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Overview
History and geography delineate the operation of power, not only its range but also the capacity to plan and the ability to implement. Approaching state strategy and policy from the spatial angle, Jeremy Black argues that just as the perception of power is central to issues of power, so place, and its constraints and relationships, is partly a matter of perception, not merely map coordinates. Geopolitics, he maintains, is as much about ideas and perception as it is about the actual spatial dimensions of power. Black's study ranges widely, examining geography and the spatial nature of state power from the 15th century to the present day. He considers the rise of British power, geopolitics and the age of Imperialism, the Nazis and World War II, and the Cold War, and he looks at the key theorists of the latter 20th century, including Henry Kissinger, Francis Fukuyama and Samuel P. Huntington, Philip Bobbitt, Niall Ferguson, and others.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253018731 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/25/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 355 |
| Sales rank: | 554,987 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is author of many books including Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures (IUP, 2015); Clio's Battles: Historiography in Practice (IUP, 2015); The Power of Knowledge: How Information and Technology Made the Modern World; War and Technology (IUP, 2013); and Fighting for America: The Struggle for Mastery in North America, 1519-1871 (IUP, 2011).
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Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance
By Jeremy Black
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2016 Jeremy BlackAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-01873-1
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Employed from 1899, geopolitics is an amorphous concept, both efficacious and misfiring, and a plastic or malleable (as well as controversial) term. Different working definitions have been advanced, and there is no universally accepted definition and, indeed, no agreed definition in English. All definitions of geopolitics focus on the relationship between politics and geographical factors, although that relationship has been very differently considered and presented. In this context, politics is approached principally in terms of the composition and use of power. The geographical factors that are treated vary, but space, location, distance, and resources are all important. Geopolitics is commonly understood as an alternative term for all or part of political geography and, more specifically, as the spatial dynamics of power. In practice, there is a persistent lack of clarity about whether geopolitics — however defined — and, more particularly these dynamics, should be understood in a descriptive or normative sense. Moreover, what in 2002 the American geopolitical commentator Harvey Sicherman termed "the facts of geopolitics — the resources and locations of various peoples and states" — involves subjective as well as objective considerations, and the significance of the former is commonly downplayed. This is true across the varied dimensions of geopolitics.
Four levels of assessment can be differentiated although, in both theory and practice, they interact to a considerable degree. At the first level, geopolitics can be considered as both concept and practice, each of which can, in turn, be classified. At the second level, it can be approached as a malleable doctrine heavily dependent upon the casuistries of leaders and politicians conducting statecraft. At the third level, the roles and approaches of professional intellectuals and commentators command attention — roles and approaches that have been, and are, very different. Whereas a geographer has a formal qualification, usually a university degree, anyone can be a geopolitician, including ardent polemicists without any in-depth knowledge. This situation can be related to the dynamic between political geography, which seeks scientific-style precision, and geopolitics which is, in part, political practice and journalism — both based on concepts in political geography. At the fourth level, geopolitics has emerged as a durable mindset and a set of doctrines that have outlasted major changes in ideology and international power. This durability reflects the plasticity of geopolitical doctrines and the extent to which fundamental concepts have remained intact, even though they are changeable, not least with major shifts in the understanding of spatiality — these concepts even bridging the large differences separating certain geopolitical doctrines from one another.
Varying definitions, contrasting usage, and the extent of subjectivity involved in the assessment of power do not mean that there is no objective reality or, indeed, no useful concept. As far as reality and perception are concerned, a human environment may be defined in terms of the human needs, desires and capabilities for satisfying them from the materials at hand (or, rather, apparently at hand). This definition depends in part on the conscious awareness of the situation and, thereby, on perception. However, no amount of desire and will can enable the production of steel from coal and iron deposits if those deposits do not exist, or if it is impossible to transport the raw materials, and at a reasonable cost.
Nevertheless, any subjective appreciation of what is objectively available lends itself to historicizing. Coal deposits exist in France and Germany, but from 1870 to 1945 the location and real significance of coal and iron deposits played a role in the territorial aspirations and strategic planning of those nations. From a different angle, responses to, say, the possibility of nuclear power or to France's interests at any time, involved, involve, and will involve ideological, cultural, and political assumptions.
Politics has, indeed, played a role throughout human geography. For example, in France during the early decades of the nineteenth century there were initial ideas for creating an integrated rail network based on grandiose economic needs, but a more political rationale came to prevail, with a national plan, imposed in 1842, that led to a rail system radiating from Paris and linking it to all parts of the country, especially the frontier regions. Transverse links that did not focus on Paris were not part of the Second Empire (1852–1870), but in 1879 the need to consider parliamentary constituencies under the Third Republic (1870–1940) produced the Freycinet Plan, which led to the building of what were termed "lines of local interest." This designation was, in turn, a clear sign of the hierarchy and usage of political space.
