but with the introduction of new powers from the periphery. 150 Looking into the future, geopolitical analysis may provide useful insights into how to think about new frontiers, such as outer space. 151

A second area in which more research needs to be done concerns the relativity of geography. Critics of geopolitics are not entirely wrong: The field does tend to pay too much attention to fixed geographic features, such as distance or terrain, and debate whether specific geopolitical ideas — for instance, the “heartland” theory — still hold today. 152 Yet, how classical geopoliticians thought about geography, especially how its interactions with human factors change the value of a place, is worth considering. One welcome development has been the incorporation of technology into the geopolitical analysis of “means,” as in the case of Porter’s “strategic distance.” While his goal was mostly to deconstruct the “Global Village” myth, the concept of “strategic distance” can be further developed and more fruitfully used to compare the power projection capabilities of different actors in a given theater. As for the “ends” of statecraft, it is becoming increasingly important to identify and manage chokepoints in the supply of foodstuff and high-tech products, such as electric vehicle batteries and semiconductors. 153 These changes will re-order the hierarchy of importance of different regions, thereby having broader strategic implications.

Moving forward, there is much room for scholars to explore the asymmetry, relativity, and comprehensiveness of geography.

There are two other avenues of future research relating to relativity. First is the inclusion of political institutions. While classical geopoliticians’ concern was mostly with how domestic institutions affected national capabilities, international institutions are also an important subject in geopolitical analysis. For instance, Harvey Starr’s observation that alliances enable states to “leapfrog” natural obstacles can be combined with Porter’s strategic distance. 154 A second line of possible research is man-made changes to the environment itself. 155 The melting of Arctic ice due to climate change is a case in point: It means the opening of a new trade route for East Asian countries. For Russia, however, it will create a long and open coastline to defend, spelling an end to its impregnable “heartland” status. 156

Finally, states tend to focus their diplomatic and military activities on specific frontiers due to limited resources. In other words, the spatial distribution of foreign policy is uneven, partly because of the asymmetric nature of geography. However, there are few, if any, analytical frameworks to explain and predict geopolitical orientation, the object of inquiry in classical geopolitical writing. 157 The standard realist literature yields only rudimentary predictions that states will prioritize the home front. Yet, great powers always have complicated interests across multiple frontiers. 158 Not surprisingly, realists’ predictions about the next strategic “hot spots” have not aged well. 159 In our time, arguably one of the most important strategic questions is whether China will become a sea power or remain a land power. 160 Geography alone is insufficient to anticipate the future. 161 The analysis on states’ strategic orientation can be done only when researchers properly consider geographic factors, along with human elements, in the way that Mahan, Mackinder, and Spykman did.

This article sought to bring geopolitics back to the mainstream of international relations scholarship. It did so in three different ways. An examination of various uses of the term “geopolitics” has shown that stretching the concept of geography has resulted in definitional confusion. Therefore, geography itself should be re-centered as the analytical core of geopolitics. Historically, classical geopolitics sought to inform grand strategy using geography as an explanatory variable and was thus institutionalized in U.S. strategic education. That is, geography was used as “an aid to statecraft.” Finally, although largely ignored in mainstream international relations, the basic premise of geopolitics still undergirds much of its concepts and theories. Moving forward, there is much room for scholars to explore the asymmetry, relativity, and comprehensiveness of geography.

As long as human beings reside on earth and states remain territorial entities, their various challenges will have geographic referents, from strategic competition over resources and buffers to climate change and space exploration. As Gottmann observed, “The differentiation arising between compartments of space is the very foundation of any study in international relations.” 162 Wholly “social” intellectual paradigms are ill equipped to deal with such challenges. Classical geopolitics, a long-forgotten yet important tradition in the annals of international relations, dynamically incorporates geographic features into political analysis and thus can provide useful perspectives and insights. Scholars and policymakers, therefore, would do well to dust off old tomes and learn some new ideas from geopoliticians from the past. 163

Jaehan Park is a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct lecturer at the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is completing his book manuscript, The Geographical Pivot of Grand Strategy: Rising Powers in the Far East, 1895-1905 .

Acknowledgments : The author wishes to thank the following individuals for providing helpful feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript: Jeb Benkowski, Hal Brands, Kent Calder, Frank Gavin, Andrew Gibson, John Karaagac, Thomas Mahnken, Sally Paine, John Schuessler, the editors of Texas National Security Review , the two anonymous reviewers, and participants of workshops hosted by the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs in 2018 and the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies in 2022. This article benefited from the generous support from the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy at Texas A&M University and the Smith Richardson Foundation. All shortcomings are the author’s own.

1 Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (New York: Random House, 2012); Peter Zeihan, The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder (New York: Twelve, 2014); and Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World (New York: Scribner, 2021).

2 Miriam Rozen, “Appetite for Geopolitical Risk Management Is Growing,” Financial Times , May 15, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/3989290b-c4d1-48dc-88f1-ca80e61c186f .

3 In recent years, various think tanks (e.g., Stimson’s Geopolitics and Economic Statecraft Project) and universities (Belfer Center’s Geopolitics of Energy Project) in the United States have launched research initiatives with “geopolitics” in their name. Outside the United States, the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies (South Korea), the Council on Geostrategy (United Kingdom), and the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics (Belgium) and the Spykman Center (France) were founded in 2015, 2018, 2021, and 2022, respectively. Also, see various essays featured in the “Mapping China’s Strategic Space” website, launched by the National Bureau of Asian Research, https://strategicspace.nbr.org .

4 Mackubin Thomas Owens, “In Defense of Classical Geopolitics,” Naval War College Review 52, no. 4 (1999): 62, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44643038 .

5 John Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences,” Polity 31, no. 3 (1999): 357–93, https://doi.org/10.2307/3235246 .

6 William R. Thompson, “Dehio, Long Cycles, and the Geohistorical Context of Structural Transition,” World Politics 45, no. 1 (1992): 127 (fn 1), https://doi.org/10.2307/2010521 .

7 Lucian M. Ashworth, “Realism and the Spirit of 1919: Halford Mackinder, Geopolitics, and the Reality of the League of Nations,” European Journal of International Relations 17, no. 2 (2011): 281, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066110363501 . Exceptions are Harvey Starr, On Geopolitics: Space, Place, and International Relations (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2013); Phil Kelly, Classical Geopolitics: A New Analytical Model (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016); and Andrew Rhodes, “Thinking in Space: The Role of Geography in National Security Decision-Making,” Texas National Security Review 2, no. 4 (2019): 90–108, http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/6664 .

8 Klaus Dodds, Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Jeremy Black, Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015); Colin S. Gray, “Nicholas John Spykman, the Balance of Power, and International Order,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 6 (2015): 873–97, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2015.1018412 ; Or Rosenboim, The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); Zhengyu Wu, “Classical Geopolitics, Realism and the Balance of Power Theory,” Journal of Strategic Studies 41, no. 6 (2018): 786–823, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2017.1379398 ; Antero Holmila, “Re-thinking Nicholas J. Spykman: From Historical Sociology to Balance of Power,” International History Review 42, no. 5 (2020): 951–66, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2019.1655469 ; and Kevin D. McCranie, Mahan, Corbett, and the Foundations of Naval Strategic Thought (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2021).

9 For instance, Geoffrey Sloan, “Sir Halford J. Mackinder: The Heartland Theory Then and Now,” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 2–3 (1999): 15–38, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399908437752 .

10 For diverging assessments and prescriptions, see Jakub J. Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell, The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016); Evan R. Sankey, “Reconsidering Spheres of Influence,” Survival 62, no. 2 (2020): 37–47, https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2020.1739947 ; and Elbridge A. Colby, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021).

11 For instance, Ladis K.D. Kristof, “The Origins and Evolution of Geopolitics,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 4, no. 1 (1960): 15–51, https://doi.org/10.1177/002200276000400103 ; Geoffrey Parker, Geopolitics: Past, Present and Future (London: Pinter, 1997); and Klaus Dodds and David Atkinson, eds., Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought (London: Routledge, 2000).

12 Owens, “In Defense of Classical Geopolitics.” It should be noted at the outset that the term “geopolitics” is not synonymous with the German Geopolitik . The latter is one form of the former. Nicholas J. Spykman, “Geography and Foreign Policy, I,” American Political Science Review 32, no. 1 (1938): 30 (fn 3), https://doi.org/10.2307/1949029 .  See also, Owens, “Classical Geopolitics,” 65–66; Herman Van der Wusten and Gertjan Dijkink, “German, British and French Geopolitics: The Enduring Differences,” Geopolitics 7, no. 3 (2002): 19–38, https://doi.org/10.1080/714000970 ; Michael Lind, “A Neglected American Tradition of Geopolitics?” Geopolitics 13, no. 1 (2008): 181–95, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650040701783441 ; and Wu, “Classical Geopolitics.”

13 For instance, David Criekemans describes geopolitics as having gone “underground,” without substantiating his claim. David Criekemans, “Geopolitical Schools of Thought: A Concise Overview from 1890 till 2020, and Beyond,” in Geopolitics and International Relations: Grounding World Politics Anew , ed. David Criekemans (Boston: Brill, 2021), 119–20. See also, Lucian M. Ashworth, “Mapping a New World: Geography and the Interwar Study of International Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2013): 138–49, https://doi.org/10.1111/isqu.12060 ; and Matthew Specter, The Atlantic Realists: Empire and International Political Thought Between Germany and the United States (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022).

14 The “ends, ways, and means” model was first suggested in Arthur F. Lykke, Jr., “Defining Military Strategy,” Military Review 69, no. 5 (1989): 3–8, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/MR-75th-Anniversary/75th-Lykke/ . See also, Colin S. Gray, Theory of Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). For a critique of this model, see Jeffrey W. Meiser, “Ends + Ways + Means = (Bad) Strategy,” Parameters 46, no. 4 (2016): 81–91, https://doi.org/10.55540/0031-1723.3000 .

15 This expression is from Frederick J. Teggart, “Geography as an Aid to Statecraft: An Appreciation of Mackinder’s ‘Democratic Ideals and Reality,’” Geographical Review 8, no. 4/5 (1919): 227–42, https://doi.org/10.2307/207838 .

16 Jacky Wong, “Samsung Orders U.S. Chips, with a Side of Geopolitics,” Wall Street Journal , Nov. 23, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/samsung-orders-u-s-chips-with-a-side-of-geopolitics-11637666262 .

17 Colin S. Gray, “Inescapable Geography,” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 2–3 (1999): 163, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399908437759 .

18 Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power , Volume 2 : The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914 , 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 56.

19 Walter Russell Mead, “The Return of Geopolitics: The Revenge of the Revisionist Powers,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 3 (2014): 69–79, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24483407 .

20 Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 914.

21 Geoffrey Sloan and Colin S. Gray, “Why Geopolitics?” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 2–3 (1999): 1–11, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399908437751 .

22 Kissinger, White House Years , 58; and Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). See also, Leslie W. Hepple, “The Revival of Geopolitics,” Political Geography Quarterly 5, no. 4 (1986): 26, https://doi.org/10.1016/0260-9827(86)90055-8 .

23 Niall Ferguson, Kissinger , vol. 1, 1923–1968: The Idealist (New York: Penguin Press, 2015).

24 Jeremy Black, “Towards a Marxist Geopolitics,” Geopolitics 16, no. 1 (2011): 234–35, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2010.493997 .

