"Geopolitics" In

1 Geopolitics programmatically entitled book Influences of Geographic Environment that “the natural envi- GEORGE STEINMETZ ronment” was “the physical basis of history” (Semple 1911: 2). Geopolitical thinkers at the The word geopolitics points to the interface turn of the century emphasized the effects of between two distinct ontological realms and physical geography and spatial location on the scientific disciplines, geography, and politics. growth and decline of states and on military and The first of these root words, “geography,” is foreign policies. British geographer Halford not necessarily restricted in this context to tra- Mackinder (1904: 422), another key founder ditional geographic concerns like climate or of geopolitics, argued that the “geographical the Earth’s physical surface, but entails a much causation” of politics was permanent, ines- broader spatial perspective concerned with capable, and pervasive, and that control of the scale and location, the size, shape, and bounda- inaccessible lands of the Eurasian “pivot” area ries of territories, and the processes by which (see Figure 3) was the key to world supremacy. territories are socially defined. The other root Alfred Thayer Mahan, a Rear Admiral in the word, “politics,” points toward subfields of US Navy, developed an opposing argument political science like international relations about the primacy of seapower and control of which are also focused on states and empires, the sea. In a chapter on the “general nature of borders and frontiers, international alliances geographical influences,” British historian H.B. and polarizations, the balance and imbalance George argued (1907: 7) that “the destinies of of global power, and war, imperialism, and man are very largely determined by their envi- diplomacy (Burchill & Linklater 1996). ronment,” especially climate and the “physical If geopolitics is delimited by the overlap features of the Earth.” The leading figure in between geography and politics, this defini- the German geopolitical school from the early tion does not yet specify the nature of the 1920s until 1945, Karl Haushofer, defined the relationship between the two realms. The field as recognizing that “the fundamental fea- founding decades of geopolitical discussion tures determined by the surface of the Earth saw an emphasis on geographical modes of … are the only lasting ones” in international explanation. Geopolitical thinkers at the turn political struggles (Haushofer 1924 [2002]: of the previous century emphasized the effects xxxiii). The editorial committee of Haushofer’s of physical geography and spatial location on Journal of Geopolitics (Zeitschrift für Geopolitik) a state’s growth and decline and its military defined geopolitics as the “science of political- and foreign policies. The word geopolitics was spatial organisms [politische Raumorganismen] coined by the Swedish social scientist Rudolf and their structures” insofar as they are con- Kjellén (1917: 46), who defined it as “the doc- ditioned “by the Earth” (Haushofer et al. trine of the state as a geographic organism or 1928: 27). a spatial phenomenon: i.e., the state as land, Contemporary treatments of geopolitics territory, region, or, most precisely, as a Reich often contain echoes of these environmen- [realm, empire].” Kjellén’ s thinking was based tally-determinist origins. Heinz Brill defines largely on the work of German geographer geopolitics as the “doctrine of the influence Friedrich Ratzel, who founded the subfields of geographic space on the politics of a state” of political geography and anthropo-geogra- (Brill 1998: 206). A recent dictionary of secu- phy as the study of the geographical basis of rity studies defines geopolitics as the “analysis the state’s action (Ratzel 1882, 1897). Ratzel’s of the influence of geographic conditions of American disciple Ellen Semple argued in her

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a state on its national and international poli- “the study of relations between the conduct of cies” (Meier et al. 2005: 144). The Encyclopædia a politics of power oriented toward the interna- Britannica (n.d.) still defines geopolitics as tional level and the geographic frame in which “analysis of the geographic influences on power it is carried out.” The exact nature of the rela- relationships in international relations.” Even a tionship between the two terms, their specific Marxist geographer like David Harvey (2003) mechanisms, causal powers, and their relative conjures up an image of a conflict between one importance, are left open in this image of a group of states trying to forge a Eurasian bloc semantic range. versus an American strategy of disrupting this Another feature of “classical” geopoliti- alliance by cultivating allies in what geopo- cal discourse that resonates in contemporary litical thinkers used to call the East European usages is the field’s emphasis on practical “shatterbelt” (Trampler 1932) between Europe political applications. For most of its history and Russia, with the ultimate goal of prevent- geopolitics has been a “‘science’ of the mili- ing the first group of powers from securing a tary staffs and security councils” (Tunander stranglehold on Middle Eastern oil. 2008: 167), though this has started to change Today the idea of geopolitics covers a broad in recent years. Geopolitics has never been an semantic terrain that ranges between geo- exclusively or even a predominantly academic determinist and politicist extremes. At the formation; the boundaries between scientific geodeterminist pole we find Kjéllen’s original and applied geopolitics have always been fluid. definition of geopolitics as the doctrine of the Even the word geopolitics is characterized by influence of geographic space on the form and a constitutive ambiguity insofar as it refers action of states and empires. At the opposite both to the object of analysis and to the sci- pole, geopolitics is a synonym for great power ence of that object. The field of geopolitics has politics. This second usage owes much to Henry included both imperialist politicians and arm- Kissinger, who defined “geopolitical” perspective chair intellectuals. For Otto Maull (1926: 246), as “an approach that pays attention to the Hans W. Weigert (1942: 734), and Richard requirements of equilibrium,” thereby margin- Hartshorne (1960: 53), geopolitics was simply alizing spatial considerations (Kissinger 1979: applied political geography. Indeed, the most 55, 1994; Howard 1994), but it was used in this famous geopolitical thinkers, from Mahan, way long before Kissinger (Coogan 1991: 5). Mackinder, and Haushofer, through to Henry Others soon began echoing Kissinger’s influ- Kissinger, Augusto Pinochet, Colin S. Gray, ential usage, defining geopolitics simply as “the and Zbgniew Brzezinki, have all moved in and art and the process of managing global rivalry” out of academic settings and foreign policy (Jay 1979: 486). Whereas the geodeterminist making. Even the university-based geopoliti- definition threatens to efface any difference cians have pursued political aims. Friedrich between geopolitics and political geography, Ratzel called for changes in popular educa- the second definition is almost identical to tion in order to promote awareness of plan- “realist” models of international relations, etary politics (Hell 2011). And even though except that geopoliticians pay more atten- adherents of contemporary “critical” versions tion to territories, borders, and concrete loca- of geopolitics have distanced themselves from tions, while realist models often treat space as the tradition of providing “advice to the prince” entirely abstract. The modal definition under- (Dalby 1994), many direct their work toward stands geopolitics as the analysis of all relations an alternative set of practical aims such as between space, on the one hand, and organized developing militant counter-strategies to mili- forms of political domination, contestation, tarism and imperialism and supporting local and alliance, on the other (Meier et al. 2005: and social movements or weaker nation-states 144). Pierre Gallois (1990: 37) exemplifies this against larger hegemons and centralized pow- modal definition, describing geopolitics as ers. Some have tried to transform geopolitics

