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TEN

The Geopolitics of the Future

DEBATING GEOPOLITICS

Current debate over the character and value of geopolitics, including, indeed, criticism of its validity, can be seen as exemplifying what Harvey Sicherman, protégé and friend of Strausz-Hupé, termed in 2002 “the revival of geopolitics.” 1  To a degree, this revival—frequently noted by commentators over the last decade and, even more, the last five years—reflected the need, after the Cold War, for a new or revived vocabulary of explanatory terms when dealing with new concerns. This revival was also linked to an awareness, especially once the “War on Terror” started, that geographical and cultural factors were indeed significant. The growth in Chinese power and ambition from the early 2000s, and concern about Chinese intentions, proved important to the revival, notably for US and Japanese commentators. So also did issues of prioritization in policy.

The ambiguities of the term geopolitics remain, however, while the issue of implementation and, more broadly, the move from theory to practice, continues to be significant. Furthermore, the impact of particular theories about geopolitics have left the subject, when conventionally understood, heavily historicized. Nevertheless, these theories are not crucial to the central question of the impact of geography on the political character, interests, and interaction of states. 2  Here, the key issue is not Mackinder, Haushofer or Bush, nor the body of literature that self-consciously employs the language of geopolitics and/or the critique of critical geopolitics; but, rather, the relationship between environmental factors, and human action and intentions. 3

The lines of debate in this relationship are essentially still those of the early twentieth century, namely those focused on the extent and nature of environmental determinism and influence. In terms of the dialogue of, and debate over, structure and agency, moreover, environmental determinism had, and has, a parallel with the continuing emphasis on the role of the system in accounts of international relations. Both the environmental perspective and that focused on the international system offers an approach that lends particular character to the related geopolitics.

The past value of these accounts can, and should, be discussed, but the issue here is the geopolitics of the future. Given the volatility of international relations, of environmental developments such as population growth, resource availability, global temperature change, and pandemics, and of other aspects of the future, such discussion may appear very problematic. It is, for example, unclear how far the rise of China, and more generally the non-West, will lead to specific political and military outcomes. The relative position of the United States, and the extent and consequences of decline, are also matters for debate. 4

However, the disruptive consequences of rapid population growth appear to be a constant factor, although the rate of that growth changes. In 2014, projected figures were revised significantly upwards. Technological change is another constant factor. 5  It is not necessary to go as far as an improbable possibility—the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the solar system, oft-predicted but never yet realized—to appreciate that a new sphere of geopolitical relationship and analysis may arise, and that present-day parameters may change or, rather, be totally transformed. Always intellectually fruitful, Mackinder himself suggested in 1943 that “someday, when coal and oil are exhausted, the Sahara may become the trap for capturing direct power from the Sun.” 6  Rather than assuming an ability to predict the future, especially that beyond several decades, it is appropriate to ask which analytical approaches may well be useful and which may well be employed.

At the level of public policy and public rhetoric, commentators will largely attempt to respond to immediate issues and crises. In short, there will be a continuation of the reactive character of (and to) geopolitics. This character was seen with key past elements of geopolitical argument. Examples include Mackinder conceptualizing both the apparent Russian challenge to the British Empire in 1904 and that from Communist Russia to the European system in 1919; and also the geopolitics of Cold War containment. Indeed, much of the predictive use of geopolitics is in practice reactive to the particular circumstances and concerns of the present. This is a situation shared by many other subjects. In that perspective, it is instructive to consider geopolitical literature as an aspect of futurology. The emphasis in the literature on drives that are inherent to a geographical situation ensures that analysis of present and future are as one; and each is employed to justify policy prescriptions in, and for, the other.