25 Gearóid Ó. Tuathail, “Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society,” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 2–3 (1999): 107–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399908437756 .

26 Highly critical assessments are offered in Terrence W. Haverluk, Kevin M. Beauchemin, and Brandon A. Mueller, “The Three Critical Flaws of Critical Geopolitics: Towards a Neo-Classical Geopolitics,” Geopolitics 19, no. 1 (2014): 19–39, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2013.803192 ; and Black, Geopolitics , 229–39. For a more positive assessment, see Phil Kelly, “A Critique of Critical Geopolitics,” Geopolitics 11, no. 1 (2006): 24–53, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650040500524053 .

27 Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography , 27–28. In fairness, Kaplan includes historical geography and geographically conscious historical studies in his analysis.

28 Jakub J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 8–11.

29 Halford J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1919) . Scholarly works treating geopolitics essentially as a variant of realism include: Wu, “Classical Geopolitics”; Van Jackson, “Understanding Spheres of Influence in International Politics,” European Journal of International Security 5, no. 3 (2020): 255–73, https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2019.21 ; and Specter, Atlantic Realists .

30 Robert G. Gilpin, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” International Organization 38, no. 2 (1984): 287–304, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300026710 .

31 Black, Geopolitics , 9; and Kelly, Classical Geopolitics , 2–3, 29–30.

32 Or Rosenboim, “The Value of Space: Geopolitics, Geography and the American Search for International Theory in the 1950s,” International History Review 42, no. 3 (2020): 373, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2019.1596966 .

33 The term is from Daniel H. Deudney, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). On his view on geopolitics in general, see Daniel Deudney, “Geopolitics as Theory: Historical Security Materialism,” European Journal of International Relations 6, no. 1 (2000): 77–107, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066100006001004 .

34 E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations , reprint of 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 66. For distinctions between geopolitics and Geopolitik , see footnote 12.

35 Robert Strausz-Hupé, Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), 137–38.

36 On this assessment, see Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, with a New Prologue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), xix–xxi. The term “inside-out” is from Peter Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics,” International Organization 32, no. 4 (1978): 881–912, https://doi.org/10.1017/S002081830003201X .

37 Mackinder’s was about the geographic scope determined by the dominant mode of transportation. In contrast, Mahan’s book stops in 1783 because he needed a break at the time of his writing. Halford J. Mackinder, “Geographical Pivot of History,” Geographical Journal 23, no. 4 (1904): 421–37, https://doi.org/10.2307/1775498 ; and McCranie, Mahan, Corbett, and the Foundations , 14.

38 Walter A. McDougall, “Why Geography Matters … But Is So Little Learned,” Orbis 47, no. 2 (2003): 224–25, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0030-4387(03)00006-1 .

39 Mahan parted with the “material” school and had become an adherent of the historical approach by the time he wrote his first book. McCranie, Mahan, Corbett, and the Foundations , 55–57.

40 Quoted in Owens, “Classical Geopolitics,” 60.

41 Isaiah Bowman, “Geography vs. Geopolitics,” Geographical Review 32, no. 4 (1942): 646–58, https://doi.org/10.2307/210002 .

42 Daniel H. Deudney, “Geopolitics and Change,” in New Thinking in International Relations Theory , ed. Michael W. Doyle and G. John Ikenberry (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 97, 120 (fn 4).

43 This is political scientist George A. Lipsky’s view, cited in “Fifth Meeting: Political Geography vs. Geopolitics, April 8, 1954,” in American Power and International Theory at the Council on Foreign Relations, 1953–54 , ed. David M. McCourt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020), 169–73.

44 Thucydides, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War , ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Richard Crawley (New York: Free Press, 1996).

45 For a summary of Montesquieu’s view, see Karl Marcus Kriesel, “Montesquieu: Possibilistic Political Geographer,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 58, no. 3 (1968): 557–74, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1968.tb01652.x .

46 Deudney, Bounding Power , 17–18.

47 McDougall, “Why Geography Matters,” 220.

48 W.H. Parker, Mackinder: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft (New York: Clarendon Press, 1982), 57–58; Deudney, “Geopolitics as Theory,” 81–84; and Lucian M. Ashworth, A History of International Thought: Fromm the Origins of the Modern State to Academic International Relations (London: Routledge, 2014), 1–92.

49 John A. Agnew and Luca Muscarà, Making Political Geography , 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 59–60.

50 Agnew and Muscarà, Making Political Geography , 21–22. See also, Owens, “In Defense of Classical Geopolitics,” 65.

51 David T. Murphy, The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990); Holger H. Herwig, “ Geopolitik : Haushofer, Hitler and Lebensraum,” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 2–3 (1999): 218–41, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399908437762 ; Ola Tunander, “Swedish-German Geopolitics for a New Century: Rudolf Kjellén's ‘The State as a Living Organism,’” Review of International Studies 27, no. 3 (2001): 451–63, https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021050100451X ; Friedrich Ratzel, “Lebensraum: A Biogeographical Study” (1901; translated into English by Tul’si [Tuesday] Bhambry), Journal of Historical Geography 61 (2018): 59–80, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2018.03.001 .

52 Historian Jonathan Haslam noted that the concern of fin de siècle German intellectuals was to harness nationalism after long years of division and impoverishment following the Thirty Years’ War, unlike in France and Britain where the “contractual” notion of the state had become established, hinting at the source of different intellectual orientations in Britain and the United States. Jonathan Haslam, No Virtue Like Necessity: Realist Thought in International Relations since Machiavelli (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 167–69, and footnote 12.

53 The original term was “seapower,” deriving from the Greek term thalassokratia . Mahan split this term and, in doing so, narrowed the meaning to denote naval power. This article will use Mahan’s term (“sea power”) interchangeably with “maritime power.” Andrew D. Lambert, Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict that Made the Modern World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 2–4.

54 Alfred T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (London: S. Low, Marston, 1890), 1, 14.

55 Mahan, Sea Power , 29, 70–74. Jon Sumida wrote that this chapter was added in a rather ad hoc manner and does not represent Mahan’s view in full. For the purpose of our discussion, however, the present work draws from this section. Jon Sumida, “Alfred Thayer Mahan, Geopolitician,” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 2–3 (1999): 46–50, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399908437753 .

56 Philip A. Crowl, “Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age , ed. Peter Paret, Gordon Alexander Craig, and Felix Gilbert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 463–65.

57 Mahan, Sea Power , 42.

58 Alfred T. Mahan. “The United States Looking Outward,” Atlantic Monthly 66, no. 398 (1890): 823, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1890/12/the-united-states-looking-outward/306348/ .

59 Alfred T. Mahan, The Problem of Asia and Its Effect Upon International Policies (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1900).

60 This expression is from Mackinder, “Geographical Pivot,” 421. His basic geopolitical outlook, expressed in his “pivot” lecture and the 1919 treatise, were laid out earlier in a series of lectures at the Institute of Bankers in 1899. Halford J. Mackinder, “The Great Trade Routes: Their Connection with the Organization of Industry, Commerce, and Finance,” Lectures 1–4, Journal of the Institute of Bankers XXI (1900): 1–6, 137–46, 147–55, 266–73, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015031657045 .

61 Mackinder, “Geographical Pivot.”

62 Mackinder, Democratic Ideals , 79 (“world island”), 93 (“heartland”).

63 Mackinder, Democratic Ideals , 177.

64 Mackinder, Democratic Ideals , 4.

65 Mackinder, Democratic Ideals , 191.

66 Mackinder, “Geographical Pivot,” 436–37.

67 Mackinder, Democratic Ideals , 134–36.

68 Mackinder distinguished this railroad belt for the purpose of dividing geographic regions according to their resource endowment and population. Halford J. Mackinder, “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace,” Foreign Affairs 21, no. 4 (1943): 598–99, https://doi.org/10.2307/20029780 .

69 Mackinder, Democratic Ideals , 186. Raleigh’s original statement was: “He who commands the sea controls trade and commerce, he who controls trade and commerce commands the wealth and riches of the world, and he who controls wealth controls the world.” Quoted in Archibald S. Hurd, “Coal, Trade, and the Empire,” The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review 44, no. 261 (1898): 722. https://www.proquest.com/historical-periodicals/coal-trade-empire/docview/2656708/se-2 .

70 Nicholas J. Spykman, America’s Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942), 16–17, 41.

71 Spykman, “Geography and Foreign Policy, I,” 40; Nicholas J. Spykman, “Geography and Foreign Policy, II,” American Political Science Review 32, no. 2 (1938): 213–36, https://doi.org/10.2307/1948667 ; Nicholas J. Spykman and Abbie A. Rollins, “Geographic Objectives in Foreign Policy, I,” American Political Science Review 33, no. 3 (1939): 391–410, https://doi.org/10.2307/1948794 ; Nicholas J. Spykman and Abbie A. Rollins, “Geographic Objectives in Foreign Policy, II,” American Political Science Review 33, no. 4 (1939): 591–614, https://doi.org/10.2307/1949493 .

72 Nicholas J. Spykman and Helen R. Nicholl, The Geography of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1944), 40–41.

73 Spykman and Nicholl, The Geography of the Peace , x.

74 Spykman and Nicholl, The Geography of the Peace , 6.

75 Spykman, America’s Strategy , 207–09; and Spykman and Nicholl, The Geography of the Peace , 5–6.

76 The term is from Mackinder, “Geographical Pivot,” 435.

77 In fairness, Huntington mentioned proximity, albeit in passing. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22–49, https://doi.org/10.2307/20045621 .

78 Wallerstein, The Modern World-System I .

79 The other such approach was Marxist theories of imperialism. A.J.R. Groom, André Barrinha, and William C. Olson, International Relations Then and Now: Origins and Trends in Interpretation , 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2019), 29–30. For similar interpretations, Haslam, No Virtue Like Necessity , 181; Joseph M. Parent and Joshua M. Baron, “Elder Abuse: How the Moderns Mistreat Classical Realism,” International Studies Review 13, no. 2 (2011): 193–213, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2486.2011.01021.x ; and John M. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760–2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chaps. 5 and 7.

80 For instance, “Geopolitics,” Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed Dec. 15, 2022, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=geopolitics&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3 .

81 On Spykman’s death, see Gray, “Spykman,” 874; and Or Rosenboim, “Geopolitics and Empire: Visions of Regional World Order in the 1940s,” Modern Intellectual History 12, no. 2 (2015): 380, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244314000547 . On the closure of geography departments, see Neil Smith, “‘Academic War Over the Field of Geography’: The Elimination of Geography at Harvard, 1947–1951,” Annals of the Association of American Geographer s 77, no. 2 (1987): 155–72, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1987.tb00151.x ; and McDougall, “Why Geography Matters,” 227–28. On the notion that periphery no longer existed under bipolarity, see Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Stability of a Bipolar World,” Daedalus 93, no. 3 (Summer 1964): 881–909, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20026863 .

82 Agnew and Muscarà, Political Geography , 115. On fundamental differences between Nazism and Geopolitik , see Mark Bassin, “Race Contra Space: The Conflict Between German Geopolitik and National Socialism,” Political Geography Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1987): 115–34, https://doi.org/10.1016/0260-9827(87)90002-4 .

