In Defense of Classical Geopolitics, Mackubin Thomas Owens
Thesis: While geopolitics stresses geographic space as a critically important strategic factor, it recognizes that geography is only part of the totality of the “global phenomenon”. Geopolitical analysis is an indispensable part of strategy making.
- Geography and Geopolitics
- The most important influence on strategy is geography, or the physical setting of human activity.
- Geography examines the physical factors of the earth, such as space, topography and climate.
However there are many subdivisions of geography, including political geography, economic geography, military geography, etc. - Geopolitics encompasses all these branches.
- The Post Cold War Security Environment: Contending Perspectives
- Nongeopolitical [sic] perspectives:
Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis.
“Global Interdependence” or globalization
Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” and Kaplan’s “Coming Anarchy”
Neo-Marxist politico-economic development (Wallerstein)
Non-Marxist structural realism and multipolarity (Buzan)
- Geopolitics, Con and Pro
- Cons:
The term is derived from geopolitik, a theory embraced by the Nazis
It smacks of “geographic determinism”, and is viewed as an excuse for aggression. - Pros:
It is essential to having an effective strategic culture, and will help a country make the right national security decisions based on its surroundings. - Geopolitics is descriptive, in that it helps us understand that world as a whole, and prescriptive in that it suggests a course of action.
- Classic Geopolitics Revisited
- Geopolitik and Organic State theory is one of the main strands of thought, and emphasizes social Darwinism, and the attitude of expand or die.
- Geostrategy, the other main strand of thought, focused more on discovering patterns of state development and maintenance of power.
- The geopolitics of containment main concept was that each region has a cornerstone, and that, if it falls, the rest will fall with it. It tried to stop this.
- Post Cold War Geopolitics
- Post-cold war geopolitics must reject the idea that geography is the only important factor affecting international action, and must understand geographical phenomena as complex.
- The geographical structure is hierarchal with two geostrategic realms, the maritime and the Eurasian continental. Realms are vast spatial areas affecting everything in their reach.
- Limits, Opportunities, and International Politics
- Napoleon defined strategy as that art of using time and space. Geopolitics provides the link between geography and strategy.
- Geopolitics is based on the fact that all international politics take place in time and space, and in particular geographical setting s and environments.
- Geopolitics is dynamic, not static. Factors can alter but not negate the need for it.