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into a theory of peace rather than war (Hepple There was also a growing sense after 1945 2000; Gilmartin & Kofman 2004). that geography was no longer as politically or Analysis of the relations between geogra- intellectually significant as it had been before. phy and political power reaches back to Plato, The new models of military and foreign policy Aristotle, Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, were no longer as likely to be rooted in con- Strabo, and other writers in the ancient Greek crete maps and categories of geographical and Roman worlds (Hartog 1978; Gallois 1990: space. Although containment strategies actu- 140–144). Attention to the nexus of geogra- ally took highly specific spatialized forms, the phy and politics reemerged in Europe during ideological definition of the struggle between the eighteenth century, partly as a result of the communism and capitalism tended to detach Enlightenment and partly as a reaction against itself from specific places (Mamadouh 1998: it. In Spirit of the Laws, first published in 1748, 238). As the United States emerged over the Montesquieu (1989) “conceived human life course of the twentieth century as the domi- as a reflection of geographical and climatic nant global power, European colonial strat- conditions” (Collingwood 1946: 79). Herder egies and Eurasian models of continental (1784: 284) connected the uniqueness of each expansion began to seem outdated. Even in national culture to geography, for example, con- its efforts to exercise global hegemony, the necting the lack of “inlets and bays” along the United States tended to pursue nonterritorial Chinese coastline to China’s “semi-Tartarish strategies that did not entail permanent occu- despotism.” Geopolitical modes of thinking pation of foreign countries (Steinmetz 2005b). were nourished by European exploration and The American overseas military and politi- imperialism and by the exigencies of securing cal presence was pointillistic, taking the form political control over conquered territories in of an “empire of basis” (Johnson 2004). As far-flung colonial empires. With the comple- nonterritorial forms of US imperial domination of the westward continental expansion of tion replaced European colonialism, specifi- the United States frontier and the end of the cally geographic approaches began to seem less second wave of European colonial conquest, pertinent to understanding international rela- the idea of “planetary thinking” or globalization tions. Murphy (2007) suggested that the new emerged powerfully (Kearns 1984). Mackinder model of American global hegemony rendered (1904) signaled the end of the “Columbian “place differences increasingly irrelevant” and epoch” of European expansionism. Geographic social science began to treat “differences from attention turned from explorations of “abso- place to place as ‘noise’ in their model-building lute space” to interest in relative space, location, efforts.” Political scientists Przeworski and and scale. The idea that the entire globe was Teune (1970: 30) called explicitly for “replac- now occupied by states and that events in the ing proper names of social systems by the rel- most far-flung parts of the globe would be felt evant variables.” Mamadouh (1998) pointed to everywhere lent a renewed immediacy to geo- improvements in communication technology political thinking. By the 1920s, geopoliticians and nuclear weapons as additional reasons for were discussing the emergence of what one of the decline of geography after 1945. them labeled the “global village” (das Dörfchen Nonetheless, open or “hot” warfare, as Smith Erde: Dix 1929), decades before Marshall (2003: 26) noted, has been “good for geogra- McLuhan re-coined that term (Murphy 1997: phy,” and the same has been true of geopolitics. 50). The evolution of geopolitical thinking The most recent explosion of interest in geo- has also responded to technological advances politics accompanied the American invasion in ship-building and navigation (Livingstone of Iraq in 2003. This is an example of the way 1993), aviation (Hochholzer 1930; Weigert & in which geopolitical discussions have been Stefansson 1944), nuclear weapons (Zoppo & shaped repeatedly by more punctual, world Zorgbibe 1983), and the Internet (Douzet 1997). political events. The geopolitical analysis of

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Figure 1 The Central European great economic space, from Volk und Reich (Wucher 1935).

borders and frontiers, for example, was inau- expansive, warlike nature of the state and the gurated by Ratzel after the German wars of international system of states. This thematiza- unification (1866–1871) had redrawn the map tion of boundaries was given new urgency by of Europe. The Berlin West Africa confer- the massive realignment of European national ence, convened by the German Chancellor in borders following World War I. Some of the 1884–1885, signaled the beginning of a 15-year most politically explosive changes in these period in which the European powers carved boundaries were attributed to the “American up Africa and the islands of the Pacific and Haushofer,” Isaiah Bowman, the geographer distributed them amongst themselves. Ratzel’s who helped to convince Woodrow Wilson to Political Geography, which is often described as include a demand for Polish independence the founding text of geopolitics, described the in his “Fourteen Points” of 1918 (Smith 2003: political border as a dynamic, living “peripheral 125). These territorial losses to Poland were organ” rather than a static line (Ratzel 1923: one of the central German grievances through- section 6). Ratzel explicitly linked the mutabil- out the 1920s and played a huge role in Nazi ity of international borders to the inherently propaganda and, eventually, Nazi policy.