83 Quoted in Peter Francis Coogan, Geopolitics and the Intellectual Origins of Containment (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991), 227, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/geopolitics-intellectual-origins-containment/docview/303924442/se-2?accountid=11752 . The same view is expressed in Earle’s review of America’s Strategy : Edward Mead Earle, “Power Politics and American World Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 58, no. 1 (March 1943): 94–95, https://doi.org/10.2307/2144430 .

84 Edmund A. Walsh, Total Power: A Footnote to History (New York: Doubleday, 1948); Coogan, “Geopolitics,” 65–66, 332–37; and Specter, Atlantic Realists , 128.

85 David Ekbladh, “Present at the Creation: Edward Mead Earle and the Depression-Era Origins of Security Studies,” International Security 36, no. 3 (Winter 2011/12): 140, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00067 .

86 William Fox, “Geopolitics and International Relations,” in On Geopolitics: Classical and Nuclear , ed. Ciro E. Zoppo and Charles Zorgbibe (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1985), 27; and Coogen, “Geopolitics,” 140, 145. Perhaps Earle’s interest in Mackinder is not surprising given his earlier work on the Bagdad Railway. Edward Mead Earle, Turkey, the Great Powers, and the Bagdad Railway: A Study in Imperialism (New York: Macmillan, 1924).

87 Edward Mead Earle, Gordon Alexander Craig, and Felix Gilbert, eds., Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952).

88 As their students wrote, they had “lifelong interest in the interplay between geographic factors and new developments in science and technology.” James N. Rosenau, Vincent Davis, and Maurice A. East, eds., The Analysis of International Politics: Essays in Honor of Harold and Margaret Sprout (New York: Free Press, 1972), 3.

89 Harold Sprout and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power, 1776–1918 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1939).

90 Harold Sprout and Margaret Sprout, Foundations of National Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945).

91 For instance, see Harold Sprout and Margaret Sprout, “Geography and International Politics in an Era of Revolutionary Change,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 4, no. 1 (1960): 145–61, https://doi.org/10.1177/002200276000400111 .

92 Margaret Sprout, “Mahan: Evangelist of Sea Power” in Makers of Modern Strategy , ed. Earle, Craig, and Gilbert, 415–45.

93 Paulo Jorge Batista Ramos, Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies in the Construction of the United States National Security Ideology, 1935–1951 (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Manchester, 2003), 139, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/role-yale-institute-international-studies/docview/1774213325/se-2?accountid=11752 .

94 Ramos, “Yale Institute,” 16.

95 Inderjeet Parmar, “‘To Relate Knowledge and Action’: The Impact of the Rockefeller Foundation on Foreign Policy Thinking During America’s Rise to Globalism 1939–1945,” Minerva 40, no. 3 (2002): 247–48, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019572526066 ; Ramos, “Yale Institute,” 96–67, 123–25; and Michael C. Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 37, 39–40.

96 Ramos, “Yale Institute,” 164–65.

97 Arnold Wolfers and Laurence W. Martin, The Anglo-American Tradition in Foreign Affairs: Readings from Thomas More to Woodrow Wilson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1956); and Coogan, “Geopolitics,” 337–39.

98 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperative (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1997).

99 Fox, “Geopolitics and International Relations,” 22; Ramos, “Yale Institute,” 141–43, 167–68; and Bruce Kuklick, Blind Oracles: Intellectuals and War from Kennan to Kissinger (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 84.

100 Robert G. Angevine, “The Rise and Fall of the Office of Naval Intelligence, 1882–1892: A Technological Perspective,” Journal of Military History 62, no. 2 (April 1998): 291–312, https://doi.org/10.2307/120718 ; Robert G. Angevine, “Mapping the Northern Frontier: Canada and the Origins of the U.S. Army’s Military Information Division, 1885–1898,” Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 3 (2001): 121–45, https://doi.org/10.1080/02684520412331306240 .

101 Neil Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 25, 118–35, 181–82, 192; and David M. McCourt, “The Inquiry and the Birth of International Relations, 1917–19,” Australian Journal of Politics & History 63, no. 3 (2017): 399–400, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12376 .

102 Fox, “Geopolitics and International Relations,” 30.

103 Their involvement in military organizations are described in Coogan, “Geopolitics,” esp. 196–238 (chap. 6); and Ramos, “Yale Institute,” 152–91 (chap. 5). On Strausz-Hupé, Andrew Crampton and Gearóid Ó. Tuathail, “Intellectuals, Institutions and Ideology: The Case of Robert Strausz-Hupé and ‘American Geopolitics,’” Political Geography 15, no. 6–7 (1996): 533–55, https://doi.org/10.1016/0962-6298(96)83606-7 .

104 Coogan, “Geopolitics,” 102–05, 217–29, 401, 423 (quote).

105 Brian C. Schmidt, “The Need for Theory: International Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on the Theory of International Relations, 1953–1954,” International History Review 42, no. 3 (2020): 589–606, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2019.1646780 .

106 These included Carr’s historical theorizing, Harold Lasswell’s scientific approach, Marxist theories of imperialism, Wilson’s idealism, and, of course, Morgenthau’s realism. See various minutes of meetings in McCourt, American Power .

107 On the lack of theoretical canon, see Ramos, “Yale Institute,” 183.

108 Nicholas Guilhot, “The Realist Gambit: Postwar American Political Science and the Birth of IR Theory,” International Political Sociology 2, no. 4 (2008): 281–304, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-5687.2008.00052.x . For the broader institutional context in which realism rose in U.S. academia, Kuklick, Blind Oracles , 78–87.

109 Lucian M. Ashworth, “Chronicle of a Death Foretold? The 1953–4 CFR Study Group Meeting and the Decline of International Thought,” The International History Review 42, no. 3 (2020): 660–61, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2019.1655780 . Compare with Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2005).

110 Daniel H. Deudney, “Regrounding Realism: Anarchy, Security, and Changing Material Contexts,” Security Studies 10, no. 1 (2000): 1–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636410008429419 ; Daniel Bessner and Nicolas Guilhot, “How Realism Waltzed Off: Liberalism and Decisionmaking in Kenneth Waltz’s Neorealism,” International Security 40, no. 2 (2015): 87–118, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00217 . For a contemporary critique, see Stanley H. Hoffmann, “International Relations: The Long Road to Theory,” World Politics 11, no. 3 (1959): 34–77, https://doi.org/10.2307/2009198 .

111 To see how Waltz did this, see Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1979), 100 (especially figure 5.2).

112 While Deudney pointed out that the main distinction between realism and geopolitics is their unit of analysis, both in fact focus primarily on the state and its external behavior. Deudney, “Geopolitics and Change,” 98.

113 Jean Gottmann, “Geography and International Relations,” World Politics 3, no. 2 (1951): 153, https://doi.org/10.2307/2008950 .

114 Both security and power are considered to be a state’s ends by defensive and offensive realists, respectively. Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, “Security Seeking Under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited,” International Security 25, no. 3 (2001): 128–61, https://doi.org/10.1162/016228800560543 .

115 Peter Hugill, “Transitions in Hegemony: A Theory Based on State Type and Technology,” in William Thompson, ed., Systemic Transitions: Past, Present, and Future (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 35.

116 Good summaries of the literature on the influence of territory upon conflicts can be found in Paul R. Hensel, “Territory: Geography, Contentious Issues, and World Politics,” in What Do We Know About War? ed. John A. Vazquez, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012), 3–26; and Monica Duffy Toft, “Territory and War,” Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (2014): 185–98, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343313515695 . A more recent work positing geography as an object of statecraft is Dan Altman, “By Fait Accompli, Not Coercion: How States Wrest Territory from Their Adversaries,” International Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2017): 881–91, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqx049 .

117 On “buffers” and similar concepts, see Michael Greenfield Partem, “The Buffer System in International Relations,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 27, no. 1 (1983): 3–26, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002783027001001 ; Tanisha M. Fazal, “State Death in the International System,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004): 311–44, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818304582048 ; Rajan Menon and Jack L. Snyder, “Buffer Zones: Anachronism, Power Vacuum, or Confidence Builder?” Review of International Studies 43, no. 5 (2017): 962–86, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210517000122 ; Evan N. Resnick, “Interests, Ideologies, and Great Power Spheres of Influence,” European Journal of International Relations 28, no. 3 (2022): 563–88, https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661221098217 ; and Boaz Atzili and Min Jung Kim, “Buffer Zones and International Rivalry: Internal and External Geographic Separation Mechanisms,” International Affairs 99, no. 2 (2023): 645–65, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad028 .

118 Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations , 127–35. For the continued relevance of territory in the nuclear age, see Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020), especially 22–24.

119 John R. McNeill, “Woods and Warfare in World History,” Environmental History 9, no. 3 (2004): 388–410, https://doi.org/10.2307/3985766 .

120 Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 138–48.

121 Eric J. Hamilton and Brian C. Rathbun, “Scarce Differences: Toward a Material and Systemic Foundation for Offensive and Defensive Realism,” Security Studies 22, no. 3 (2013): 436–65, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2013.816125 .

122 Quoted in Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 56.

123 Steven G. Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 172–73, 202; and Constantine Pleshakov, The Tsar’s Last Armada: The Epic Journey to the Battle of Tsushima (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 91–111.

124 Spykman and Nicholl, The Geography of the Peace , 40–41.

125 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics , updated edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014), 44.

126 Patrick Porter, The Global Village Myth: Distance, War and the Limits of Power (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), 9.

127 Øystein Tunsjø, The Return of Bipolarity in World Politics: China, the United States, and Geostructural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

128 There are other recent works making use of geography as an explanatory variable, but they do not establish how certain geographic features affect foreign policy specifically. For instance, see Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, “Partnership or Predation? How Rising States Contend with Declining Great Powers,” International Security 45, no. 1 (2020): 90–126, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00384 ; and Norrin M. Ripsman and Igor Kovac, “Material Sources of Grand Strategy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Grand Strategy , ed. Thierry Balzacq and Ronald R. Krebs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 205–20.

129 Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30, no. 2 (1978): 167–214, https://doi.org/10.2307/2009958 . The expression is from David Blagden, “When Does Competition Become Conflict? Technology, Geography, and the Offense-Defense Balance,” Journal of Global Security Studies 6, no. 4 (2021): 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogab007 .

130 For instance, Keir Lieber argued for its exclusion in War and the Engineers: The Primacy of Politics Over Technology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 30–33. Some important works and reviews on the “offense-defense” balance include: Charles L. Glaser and Chaim Kaufmann, “What Is the Offense-Defense Balance and How Can We Measure It?” International Security 22, no. 4 (1998): 44–82, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.22.4.44 ; Sean M. Lynn-Jones, “Offense-Defense Theory and Its Critics,” Security Studies 4, no. 4 (1995): 660–91, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636419509347600 ; and Stephen Van Evera, “Offense, Defense, and the Causes of War,” International Security 22, no. 4 (1998): 5–43, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.22.4.5 .

131 Stephen M. Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” International Security 9, no. 4 (1985): 3–43, https://doi.org/10.2307/2538540 ; and Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987).

132 Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984).

133 Some recent works using this dichotomy are Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, “Balancing on Land and at Sea: Do States Ally Against the Leading Global Power?” International Security 35, no. 1 (2010): 7–43, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00001 ; Evan B. Montgomery, “Competitive Strategies Against Continental Powers: The Geopolitics of Sino-Indian-American Relations,” Journal of Strategic Studies 36, no. 1 (2013): 76–100, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2012.736383 ; and Joseph M. Parent and Sebastian Rosato, “Balancing in Neorealism,” International Security 40, no. 2 (2015): 51–86, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00216 .