A PREDICTION FROM 2002

For example, to take a book that appeared to great attention in the United States in 2002, a work that conceptualized geopolitical relationships as dynamic: Philip Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History argued that the fundamentals of the international system were changing because the nation-state was no longer able to cope with the challenges of the modern world and, instead, there had been a shift to what he termed the market-state. Underplaying the role of China, Bobbitt saw the society of market-states “as dominated by three important actors,” Europe, Japan, and the United States. 7  There was therefore a superficial resemblance to Haushofer’s three pan-regions, although in practice there was no connection. In contrast to the emphasis in classical geopolitics on rivalry and conflict, for example, Bobbitt correctly pointed out the co-dependency that arose from investment and debt. Looking to the future, he presented economic developments as the means for a rapid change in the global system. Bobbitt suggested, in his chapter on “Possible Worlds,” that by 2020 70% of the world economy would be in the former Third World and China. Some of his other suggestions, such as Pakistan and India joining in a free-trade area in 2010, appeared distinctly problematic at the time, and have been disproved.

As far as military projections were concerned, Bobbitt offered a number of scenarios, for example, a successful North Korean invasion of South Korea in 2018, followed in 2020 by the first pre-emptive strike, by an ad hoc coalition, against a Central Asian state possessing a ballistic missile system. Alternatively, the earlier acquisition by South Korea of nuclear weapons was seen as preventing a North Korean attack. Proliferation was presented as encouraging aggression, as in the possible Chinese use of neutron bombs to gain Taiwan. In contrast, the further proliferation arising from states rushing to acquire defenses, was predicted as likely to produce multiple regional standoffs: “[T]he Iron Triangles, a series of interlocking deterrence relationships around the world in which, it was believed, a mutual stability was achieved through nuclear proliferation among regional adversaries: China-Korea-Japan; Germany-Russia-Ukraine; India-Pakistan-China; Iran-Israel-Iraq; Australia-Indonesia-Malaysia; Chile-Argentina-Brazil: these were the main Iron Triangles, with subsidiary triangles such as Singapore-China-Viet Nam, Germany-Poland-Russia, France-Germany-Great Britain. 8

However much a state or a group of states might dominate the power stakes, and however much diplomacy might resolve many problems, the cost (as a result of proliferation) of trying and failing to coerce a “rogue” state were likely, Bobbitt claimed, to rise to a point that encouraged caution. This would not only be a Realpolitik scenario, but it would also be the politics of prudence that most military leaderships are apt to encourage. On the other hand, as the experience of the Vietnam War and Gulf War II (2003) conflicts suggested, US politicians, while themselves inexperienced about military matters, generally listen only to the advice they wish to hear. Moreover, politicians engage in promotion politics to ensure they receive this advice, a tendency taken much further in ideological and/or authoritarian regimes such as Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The strategic culture of the governing group is sustained through promotion policies. Thus, the politics of prudence are countered by the imperatives of commitment.

Bobbitt was at pains to stress that he was writing not what he considered futurology, but, rather, about current choices: a careful distinction. He saw cataclysmic war as a real possibility in Asia, with China, India, and Russia each facing the risk of a civil war that could, however, be succeeded by aggression. Bobbitt also suggested that the rise of civil disobedience and civil strife would provide opportunities for powers to wage indirect war. This was an instructive approach to geopolitics that, for example, echoed the role of religion in early-modern Europe. Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014 demonstrated this process.

Furthermore, Bobbitt predicted endless, low-intensity conflicts with states and nonstate groups whose plights are, and will be, the consequence of an evolving pluralist society of market-states. The opponents of globalization were thereby seen as a threat to not only themselves but also to global stability. This was a correct assessment, but needs to be matched by an awareness of rivalry between the major states.

Bobbitt concluded that there would be an overturning of accustomed notions of national stability: that it is national (not international), public (not private), and seeks victory (not stalemate). Bobbitt also argued that “a state without a strategy for war would be unable to maintain its domestic legitimacy and thus could not even guarantee its citizens’ civil rights and liberties,” 9  an assessment that was a challenge to internationalism via the agencies of world cooperation, notably the United Nations.