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I S U Deutscher Deutscher Kultur- Deutscher Kultur- Sereu-U. Jnsel. L R Volksboden boden ím Norden boden ím Süden deutschium A W N 50 km 0 50 100 150 200 250 km I E

Figure 2 Map of German ethnic space and cultural space (Volksboden and Kulturboden), showing extension beyond German state borders (from von Loesch 1925, facing p. 72).

The frontier or border became, and has Geopolitical planning sought to achieve remained, a central theme in geopolitical writ- informal hegemony over the “Central European ing in Germany (von Loesch 1922; Haushofer greater economic space” (Figure 1) or, even 1927) and France (Ancel 1935; Gottmann more ominously, to realign German state bor- 1952; Febvre 1962; Raffestin 1974; Foucher ders with the much wider region of ethnic or 1980). According to Golcher (1927), the bor- racial Germandom, and eventually with the der had to be considered a “palpable and inde- even wider lands of what they understood as pendent life form, an organism in its own right “ancient German” settlement (Jacobsen 1979: rather than simply the ‘skin’ of the state organ- 257) (Figure 2). The Nazi–Soviet pact and the ism” (Murphy 1997: 32). Ethnosociologists German alliance with Japan were greeted by Max Hildebert Boehm and Karl C. von Haushofer, who accepted Mackinder’s argu- Loesch founded the Berlin Institut für Grenz- ment that control of the Eurasian pivot area und Auslandsstudien (Institute for the Study would guarantee global domination (Jacobsen of Borders and Foreign Areas) in 1926 and 1979: vol. 1, 268). Haushofer was depicted in published a yearbook, Deutsches Grenzland popular American publications like Reader’s (German Borderlands), which documented Digest and Life as the scientific genius behind ongoing “German border struggles” (Boehm Hitler’s policies of attaining Lebensraum (living 1938; Klingemann 1996: ch. 4). space) through conquest, and many Americans

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became convinced that it was “smart to be geo- 1991: 11) and the doctrines reemerged in the political” (in the words of Strausz-Hupé 1943) 1980s. Geopolitical ideas also flourished in or “fas est ab hoste doceri” (“it is right to learn the authoritarian states of Latin America even from the enemy”), in Haushofer’s favored in the 1960s and 1970s: the future Chilean maxim, from Ovid (Ó Tuathail 1996: 130). The General Augusto Pinochet (1968) published US War Department created a Geopolitical an introduction to geopolitics, journals called Section inside the Military Intelligence ser- Geopolítica appeared in Argentina and Uru- vice in 1942 (Coogan 1991: 201–212). Soviet guay, and the Revista chilena de geopolítica was success in World War II led to the American created in 1984. “containment” policies that were derived in The next wave of explicit geopolitical dis- part from Mackinder’s classic geopolitical the- cussion began in the 1980s in the wake of ory. These policies sought to control the “rim- the escalation of the nuclear confrontation lands” of Eurasia, “that is, Western Europe, the between the United States and USSR and the Pacific Rim, and the Middle East” (Klare 2003: emergence of a new intellectual right wing 54), thereby creating a buffer zone of allied in Europe. A conservative “International states between the “pivot area” and the Anglo- Institute of Geopolitics” (Institut international American “crescent of sea power” (see Figure 4). de géopolitique) was founded in 1983 in Paris. The strong associations between geopo- In response to the reemergence of conserva- litical vocabulary and Nazism led to a disap- tive geopolitics, critical geographers associated pearance of geopolitical discussion in Europe with journals like Antipode, Political Geography and a vehement opposition to it in the USSR Quarterly (1982–present, renamed Political after 1945. Carl Schmitt’s book The Nomos of Geography in 1992), and Hérodote attempted to the Earth, published in 1950, was fundamen- capture the language of geopolitics for them- tally geopolitical in inspiration, but Schmitt selves. In Germany, where taboos on geopo- largely avoided geopolitical vocabulary, coin- litical discourse were much greater, geopolitics ing his new concept of Nomos as an alternative, reemerged following the collapse of commu- and while also continuing to use the originally nism. Some writers rediscovered theories of economic category of Grossraum as an alterna- Germany’s supposedly fateful “Mitellage,” or tive word for a political sphere of hegemonic intermediate location, in the center of Europe influence. Schmitt had transformed the idea (Calleo 1978; Zitelmann et al. 1993; Bassin of Grossraum into a political concept during 1996; Brill 1998). The German army created the Nazi years, using it to describe a region an “Office for Military Geoontology” (Amt of German political hegemony over Central für Militärisches Geowesen) in 1985, which Europe (Schmitt 1942; Ebeling 1994: 149–151; merged into the “Office for Geoinformation” Hell 2009). Explicit geopolitical discussions (Amt für Geoinformationswesen) in 2003. faded away in the United States somewhat According to its website, the areas of speciali- later, during the early 1960s (Kristof 1961). In zation of this Office include “Geopolitik”; its 1963 an American text on political geography yearbook (Jahresheft) is called Geopolitik. The suggested that the “revival of the term geopoli- terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the tics is probably premature and may remain so American military responses to those attacks as long as most people associate the term with intensified skepticism about overly sanguine the … Third Reich” (Pounds 1963: 410). Sempa theories of globalization and the “flat earth,” (2002: 103) noted the “virtual eclipse of geo- inspiring a new wave of interest in geopolitics. politics in the American academic realm” from Nowadays, universities in Britain, India, and the late 1960s through the 1970s. But geopo- the Czech Republic offer degrees in geopoli- litical ideas finally began to play a critical role tics, and serious newspapers like Le Monde use in the “evolution of American national security the language of geopolitics regularly. A French policy during and after the 1960s” (Coogan geopolitician even published a book called

