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Geopolitics Political Radicalisation of These Elements in Anglophobia and Anti-Semitism HIMA 14,1_Dictionary_326-335 3/29/06 1:50 PM Page 327 Geopolitics political radicalisation of these elements in Anglophobia and anti-Semitism. In the A: [u©ràfiyà siyàsìya. – F: géopolitique. – context of the capitalist interwar crisis, G: geopolitik. – R: geopolitika. S: geopolítica. – German geopolitics can best be understood C: diyuan zhengzhixue. as the ideology of a ‘continental German The term ‘geopolitics’ was formalised by the imperialism’ (Diner 1984, 2) and a theoretical Swedish constitutional lawyer Rudolf Kjellén riposte to Marxist theories of imperialism. (1864–1922) and systematically developed Between 1916 and 1944, the concept of and raised to a doctrine of international geopolitics reaches its phase of greatest relations by Karl Haushofer (1869–1946) public influence; first during the revisionist during the period of Europe’s intensifying intellectual struggles against the Versailles interstate rivalries after the turn of the Treaties and, thereafter, as a key legitimation century. It had the objective of emphasising for national-socialist Großraumpolitik. The the primary determination of the political disastrous consequences of WWII led to the by space. Since the 1970s, it is supposed to term’s widespread discrediting in the Federal capture in its formally neutralised version Republic, even though the concept was ‘power struggles over territories for the not altogether taboo (Grabowsky 1960). purpose of political control over space’ Elements of the term were revived during (Lacoste 1993). the 1980s by conservative historians in the Cross-nationally, the concept entails three ‘Historians’ Controversy [Historikerstreit]’ in core elements: a bio-organic notion of the what Hans-Ulrich Wehler described as state, a social-Darwinist view of inter-state ‘middle position palaver [Mittellagen Palaver]’ relations defined as a struggle for Lebensraum (Wehler 1988, 224), seconded by Jürgen [living space], and the deduction of the Habermas who referred to the term’s public political from spatio-natural determinants. rehabilitation as a form of ‘geopolitical ballyhoo [Tamtam]’ (Habermas 1987, 75). 1. As set out in the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik German unity, finally, led to a general dis- [Journal for Geopolitics], Haushofer’s ‘speci- cursive renaissance of the idiomatic vocabu- fically German’ theory of international lary of geopolitics, even though the concept’s politics combined (i) a backward-looking historical genealogy has been largely critiqueoftheliberal,‘mechanistic’conceptions sanitised or suppressed (Diekmann et al. of the state and society, counterposed to the 2000). völkisch ‘ideas of 1914’ and an organicist Outside Germany and from the beginning conception of the state; (ii) an instinctive of the Cold War onwards, German-Jewish rejection of technology and industry; (iii) a émigrés exported geopolitical categories corresponding revaluation of pre-industrial and ways of reasoning that crystallised in agriculture, mystified as ‘chthonic’ and the American discourse of power-political ‘organic’; (iv) a Malthusian emphasis on ‘realism’. Through this transposition, geo- population growth; (v) a dualistic view of political ideas with only minor conceptual power determined by geographical position re-adjustments merged in the US with an with a preference for land power over sea indigenous Anglo-American geopolitical power, informing the programmatic policy tradition, most powerfully represented at prescriptions for the establishment of a the time by Isaiah Bowman, a key adviser Eurasian power bloc under German leader- to Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference ship; (vi) the rejection of international law, (Bowman 1922; Strausz-Hupé 1942). as institutionalised in the League of Nations, Wilson’s moralistic liberal internationalism in favour of a new Großraumordnung [Grand was strongly informed by Bowman’s new Spatial Order]; (vii) the combination and geopolitical strategy of US non-territorial Historical Materialism, volume 14:1 (327–335) © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2006 Also available online – www.brill.nl HIMA 14,1_Dictionary_326-335 3/29/06 1:50 PM Page 328 328 • Benno Teschke economic expansionism – a drive for ‘Ame- developed the critique of the universalistic rican global dominance’ (Gowan 2004, 161). notion of the state associated with the With the post-WW-II resurgence of classical Enlightenment and liberalism (Faber 1982). realism (Morgenthau 1948) and its Cold- Ratzel, a co-founder of the Alldeutscher War-driven transformation into neo-realism Verband (Pan-German League), fused the (Waltz 1979) – which insists on a systemic organic-state conception with the social logic of an international state of nature in Darwinism of