Works such as Bobbitt’s emphasized a theme of challenge, one that extended to the fundamentals of international and domestic politics. Geopolitical arguments provided a means of advancing such arguments and also of debating them. Indeed, geopolitics as a type of analysis served as a form of rethinking past, present and future. At the same time, the number of states that Bobbitt and others saw as able to take initiatives created a further challenge for geopolitics by lessening the dominance of great powers. This analysis gathered pace in the 2010s alongside, but separate to, that of the apparent relative decline of the United States.

USES OF THE LANGUAGE

In many respects, 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. There is felt to be a need to react conceptually, or at least polemically, to such challenges and developments as large-scale terrorism, nuclear proliferation, US interventionism, globalization and the rise of China, as well as to more specific events, such as the crisis over Ukraine in early 2014, and that over Iraq and Syria that same year. Thus, Niall Ferguson, in the September 2008 issue of the London monthly, Standpoint, wrote of “The End of ‘Chimerica’” China–America, with the sub-heading, “The delicate balance of power between China and America is unstable and the geopolitical consequences will affect us all.” This account of the economic crisis and of China’s rapid growth asked: “What are the geopolitical implications of all this?” concluding with, “One is that the great reconvergence between East and West is speeding up. . . . The second . . . is that the days when the dollar was the sole international reserve currency are coming to an end. . . . A third . . . is that troublemakers get richer.” 10  There was then an attempt, in the article, to add geographical factors, notably China’s scramble for African resources, a topic that engaged many commentators, as well as an aspect of a continuing Asian challenge to the West that began with Japanese expansionism in the 1900s.

The extent to which this argument should be seen as geopolitical in any profound sense is unclear: for example, because there is only a somewhat crude juxtaposing of West and East—although a critic might suggest that this point is true of most geopolitical work. Such an assessment would draw attention to the extent to which the earlier attempt at precision offered by accounts of environmental impact in particular countries (of the type that the mountains made the East difficult to control) has been lost with the replacement of such specificity, most of which was grounded in physical geography. Moreover, taking a different tack, much of the use of geopolitics is, in practice, part of a commentary driven by political factors.

As a specific point, Ferguson is correct in arguing that the pursuit of resources has a geographical dimension, in this case a focus on Africa by China. This focus encourages Chinese interests in the security of maritime routes across the Indian Ocean. The geopolitics of the latter has become more prominent since 2001 as that ocean has played a far greater role than hitherto in discussions of both US and Chinese policy, not least with analysis of the latter in terms of the establishment of a “string of pearls”: a series of maritime bases. At the same time, Chinese geopolitics entails the interaction and prioritization of a number of spheres, both continental and oceanic. The discussion of this interaction and prioritization involved the vocabulary of geopolitics, although other issues and languages were significant, notably that of historical position. 11  Outside commentators also saw geopolitics as part of the equation, with a sense of the interplay of the great powers over the East China Sea in 2013–2015 being best understood in geopolitical terms.

The same was the case in the 2010s with rapidly increasing international attention in the Arctic, notably as its potential as a set of routes and resources opened up with the melting of the ice linked to global warming. This issue served as a reminder of the extent to which the physical foundations of geopolitics were far from fixed. As an aspect of this attention, the routes towards the Arctic became more significant, leading, in the early 2010s, to greater Chinese interest in Iceland and in the possibility of Scottish independence, with the consequences the latter would have of handicapping the British nuclear submarine force. That this force depends on one base, Faslane on Holy Loch, in Scotland, a base also important to the United States, exemplified the geographical nature of international politics. The Arctic issue also further underlined Japan’s blocking position across Chinese maritime routes.

Terminology is an ever-relevant issue. Aside from the argument employed with reference to cultural arenas and Huntington, that the terminology employed by “followers of geopolitics” is over-simplistic, 12  “geopolitical” frequently serves as a term simply meaning “the international dimension.” Thus, an editorial in the Times of January 28, 2009, on Russia’s position, argued that, with the resource boom over, “Mr. Putin remains politically powerful, but geopolitically he is weakened.” In this context, geopolitics simply serves as a means to discuss nonideological international relations. So also with the reference five years later to Putin as “a geopolitical grandmaster.” 13  Putin, in turn, saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as a geopolitical disaster.