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Geopolitics for Dummies (La géopolitique pour It is important to consider the field of geo- les nuls; Moreau Defarges 2008). politics in sociological terms if we want to One gauge of waxing and waning of geo- understand its peculiar history. A “sociological” politics over time is the creation of journals approach to an academic field involves looking with “geopolitics” in the title. The first jour- at its internal structure and differentiation and nal specifically devoted to geopolitics was the its relations to other disciplines and non-scien- Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, which existed from tific powers. In order to understand the gradual 1924 to 1944. The Italian journal Geopolitica shift over the last century from a more geo- (1939–1942) emulated the German model. graphical to a more political emphasis within After the creation of the Latin American jour- geopolitics, we need to consider the uneven nals mentioned above, geopolitical discourse development and prestige of the two main con- moved next to France, where the International stituent disciplines that have contributed to it, Institute of Geopolitics launched the jour- geography and political science. Political science nal Géopolitique in 1983. Hérodote, a journal emerged somewhat later than geography as a that had existed since 1974, followed suit and university discipline, but it surpassed geography adopted the subtitle “revue de géographie et in status and size in the second half of the twen- de géopolitique” (“Journal of Geography and tieth century. Academic geography grew out of Geopolitics”) in the same year. Since then eighteenth century learned societies such as the France has seen the creation of several addi- British Association for Promoting the Discovery tional geopolitical journals, including LiMes: of the Interior Parts of Africa (founded in 1788) Revue française de géopolitique (1996–present) and the French Société de Géographie (founded and Outre-terre: revue française de géopoli- in 1821). The first half of the nineteenth century tique (2001–present). The 1990s saw the crea- saw the pioneering work of university geogra- tion of the British journal Geopolitics and phers like Carl Ritter and explorer-scientists International Boundaries, which changed its such as Alexander von Humboldt. University title to Geopolitics in 1998. Journals of geopoli- professorships specifically dedicated to geogra- tics appeared in Italy, Russia, and Cameroon phy were created, starting in 1874 in Germany. (Limes: rivista italiana di geopolitica, Russkii By 1935 there were over 100 000 members of geopoliticheskii sbornik, and Enjeux: bulletin geographic societies worldwide (Capel 1991; d’analyses géopolitiques pour l’Afrique central). Robic 2003). Geographical interest flourished Since 2004 new geopolitical journals have in the United States and Europe during the been founded in several eastern European two world wars (Smith 2003). During the sec- counties, including Bulgaria (Geopolitika ond half of the twentieth century, however, & geostrategiia), Poland (Geopolityka), and academic geography declined rather precipi- Serbia (Geopoliticki casopis). Interestingly, the tously. Geography departments were closed two major countries in which there are still no in a number of leading American universities, journals with geopolitical titles are the United starting with Harvard in 1948 and followed by States and Germany (with the exception of the Columbia, Michigan, Penn, Stanford, Virginia, German Army yearbook mentioned above). Yale, and many others (Murphy 2007: note 1). In the United States, international relations In Germany, geopolitical discussion was “taboo” has largely filled the place of geopolitics in (Brill 1998: 205) after 1945 and political geogra- the universities, while geography declined phy was also largely discredited. overall as a discipline, as discussed below. In Like geography, political science also had Germany, Geopolitik since 1945 has been a ancient precursors, and it emerged from a word like race (Rasse), one that many people set of established university disciplines such continue to see as too strongly associated with as Staatswissenschaft (state sciences) and the Nazi era to be used in a neutral or scien- Cameralistics, History, Law, and Economics. tific manner. The first formal departments and university

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chairs of political science were created in the oriented more toward political power and final decades of the nineteenth century in the policy making than autonomous scientific United States, and “the number of colleges and production. In this respect geopolitics more schools offering courses in international rela- closely resembles social work or public policy tions increased exponentially” in the inter- schools than traditional disciplines like history, war period (Coogan 1991: 55; Farr 2003). In philosophy, or even geography. The difference Germany, the first institution of higher edu- between political geography and geopolitics cation dedicated specifically to political sci- was almost entirely defined in terms of the lat- ence, the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, was ter’s applied and heteronomous character, that founded only in 1920 (Behrmann 1998; Bleek is, its dependence on political power. Moreover, 2001), and political science did not become geopolitics until recently was usually connected part of the established German universities to conservative political actors, perspectives, until after 1945, partly as a result of the Allied and policies; it was a science of and for empire, military occupation (Plé 2001). The reputa- which flourished especially during wartime tion of political science eclipsed geography in (Murphy et al. 2004). In the history of geopoli- European and American universities during tics, politicians and policy-oriented academics the second half of the twentieth century. The like Mackinder and Haushofer have tended to gradual shift in emphasis within geopolitics overshadow the more autonomous, scientifi- from an original focus on the determination cally-oriented figures. Haushofer (1925: 93), a of politics by the geographic environment, to a Bavarian general turned professor, described political determination of territory and space, geopolitics as a “servant of the politically lead- is thus connected not only to developments in ing powers.” A recent discussion among four the world outside science but also to the shift- leading political geographers suggested that ing balance of power between geography and nonacademics still tend to be drawn to the more political science. geodeterminist concepts of “classical geopoli- Another intra-scientific reason for the tics” (Murphy et al. 2004: 619, 621). By contrast, decline of geopolitics after 1945 has to do with more autonomous geopolitical writers tend to the growing prestige of neopositivist, formal- emphasize the ways in which geographical dis- ized, and mathematized forms of social sci- courses and representations shape world politics ence, especially in the United States (Steinmetz and the ways that states and politics shape space 2005b). These approaches tended to abstract and territory (e.g., Brenner 1997, 1998, 2002). from place and space as well as history, pro- The social sciences have often shown marked posing universal models in a hypothetico- “national colorations” (Heilbron 2008), and this deductive format. The replacement of a has perhaps been especially true of geopolitics, language of geopolitics by the language of since it has been so closely linked to imperial “international relations” in American politi- politics. As Hans Weigert (1942: 733) observed: cal science was related not only to the rise of nuclear weapons and the informal character There is no such thing as a general science of of US hegemony, but also to the increasingly geopolitics. It does not have a singular form. powerful idea of a political science valid for all There are as many geopolitics as there are con- times and places (Gunnell 1986). flicting states. Even if geopolitics has rarely existed as a university discipline, it did occasionally cohere According to the editors of the Handbook of as a subfield within geography or political sci- Political Geography, this field was “clearly, even ence (on the theory of subfields, see Steinmetz self-consciously subordinated to the statecraft 2010a, 2010b, 2011). Geopolitical (sub)fields of particular nation-states” (Cox et al. 2007: 3; are usually dominated by their “heteronomous” see also Cowen & Smith 2009: 25). The geo- pole, that is, by participants and institutions political approach itself suggests that there