Ernst Haeckel (1843–1909) which Realpolitik, security dilemma and into ‘the law of spatial expansion’ (Ratzel balance of power theory prevail – the realist 1882, 116 et sqq.). The struggle for survival, tradition asserts itself as a hegemonic operative in fauna and flora, transforms into discourse of international politics to this a collective struggle for space and resources very day (Gray 1988; Kissinger 1994; Mear- amongst Völker [racially/culturally defined sheimer 2001). In Latin countries, the nouvelle peoples]. This struggle for space revolves géopolitique (Lacoste 1993) is propagated with around expansion and selection, rather than reference to the géohistoire of the Annales specialisation. The notion of a mismatch School (Braudel 1994). It attributes primacy between soil fertility and population growth to the pre-social conditions of political life, (Ratzel 1897, 74 et sqq.), grounded in a especially to its natural-infrastructural precapitalist agrarian worldview, justifies (geographical, geological and topological) expansionist policies. Großraum turns into premises as manifestations of la longue durée. Lebensraum (Ratzel 1901) and, therefore, into It led to thefoundation of geopolitical journals the ‘natural’ objective of any state activity. in France (Hérodote) and Italy (liMes – Rivista War is regarded as the natural and decisive Italiana die Geopolitica). Since the 1980s, critical mode of geopolitical regulation between geopolitics (Ashley 1987; Walker 1993; organic collectives. States are born, grow George 1994; Agnew/Corbridge 1995; Ò and die in the struggle for space. Categories Tuathail 1996; Agnew 1998), especially in that mediate between the notions of soil, its poststructuralist form, attempts to under- society and state – such as labour, classes stand geopolitics as a discursive inside/ and social interests – are largely sidelined. outside phenomenon by exploring the social Consequently, differences arise in the prewar constructedness of spatial political orders era between ethnocentric (Oscar Peschel, on the basis of historicised readings of Robert Sieger) and geopolitical views of territorial transformations. Even though the the goals and limits of foreign policy. While intellectual links between some of these the former conception relies on political contemporary strands of geopolitical thought romanticism and Herder’s notion of nations and the original German tradition are as cultural-linguistic units [Volksnation], tenuous, invocations of the term geopolitics leading to a self-limiting territorial corres- have become once again central to the wider pondence between a nation’s area of settle- discourse in academia and beyond. ment and the scale of state territory, the latter conception [Staatsnation] prioritises infinite 2. Elements of the geopolitical tradition of territorial aggrandisement over ethnic-racial thought can be traced back to the political homogeneity (Ratzel, Alfred Kirchhoff), philosophies of the physiocrats and although it may also involve an active policy bourgeois materialists. Political naturalism, of ethnic settlement (Germanicisation). which originates from there, can be divided Volksnation and Staatsnation are, thus, not into a biological-racial doctrine of human synonymous and constitute rival points of nature and a geographical-determinist reference (cf. Faber 1982, 394 et sqq.). This doctrine (climate, soil, location, topography) tension between ‘race’ and ‘space’ re-emerges in relation to non-human nature. Both are later in discrepancies between the original crucial for determining the regionally specific programme of German geopolitics and Adolf form of political socialisation. Against the Hitler’s Rassenideologie [racial ideology] (cf. background of the foundation of the German Bassin 1987). Empire (1871) after the Wars of Unification Contemporaneously and in partial compe- and the subsequent period of inter-imperialist tition with these developments in prewar rivalries, Friedrich Ratzel (1846–1911) first Germany, Alfred T. Mahan’s (1840–1914) HIMA 14,1_Dictionary_326-335 3/29/06 1:50 PM Page 329 HKWM – Geopolitics • 329 anti-isolationist navalism and Halford trading states (1919; cf. Semmel 1960, 174 Mackinder’s (1861–1947) heartland-theory et sqq.). His dichotomous categories – land/ form the core of a recognisable geopolitical sea, tellurian/aquatological, Leviathan/ tradition in the US and Britain. Admiral Behemoth – are later adopted by Carl Mahan’s ‘aquatological’ theory (1890; 1897) Schmitt (1950). identifies the decisive factor in power politics in the fleet-based domination of the sea, 3. As a practice-oriented theory of space, whereas Mackinder – at the time Director geopolitics matures from 1933 onwards into of the London School of Economics – insists the official German science of the state on the superiority of territorial power
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