GEOPOLITICS : CLASSICAL AND MODERN

GEOPOLITICS : CLASSICAL AND MODERN by Bertil Haggman Introduction There are a number of different opinions concerning the definition of geopolitics. It must be regarded as a science bordering on geography, history, political science and international relations. Out of the classical approach grew one branch, which to some extent was used by the Nazis as a pseudo-scientific rationale for their expansionist policies. This resulted in a setback for geopolitics that lasted at least until the mid-1970s. Modern geopolitics draws much from classical geopolitics and relates power politics and geography. The politician, the military planner, and the diplomat can use geopolitics as a method to analyze how geographical factors can be of importance when planning. In the latest 15-20 years many writers have come to let geopolitics mean just political geography or the relationship between politics in general and geography. Geopolitics in South America differs somewhat in context from Western geopolitics in general. Some basic facts and selected bibliographies on this branch of geopolitics has been presented separately by CRG. A concept closely related to geopolitics is geostrategy. It can be defined as the application of geopolitics to military planning on high level, how to best use national defense and war-making resources. Some of the basic concepts of geopolitics were presented by the German geographer, Professor Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), who coined the phrase anthrogeographical meaning a combination of anthropology, geography and politics. According to Ratzel states had many of the characteristics of living organisms. He also introduced the idea that a state had to grow, to expand or die and of “living frontiers”, that borders were dynamic and subject to change. The Swedish Professor Rudolf Kjellen (1864-1922) was first to use the term geopolitics (in Swedish “geopolitik”) and he can be regarded as the founder of the science of geopolitics. The basics were presented in 1900 in the book Introduction to Swedish Geography based on lectures at the Gothenburg University. The State as a Living Form (1916) is generally regarded as his most important book in relation to geopolitics. Meanwhile a geopolitical school was developing in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947), a British geographer, stressed the importance of land transport as a key to control and power. The core of Mackinder’s land-based power was the Eurasian “Heartland” of Russia. Eurasia and Africa constituted the “World Island”. The power that could control the Heartland would have a dominant position, what we today would call a superpower status. Admiral Alfred T. Mahan (1840-1914) of the United States on the other hand stressed the significance of sea power and that control of sea lanes of communication was the most effective way of exercising control and power in the world. After World War I a German geopolitical school was developing under General and Professor Karl Haushofer (1869-1946). He used the basic concepts of Ratzel and Kjellen. Between 1925 and 1945 he and his colleagues produced a mass of geopolitical writing and he founded Journal of Geopolitics (Zeitschrift fuer Geopolitik). Haushofers geopolitical ideas were used to give legitimacy to the conquests of Nazi Germany before and during World War II. It must, however, be noted that Haushofers influence was exaggerated by the allies and that he had no access to the inner circles of the Nazi Party. Also, he spent some time in concentration camp at the end of the war and his son Albrecht was executed for his participation in the 20 July coup against Hitler. At about the same time the American Professor Nicholas Spykman (1893-1943) felt that Mackinder had put too much emphasis on the Heartland. Instead he offered the concept of the “Rimland”, a large buffer zone between sea and land power. After World War II the Rimland concept became part of the United States policy of containment of the Soviet Union and communism, a concept describing the policy to prevent the USSR (and originally the Peoples Republic of China) from spreading influence to the Rimland. After World War II the term geopolitics was rarely used. During the 1970s, to some extent because Henry Kissinger used the term, geopolitics experienced a renaissance, which has bee strengthened during the 1990s. Modern classical geopolitics is mainly based on Mackinder and Spykman. To some extent geopolitics has changed its theoretical dynamics during the 1990s. S.c. critical geopolitics is playing a wider role. Much of modern geopolitics has been included in subjects such as national defense planning, strategic studies and elements of national power. An important contributor in this respect has been the British born strategic expert Colin S. Gray and his book Geopolitics of the Nuclear Era (1977). On the other hand some strategists have declared geopolitics to be outdated and replaced by geo-economics.