Returning to the general point, more is involved when considering geopolitics than a simple conceptual and/or polemical response mechanism to problems or, more critically, the combination of the cacophony of competing politicized responses with the academic need to input theory into events and events into theory. There are also serious questions of intellectual strategy. These questions include how best to assess geographical influence at a time of large-scale environmental change and resource pressure; as well as the comparable impact, in political geography, of transnationalism and, in some parts of the world, of the apparent weakness of nation states. There are also significant questions of the level and type of analysis. Geopolitics widens the perspective of analysis and provides an appreciation of global dynamics, rather than interpreting events only from a parochial or national perspective. Geopolitics also encourages attention to the role of natural phenomena, such as climate. However, at the level of decision-making, the role of geopolitics has to be tempered by the need to consider each event in terms of cultural perspectives and collective and individual drives, as well as structural factors.

THE FACTS OF PLACE AND DISTANCE

To return to the example of China, the relationship between the geographical facts of place and the dynamics of human and political geography remains important, despite the ruthless Chinese determination to overcome the constraints of nature, both in China and overseas, in their struggle for resources and growth, a struggle translated from the totalitarian-state economy Maoist regime to its post-Maoist totalitarian–capitalist successors. More generally, as an instance of the significance of place, proximity remains a key issue for international politics. This has been underlined by developments as varied, for example, as tensions over headwaters and river rights among many rivers (e.g., the Blue Nile and the Mekong) and over maritime claims (e.g., the East and South China seas, the Persian Gulf, the Arctic, and the Black and North seas) and, alternatively, the spreading use of medium-range rockets.

Alongside such realist criteria, the psychological impact of international politics is significant, but it is again related to place. Thus, in the case of perception, there is a realism: in practice, a realism that is based on geographical facts. For example, the potential impact, including the psychological fear in Europe of Middle Eastern politics is greater than in Canada due to the factor of proximity. In 2013, Bulgaria began a border fence designed to restrict the entry of refugees from the civil war in Syria. Yet, proximity is not the sole factor: that potential impact is magnified in the case of Europe by the high birth rate in Muslim immigrant communities and the related social and political issues and anxieties.

As a complicating factor, there are also the proximities created by the media with its apparent ability to overcome some of the effects of physical distance. In addition, political concerns can act as a counter to distance. In the case of the United States, the fact of distance from the Middle East is altered by political geography due to the strong commitment to Israel. Such a point underlines the value of those maps that present a spatial distortion in order to capture mental perceptions: for example, different scales in the individual map. Humorous instances are provided by maps of the world from the perspective of an inhabitant of Manhattan or Chelsea. However, more seriously, mental perceptions of spatial concern are of importance. At the same time, in the case of US attitudes to the Middle East and Cuba, such perceptions need to be understood in terms of different views by particular constituencies within the United States. Alongside this point comes that of varied willingness on the part of leaders and the public. Thus, in the view of influential American commentators in the early 2010s, and certainly in the case of Syria (2013) and Crimea (2014), the Obama administration appeared unwilling to seek to bring stability to the international order.

A similar situation can be seen in other countries. These different views are frequently linked to political programs. Thus, again, geopolitical arguments are, in part, a product of differing perceptions. That point does not reduce their value but, instead, underlines the need for careful scholarship in comprehending this situation and its implications.

Another level of complexity will continue to be provided by the level of decision-maker and commentator under consideration. Issues of geography are more important, or even dominant, to regional, and even more local participants, than to great powers.14 The West Bank provides a good example, not least with differences between Israeli and US sensitivities to Israeli security; although, in this case, both American and Israeli are in part abstractions or, seen differently, contested spaces and identities, each in fact covering a range of different, and frequently clashing, views.