134 Mearsheimer, The Tragedy .

135 Bernard Brodie, Sea Power in the Machine Age , 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1943), 105–6.

136 John M. Schuessler, Joshua Shifrinson, and David Blagden, “Revisiting Insularity and Expansion: A Theory Note,” Perspectives on Politics (2021): 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272100222X .

137 Mahan, Problem of Asia , 20.

138 Starr, On Geopolitics , 22–29.

139 According to one estimate, the overall sail distance was 50 percent greater than steam for trans-Atlantic voyages. N.A.M. Rodger, “Weather, Geography and Naval Power in the Age of Sail,” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 2–3 (1999): 191, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399908437760 .

140 On the concept of “time-space compression,” see David Harvey, “Between Space and Time: Reflections on the Geographical Imagination,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80, no. 3 (1990): 418–34, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1990.tb00305.x .

141 Steven Gray, “Fuelling Mobility: Coal and Britain’s Naval Power, c. 1870–1914,” Journal of Historical Geography , no. 58 (October 2017): 92–103, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2017.06.013 .

142 David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 142–44, 270, 275–77.

143 Strausz-Hupé, Geopolitics , 182.

144 A. Wess Mitchell, The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

145 Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991).

146 Spykman and Nicholl, The Geography of the Peace , 4.

147 On this point, see David W. Blagden, Jack S. Levy, and William R. Thompson, “Sea Powers, Continental Powers, and Balancing Theory [with Reply],” International Security 36, no. 2 (2011), 201–2, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_c_00060 . Blagden briefly discusses this point in “When Does Competition Become Conflict?” 14–15.

148 On Eurocentrism in the realist tradition and its limits, see William C. Wohlforth, “Gilpinian Realism and International Relations,” International Relations 25, no. 4 (2011): 499–511, https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117811411742 .

149 William C. Wohlforth et al., “Testing Balance-of-Power Theory in World History,” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 2 (2007): 155–85, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066107076951 .

150 Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle (New York: Knopf, 1962). Similarly, Paul Schroeder noted that it was the preponderance of two “flanking” powers, Britain and Russia, that maintained stability in Europe after the Congress of Vienna. Also, by virtue of geography, they could expand outside of Europe. Paul W. Schroeder, “Did the Vienna Settlement Rest on a Balance of Power?” The American Historical Review 97, no. 3 (1992): 683–706, https://doi.org/10.2307/2164774 .

151 Everett C. Dolman, “Geostrategy in the Space Age: An Astropolitical Analysis,” Journal of Strategic Studies 22, no. 2–3 (1999): 83–106, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402399908437755 ; Daniel Deudney, Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).

152 For a trenchant critique, see Christopher J. Fettweis, “On Heartlands and Chessboards: Classical Geopolitics, Then and Now,” Orbis 59, no. 2 (2015): 233–48, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orbis.2015.02.005 .

153 Rob Bailey and Laura Wellesley, Chokepoints and Vulnerabilities in Global Food Trade (London: Chatham House, 2017), https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/2017-06-27-chokepoints-vulnerabilities-global-food-trade-bailey-wellesley-final.pdf ; Daniel Yergin, The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (New York: Penguin Press, 2020); Building Resilient Supply Chains, Revitalizing American Manufacturing, and Fostering Broad-Based Growth , The White House, June 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/100-day-supply-chain-review-report.pdf ; and Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (New York: Scribner, 2022).

154 Harvey Starr, “On Geopolitics: Spaces and Places,” International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2013): 435, https://doi.org/10.1111/isqu.12090 .

155 Simon Dalby, “The Geopolitics of Climate Change,” Political Geography 37 (2013): 38–47, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2013.09.004 .

156 Rodger Baker, “Revisiting Arctic Geopolitics: Climate, Competition, and Governance,” Presentation at Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, Oct. 13, 2022.

157 There are a few exceptions. See, for instance, Michael C. Desch, “The Keys that Lock up the World: Identifying American Interests in the Periphery,” International Security 14, no. 1 (1989): 86–121, https://doi.org/10.2307/2538766 ; Robert J. Art, “Geopolitics Updated: The Strategy of Selective Engagement,” International Security 23, no. 3 (1999): 79–113, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.23.3.79 ; and Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change .

158 Paul M. Kennedy, “The Operations Plans of the Great Powers, 1880–1914,” Militaergeschichtliche Zeitschrift 19, no. 1 (1976): 194, https://doi.org/10.1524/mgzs.1976.19.1.188 .

159 For instance, John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 1 (1990): 5–56, https://doi.org/10.2307/2538981 . An exception is Aaron L. Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia,” International Security 18, no. 3 (1993): 5–33, https://doi.org/10.2307/2539204 .

160 Toshi Yoshihara, “China as a Composite Land-Sea Power: A Geostrategic Concept Revisited,” Center for International Maritime Security, Jan. 6, 2021, https://cimsec.org/china-as-a-composite-land-sea-power-a-geostrategic-concept-revisited/ .

161 Robert S. Ross, “The Geography of the Peace: East Asia in the Twenty-First Century,” International Security 23, no. 4 (1999): 81–118, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.23.4.81 .

162 Gottmann, “Geography and International Relations,” 165.

163 The original expression is from Todd G. Buchholz, New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought (New York: Plume, 2007).

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Geopolitics — the key to understanding Russia foreign policy

• January 19, 2022

Gabriel Gorodetsky

• Themes: Russia

From Tsar Alexander II to Putin, Russia's leading ideology and relationship to Europe has swung between extremes. One constant, however, has remained throughout history: an overriding concern for the geopolitical.

This essay originally appeared under the title  ‘Geopolitical factors in Russian foreign policy and strategy’  in  ‘ The Return of Geopolitics ’,  Bokförlaget Stolpe , in collaboration with the  Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation , 2019.

It is most telling that less than ten years ago, with Vladimir  Putin  already well settled in the saddle, prominent Russian liberals dismissed the legend of ‘the Phoenix rising out of the ashes’ as a possible trajectory of the future. It was misleading, as  Dimitri Trenin  argued, because of the ‘discontinuities in Russia’s structure and behaviour that militate against the repetition of the familiar cycle, i.e passing from imperial break-up to  imperial restoration .’ In other words, there was no longer ‘a fundamental value gap between Russia and much of the rest of the world…  borders  as barriers are being replaced by borders as frontiers, interfaces, lines of communication.’

The perennial issue concerns the definition of the nature of Russian foreign policy and revolves around the relationship between ideology, realism and national interests. My contention is that the l egacy of the past still weighs heavily on the execution of contemporary Russian foreign policy . Any attempt in the  West  to make projections for the future, therefore, requires an ability to recognise the past and the enduring geopolitical factors of Russian foreign policy.

The concept of geopolitics often relates to the physical realm, and yet it is also inherently mental. Perceptions, preconceived ideas, emotions and individuals remain major factors in the conduct of international relations, though naturally this is rarely conceded by politicians and, strangely enough, tends to be ignored, if not dismissed, by both historians and political scientists. In the 1930s, for instance, vindictiveness and resentment rekindled preconceptions and mutual suspicion, which in turn shaped policies, and were the single most important contributor to the calamitous events leading to the  Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact  that precipitated the outbreak of the  Second World War.

The following subtle minor episode illustrates the  power  of such convictions. In May 1940, when Britain embarked on crucial negotiations with the Soviet Union in an attempt to sway it away from Nazi Germany,  General Hastings Ismay , head of the Cabinet Secretariat and later  Winston Churchill’s  military adviser, sent his friend,  Orme Sargent,  the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, ‘ The Truce of the Bear ’, which was inspired by the 19th-century Anglo-Russian imperial rivalry in Central Asia – the so called ‘Great Game’. In the poem, from which the following verses are selected, an old blind beggar who had been mauled by a bear removes his bandages to reveal his wounds and speaks:

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless – toothless, broken of speech, Seeking a dole at the doorway he mumbles his tale to each Over and over the story, ending as he began: ‘Make ye no truce with Adam-zad – the Bear that walks like a man.

‘Horrible, hairy, human, with paws like hands in prayer, Making his supplication rose Adam-zad the Bear! I looked at the swaying shoulders, at the paunch’s swag and swing, And my heart was touched with pity for the monstrous, pleading thing.

Touched with pity and wonder, I did not fire then… I have looked no more on women – I have walked no more with men. Nearer he tottered and nearer, with paws like hands that pray – From brow to jaw that steel-shod paw, it ripped my face away!

‘When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer, That is the time of peril – the time of the Truce of the Bear!’ Over and over the story, ending as he began: ‘There is no truce with Adam-zad, the Bear that looks like a Man.’

Ever since Russia’s emergence as a major power in the 18th century,  the Western world has been reluctant to accept it as an integral part of Europe . This rebuff, embedded in a deep-rooted Russophobic tradition, was heightened by the  Bolshevik Revolution . In 1839, the  Marquis de Custine , whose entire family had been sent to the guillotine, sought refuge in Russia, the bastion of monarchical rule in Europe. He came back appalled, warning his readers that the Russians were ‘Chinese masquerading as Europeans’. Almost a century later we find the famous British diplomat, author and politician,  Harold Nicolson , describing in his diary a lunch at the grand London residency of Ambassador  Ivan Maisky , a ‘grim Victorian mansion’ in Nicolson’s words. ‘I was ushered into a room of unexampled horror… we were given corked sherry, during which time the man with a yellow moustache and a  moujik’s  unappetising daughter carried tableware and bananas into the room beyond,’ he wrote. ‘We then went into luncheon, which was held in a winter-garden, more wintry than gardeny… We began with caviar which was all to the good. We then had a little wet dead trout. We then had what in nursing homes is called “fruit jelly”…During the whole meal, I felt that there was something terribly familiar about it all… And then suddenly I realised it was the East. They were playing at being Europeans…They have gone oriental.’

Earlier, during the civil war in the wake of the Russian Revolution,  Churchill  applied far more unflattering metaphors, comparing the Russians to ‘crocodiles’ and a ‘bubonic plague’. Continuity in the Western perception of Russia was likewise conspicuous in its choice of the ‘Iron Curtain’ metaphor as an opening salvo in the  Cold War , a mere para- phrase of the ‘ cordon sanitaire ’, with which  Lord Curzon  had hoped to isolate Western civilisation from the Bolshevik ‘epidemic’ following the Russian Revolution.

Nor have the Russians been immune to xenophobia, or clear about their own  identity and destiny.  From the early 1830s the Russian intelligentsia pursued a fierce debate between the  Westerners and the Slavophiles  over the road which Russia should follow to surmount its political, social and economic backwardness. It may well be argued that the search by the  double-headed eagle  for physical and national identity had been the gist of Russian history all along. The debate, in various shapes and forms, has since followed each swivel in the Russian story, culminating in the demonising of the Western bourgeoisie following the Bolshevik revolution. Stalin’s chronic misreading of British intentions and behaviour, for instance, was undoubtedly a major factor in the formulation of Soviet foreign policy.