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must be a global geopolitics of the production approached in a completely different manner of geopolitical knowledge. Theoretical and than the sciences of natural phenomena. The analytic approaches will vary spatially not just main differences concerned the central role of because of national scientific and intellectual interpretation in the human sciences and the traditions but because of the specific geopoliti- idea of individuality – the irreducible particu- cal stakes, conflicts, and regimes prevalent in larity of events, historical processes, institu- each specific state or empire. tions, and actors. Rickert, whose thinking had Explaining geopolitical discourse in a socio- a profound influence on Max Weber, argued logical manner also requires that we pay atten- that “the historical individual” was the typical tion to the broader intellectual currents within object of analysis in the human and social sci- which such discussions emerge. Geopoli- ences. Max Spandau, a student of Max Weber tics was directed in part against Marxism and Karl Haushofer, argued that “geography is (Neumann 1943: 287), as Karl Wittfogel (1929) related to history in terms of the unique indi- argued in a journal of the German Communist viduality [Einmaligkeit] of its object” and that Party. Classical geopolitics was a non-Marxist geography was “subject to ‘historical’ expla- form of materialism (Ó Tuithail 1996: 17). nations in the sense in which this term has Another intellectual current that had an enor- been used by H. Rickert because, like history, mous impact on early geopolitics was Social it is concerned with the ‘unique facts of exist- Darwinism, without which Ratzel’s concept of ence’” (Spandau 1925: 40). And as the émigré Lebensraum and his theory of the state as an sociologist Werner Cahnman noted, Spandau organism are incomprehensible. Environmental insisted that “no general causal nexus should determinism, in this respect, was the “geo- be implied in investigations … into historic graphic version” of nineteenth century Social or geographic individualities” but should try Darwinism (Peet 1985). The first generation of instead to make a “genuine historical expla- geopolitical thinkers was mainly influenced by nation” showing that “a unique complex of the natural sciences. This reinforced a tendency causes had brought forth a unique complex to make predictive forecasts on the basis of sup- of facts in a unique field situation” (Cahnman posedly general geopolitical “laws.” 2007: 146). After 1900, geopolitical thinking began to The rejection of a “nomothetic” approach be influenced by the very different intellectual to geopolitics was not confined to Germany. formations of neo-historicism (Mannheim French political geographers promoted a philo- 1952) and antipositivism (Steinmetz 2005c), sophical doctrine known as Possibilism, which which militated against any notion of general resembled German historicism in emphasiz- laws or strong predictions in the social sciences. ing the human capacity “to choose between Indeed, scientific naturalism had never com- a range of possible responses to the environ- pletely replaced historicism within German ment” (Johnston 2000: 609). The leading geo- geography. Carl Ritter (1834, 1862: 19) had graphical representative of this view was Vidal described the Earth as a “cosmic individual” de la Blache (1923: 14), who criticized Ratzel’s and “ens sui generis,” insisting on the “historical naturalism and insisted that: element in geography.” The geographer Hözel (1896) discussed the idea of the “geographical a geographical individuality does not result sim- individual.” The phrase “geographical indi- ply from geological and climatic conditions. It is vidual” harkened back to Ritter, and resonated not something delivered complete from the hand with philosopher Heinrich Rickert’s concept of of Nature. … It is man who reveals a country’s the “historical individual” (Steinmetz 2010a). individuality by moulding it to his own use. The German philosopher Wilhelm Windelband had argued that the Geisteswissenschaften An even stronger adherent of “possibilism” was (human sciences) such as history had to be Lucien Febvre, the co-founder with Marc Bloch