This factor of scale will go on being significant, both in the Middle East and elsewhere. At the same time, scale takes on different meanings thanks to weapons capabilities, and is also transformed by technology, as shown, for example, by the deployment of longer-range missiles by Hizbullah and Hamas against Israel in the late 2000s, and as exemplified in the Gaza crisis of 2014. At the same time, these developments can be highly specific, such that there is a repeated revenge-taking, of the local and specific, on more general speculations about revolutions in military technology bringing fundamental change to the nature of war and to the related parameters of power projection.15

THE ROLE OF SCALE

Thus, despite talk of globalization, one of the key challenges in geopolitical analysis will continue to be not just the understanding of what globalization entails (not least for different constituencies that can be seen as spatially encoded), but also the relationship between the differing influence of geography at both local and global levels. Writing about the global level provides much of the literature noted as geopolitical. This will probably continue to be the case, given the emphasis on globalization and on global environmental change, as well as on the academic, popular and publishing claims bound up with the statement that a coverage is global. Yet, the local—understood in this case as state and sub-state levels—is a prime area of geographical and spatial impact on politics and deserves more attention as a field for geopolitical study.16 In 2009, Rupert Smith, a former British general, offered an instructive contrast between facts and matters that are slow to change, and the more recent and changing events that are proximate causes, suggesting that if this distinction was not drawn, there was a danger of mutual incomprehension between powers as they would classify, comprehend and act on information differently. As a further distinction, Smith argued that it was necessary to distinguish between politics and strategy, which were essentially activities, and history and geography, which were bodies of information and theoretically based interpretations. He added: “To run the two pairs together except in pursuit of a particular goal of one or both of the activities seems to me to be nonsense.”17

Indeed, conceptualizing the nature of the geographical and spatial impact on politics is likely to continue to be an important challenge, as is applying the resulting concepts.18 At the same time, the very diffuseness of this impact makes it difficult to reduce to the clear-cut clarity of theory, not least the apparent clarity offered by the use of binary opposites to evaluate and emphasize international challenges. Thanks to humans’ hard-wired proclivity to think in bifurcated ways, the temptation for dialectical thinking will ever be present and, therefore, so will geopolitics in this form. The nature of geopolitical discussion in the future may therefore reflect the tension between the preference of some commentators for engaging with the complexities of the particular and, on the other hand, the seductive simplicities of broad-brush approaches. These simplicities will continue to engage most attention, but they not only offer less than the full map, but also scales and projections that are frequently misleading.19 This is an aspect of the broader nature of geopolitics, an ambiguity that poses instructive problems but also perpetuates the subject.

ELEVEN

Conclusions

GEOPOLITICS HAS MANY BENEFITS AND OFFERS MANY insights. Like many other subjects, it is a means for argument as well as analysis, for polemic as well as policy, and these categories are not rigidly differentiated. Geopolitics focuses on human society, but also on the contexts within which, and through which, it operates. Geopolitics thus highlights the basic (but often silent) structure and infrastructure of human interaction, as well as the issues involved in formulating and implementing policy. This structure and infrastructure is both man-made (whether frontiers or transport systems) and natural (notably place, distance, terrain, climate, and resource availability), the two interacting and being linked in their influences. Many elements of geopolitics represent an interaction of structure and infrastructure: for example, coast-hinterland relations. This very range of the subject poses problems for any attempt to offer a precise and concise definition and typology.

From a different perspective, contrasting definitions of geopolitics and its application pose a series of problems. The extent to which politics, both international and domestic, can be variously interpreted indicates the difficulties with any narrow definition of geopolitics and, indeed (whether linked to that or separate), the problems with any overly didactic account of geographical determinism. Yet, returning to the point made in the Introduction, there are objective factors, such as location, space, distance, and resources; and it is pertinent to consider their impact on the formulation and execution of policy. Concern with such factors asserts a commitment to objective reality based on material factors. However, linked to this, there can be a misleading tendency to downplay the role of the human perception of the situation and the extent of choice. The nature of choice and the factors involved in the latter play significant roles, as with related aspects of the study of international relations.1

To take another approach, the tendency to treat geopolitics as a subject focused on international relations presents two questions. First, why should geopolitics not address other forms of politics that have a spatial dimension, including the dimension of activity on city streets2 and the politics of urban development? This question is particularly valid given the more general issue of geographic perspectives on history.3 The likely consequences of smaller-scale geopolitics within individual states on the geopolitics at the state level will probably increase the variations between these latter geopolitics.