This diehard tradition accounts very much for Western attempts to impose values as the indispensable common denominator and precondition for any community of interests with Russia – a criterion which is hardly observed by the West in its relations with allies such as  Turkey , Saudi Arabia or Egypt. This adherence to ‘moral’ criteria in forging foreign policy stands in contrast to lessons learnt from the past. There is no way of overcoming lingering mutual suspicion and preconceived ideas without a resort to history and dialogue, if a bridge is to be established. The idea that values are the indispensable common denominator and precondition for any community of interests is not borne out by historical experience. After all, paradoxically, the West forged the most sound alliances with Russia on solidly geopolitical grounds when its regime was much at odds with Western values: be that during the Napoleonic Wars, the  First World War , or the Grand Alliance with Stalin.

Notions of space and geopolitics, applied to conflicts concerning overlapping interests or regional ethnic issues and manipulated through the instruments of balance of power, were and remain central to the formulation and execution of Russian foreign policy. My extended research into Stalin’s foreign policy, for instance, has shown that he was little affected by ideological predilections or sentiments in that regard. His statesmanship was to a large extent entrenched in the legacy of  Tsarist Russia , and responded to challenges which had deep historical roots. This is in no way to question the view that Stalin’s system of government (or for that matter Putin’s as well) was also characterised by idiosyncratic and despotic methods in the pursuit of state goals. Who would dispute the disastrous impact of  Stalin’s savage purges of the military , his disastrous meddling in the workings of the high command and the highly professional Soviet foreign ministry?

And yet, on the whole, Stalin’s foreign policy appears to have followed an unscrupulous realpolitik, serving well-defined traditional Russian geopolitical interests. Ironically, Marx’s battle cry for the international proletariat in 1848 – that they had ‘ little to lose but their chains ’ – evoked far less resonance in Stalin than the famous dictum of the then British Foreign Secretary,  Lord Palmerston , in the same year: ‘We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.’

I have devoted the core of my academic career to exploring the interrelations between ideology, realpolitik and geopolitics.  My earlier books  focused on the formulation of Soviet foreign policy in the 1920s and 1930s. They revealed how the first decade of the Russian Revolution was characterised by a dynamic process of re-evaluation of foreign policy. The Bolsheviks faced a formidable trial in their futile attempts to reconcile two contradictory factors: the axiomatic need to spread the revolution beyond Russia’s borders and the prosaic need to guarantee survival within recognised borders. From its inception, Soviet foreign policy was characterised by a gradual but consistent retreat from unyielding hostility to capitalist regimes, preferring peaceful coexistence based on mutual expediency. Crude, cold calculations had always been and remained the backbone of Stalin’s policies, and they echoed forcefully in the corridors of the Kremlin until the  appearance of Mikhail Gorbachev  and the sub-sequent demise of the Soviet Union.

When it comes to the Second World War,  neither the fanciful idea that throughout 1939–41 Stalin had been meticulously preparing a revolutionary war against Germany  but was pre-empted by Hitler’s own invasion of Russia, nor the notion that he expected Germany and Britain to bleed white, paving the way for the communist revolution to be carried into the heart of Europe on the bayonets of the Red Army, is borne out by the archival sources. Shortly after the outbreak of war, Stalin personally warned  Georgi Dimitrov,  the Bulgarian leader of the Comintern, not to cherish revolutionary dreams. ‘In the First Imperialist War’, Dimitrov was warned, ‘the Bolsheviks overestimated the situation. We all rushed ahead and made mistakes! This can be explained, but not excused, by the conditions prevailing then. Today we must not repeat the mistakes made by the Bolsheviks then.’

Surprisingly, Stalin’s mind was not set on war, but rather on the agenda for a peace conference which he expected to convene by 1942. He hoped the conference, attended by a debilitated British Empire, would topple the Treaty of Versailles, and acknowledge the new Soviet security arrangements in Central and Northern Europe. However, far more striking is that, embracing the traditional Russian geopolitical outlook, Stalin saw in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact an opportunity to redress the grievances which he felt had been inflicted on Russia throughout the 19th century, during the struggle for mastery in Europe – and specifically in the  Paris  and Berlin Peace conferences following the Crimean War of 1856 and the  Russo-Turkish wars in 1877–78 . The forgotten story of the scramble for the Balkans in 1939–41, and indeed the reopening of the 19th-century ‘Eastern Question’, best illustrate the geopolitical continuum in Stalin’s approach to foreign policy. The  annexation of Bessarabia in June 1940  has been commonly perceived by historians as yet another example of pure Bolshevik expansionism. But the move was motivated by the need to improve the strategic position of the Soviet Union vis-à-vis both Britain and Germany by securing the littoral of the  Black Sea  and control of the mouth of the Danube. His conduct is almost a replica of Alexander II’s conduct during the 1877–78 war with Turkey, which ended with the  Treaty of San Stefano , establishing a Russian presence at the opening of the Bosphorus strait.

The common vivid presentation of  Molotov’s negotiations with Hitler  in Berlin in November 1940 as proof that Stalin had conspired with Hitler to divide the world, is contested by the directive for the talks, dictated to Molotov in Stalin’s dacha and in his long hand, which I unearthed, and which is confined to the intrinsic Soviet interests in the Balkans and the Turkish Straits, determined by considerations of security. Stalin later explained to Dimitrov, who became the first communist leader of Bulgaria, that the approach to Hitler was induced by the threats posed to Russia in the Black Sea. ‘Historically the danger has always come from there,’ Stalin noted, revealing his frame of mind, ‘The Crimean War – the capture of Sebastopol – the  intervention of Wrangel  [the commanding general of the anti-Bolshevik White Army in southern Russia] in 1919 etc.’

Stalin’s stance over the Balkans reflected similar arrangements obtained by force from Finland after the conclusion of the  Winter War in March 1940,  and which protected the maritime approaches to Leningrad. The triangular ‘urge to the Sea’ (at the Pacific, the Baltic and the North Seas, and the Black Sea) had been, and remains, as brilliantly suggested a long time ago by Max Kerner, a cardinal principle in Russian geopolitically-oriented foreign policy. It was Stalin’s a priori premise, when war broke out, that Russia was ‘content being confined to its own small  lebensraum ’. Accused at one point by the Western press of conducting in southeast Europe a ‘platonic relationship with the Slavonic people’, Stalin responded: ‘I have read Plato carefully but I do not really see the relevance. We simply pursue a realistic policy rather than sentimental. We save our sentiments for small children and little animals, but in practice we do not conduct a sentimental policy in relation to any country, be that Slav or not, be that small or big.’ In a tête-à-tête conversation with  Anthony Eden , Britain’s Foreign Secretary for most of the Second World War, Maisky, the veteran Soviet ambassador to London, complained that British statesmen and politicians had always been divided into two groups. One embodied primarily the state interests of Great Britain and the second embodied primarily the ‘class feelings and prejudices of the ruling top circles’. When Eden suggested that the same could be said of Russia, Maisky interjected: ‘But the difference is that the S[oviet] G[overnment] has never pursued and does not pursue  Gefülspolitik.  The S[oviet] G[overnment] is utterly realistic in its foreign policy. When state interests and ideas collide, state interests always emerge with the upper hand.’

It may come as a surprise to learn that Churchill, the cross-bearer in the crusade against communism in the Russian civil war and the 1920s, and the architect of the Iron Curtain, held similar views. Churchill’s witty quip, describing Russia as  ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’ , has often been evoked by historians and politicians alike to demonstrate the sinister nature of Stalin’s foreign policy. However, few historians have actually bothered to study the radio speech delivered by Churchill in October 1939 (merely three months after the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact), seeking reconciliation and rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Churchill actually went on to solve the mystery: ‘ But perhaps, there is a key. The key is Russian national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest of the safety of Russia that Germany should plant herself upon the shores of the Black Sea, or that she should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic peoples of south-eastern Europe. That would be contrary to the historic life-interests of Russia. ’

In conclusion, my argument is that to attribute Russian imperial policy, Stalin’s conduct of foreign affairs or indeed Putin’s actions in contemporary world affairs to the whims of tyranny, or to an ideological drive towards relentless expansionism, is entirely misleading and ahistorical. It overlooks Russia’s tenacious adherence to imperatives deeply rooted within its history and national mentality.

Geopolitics, in the Russian/Soviet process of nation building, has been a major factor in the interrelationship of Soviet domestic and foreign policy. It leaves one wondering whether, in the sphere of foreign policy, universal ideologies have not been at best instrumental in manipulating and moulding public opinion, or in sustaining legitimacy in the age of democracy and the masses.

In order to understand the 20th century, as well as today’s Russia, it might be necessary to resort to the icons of  Halford Mackinder ,  Machiavelli ,  Richelieu  and  Bismarck , rather than  Woodrow Wilson ,  Marx ,  Lenin  or  Milton Friedman.

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A queen Solenopsis invicta , an invasive fire ant. Photo by Alex Wild

Ant geopolitics

Over the past four centuries quadrillions of ants have created a strange and turbulent global society that shadows our own.

by John Whitfield   + BIO

It is a familiar story: a small group of animals living in a wooded grassland begin, against all odds, to populate Earth. At first, they occupy a specific ecological place in the landscape, kept in check by other species. Then something changes. The animals find a way to travel to new places. They learn to cope with unpredictability. They adapt to new kinds of food and shelter. They are clever. And they are aggressive .

In the new places, the old limits are missing. As their population grows and their reach expands, the animals lay claim to more territories, reshaping the relationships in each new landscape by eliminating some species and nurturing others. Over time, they create the largest animal societies, in terms of numbers of individuals, that the planet has ever known. And at the borders of those societies, they fight the most destructive within-species conflicts, in terms of individual fatalities, that the planet has ever known.

This might sound like our story: the story of a hominin species, living in tropical Africa a few million years ago, becoming global. Instead, it is the story of a group of ant species, living in Central and South America a few hundred years ago, who spread across the planet by weaving themselves into European networks of exploration, trade, colonisation and war – some even stowed away on the 16th-century Spanish galleons that carried silver across the Pacific from Acapulco to Manila. During the past four centuries, these animals have globalised their societies alongside our own.

It is tempting to look for parallels with human empires. Perhaps it is impossible not to see rhymes between the natural and human worlds, and as a science journalist I’ve contributed more than my share. But just because words rhyme, it doesn’t mean their definitions align. Global ant societies are not simply echoes of human struggles for power. They are something new in the world, existing at a scale we can measure but struggle to grasp: there are roughly 200,000 times more ants on our planet than the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way.

In late 2022, colonies of the most notorious South American export, the red fire ant ( Solenopsis invicta ) were unexpectedly found in Europe for the first time, alongside a river estuary close to the Sicilian city of Syracuse. People were shocked when a total of 88 colonies were eventually located, but the appearance of the red fire ant in Europe shouldn’t be a surprise. It was entirely predictable: another ant species from S invicta ’s native habitats in South America had already found its way to Europe.

What is surprising is how poorly we still understand global ant societies: there is a science-fiction epic going on under our feet, an alien geopolitics being negotiated by the 20 quadrillion ants living on Earth today. It might seem like a familiar story, but the more time I spend with it, the less familiar it seems, and the more I want to resist relying on human analogies. Its characters are strange; its scales hard to conceive. Can we tell the story of global ant societies without simply retelling our own story?