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of the French Annales historiographic school. (Bassin 2003: 16). The word Lebensraum Febvre insisted that “there are no necessities, became infamous once it appeared in the but everywhere possibilities” (Febvre 2003: pages of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and subsequently xi). The Scottish geographer and sociologist appeared to guide some of the Nazis’ wartime Patrick Geddes also defended a form of “pos- policies (Lange 1965). Ratzel’s theory was a sibilism” and practiced a form of “conservative form of Social Darwinism, but in contrast surgery” on cities to make them more humane to Darwin’s account, the struggle took place (Geddes 1947: 44–49). Even Mackinder saw among states rather than individuals. As a geopolitical events as singular, meaning that state’s population grows, according to Ratzel, geopolitics was not a nomothetic science it requires a larger Lebensraum; and “as more (Parker 1985: 26). Isaiah Bowman attacked and more states grow up, the nearer do they the geopoliticians’ insistence on geographic edge together, and … act and react upon one “laws” and their perverse mixing of scientific another” (Ratzel 1897: 297). There is a natural laws with a Nietzschean politics of the will tendency for states to engage in conquest and (Bowman 1942: 648–649). to expand: “in the long run, nature does not Since the 1980s, geopolitical discussions let a Volk remain immobile, it has to move for- have been deeply influenced by neo-Marxism ward or backward” (Ratzel 1882, vol. 1: 116). and poststructuralism. The Marxist geogra- Since the Earth’s surface was considered to be pher David Harvey discussed the “geopolitics completely occupied by states by the end of the of capitalism” and developed a partially geopo- nineteenth century, the necessary corollary of litical explanation of contemporary American spatial growth by some states was the annexa- imperialism (Harvey 1985, 2003). Yves Lacoste tion and disappearance of other states. Ratzel promoted a critical analysis of geography as argued that giant empires were both the start- “a language and form of power/knowledge,” ing point and the culmination of world history. emphasizing, for example, that the central geo- He also developed the Greco-Roman idea of graphic notion of region derived from the Latin the ecumene as the inhabited part of the Earth, word regere, meaning “to rule” (Ó Tuathail and distinguished between core (Innenlage or 1996: 161, 163). Geopolitical writers influ- Zelle) and peripheries (Ränder) within that enced by Marxism and poststructuralism have ecumene (Ratzel 1897: 205–208). This distinc- analyzed the geopolitical assumptions and tion between core and periphery resurfaced “mental maps” that shape foreign policy mak- in Alfred Weber’s (1929) “industrial location ing (Henrickson 1980), deconstructing geopo- theory,” Christaller’s (1933) “central place the- litical models such as the “view from nowhere,” ory,” the “three worlds” model (Balandier 1956; hierarchies of place, and the distinctions Worsley 1984), Wallerstein’s (2004) world between the inside-domestic and the outside- system theory, and many other discussions foreign (Agnew 2003). Geopolitical writers of core–periphery relations (e.g., Whittlesey have also responded to the newer discussions 1944; Shils 1975). Ratzel also injected a cultural of globalization (Lacoste 2003; Dodds 2007). dimension into political geography, noting that The beginning of geopolitics lies in a view of “the more nations become conscious of global the state as “a living organism” whose territory spatial relations, the more they engage in the is not a “definite area fixed for all time” and struggle for space” (Ratzel 1897: 266). This which “cannot be contained within rigid lim- idea suggested to later geopolitical thinkers that its” (Ratzel 1896: 351). Ratzel started from the perceptions of space among political leaders premise that “every living organism required and broader populations should be as central a certain amount of territory from which to to analysis as the study of physical space. draw sustenance,” and he notoriously labeled The idea that history was driven by a constant this territory “the respective Lebensraum, or international struggle for space had already living space, of the organism in question” been proposed by Ludwig Gumplowicz. Like

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Ratzel, Gumplowicz resisted thinking of the Parker 1985: 108). Spykman and subsequent hierarchical cultural differences that lay behind geopolitical writers reversed one key aspect states’ differential success as biological or racial of Mackinder’s model, however, emphasizing differences (at least after the 1870s; Weiler control of the buffer zone or “rimland” by the 2007). But Gumplowicz’s writing abstracted outer world-island of sea powers as the key to from the concrete territories in which these global political control. Spykman’s approach eternal struggles were said to be raging, while is often seen as the inspiration for George Ratzel focused precisely on the spatial aspects Kennan’s containment doctrine. It urged the of the expansion and contraction, the rise and United States to support, control, and ally with fall, of states and empires. Kjellén’s analysis the rimland states in order to contain Soviet also hewed closely to Ratzel, positing a “Law of expansion (Dodds 2007: 196). As Spykman Healing” (Kjellén 1917: 61) whereby states seek (1944: 43–44) argued during World War II, naturally to compensate for the loss of ampu- “the heartland becomes less important than the tated territories by regaining land. Mackinder rimland and it is the co-operation of British, (1887: 143) agreed that “the communities of Russian, and United States land and sea pow- men should be looked on as units in the strug- ers that will control the European littoral and, gle for existence.” Some of the most influential thereby, the essential power relations of the contributions to the historical sociology of pol- world.” itics in recent decades (e.g., Mann 1986; Tilly Trampler (1932) and Cohen (2003) referred 1990) have been inspired by the “military” state to a “shatterbelt” of eastern European states, theories of Ratzel, Gumplowicz (1883, 1909), a zone pressed between larger political pow- Hintze (1907), and Oppenheimer (1919). ers and shattered into numerous small states. Mackinder’s lasting contribution to this dis- Similarly, Hodder et al. (1997) discussed the cussion was to focus attention on the globe problems of landlocked states. in its concrete entirety and to analyze it as a These sorts of classical geopolitical ideas political chessboard. Mackinder’s model dis- continue to inform the work of American tinguished between the Eurasian “pivot” or imperial policy-makers (Klare 2001, 2003). “heartland” surrounded by an “inner cres- A number of post-1945 US foreign policy cent,” which was itself surrounded by an “outer frameworks flow at least in part from geopo- crescent” of sea powers (see Figure 3). This litical theories, including containment, the model remained influential for many decades. iron curtain, the domino theory, the ideas of According to Mackinder’s famous formula the axis of evil and of “Old Europe versus New (1942 [1919]: 150): Europe,” and Europe as Venus versus America as Mars (Kagan 2003), and the clash of civili- Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: zations (Huntington 1996). So-called realism Who rules the Heartland commands the in international relations theory, as Weigert World-Island: (1942: 734) observed, is rooted in geopolitics. Who rules the3 World-Island commands the World. Contemporary “neorealist” theorists portray international relations as a realm of perpetual Fairgrieve (1924) redefined the inner cres- anarchy in which states attempt to gain as much cent as the “crush zone,” a belt of small buffer power as possible (Waltz 1979; Mearsheimer states located between the sea powers and the 2001). This approach is strongly reminiscent Eurasian land mass (Figure 5). This approach of classical geopolitics, even if it has shed the was adapted by Spykman (Figure 4), who older biological and geological foundations. argued during World War II that the United During the first decades of the twentieth States had to help Britain in order to avoid century, geopolitical thinking moved away between surrounded by hostile powers on from environmental determinism and organi- its Pacific and Atlantic rims (Spykman 1942; cist metaphors and toward an understanding