Second, if attention in geopolitical studies is restricted to, or focuses on, international relations, how far is the treatment of the subject to depart from the classic political agenda? This is an agenda primarily of states, but also of international institutions, agreements, and attitudes. These can be seen as the accumulation of state views, or as an international system in which the system has a role of its own. States are the constituent parts, but alongside a system that affects their attitudes and behavior.

The second question has engaged most attention. In some circles there is a preference for alternative voices, as well as for transnational and comparative approaches and concerns. This development is of considerable value.4 Nevertheless, there can be a tendency, not least in some of the work on transnationalism, to underplay the place of the state and, indeed, to argue that it has been greatly weakened by the energy and demands of global capitalism.5 However much it may have taken on unsustainable domestic goals,6 it is far from clear that effective governance can be organized in alternative forms to that of the conventional state. Furthermore, liked or not, the state remains the key player in international and domestic politics, as well as a vital source of identity.7 Indeed, an emphasis on the state as a key player became more pronounced as a consequence of the recession that began in 2008. Despite assumptions about the decline of the state, that recession encouraged protectionism in both government policy and public attitudes, notably in opposition to large-scale immigration. Thus, there was pressure against such immigration from the governments of Australia, Britain, France, Germany, and the United States in 2013–2015.

There is a distinction between an appreciation of the role of geography and geopolitics and, on the other hand, grand geopolitical theories.8 Nevertheless, whichever the focus, key issues can be addressed as geopolitical, not least the availability of resources and the resulting significance of particular regions when considering other regions or localities with different characteristics. Geopolitics is also definitely useful as a concept when discussing the influence of geography (for example, distance, and propinquity) on inter-state politics. Linked to this is the issue of communications, with geopolitical considerations providing an explanation of reasons for change and a key measure of the importance of changes. Thus, just as the consequences of the opening of the Suez and Panama canals in the late nineteenth century and the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway involved geopolitical and geostrategic elements, so also with the likely opening of sea passages through the Arctic, to the north of both North America and Russia, as the ice melts under the impact of global warming.

The value of routes is also a matter of cultural expression for political goals, as with the Chinese welcoming of Gavin Menzies’s tendentious theory that the Chinese circumnavigated the globe in 1421.9 The China Daily was happy to claim in July 2004 that the Chinese did so well before Columbus and Magellan, and their admiral of the early fifteenth century, Zheng He, was commemorated in 2005 while his voyages were highlighted in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Some other uses of spatial elements in the past, such as patterns of settlement or territorial extent, constitute a geopolitics that is designed to be of political value in the present and the future. These elements constitute the prime basis for territorial claims.

Changes to communications and transport routes serve as a reminder of the dynamic spatial dimensions, not only of power, but also of interest: specifically state interests and those of, for example, major companies, and of the concern that accompanies them. Interests lead to and reflect commitments and tasks, both of which are very important to geopolitics. The spatial component of state interests is made dynamic by not only changes in particular states and in the means of state action, for example, military technology, but also in relationships within, and between, larger regions. Thus, for example, the geostrategic interests of the great powers have been very important for the Baltic/Nordic region and have helped direct its geopolitics. This dynamic interaction has ranged across issues such as trade, notably in naval stores and iron, as well as: the Danish Straits being a choke-point into the Baltic; Finland as a threat to, or security zone for, St. Petersburg; and the Norwegian fjords as bases for forces attacking trans-Atlantic communications or for threatening Russia’s White Sea ports.