S ome animal societies hold together because their members recognise and remember one another when they interact. Relying on memory and experience in this way – in effect, trusting only friends – limits the size of groups to their members’ capacity to sustain personal relationships with one another. Ants, however, operate differently by forming what the ecologist Mark Moffett calls ‘anonymous societies’ in which individuals from the same species or group can be expected to accept and cooperate with each other even when they have never met before. What these societies depend on, Moffett writes, are ‘shared cues recognised by all its members’.

Recognition looks very different for humans and insects. Human society relies on networks of reciprocity and reputation, underpinned by language and culture. Social insects – ants, wasps, bees and termites – rely on chemical badges of identity. In ants, this badge is a blend of waxy compounds that coat the body, keeping the exoskeleton watertight and clean. The chemicals in this waxy blend, and their relative strengths, are genetically determined and variable. This means that a newborn ant can quickly learn to distinguish between nest mates and outsiders as it becomes sensitive to its colony’s unique scent. Insects carrying the right scent are fed, groomed and defended; those with the wrong one are rejected or fought.

Colonies spread without ever drawing boundaries because workers treat all of their own kind as allies

The most successful invasive ants, including the tropical fire ant ( Solenopsis geminata ) and red fire ant ( S invicta ), share this quality. They also share social and reproductive traits. Individual nests can contain many queens (in contrast to species with one queen per nest) who mate inside their home burrows. In single-queen species, newborn queens leave the nest before mating, but in unicolonial species, mated queens will sometimes leave their nest on foot with a group of workers to set up a new nest nearby. Through this budding, a network of allied and interconnected colonies begins to grow.

In their native ranges, these multi-nest colonies can grow to a few hundred metres across, limited by physical barriers or other ant colonies. This turns the landscape to a patchwork of separate groups, with each chemically distinct society fighting or avoiding others at their borders. Species and colonies coexist, without any prevailing over the others. However, for the ‘anonymous societies’ of unicolonial ants, as they’re known, transporting a small number of queens and workers to a new place can cause the relatively stable arrangement of groups to break down. As new nests are created, colonies bud and spread without ever drawing boundaries because workers treat all others of their own kind as allies. What was once a patchwork of complex relationships becomes a simplified, and unified, social system. The relative genetic homogeneity of the small founder population, replicated across a growing network of nests, ensures that members of unicolonial species tolerate each other. Spared the cost of fighting one another, these ants can live in denser populations, spreading across the land as a plant might, and turning their energies to capturing food and competing with other species. Chemical badges keep unicolonial ant societies together, but also allow those societies to rapidly expand.

A ll five of the ants included in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) list of 100 of the world’s worst invasive alien species are unicolonial. Three of these species – the aforementioned red fire ant ( S invicta ), the Argentine ant ( Linepithema humile ) and the little fire ant ( Wasmannia auropunctata ) – are originally from Central and/or South America, where they are found sharing the same landscapes. It is likely that the first two species, at least, began their global expansion centuries ago on ships out of Buenos Aires. Some of these ocean journeys might have lasted longer than a single worker ant’s lifetime.

Unicolonial ants are superb and unfussy scavengers that can hunt animal prey, eat fruit or nectar, and tend insects such as aphids for the sugary honeydew they excrete. They are also adapted to living in regularly disrupted environments, such as river deltas prone to flooding (the ants either get above the waterline, by climbing a tree, for example, or gather into living rafts and float until it subsides). For these ants, disturbance is a kind of environmental reset during which territories have to be reclaimed. Nests – simple, shallow burrows – are abandoned and remade at short notice. If you were looking to design a species to invade cities, suburbs, farmland and any wild environment affected by humans, it would probably look like a unicolonial ant: a social generalist from an unpredictable, intensely competitive environment.

When these ants show up in other places, they can make their presence felt in spectacular fashion. An early example comes from the 1850s, when the big-headed ant ( Pheidole megacephala ), another species now listed on the IUCN’s top 100, found its way from Africa to the Madeiran capital of Funchal. ‘You eat it in your puddings, vegetables and soups, and wash your hands in a decoction of it,’ complained one British visitor in 1851. When the red fire ant ( S invicta ), probably the best-known unicolonial species, spread through the US farming communities surrounding the port of Mobile, Alabama in the 1930s, it wreaked havoc in different ways. ‘Some farmers who have heavily infested land are unable to hire sufficient help, and are forced to abandon land to the ants,’ was how E O Wilson in 1958 described the outcome of their arrival. Today, the red fire ant does billions of dollars of damage each year and inflicts its agonising bite on millions of people. But the largest colonies, and most dramatic moments in the global spread of ant societies, belong to the Argentine ant ( L humile ).

New Zealand is the only country to have prevented the spread of the red fire ant

Looking at the history of this species’ expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it can seem as if the spread of global trade was an Argentine ant plot for world domination. One outbreak appeared in Porto, following the 1894 Exhibition of the Islands and Colonies of Portugal. The insects had likely travelled on produce and wares displayed at the exhibition from Madeira – ornamental plants, which tend to travel with a clump of their home soil, are particularly good for transporting invasive species. In 1900, a Belfast resident, Mrs Corry, found a ‘dark army’ of the same species crossing her kitchen floor and entering the larder, where they covered a leg of mutton so completely that ‘one could scarcely find room for a pin-point’. In 1904, the US Bureau of Entomology dispatched a field agent, Edward Titus, to investigate a plague of Argentine ants in New Orleans. He heard reports of the ants crawling into babies’ mouths and nostrils in such numbers that they could be dislodged only by repeatedly dunking the infant in water. Other reports described the ants entering hospitals and ‘busily carrying away the sputum’ from a tuberculosis patient. When the species arrived on the French Riviera a few years later, holiday villas were abandoned and a children’s hospital was evacuated.

In December 1927, Italy’s king Vittorio Emmanuel III and its prime minister Benito Mussolini signed a law setting out the measures to be taken against the Argentine ant, splitting the cost equally with invaded provinces. The state’s effectiveness, or lack of it, is shown in the novella The Argentine Ant (1952) by Italo Calvino, one of Italy’s great postwar writers. Calvino, whose parents were plant biologists, sets his tale in an unnamed seaside town much like the one where he grew up, in the northwestern province of Liguria. The ant has outlasted both Mussolini and the monarchy, and saturates the unnamed town, burrowing underground (and into people’s heads). Some residents drench their houses and gardens with pesticides or build elaborate traps involving hammers covered in honey; others try to ignore or deny the problem. And then there is Signor Baudino, an employee of the Argentine Ant Control Corporation, who has spent 20 years putting out bowls of molasses laced with a weak dose of poison. The locals suspect him of feeding the ants to keep himself in a job.

In reality, people who found themselves living in the path of such ant plagues learned to stand the feet of their cupboards, beds and cots in dishes of kerosene. However, this was not a long-term solution: killing workers away from the nest achieves little when most, along with their queens, remain safe at home. Slower-acting insecticides (like Baudino’s poison), which workers take back to the nest and feed to queens, can be more effective. But because unicolonial workers can enter any number of nests in their network, each containing many queens, the chances of delivering a fatal dose gets much slimmer.

In the early 20th century, an intensive period in the human war against ants, pest-control researchers advocated using broad-spectrum poisons, most of which are now banned for use as pesticides, to set up barriers or fumigate nests. Nowadays, targeted insecticides can be effective for clearing relatively small areas. This has proved useful in orchards and vineyards (where the ants’ protection of sap-sucking insects makes them a hazard to crops) and in places such as the Galápagos or Hawaii where the ants threaten rare species. Large-scale eradications are a different matter, and few places have tried. New Zealand, the world leader in controlling invasive species, is the only country to have prevented the spread of the red fire ant, mostly by eradicating nests on goods arriving at airports and ports. The country is also home to a spaniel trained to sniff out Argentine ants nests and prevent the insects from reaching small islands important for seabirds.

H uman inconvenience pales in comparison with the ants’ effects on other species. Exploring the countryside around New Orleans in 1904, Titus found the Argentine ant overwhelming the indigenous ant species, bearing away the corpses, eggs and larvae of the defeated to be eaten: ‘column after column of them arriving on the scene of battle’. Other entomologists at the time learned to recognise the disappearance of native ants as a sign of an invader’s arrival. Unicolonial species are aggressive, quick to find food sources and tenacious in defending and exploiting them. Unlike many ant species, in which a worker who finds a new food source returns to the nest to recruit other foragers, the Argentine ant enlists other workers already outside the nest, thus recruiting foragers more quickly. However, the decisive advantage of unicolonial ant species lies in their sheer force of numbers, which is usually what decides ant conflicts. They often become the only ant species in invaded areas.

The effects of these invasions cascade through ecosystems. Sometimes, the damage is direct: on the Galápagos, fire ants prey on tortoise hatchlings and bird chicks, threatening their survival. In other cases, the damage falls on species that once relied on native ants. In California, the tiny Argentine ant (typically under 3 mm long) has replaced the larger native species that once formed the diet of horned lizards, leaving the reptiles starving – it seems they do not recognise the much smaller invader as food. In the scrublands of the South African fynbos heathland, which has some of the most distinctive flora on Earth, many plants produce seeds bearing a fatty blob. Native ants ‘plant’ the seeds by carrying them into their nests, where they eat the fat and discard the rest. Argentine ants – almost certainly imported to South Africa around 1900 along with horses shipped from Buenos Aires by the British Empire to fight the Boer War – either ignore the seeds, leaving them to be eaten by mice, or strip the fat where it lies, leaving the seed on the ground. This makes it harder for endemic flora such as proteas to reproduce, tipping the balance towards invasive plants such as acacias and eucalypts.

In the past 150 years, the Argentine ant has spread to pretty much everywhere that has hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. A single supercolony, possibly descended from as few as half a dozen queens, now stretches along 6,000 kilometres of coastline in southern Europe. Another runs most of the length of California. The species has arrived in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and even reached Easter Island in the Pacific and St Helena in the Atlantic. Its allegiances span oceans: workers from different continents, across millions of nests containing trillions of individuals, will accept each other as readily as if they had been born in the same nest. Workers of the world united, indeed. But not completely united.

As with inbred species everywhere, this may make them prone to disease

Expanding in parallel with the world-spanning supercolony are separate groups of the Argentine ant that bear different chemical badges – the legacy of other journeys from the homeland. Same species, different ‘smells’. In places where these distinct colonies come into contact, hostilities resume.

In Spain, one such colony holds a stretch of the coast of Catalonia. In Japan, four mutually hostile groups fight it out around the port city of Kobe. The best-studied conflict zone is in southern California, a little north of San Diego, where the Very Large Colony, as the state-spanning group is known, shares a border with a separate group called the Lake Hodges colony, with a territory measuring just 30 kilometres around. Monitoring this border for a six-month period between April and September 2004, a team of researchers estimated that 15 million ants died on a frontline a few centimetres wide and several kilometres long. There were times when each group seemed to gain ground, but over longer periods stalemate was the rule. Those seeking to control ant populations believe provoking similar conflicts might be a way to weaken invasive ants’ dominance. There are also hopes, for example, that artificial pheromones – chemical misinformation, in other words – might cause colony mates to turn on one another, although no products have yet come to market.