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A R

E R

A T

S U

T U

N E

S C

S E

N R

I A

PIVOT AREA I

O A

R R

O R

R E E E N S N N E I T

D OUTER U Mackinder’s map of the pivot area, inner crescent, and outer or insular crescent. insular or outer and inner crescent, area, the pivot of map Mackinder’s

F Figure 3

S D L A N

wbeog239.indd 12 2/4/2012 9:28:13 AM 13 South Asia, Asia, South Call’s projection Spykman’s (1942) map of American “encirclement” of the pivot area through alliances with “inner crescent” (Europe, Middle East, Middle (Europe, “inner with crescent” alliances through area the pivot of “encirclement” American of (1942) map Spykman’s Southeast Asia, and East and Asia). Southeast Asia, Figure 4

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ICE

R S 3 I

U HEARTLAND 1

S S 2 E

A H N O II Z R III

P E O W

Lands of the sea powers. 1, 2, 3: Centres from which the Heartland has been dominated:– the Altai, the Turan, Russia. The crush zone. I, II, III: Centres from which the Heartland might be dominated:– Germany, China, India. The heartland. The old world system.

Figure 5 Fairgrieve (1924: 334), map of the world system, showing “crush zone.”

of the ways in which landscape and territory geography encompassed not just “transpor- are shaped by politics. Max Weber (1891) ana- tation and settlement” patterns “but even the lyzed the spatial layout of roads and proper- geography of flora and fauna” since the “place- ties in the Roman Empire, showing that they ment of transportation routes is often carried followed a primarily political and military out purely according to the standpoint of the logic rather than a natural or economic one. state (defense), transfers of population or are Max Spandau (1925) argued that political hindered by the will of the state.” The Austrian

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geopolitical thinker Hugo Hassinger (1932) Empires have been central to geopolitical described the state as a “shaper of landscapes” discussions since the beginning of the subfield. (Landschaftsgestalter). Ratzel discussed colonialism and empires of con- One of the most fundamental contributions quest. A key chapter of Mackinder’s Democratic of the geopolitical literature has been its intense Ideals and Reality concerned “the rivalry of focus on colonialism, and also on empires empires” (Mackinder 1919). Adolf Grabowsky, that are noncolonial in the sense of dominat- the leading representative of geopolitics within ing foreign states indirectly without con quering political science during the Weimar Republic them, seizing sovereignty, or governing directly (and the author of a famous article on the in the place of indigenous populations or élites. “primacy of foreign policy”; Grabowsky 1928) Although all of the social science disciplines wrote a book on “Social imperialism as the last have dealt with empires, none of them has made phase of imperialism” (Grabowsky 1939) while empire the core object of analysis. This distin- in exile in Switzerland during the Nazi period. guishing feature of geopolitics has sometimes Otto Maull, one of the editors of the Journal been overlooked by commentators, for at least of Geopolitics, discussed “colonial geopolitics” two reasons. First, geopolitical analysts have (Maull 1936: 51–54). Erich Obst, another editor themselves often characterized their field as of that journal, specialized in overseas colonial- being centered on the state as the central object ism. Obst discussed the “geopolitical divisions of analysis, downplaying their own field’s inter- of Africa” and deployed the “Grossraum idea” est in forms of political organization and strat- to analyze “colonial imperialism” (Obst 1932, egy located at levels broader or larger than the 1941). Even as Haushofer provided arguments individual state. Introductory texts on geopoli- for an imperial invasion of certain parts of east- tics from the interwar period typically begin ern Europe, he called for an anti-imperialist with the category of the state rather than empire alliance between Germany and Japan, China, (e.g., Maull 1925; Hennig 1928). The second Turkey, India, and the USSR against the powers reason for this mischaracterization of the field of the “outer ring,” which were trying to suppress is that the social sciences to which geopolitics these countries’ self-determination (Jacobsen has been most closely linked have themselves 1979: 268–269). Geographer Manfred Langhans failed to recognize the importance of empires. (1924) discussed the “legal and actual spheres Gumplowicz, for example, did not refer to the of influence of the great powers,” diagnosing an largest or highest-order political organizations emerging pattern of informal imperial domi- as empires except when he discussed the United nance. Langhans emphasized the usefulness of States, which he saw as “seeking today to unify a geographic approach to the problem, calling itself with the South American states into a large for maps that could “convey an accurate pic- American Reich (empire)” (Gumplowicz 1910: ture” of the actual political reach of the various 157). German “state theory” from Hegel to Max great powers (Murphy 1997: 111). Focusing on Weber typically associated the idea of empire US policy in Central America, Langhans argued with ancient history and the idea of the state that “modern statecraft allows the more power- with modernity. This problem started to be ful (ruling) state to impose a protective rela- corrected by theorists like Ratzel and Schmitt, tionship over the weaker (protected) state that but post-1945 American social science slipped is in many respects the equivalent of annexa- back into the nineteenth century conflation of tion, while carefully avoiding the appearance of modern empires with “states.” Skocpol (1979: being the actual ruler of the area it dominates” 47), for example, described and treated Tsarist (Langhans 1924; see also Salz 1923: 569). Russia and Qing China as “old-regime states” These models of informal empire were closely rather than empires, thereby effacing some of tied to German discussions of continental the specifically imperial determinants of the domination over central Europe. As the liberal revolutions she was analyzing. imperialist politician Friedrich Naumann had