To take another example, the US government has recently found the notion of "ungoverned spaces" useful as a way to classify the world. This notion was centrally linked to discussion in the 2000s about so-called failed states, notably Afghanistan — discussion that was linked to an alleged need to intervene in them. The Pentagon's "National Defense Strategy," issued in 2008, referred to "ungoverned, under-governed, misgoverned and contested areas." Yet, in practice, definitions on this point are difficult. Failure as a state occurs in different ways, and with varied consequences. There are contrasts between domestic and international perception and different mechanisms at play that might help us in understanding something called "state failure." There may be a failure at the level of national government, but effectiveness at the level of some, or all, regional governments within a particular state. Moreover, as an instance of the role of perception, a murder rate that in Denmark would be seen as a sign of societal collapse is not perceived the same way in Brazil or South Africa. Not all the supposedly weak states are centers for terrorism. Indeed, this issue underlines the problem of thinking geopolitically in terms of states, as the key spaces in terms of instability are often parts of states, for example, dissident regions and communities. Since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, instability and opposition have been more pronounced in eastern and southern Afghanistan than in the north. This point demonstrates a concomitant need to think of geopolitics, at least in part, in terms of the spatial imprint and geographical shaping of ideologies, an imprint and shaping that may not reflect national boundaries. Geopolitics reflects the extent to which space is a reality, a process, and a perception, with a dynamic and contested character to each.
Geoffrey Sloan, a student of classical geopolitics, drew attention to different approaches in 2007 by considering geopolitics as a policy science and as an appendage of political propaganda. This is not, however, a clear classification. In practice, such a use of geography for propaganda is long-standing. For example, Augustin Fitzhugh's map of Newfoundland in about 1700 makes a political point, with the small area for "English fishing boats" appearing to be entirely shut in by the huge part of the sea controlled by their French counterparts. The 1930s Nazi map that showed Germany to be threatened by Czechoslovakian air power was a piece of propaganda, as there was no such threat. However, not all maps are easy to define. A map depicting the utility of the Suez Canal for British shipping might be propaganda or mere description, depending on the use to which the map is put, how it is drawn, and the accuracy of the data on which it is based. Moreover, the criteria for propaganda and description cannot always be readily distinguished.
In the longer timescale, alongside the objective criteria discussed above — criteria that play a key role in military, political, and economic strategy — geopolitics, like other forms of geographical analysis and expression, can, in part, be seen as a belief system. This is not least due to the symbolic weight attached to methods of depiction, whether symbols on maps or geopolitical phrases, such as "natural interests." Furthermore, as a more general point, the perception of power, as of success, is centrally involved in issues of power. Even place, its constraints and relationships, is a matter of perception, as much as an element that can be objectively measured and displayed in terms of coordinates. As geography is a means by which political entities, including their populations, make sense of their situation, specifically (but not only) their territorial setting and interests, so are these perceptions of key importance. As a related point, it is troubling to see the extent to which there is limited, or no, formal discussion of geopolitics in some of the synoptic literature produced by major experts in politics and international relations.
Perceptions of space are particularly significant for new states as they seek to define their interests. This point can be readily illustrated from history. For example, alongside "realist" issues of the inherent strength of the Brazilian state, perceptions of the space necessary for the state to operate, its real geographical identity, play a role. Alongside contingent political circumstances, this can be seen in the contrast between Brazil's ability to retain cohesion after the Portuguese link was broken in the 1820s and the strongly fissiparous character of former Spanish America in the same period. The definition and perception of space took place in a highly competitive fashion. Thus, in the late nineteenth century, the definition of the interests of the newly unified states of Germany and Italy was complicated by assumptions that derived from readings of the past, not least those of vulnerability to hostile neighbors that had allegedly prevented earlier unification, notably France and Austria. There was, and is, a broad social dimension to this issue of perception and to consequent attitudes and actions. For example, in the newly independent United States geographical literacy played an important cognitive, symbolic, and pedagogic role.
Yet, to indicate the variety of directions in which geopolitics can be taken, the question of making sense of the spatial setting of states (whether or not this "sense" is discussed in terms of realism, perception, or both) is made more complex when the understanding of geopolitics is expanded. This is the case in particular when geopolitics is expanded from a simple notion of debating military strategy (now often termed geostrategy) to consider, in addition, domestic policy and its multiple locations as key aspects of geopolitics and strategy. Indeed, part of the value of "critical geopolitics," a significant development in the subject over the last two decades, is that discussion of practical and popular geopolitical culture plays a prominent role in some of the literature.