In the very long term, the fate of unicolonial societies is unclear. A survey of Madeira’s ants between 2014 and 2021 found , contrary to fears that invasive ants would wipe the island clean of other insects, very few big-headed ants and, remarkably, no Argentine ants. Invasive ants are prone to population crashes for reasons that aren’t understood but may be related to genetic homogeneity: a single colony of Argentine ants in their homeland contains as much genetic diversity as the whole of California’s state-spanning supercolony. As with inbred species everywhere, this may make them prone to disease. Another potential issue is that the ants’ lack of discrimination about whom they help may also favour the evolution of free-riding ‘lazy workers’ in colonies, who selfishly prosper by exploiting their nest mates’ efforts. Though it’s assumed this uneven distribution of work may eventually lead to social breakdown, no examples have been found.

Unless natural selection turns against them, one of the most effective curbs on unicolonial ants is other unicolonial ants. In the southeastern United States, red fire ants seem to have prevented the Argentine ant forming a single vast supercolony as it has in California, instead returning the landscape to a patchwork of species. In southern Europe, however, the Argentine ant has had a century longer to establish itself, so, even if the fire ant does gain a European foothold, there’s no guarantee that the same dynamic will play out. In the southern US, red fire ants are themselves now being displaced by the tawny crazy ant ( Nylanderia fulva ), another South American species, which has immunity to fire ant venom.

I t is remarkable how irresistible the language of human warfare and empire can be when trying to describe the global history of ant expansion. Most observers – scientists, journalists, others – seem not to have tried. Human efforts to control ants are regularly described as a war, as is competition between invaders and native ants, and it is easy to see why comparisons are made between the spread of unicolonial ant societies and human colonialism. People have been drawing links between insect and human societies for millennia. But what people see says more about them than about insects.

A beehive is organised along similar lines to an ant nest, but human views of bee society tend to be benign and utopian. When it comes to ants, the metaphors often polarise, either towards something like communism or something like fascism – one mid-20th-century US eugenicist even used the impact of the Argentine ant as an argument for immigration control. For the entomologist Neil Tsutsui, who studies unicolonial ants at the University of California, Berkeley, insects are like Rorschach tests. Some people see his research as evidence that we should all get along, while others see the case for racial purity.

In addition to conflating a natural ‘is’ with a political ‘ought’, the temptations of ant anthropomorphism can also lead to a limited, and limiting, view of natural history. Surely the habit of worker ants in Argentine nests to kill nine-tenths of their queens every spring – seemingly clearing out the old to make way for the new – is enough to deter parallels between ant societies and human politics?

Unicolonial species can overwhelmingly alter ecological diversity when they arrive somewhere new

The more I learn, the more I am struck by the ants’ strangeness rather than their similarities with human society. There is another way to be a globalised society – one that is utterly unlike our own. I am not even sure we have the language to convey, for example, a colony’s ability to take bits of information from thousands of tiny brains and turn it into a distributed, constantly updated picture of their world. Even ‘smell’ seems a feeble word to describe the ability of ants’ antennae to read chemicals on the air and on each other. How can we imagine a life where sight goes almost unused and scent forms the primary channel of information, where chemical signals show the way to food, or mobilise a response to threats, or distinguish queens from workers and the living from the dead ?

As our world turns alien, trying to think like an alien will be a better route to finding the imagination and humility needed to keep up with the changes than looking for ways in which other species are like us. But trying to think like an ant, rather than thinking about how ants are like us, is not to say that I welcome our unicolonial insect underlords. Calamities follow in the wake of globalised ant societies. Most troubling among these is the way that unicolonial species can overwhelmingly alter ecological diversity when they arrive somewhere new. Unicolonial ants can turn a patchwork of colonies created by different ant species into a landscape dominated by a single group. As a result, textured and complex ecological communities become simpler, less diverse and, crucially, less different to each other. This is not just a process; it is an era. The current period in which a relatively small number of super-spreading animals and plants expands across Earth is sometimes called the Homogecene. It’s not a cheering word, presaging an environment that favours the most pestilential animals, plants and microbes. Unicolonial ants contribute to a more homogenous future, but they also speak to life’s ability to escape our grasp, regardless of how we might try to order and exploit the world. And there’s something hopeful about that, for the planet, if not for us.

The scale and spread of ant societies is a reminder that humans should not confuse impact with control. We may be able to change our environment, but we’re almost powerless when it comes to manipulating our world exactly how we want. The global society of ants reminds us that we cannot know how other species will respond to our reshaping of the world, only that they will.

If you want a parable of ants’ ability to mock human hubris, it’s hard to improve on the story of Biosphere 2. This giant terrarium in the Arizona desert, funded by a billionaire financier in the late 1980s, was intended as a grand experiment and model for long-distance space travel and colonisation. It was designed to be a self-sustaining living system, inhabited by eight people, with no links to the world’s atmosphere, water, soil. Except that, soon after it began operations in 1991, the black crazy ant ( Paratrechina longicornis ), a unicolonial species originally from southeast Asia, found a way in, reshaped the carefully engineered invertebrate community inside, and turned the place into a honeydew farm.

It is possible to be both a scourge and a marvel.

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Your Article Library

Essay on geopolitics.

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Geopolitics is the science which studies the dependence of political events upon the soil (i.e. physical setting).

Geographical factors (space, location, terrain, climate and resources) have played a significant role by either favouring or obstructing political and military manoeuvres, endowments of strategic advantages over neighbours, founding of nations, acquiring of colonies, building of national strength and preservation of peace.

Geopolitics is different from political geography in many respects. Geopolitics is concerned with the spatial requirements of the state, while political geography examines only space relationships.

The spatial requirements, as reconciled to the geographic relations of the state, determine the national and economic structure of the state and influence its foreign relations. In putting geography to the service of space conscious politics, geopolitics devotes itself to the question of future. Political geography focuses on geographical phenomena and political interpretations, while geopolitics focuses on political phenomena and their geographical interpretations.

Earlier the concept of geopolitics was reflected in the writings of Aristotle, Strabo and Plato. Later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bodin and Montesqui referred to geopolitics in their discussion of environmental determinism.

During the nineteenth century, environmental concepts of various scholars were brought together and developed. Kant defined the field of geography and delineated its parts, with political geography being one of them. Ritter carried out a study of impact of climate on culture and civilisation.

He applied Darwinism to culture; culture was seen as an organism. Ratzel is considered the Father of Political Geography. He wrote Laws of Territorial Growth of State. In his observations, Ratzel saw the state as an organism fixed in soil.

Organic growth of state was recognised by him and boundaries were seen as dynamic lines, representing only a particular condition in spatial context between two states. Boundaries expand and express expansive power of the aggressive state; weak states get absorbed in the process and finally only a few complex states remain to compete for dominance.

Kjellen improved upon Ratzel’s ideas and accepted power as the aim of growth of the state. He also accepted the state as an organism and a conscious being with moral-intellectual capabilities which could employ modern cultural advances and techniques instead of a simple territorial expansion to achieve its goals. The final objective of a state was seen as the achievement of natural frontiers externally and a harmonious unity internally.

According to Kjellen, geopolitics means natural environment of the state. He was the first to use the term ‘geopolithik’. In his analysis of the state, he made certain distinctions—’geopolitic’ was concerned with the relationship of geography and state; ‘demopolitic’ with population and state; ‘demopolitic’ with economic resources and state; ‘sociopolitic’ with government and state.

Kjellen predicted that power will pass from the maritime powers to compact land powers, and that Germany will be a super power in Europe, West Asia and Africa.

Haushofer, who was associated with the Institute of Geopolitics (Munich), was influenced by Kjellen and Ratzel. Modern geopolitics is associated with the Nazis after their defeat in the Second World War. In Germany, war geography became a national preoccupation during this period. The Germans defined the subject as science of earth with respect to political developments. Haushofer’s ideas of organic stage, “lebensraum” (living room) and organic frontiers, received major attention.

The German scholars related the political aspect of the state to physical presence in context of landmasses and ocean space distribution. In Germany, geopolitic became a prescription and justification for expansion which was seen as following the natural law. Later, non- geographic elements like race were also included in this ideology.

Haushofer’s theory contains elements which are untenable from the viewpoint of scientifically objective geography. In other parts of the world, academic objectivity was maintained but the subject was never pursued with as much intensity as in Germany. The new science of political geography was much appreciated in France and Poland.

French Possibilists include Bruhnes, Demangeon and Vidal de La Blache. According to them, the state is not an organic political entity but a cultural and rational unit whose actions are determined by the collective conscience of its citizens or the physical environs. Rather than having a deterministic influence on humans, the state presents them with various options and they can choose the best for development. They rejected the concept of national existence as struggle for space.

Related Articles:

• Biography of Friedrich Ratzel | Geographer
• Essay on Population Geography

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IRENA’s 14th assembly underscores role of geopolitics, urgent need for action

The 14th assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) last week in Abu Dhabi underscored the centrality of geopolitics and security in the current global energy landscape. The gathering also called for greater action to achieve the COP28 target of tripling renewables deployment by 2030.

• Commercial & Industrial PV

IRENA's 14th assembly in Abu Dhabi

Image: pv magazine

The opening of IRENA ‘s 14th assembly by its president, Francesco La Camera, emphasized the urgency of implementing specific strategies to make the world comply with the 2030 target set by the COP28 conference in Dubai last year. The aim is to triple global solar capacity by the end of this decade.

“We have to triple capacity for all renewable energy sources by the end of this decade,” La Camera said. “This requires concrete and immediate action.”

However, he noted that this ambitious target must be achieved in a global energy landscape that is currently dominated by polarization and geopolitical turmoil.

Need for speed

“Around 87% of all new power in 2023 was from renewables,” La Camera said. “However, these global numbers hide important nuances. Investments remain concentrated in a few technologies such as solar and wind, while achieving the triple target requires harnessing all renewable sources. A worrying trend is also persistence in geographical concentration.”

The African continent is expected to become the key to filling this gap, with its capacity rising from around 26 GW at present to 300 GW by 2030.

“We need a master plan for the continent,” said Amani Abou-Zeid, the African Union's commissioner for infrastructure and energy. “At the COP28 we said enough – now it is time for real action and real implementation.

Access to financing is one of the biggest challenges that the countries of Africa face, as do many other emerging economies.

“The problem comes with the cost of capital,” said Barbadian Minister of Energy and Business Lisa Cummins. “We need to accelerate timelines and support climate finance.”

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EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson stressed the need to address such issues ar the upcoming COP29 event in Baku, Azerbaijan.

“There should be a monitoring framework that allows us to follow what is happening, since 132 countries agreed to triple renewables and double energy,” said Simson. “We are done with strategies, ideas, processes and decisions. It is only time for implementation.”

Political concerns

The “Ministerial Roundtable: Geopolitics of Energy Security” discussion at the assembly underscored the importance of geopolitical considerations in the current political debate on energy. Such concerns have become particularly important since the start of the war in Ukraine, as well as the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine.

pv magazine

The April edition of pv magazine considers a $9 billion subsidy package for Indian rooftop solar, examines energy community movements in the US and Italy – as well as renewables pushback in Australia – and ranges as far afield as Egypt, Central Asia, and the Middle East. All that plus a special section previewing this year’s smarter E Europe energy exhibition.

“Geopolitical risk is not an argument for inaction – quite the contrary,” Hans Olav Ibrekk, Norway's special envoy for climate and security, said as the panel opened.