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written in an influential essay on Mitteleuropa, apolitical stance; instead they directed their the peripheral states in such a German- advice toward social movements and progres- dominated system would “have their own life, sive parties. The central thesis of the Hérodote their own summers and winters, their own group was that: culture, worries and glories, but in the grand world-historical scheme of things they [would] no longer follow their own laws but instead geography was a form of strategic and political knowledge, central to military strategy and the would work to reinforce the leading group” exercise of political power, but that this strategic (Naumann 1915). During the 1920s these discourse had become hidden behind the “smoke- ideas developed into projects for a German- screen” … of academic geography. Geographers dominated Grossraum in the east (Figure 1). The needed to cast off the limitations of their “mys- legal theorist Carl Schmitt applied the idea of tified and mystifying discourse,” and become the Grossraum to imperial political formations, militant and critical analysts of strategy, working defining it as a modern approach to empire in to unmask the geographical structuring of power which the controlling state renounces “open ter- and assisting in the development of counter- ritorial annexation of the controlled state” but strategies. (Dodds and Atkinson 2000: 268) absorbs a “space far exceeding the boundaries of the state proper” into its own “spatial sphere” Lacoste (1993) was interested in contributing (Schmitt 1950: 252, 281). During World War II to counter-hegemonic and democratic move- Schmitt began discussing the new American ments by analyzing the ways in which politi- Nomos that he argued would install itself “upon cians are guided by geopolitical ideas and by the ruins of the old” ones (presumably the offering alternative ways of visualizing politi- British, Soviet, and German Nomoi) after the cal space. In this respect Lacoste responded war (Schmitt 1942: 59). Schmitt also held out directly to the geopolitical tradition of visual, the possibility of a “combination of several inde- especially cartographic, propaganda. Halford pendent Groβräume or blocs” that could coun- Mackinder attempted to make people “think terbalance the American and perhaps also the imperially” by visualizing global space (Dodds Soviet Nomos (Schmitt 1950: 355). Geopolitics 2007: 121). Karl Haushofer (1928) promoted has thus been a theory of empires and supra- an evocative new form of cartography, which state political spaces as well as states, regions, he labeled “the suggestive map,” aimed at a and substate politics. “politically emphatic” visual message (Hell The most important development in the 2009). Like some of the Anglophone critical geopolitical literature in the past three decades geographers, Lacoste promoted an alternative is the emergence of several critical schools of cartography. During the Vietnam War, Lacoste geopolitics. Yves Lacoste and the Hérodote mapped the US bombing of dikes protect- group rejected the pretensions of “disinter- ing the rice paddy fields of the Tonkin River ested” and “scientific” geography and argued Delta in order to “systematically destroy the that “geopolitics is not just the consideration of farming basis of the Vietnamese economy” planetary-scale superpower strategies but also (Claval 2000: 244). More recently he presented involves a form of reasoning that can contrib- a map of trajectories of “postcolonial immigra- ute to anti-hegemonic resistance. … There is tion” into France that reminds viewers of the more than the geopolitics of raison d’état; there colonial origins of France’s current “domestic” are other forms of geopolitics” (Lacoste 1982: conflicts, and that evokes a ghostly memory of 4, 1984). Rather than channeling their work older maps of colonial Africa that depicted the toward ruling politicians, they took a “dis- colonies of each European country’s power in a tanced and skeptical view of the political status different color (Lacoste 2010: 15). quo” (Bassin 2004: 621). But these critical geo- Lacoste’s version of geopolitics, like the politicians did not necessarily strike an entirely Anglophone school of critical geopolitics, has

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X We can identify at least seven areas of valu- able geopolitical research and theory for the present and the future. The first has to do with continuing to identify the spatial form of evolv- C ing imperial strategies. Geopolitical theory B warns against ignoring or de-emphasizing the 2 role of both states and supra-state (imperial) A forms of political domination when theorizing 10 000 km empire (as in Hardt & Negri 2000). The second 1 agenda involves analyzing states and politics as shapers of space and territory (Brenner 1997), a project that continues the pioneering work of A Hassinger and others from the interwar period. 3 The third involves thinking in terms of shatter- E belts, crushbelts, and other spatial concepts of F 1000 km D international relations. Fourth, there is a need 2 to continue developing the dialogue with neo- historicism that existed in German geopolitics before 1933, in order to resist the idea that such F G relations can be explained by a general theory 4 or that geopolitics is likely to take a universal I form. A fifth, related point is that geopolitics 100 km can help to resist the temptations of economic H 3 reductionism in social science. J Sixth, geopolitics has a critical and reflex- ive agenda of understanding, criticizing, deconstructing, and offering alternatives to official government geopolitical imaginaries. H M Explicit, conservative geopolitics continues to 10 km L flourish in imperial settings like the United K 4 States and post-Soviet Russia, and in new geopolitical formations like the European Figure 6 Lacoste (1985: 73): different levels or Union. Whereas geopolitics had been “per- scales of spatial analysis. sistently demonized during the days of the Soviet Union” as a “heinous capitalist ideo- applied geopolitical ideas to new objects and logical device” and an instrument of “military scales of analysis. As Lacoste wrote, “states do adventurers,” a “fascist” theory “in the service not have a monopoly on geopolitics” (1986, of American (and West German) imperial- vol. 1: xiii). Geopolitics is not only about inter- ism,” geopolitical discourses “returned with national or imperial politics but is also about a vengeance” in post-Soviet Russia (Erickson “internal” geopolitics within nation-states (e.g., 1999: 242). North American imperialists have regionalism), urban relations that transcend also argued that traditional geopolitics should national boundaries, popular geopolitical be brought back (Ignatieff 2003: 20). Critical and nationalist discourse, and the construction geopolitics “puts us on our vigilance for crude of the very distinction between the foreign and ‘reterritorializations’” (Taylor & Flint 2000: the domestic (Foucher 1980). Lacoste suggests 103) that try to represent a complex world of analyzing each point in political space at a vari- massive social and political change in terms ety of different scales (Figure 6). of simple models and concepts.

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