At the same time, it can be very difficult to establish likely policy developments from a discussion of geography. Thus, alongside the recent emphasis on Chinese expansionism10 can come the more prosaic argument that the Chinese will continue to cede safeguarding their export routes across the Pacific to the United States Navy, but are less certain about the ability of other navies to defend the maritime routes to, and in, the Indian Ocean. The 1990s policy of Deng Xiaoping, ‘to observe carefully, secure our position, hide our capacities, bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile, never claim leadership’11 (a maxim released in 1995), is not one that inherently can be explained in geopolitical terms. In contrast, the Chinese concern that a North Korean collapse would lead to Korean reunification around South Korea, which brought US power to China’s border, is much more readily discussed in these terms. In practice, it is unclear how far a reunified Korea will look to the United States.

Attempts to consider how best to manage US–Chinese relations12 face the problem that compromise in terms of geographical zones of influence does not correspond with the political views of either party, while the range and overlapping character of modern weapons technology acts as a further complication. There is also the key issue of the views of other powers, such as Japan and South Korea, that will not be happy to accept the idea or consequences of zones of influence. The idea that zones of influence will prove the best way to manage the transition in Sino-American relations appeals to realists but does not capture the range of factors involved in global politics, nor the pressures rising from these factors.

Such points indicate the value, but also the complexity, of geopolitics and, moreover, the need to assess it in terms of competing as well as changing values. If geopolitics is seen along the line of Mackinder’s “Who controls the Heartland commands the World-Island,”13 or similar adages, then geopolitics can be too general and vague, and of use mainly for rhetorical purposes. A geographical situation does not dictate preparedness, strategy, or doctrine. Indeed, the changing nature of values and their clear consequences for conventional geopolitical assessments were clearly demonstrated in 2014 when it emerged that, short of resources and poorly prepared, the German military would be totally unable to meet its NATO commitments, a point publicly admitted by the defense minister. Moreover, some of the geopolitical concepts, such as that of a geopolitical center,14 are problematic.

However, if what is meant by geopolitics is that geography is an essential factor in understanding a country’s foreign policy, but not one to be seen or presented in automatic terms, then geopolitics is very important. For example, it is impossible to understand the history of US, British and Russian strategic and foreign policies without taking into consideration their geographic circumstances.

Looked at differently, state interests can be approached in terms of the ability of competing groups to define these interests in light of their particular views. In this perspective, geopolitics emerges as a central part of the debates in which such views are advanced and are identified with those of states. Thus, geopolitics becomes an argument about power rather than solely a discourse of power in which there is no argument or debate apparent. Indeed, in considering the treatment of Mackinder’s heartland theory in post-Soviet geopolitical discourse, Mark Bassin and Konstantin Aksenov have emphasized the conceptual plasticity of the theory, going on to suggest that “the popular appeal of geopolitics more generally rests significantly on its ability to generate what it calls “objective” geographical models of political relations which in fact are open to reinterpretation and even realignment, in response precisely to those shifts in historical, political, and ideological context which it claims categorically to transcend.”15

These responses provide an obvious subject for study by those interested in a historicized approach to geopolitics, including historians. Similarly, the changing use of particular arguments is best understood in terms of a discussion of the historical context.16 More generally, conceptual plasticity helps explain the appeal, or at least use, of a range of geopolitical theses.

The self-styled “critical geopolitics,” with their emphasis on how material realities are inserted into discursive contexts, and the more recent attempts to develop a Marxist or, at least, Marxisant geopolitics, can be readily and valuably incorporated into an account of geopolitics as an argument about power, an aspect that is particularly effective in terms of academic concerns in recent decades. From this perspective, the nature of “critical geopolitics” becomes an understandable factor in light of the dynamics of the debate and the determination to advance concepts of interest. Yet, some of the literature is so uncompromising that it scarcely invites such incorporation. For example, in 1996, Gearóid Ó Tuathail closed his critical account of geopolitics, one in which the latter is presented as “organically connected” to militarism, by claiming: “Critical geopolitics is one of many cultures of resistance to Geography as imperial truth, state-capitalized knowledge, and military weapon. It is a small part of a much larger rainbow struggle to decolonize our inherited geographical imagination so that other geo-graphings and other worlds might be possible.”17

There was no attempt in this passage, or elsewhere, to conceal the sense of political imperative that at least some of the “critical geopoliticians” espouse. In short, “critical geopolitics” is an aspect of a politicized debate. At the same time, it is important to stress the diversity and dynamism of “critical geopolitics” literature which, indeed, has different proponents, including feminist, postcolonial, and poststructuralist wings.18 The same is the case with Marxist geopolitics.