Elizabeth Press, director of planning and program support at IRENA, noted the urgency of becoming more energy-independent for many countries throughout the world.  She said that “86% of the population lives in the next importing country … but everybody has something.” She added that all countries have a certain amount of renewable energy resources to exploit.

“We have replaced a significant share of natural gas with renewables and we have been able to stabilize markets in Europe,” said Simson. “Last year, 70 GW of renewables and 3 million heat pumps were installed across Europe last year.”

In addition, Anna Shpitsberg – deputy assistant secretary for energy transformation at the US Department of State – stated that “diversifying investment is crucial to mitigate energy risks, not create new ones.”

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com .

Emiliano Bellini

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Biden’s Deep Miscalculation on Israel and Gaza

Nicholas Kristof asks: Where has our moral president gone?

By Nicholas Kristof and Sarah Wildman

Produced by Vishakha Darbha

The war in Gaza has become President Biden’s war, the Times Opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof argues in a recent column criticizing what he describes as a moral failing on Biden’s part. In the following conversation, the Opinion editor Sarah Wildman asks Nick to elaborate on where he thinks Biden went wrong and what he hopes the president will do to try to end the conflict in the Middle East

Below is a lightly edited transcript of this episode. To listen to this episode, click the play button below.

Sarah Wildman: Hello, I’m Sarah Wildman, staff writer and politics editor for New York Times Opinion. Today I’m in conversation with columnist Nicholas Kristof on Biden’s role in the war in Gaza. Nick has been writing about the conflict since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Most recently, he wrote a major column on what he sees as Biden’s complicity in the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Essentially, Nick makes the case that the Israel-Hamas war is now Biden’s war. This conflict, he writes, will be a significant part of Biden’s legacy.

Nick, thank you so much for joining me today. I know it’s a little early on your side of the country.

Nicholas Kristof: Oh, my pleasure.

Sarah: Nick, how do you think Biden wanted to position himself during this administration?

Nick: He’s a veteran on foreign affairs. He cares deeply about foreign affairs. He’s got a great foreign policy team, and well, they bungled Afghanistan at the outset. But then I think they did a very impressive job rallying Europe around Ukraine.

And I think that he thought that Ukraine was going to be his war — that was going to be his chance to stand up for international norms. And I’m afraid that the war he will be remembered for may not be so much Ukraine as the Gaza war.

This notion that, you know, since World War II, we have tried to preserve some international norms that have restrained governments, that have tried to promote certain values — we don’t live up to the standards that we proclaim, but they have made some difference. And now, you know, I’m afraid that a lot of the world looks at this and they just laugh at us. They roll their eyes.

Sarah: I want to talk a little bit about Biden’s legacy prior to all of this, when it comes to humanitarian crises. Back in 1986, as a younger senator, he spoke out passionately against apartheid.

[Archival audio of Biden] Our loyalty is not to South Africa. It’s to South Africans. And the South Africans are majority Black, and they are being excoriated. It is not to some stupid puppet government over there. It is not to the Afrikaners’ regime. We have no loyalty to them. We have no loyalty to South Africa. To South Africans.

Sarah: You’ve been covering human rights and conflicts for decades. How have you seen Biden position himself in the past?

Nick: He’s been a good, moral voice on a lot of these issues, including for those in which Muslims were victims.

In Bosnia, he was an important advocate for addressing the genocide there. I worked with him in the Darfuri genocide in the early 2000s. Senator Biden then felt that President Bush wasn’t doing enough. And he was urging me to write, you know, tough columns calling on the White House to not just talk but to actually do more to address the suffering in Darfur.

So I think of the passion and urgency that Biden has used in the past to offer a moral voice, and I wonder, “Where has that Joe Biden gone?”

Sarah: You write that Biden came to Israel with enormous empathy for Israelis, following the horrific attacks of Oct. 7. But you also say that you think the empathy has been unequally applied to the conflict. Can you explain what you mean?

Nick: So I think that there is something of an empathy gap, and when I see President Biden talk about the Israeli suffering after Oct. 7, you can just see how authentic that is. He means it. I mean, he’s, he’s hurting. He feels that suffering. And when he speaks about Gazan suffering, you don’t sense that same deep pain, that same sense of walking in other people’s shoes. And I think that this empathy gap does make it easier to support policies that, you know, he recognizes causes a great deal of suffering, a great deal of individual loss, led more than a thousand kids in Gaza to now be amputees. But it historically has been easier for us to impose costs on people abroad — whether they were Vietnamese or Afghans or Iraqis — when we identify a little bit less with them.

And I wonder if that isn’t the case right here.

Sarah: From a humanitarian standpoint, how would you describe Biden’s approach when it comes to Israel and to Gaza?

Nick: I think President Biden is legitimately deeply distressed by the suffering in Gaza and starvation. And he has regularly called on Israel to dial back the bombing and to allow more aid into Gaza.

I think he recognizes this is not the way he would want to conduct that war, but he imposes no consequences when his guidance is ignored and when the bombings continue and when the starvation continues. And so if you continue to provide the material, if you continue to provide the support, if you continue to provide the diplomatic protection, then it’s a little hard to then complain when 12,000 kids are killed, when kids do starve to death.

President Biden has talked a lot about how Israel should let in more food into Gaza, and he got to the point of organizing airdrops to drop food in. But back in December, he actually had a chance to do something, and the U.N. Security Council was organizing a structure that would provide a U.N. mechanism to inspect food going into Gaza to get around the Israeli system that has been a real block for food getting in. And the White House blocked that effort. They essentially watered it down to nothing. So the Israeli inspections are still the structure that is in place and that still are impeding food getting in.

Sarah: You say you think that there has been a miscalculation on the part of the administration, and Biden particularly, at how this war would play out. How was it miscalculated?

Nick: So I think that the Biden administration didn’t appreciate how harsh Israeli bombings would be. I don’t think they appreciated how much Israel would try to block humanitarian aid into Gaza, and this caused starvation. And I don’t think they appreciated how much their own advice would be ignored regularly.

I think that President Biden had a little more confidence that he would be able to nudge Benjamin Netanyahu in the direction of more restraint, and that did not happen.

Sarah: It’s interesting you say that you think he thought he would be able to nudge him. Can you walk me through the difference between his support for Israel and his support for Netanyahu?

Nick: I mean, Biden, forever, he’s been a very strong supporter of Israel.

I think that’s partly his generation growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust and remembering Israel as a deeply fragile state, surrounded by enemies who periodically tried to destroy it. And many Democrats have been at odds with Netanyahu, who they see as fundamentally working with Republicans to try to undermine President Obama, for example, when Biden was vice president.

And Americans have always found, have always found Netanyahu to be a really difficult person. Knowing all this, somehow Biden seemed to think that he could put his arm around Netanyahu and manage him.

And instead, looking back, it seems pretty clear that it was Netanyahu who managed Biden.

Sarah: What has Biden’s strategy been with Netanyahu, in particular?

Nick: Biden recognizes what a mess he’s gotten himself into in both geopolitical terms and in humanitarian terms. His strategy has been a kind of Hail Mary pass that would involve a three-way deal with Saudi Arabia, with Israel and the U.S., in which Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel, which is something Israel would very much like. The U.S. would provide benefits to Saudi Arabia, and then Israel would agree to a two-state solution. And then there would be some kind of a cease-fire in which this would all be hammered out. And then the war wouldn’t actually resume, and then there would be work on getting some kind of Palestinian state created and end the fighting and have some kind of an international effort to rebuild Gaza.

It sounds great. It would be an incredible achievement if you were to pull it off. It seems not terribly likely to me right now, and there isn’t really a Plan B.

Sarah: One of the things you noted about the miscalculation in the piece is that you say they miscalculated the impact of Oct. 7 on Israeli society. And one thing we haven’t mentioned is that there are still hostages being held, and that has been, obviously, a driving force for much of Israeli society. How does that play into Biden’s understanding of the moment and his concern?

Nick: So that has been a real constraint, I think. And look, Israeli society was just shattered by Oct. 7, deeply, deeply traumatized. That moved Israeli public opinion and made people very suspicious that a Palestinian state would ever be feasible.

It led to a strong desire to try to completely eradicate Hamas and accept civilian losses if that was part of that path.

Sarah: So where do we go from here? Does the administration have diplomatic room to maneuver?

Nick: I think that right now Biden is on a cul-de-sac. I don’t think that the path he’s on right now is going to take him to a better place. And in fact, there are a lot of risks that things could get worse. We could have a wider war involving Iran, involving Hezbollah. We could also have famine break out in Gaza. And it’s also just hard to see how this ends, because even if Israel dials back the bombing, then what authority is there going to be in Gaza that can actually provide health care, can distribute food, can establish order?

So I’m afraid we’re not on a very good path, and I think that the answer has to be to try to create consequences when Israel doesn’t listen to Biden, and the obvious consequence is to withhold offensive arms.

I think that would get the attention of the Israel Defense Forces very quickly. It was notable that when Biden finally raised the possibility of using his leverage and had a tough conversation with Netanyahu and warned about those consequences, then almost immediately Israel did allow more aid in, and I just wish that he had had that conversation months and months earlier.

Sarah: Do you think it’s politically practical for him domestically to condition aid? Where would that position him on the domestic front, given the election?

Nick: I mean, it’s difficult for Biden because the Democratic Party has many people who are outraged by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but it also has many people who were deep, strong supporters of Israel and would be appalled by a suspension of offensive arms.

But public opinion has moved very quickly, and at this point, a majority — not just the Democrats — but a majority of Americans, as a whole, disapprove of Israeli actions in Gaza. And so I think that would be the smarter move.

Sarah: What do you think Biden must do right now, most urgently?

Nick: So I think he needs to suspend the transfer of offensive arms to Israel, pending food actually being delivered to Gaza to end this starvation, and some indication of dialing back the more reckless side of the bombing in Gaza and then push immediately for some kind of a cease-fire and hostage release and, likewise, then try to use that for some kind of an arrangement for a Palestinian state.

Sarah: Before I let you go, we’ve talked about possible practical political moves the administration might make, but really your piece is about morality and legacy. And I wonder if you can bring us back to that for a moment. What is the takeaway you have about this moment for Biden now on that issue?

Nick: I think of the compassion that Joe Biden has shown at various points for people who are suffering around the world and his sense of moral obligation to address that suffering. And then I try to juxtapose that with what is happening in Israel and Gaza, and I admire the compassion that he showed for victims of Oct. 7 and the moral clarity he showed after Oct. 7, when it was necessary to call this out as barbaric and intolerable. But if you only care about human rights for one side in a conflict, then you don’t actually care about human rights. And if you regard the deaths of children on one side of a conflict as a tragedy, as unacceptable, but deaths of children on the other side of the conflict as regrettable, then there is something profoundly wrong not just with your geopolitics but with your moral compass.

And I fear that is the direction we have strayed in, at the end of the day. We forget there’s the basic principle that all lives have equal value, and that has to be our sense of where we go forward, and it’s very hard to integrate that principle in military conflict and geopolitics, but we can do a lot better at integrating it than we have done.

Sarah: Nick, thank you so much. This is a tough conversation, but I really appreciate your time.

Nick: Thank you, Sarah.

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] .

This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin and Annie-Rose Strasser. Engineering by Efim Shapiro, with mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “ Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life .” @ NickKristof