Problematizing Geopolitics: Survey, Statesmanship and Strategy Author(s): Gearóid Ó. Tuathail and Gerard Toal Source: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1994), pp. 259-272 Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/622322 Accessed: 16-07-2015 09:04 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/622322?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 194.128.227.202 on Thu, 16 Jul 2015 09:04:48 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 259 Problematizinggeopolitics: survey, statesmanshipand strategy Gear6id 0 Tuathail (Gerard Toal) 'Geopolitics'is a polysemousterm that exceeds all attemptsto delimitit as a singular presence.It is betterapproached by criticallyinvestigating how the conceptis made to carrycertain meanings in politicaldiscourse. This paper considersthree different ways in whichgeopolitics is used to make meaningin global politics:(i) as survey, (ii) as a philosophyof statesmanshipand (iii) as grandstrategy. In documentingthis performativerange of geopolitics,the paper problematizesthe conditionsof possibilitywhich enable the productionof geopoliticsas knowledgegenerally. The key problematicit identifiesis a Cartesianperspectivism which operates through assumptionsabout the facultyof sightto producethe sitingand citingof global politics. key words criticalgeopolitics survey navigate strategy egopolitics Associate Professor,Department of Geography,Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg,Virginia 24061, USA revised manuscriptreceived I December 1993 Introduction thereforenot surprisingthat 'a certainamount of obscurityhas accompaniedits use' (Thermaenius Geopoliticsis not an immanentlymeaningful term 1938, 165). but a historicallyambiguous and unstableconcept. The outbreakof World War II and the sub- Originallycoined in Swedish by RudolfKjellen in sequent allied propaganda war against Nazi an articleon the boundariesof Sweden in 1899, the Germanyfacilitated the emergenceof an English word geopolitikwas firstintroduced into Germanin language word 'geopolitics'. Geopolitics became a reviewof Kjellen'swork in 1903 and subsequently the name for a new and 'lurid scientificsystem' by Kjellen himselfin 1905 (Holdar 1992, 319-20). that, in the words of Life magazine, 'a Briton Popularizedmost famouslyby KarlHaushofer, who invented,the Germans used and the Americans discoveredKjellen's work during World War I, the need to study'(Thorndike 1942). Once introduced term establisheditself in interwarGermany and into allied politicaldiscourse, geopolitics came to took on a set of meaningsdistinct from its use as a have a paradoxicaldouble life.On the one hand, categoryin Kjellen.Kjellen was the firstof many the term was a taboo word associated with an commentatorsto decrythe polysemityof the term, imperialistNazi foreignpolicy. On the otherhand, complainingthat the Germanswere misusingthe geopolitics was a necessary evil, a hardheaded very word he himselfcoined (Thermaenius1938, strategicapproach to the study of global politics 166). By the 1930s, the word had become a popular that the allies could not affordto ignore. 'Let us one in Germanpolitical language on international learn our geopolitics' and 'It's smart to be a affairs.Inevitably, this popularizationof the term geopolitical'were the distilledsentiments pushed was accompaniedby a certainamount of confusion by anti-Naziemigres in the earlyforties (Schuman as to whatgeopolitik really meant. One commentator 1942; Strausz-Hupe1943). suggestedin 1938 that the term'geopolitics' had Though stigmatizedas a 'pseudoscience'by cer- at least five differentmeanings and that it was tain influentialintellectuals like Isaiah Bowman, TransInst Br GeogrNS 19 259-272 1994 ISSN: 0020-2754 Printedin Great Britain This content downloaded from 194.128.227.202 on Thu, 16 Jul 2015 09:04:48 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 260 Gear6id6 Tuathail RichardHartshome and Hans Morgenthau,geopoli- and strategy.Though we could identifymore, I ticsbecame part of Cold War strategicdiscourse. In have chosen to elaborateon these threeusages of the early 1950s Schmidt(1954), in an introduction geopoliticsnot because theyare objectivelydistinct to a bibliographyon geopoliticsfor the US Airforce, but ratherbecause they,first, provide a point of noted