DEFINITIONS
It is the very drive of the political system that is at question when domestic policies, the processes of identity, and the pressures for obedience and order, are all considered; and these factors all have spatial dimensions. Moreover, to take the political aspect further, geopolitics and strategy can be understood in terms of a process of policy formulation, execution, and evaluation, to which military purposes are frequently both instrumental and secondary. In part, the definition and discussion in recent decades of a separate operational dimension to war and policy — a dimension very much understood in military terms and with reference to military organizations and goals — provide, in contrast, a key opportunity for emphasizing a political approach to strategy, one in which geopolitics plays a major role.
An emphasis on the significance of domestic political issues and drives offers a possibility of dispensing with analytical models of international state and military development that assume, at that level, some mechanistic search for efficiency and for a maximization of effectiveness. One traditional strand of geopolitical argument can be located in this context by seeing it as designed to help secure such effectiveness and efficiency, and such claims are at least implicit in much of the conventional discussion of geopolitics. Such ideas, however, can do violence to the inherently controversial nature of efficiency and effectiveness, and to the complex processes by which interest in new ideas and methods interact with powerful elements of continuity.
Thus, replicating, and overlapping with, the situation in which geography, geographical relationships, and maps can all be variously defined and presented, geopolitics has a range of meanings and can be understood in different terms. These meanings can be grouped in terms of the geography of politics and, as significant, the politics of geography. These meanings, moreover, relate as much to how each is discussed as to what is being considered. In part, this range reflects the porosity of geography as a subject, especially once the public discussion of geographical factors is also considered. Analysis of the range of meanings of geopolitics in terms of a typology of meanings would not be terribly helpful, as there is a sliding and elision between them. Furthermore, what to a practitioner may be an objective geopolitical analysis may be a subjective, rhetorical, politicized use of geopolitical ideas to commentators or other practitioners. Such a contrasting understanding of geopolitics is well-grounded.
However overlapping, conditional, and contested, definitions are still valuable. As a field upon which policymakers rest (or even unthinkingly base) their decisions, and in which they seek to implement them, geopolitics most frequently calls attention to the context in which national security decisions are made and issues of war and peace are decided and, more particularly, calls attention to the relationship between strategy and geography. Thus, classical geopolitics discusses the key importance of geography for statecraft. In doing so, classical geopolitics defines the relevant relationships between, and among, the exercise of power, notably the changing geographical constraints and opportunities for success and failure. Classical geopolitics does so as those constraints and opportunities are perceived by actors engaged in conflict, as well as with reference to the capabilities of adversaries, such as population and critical resources, their perception of their interests, the available technology for war (and now also terrorism) and economic competition.
Geography is deployed by commentators in a number of respects. In particular, power in geopolitics is frequently positional, often focusing on a particular location or pivot (real or apparent) that may lend itself to weakness or strength, such as the possession of "choke points" — for example, the straits of Hormuz and of Malacca. Similarly, the idea of a drive for warm-water ports and for access to the oceans is an established theme in geopolitical literature, the former in the case of Russian history and the latter in that of modern Chinese politics.
Moreover, geographical factors are deployed in particular conceptual and methodological ways. For example, whereas both realism (as an approach in international relations) and geopolitics contain balance-of-power theories, their descriptions and use vary by subject. For realism, the relative physical strengths of nations and coalitions are measured in terms of physical-balance relationships. In contrast, for geopolitics, balance-of-power relationships come, in part, in terms of spatial positions or patterns.
At the same time, what these and other relationships meant to contemporaries — and what they also can be said to mean to subsequent commentators — varied greatly. These variations need to be borne in mind. This point provides a vital role for the historian, reflecting, as it does, the tension between a desire on the part of many social scientists to look for universal entities that can then be analyzed and, on the other hand, historical reservations about such an approach. These reservations tend to focus on the nature of changing meanings and of altering implementation, not least as a consequence of the specific discursive contexts within which entities and concepts exist and are to be understood. In the latter approach, geopolitics is historicized.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Geopolitics before the Term: Spatiality and Frontiers
3. Geopolitics before the Term: Maps
4. Geopolitics of British Power 1500-1815: A Case Study
5. Geography and Imperialism: The World in the Nineteenth Century
6. Geopolitics and the Age of Imperialism, 1890-1932
7. Nazi Geopolitics and World War II, 1933-1945
8. Geopolitics and the Cold War
9. Geopolitics Since 1990
10. The Geopolitics of the Future
11. Conclusions
Selected Further Reading
Index
What People are Saying About This
An extremely original work. . . . Black has his facts well in hand, and his interpretations are convincing.
"A germinal contribution to the study of geopolitics, international relations, and nation-state mechanisms for achieving predominance and hegemony in world affairs.... [It] is superlatively organized and written in eminently readable, clear, literary, and engaging prose.... Black has opened new frontiers of explanation and reference for future investigators."