This book is not the place to discuss the epistemological and philosophical aspects of objectivity. Instead, reprising my argument in the discussion of cartographic accuracy, I would argue for objectivity as valid and possible as an aspiration, whatever the difficulty in execution; and I would also draw attention to the role of autonomous subcultures, for example, cartographers. That geopolitical arguments (often in the form of maps) have been exploited for propaganda purposes, often brilliantly so, does not mean that they are without value, or, indeed, simply systems to control territory by allocating it, or by manipulating the understanding of spatial issues.19 It is necessary to understand the nuances of perception, and therefore representation, and to “unpick” texts, at the same time as appreciating the inherent problems of geopolitical analysis and exposition. For example, a “Map of the West Coast of Africa . . . including the colony of Liberia,” published in Philadelphia in 1830, can readily be castigated for its assumptions and languages. Tribes are stereotyped, as with the Dey, “an indolent and inoffensive people,” and the interior is presented as lost in benighted obscurity: “At a distance of from 30 to 60 miles inland, a belt of dense and almost impassable forest occurs along the whole of the coast, of from one to two days journey in breadth, which nearly prevents all intercourse between the maritime and interior tribes, and some of the principal causes why the inland parts of this section of Africa are so entirely unknown to the civilized world.”

The last remark now seems ridiculously Western-centric, but there was still the practical problem in 1830 of how best to depict Liberia with the information available.

Geopolitics can be regarded as similar to cartography and worthy of discussion in these terms, notably those of the inherent difficulty of the subject and the practical problems involved. At the same time (as emerges from this book), there is no coherence to geopolitics. The lack of coherence is not a matter of chronological change, nor of differing national cultures or understandings of geopolitics; although each of those factors is relevant. Instead, there are differing understandings and uses of geopolitics, not least between political geographers and political scientists, and between scholars and those in the public sphere, whether as commentators or as planners.

Such a typology and matrix needs to allow sufficiently for overlaps and mutual impacts. Moreover, categories in geopolitical use and presentation shift and are capable of a variety of analyses. This point is particularly the case with political geographers, a group that can be taken to cover geopolitics in its varied manifestations. “Critical geopoliticians” are prone to regard old-school political geographers as reactionaries. Thus, one aspect of the history of geopolitics is of the differing definition of geography and geographers and of the changing use of political geography. This is a point that can be greatly amplified by considering the varied definition of geography and the contrasting use of geographers around the world at present.

A further dynamic dimension in the use of geopolitical analysis is that of time. Space and distance seem fixed by the scale, but the very notion of both has changed over time (as have their depiction and measurement20), and these changes have greatly affected the understanding of power. Moreover, the rates of change, both actually and in perception, are not constant. For example, journeys and concepts of space and time in 1780 were more similar to the situation 230 years earlier than 230 years later. As a separate element, time is more generally significant because a lack of historical awareness weakens some of the use and understanding of geopolitics. For example, inappropriate geopolitical continuities can be advanced.

To sum up, geography and politics are closely intertwined, although that no more means that all geography is political than that all politics is geographical. A key dimension in which geopolitics is useful is that of the global scale, but geopolitics is also of crucial value in the understanding of particular states and communities, their characters, composition, development, and interactions. If the interconnection of areas in a region is a sphere for geopolitical consideration, then there is no reason why the region in question should solely be that of the globe. Indeed, more attention in geopolitics needs to be devoted to sub-global levels than to the lure of the world question. Moreover, the quest for a single explanatory factor or, indeed, means of analysis, is unhelpful.21 Linked to this, geopolitical writing would benefit greatly from a measure of skepticism in assessing influences and in drawing conclusions, and also from offering more questions than answers.