thatit is used in a wide varietyof senses.In entryinto longstandingpractices associated with some instances,he suggested,the termappears to geopoliticsand, secondly,provide a pointof depar- have no meaningat all. In the 1960s and 1970s, turefor an explorationof the conditionsof possi- Henry Kissingerpropelled geopolitics back into bilityof geopoliticsas knowledgein general.The general public discourse and made it a favourite productionof geopoliticsas knowledge,I wish to termof journalistskeen to be read as seriousand suggest,is dependentupon the practiceof privileg- worldly (Hepple 1986). In Latin America at this ing a transcendent,seeing man as the authoritative time,the conceptbecame part of the ideology of seer of global politicalreality. The task of critical bureaucraticauthoritarian states (Hepple 1992). geopoliticsis to expose the operationand subvert Withinthe United States in the early 1980s, geo- the authorityof thisCartesian figure. politics came to have significancein the Reagan administration'srevitalized production of the Cold War,appearing frequently in discussionsconcerning Geopolitics as survey: the panopticonism Central America and the Caribbean (O Tuathail of the strategicgaze 1986; Ronfeldt1983). Inevitably,these proliferating usages erodedthe confidence of some in geopolitics Though the termgeopolitics has been in use for as a meaningfulconcept. In 1986 one political less than a century,the general historyof geo- scientistwas moved to writethat the difficultywith graphicaldiscourse has been a deeply politicalone geopoliticsis that'it is conceptuallyso broad thatit (Livingstone1993). Geography is a practicethat can and does meanall thingsto all people' (Haglund gained its identityfrom the Westernimperializing 1986, 223). projectof surveying,mapping and cataloguingthe Complaintsabout the polysemityor meaning- earth.From the fifteenthcentury onwards, Western lessness of geopolitics are problematicin them- expansionismproduced a 'world' measured and selves.In general,such observations assume a naive definedby Westernsystems of signification.The theoryof languagewhere words and conceptshave mathematicalsystems constructed upon notionsof stable,assured identities which refer unproblemati- Euclidianspace gave rise to systemsof calibration cally and unambiguouslyto a fixedset of referents. which measured the earth in terms of European This assumption,however, has long been question- scales (theFrench metric system, the British imperial able. Ratherthan assumingthat we can ever truly system). The Linnean-inspiredscience of natural defineand isolate the essence of geopolitics,this historyin theseventeenth century created a tableof paper seeks to problematizethe ways in which classificationwhich European explorersprojected geopolitics has been made meaningfulin recent onto territoritiesthey considered 'blank' (Pratt political discourse. How is geopolitics put into 1992). The scientificsurveying of figures like politicaldiscourse? How does it function?What is Alexandervon Humboldt was made possible by the problematicmarked by its deploymentand use? earlierprojects of militarysurveying which enabled Instead of treatinggeopolitics as a self-evident territoriesto be conqueredand subdued.The con- presence,this paper seeks to questionhow geopoli- tinuedmaintenance of colonial empires,and their tics is presencedin our politicalculture, how it is a laterencroachment into the interiors of Africain the gatheringpoint formeaning and knowledgeabout middlenineteenth century, was dependentupon the global politics,a markof a series of performative persistentgeneration of surveysand maps of all practices.This paperis partof a broaderproject that sorts: navigational,military, topographical, econ- has come to be known as criticalgeopolitics (Dalby omic, demographic,scientific and political. The 1991; Dodds 1993; 0 Tuathailand Agnew 1992; maintenanceof empire depended on a will to 0 Tuathail1994). knowledgeabout places,territories and populations. To effectthis problematization of geopolitics,this Europeanscience understoodits knowledgeto be paper considersthree cases of how geopoliticsis an objectiveaccount of the earth,a formof knowl- deployedin late Cold War US politicalculture, cases edge which describedthat which was supposedly which I have organized