Geopolitics, geography and strategic

history
Book

Published Version

Sloan, G. (2017) Geopolitics, geography and strategic history.

Geopolitical Theory. Routledge, Abingdon, UK, pp272. ISBN
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 1

CHAPTER ONE
GEOPOLITICS: GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY AND STRATEGY:
A TRINITY OF RELATIONSHIPS

Introduction
This is a book about relationships and the puzzles they present. These
two issues will be explored through a trinitarian structure. Understanding the
manner in which geography, history and strategy interact and have produced
political outcomes that have affected the security of states is the analytical
objective. Initially it would appear that this relationship is self-evident given
the fact that the configuration of terrain, changing technology and political
preferences are widely recognized as being pivotal to all security
arrangements. Deudney has pointed out, that there is a long history in
attempting to develop explanatory power with respect to these variables:
“geopolitical theorizing about the relationship between material contexts and
security politics is also among the oldest and most central lines of argument
in the 2,500 year project of Western political science.”1
The Problem of Definition
Despite this impressive intellectual lineage, which stretches back to
antiquity, geopolitics in the early twenty first century has a three-fold
problem. First there is the problem of definition. Every theory is generated
for someone and for some reason. Geopolitical theory initially emerged --
from Aristotle to Montesquieu and Machiavelli -- as a result of a naturalist
intellectual impulse. In The Prince, Machiavelli suggested that mastery of
geography is a key component to political survival: “He (the prince) should

1
D. Deudney, “Geopolitics as Theory: Historical Security Materialism,” European Journal of International
Relations Vol 6, No 1 2000 p 78.
 2

learn the nature of sites, and recognise how mountains rise, how valleys
open up, how plains lie, and understand the nature of marshes--and in this
invest the greatest care...and the prince who lacks this skill lacks the first
part of what a Captain must have.”2
There are numerous contemporary definitions of geopolitics. Many
focus on an appreciation of the development of modern economies,
changes in transport and weapons technology, access to trade routes and
resources. Aron has maintained that geopolitics “combines a geographical
schematization of diplomatic – strategic relations with a geographic-
economic analysis of resources, with an interpretation of diplomatic attitudes
as a result of the way of life and of the environment (sedentary, nomadic,
agricultural, seafaring).”3 Gray has tried to disaggregate the concept to
reveal its essential components: “Geopolitics is regarded here as a house
with five rooms: geophysical resources; location; human resources--skills
and culture; experience--the past, history, legends, myths; and mental
cartography. These categories capture the sources of the political
implications of geography.”4 Sloan focuses on the way in which these
components should function together to generate explanations: “Geopolitical
theory is an attempt to draw attention to the importance of certain
geographical patterns in political history. It is a theory of spatial
relationships and historical causation. From it explanations have been
deduced which suggest the contemporary and future political relevance of
various geographical conceptualisations.”5 Grygiel maintains that
geopolitical theory has three constituent elements: lines of communication
2
N. Machiavelli, The Prince (H.C. Mansfield Jr., Trans), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. p 59.
3
R. Aron, Peace and War, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966 p 191.
4
C.S. Gray, Perspectives on Strategy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, p 125.
5
G.R. Sloan, Geopolitics in United States Strategic Policy 1890-1987, Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1988
p 8.
 3

and their changing significance due to changes in transport and weapons

technology, the location of sources of natural resources and the location of
economic power.6 Furthermore, he has made an important claim about the
nature of the geopolitical reality and its relationship to policy: “the first
quality of geopolitics is its objectivity. By this I mean that geopolitics, or
the geopolitical situation, exists independently of the motivations and power
of states and is not contingent on the perceptions of strategists and
politicians”.7
Applying a synthetic intellectual approach, all four definitions
elucidate a common insight. Geopolitics is one of ‘grand theories’ of
International Relations. It is illustrative of theorising in which inter-
relationships among a limited number of variables purport to explain a wide
range of phenomena.
The Problem of Usage and Currency
The second problem is that of usage and currency. In terms of the
modern literature of International Relations and Strategic Studies, it has
become invisible. In one of the most important text books on International
Relations, edited by Baylis and Smith, there is no reference at all to
geography or geopolitics, and there is only one reference to strategic
interaction.8 In one of the leading text books on International Relations
theory,9 one that has gone through three editions,10 there is no reference to

6
For a more detailed discussion of these three elements see J.J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical
Change, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006, pp 26-36.
7
J.J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006, pp
24-25. Furthermore, he argues that a state has no capacity to change this geographic reality. Environmental
changes take place over decades and a policy maker can only respond; he cannot control them.
8
See Baylis and Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics, Second Edition, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001, p 314.
9
See Steans and Pettiford, An Introduction To International Relations Theory, Third Edition, Harlow:
Pearson Education Limited, 2010.
10
These editions were published in 2001.2005 and 2010.
 4

geography or geopolitics. In terms of the field of Strategic Studies the

situation is little better: in the recent monograph by Friedman11 there is only
a brief treatment of geopolitics; in the monographs by Heuser12 and Hill13
there is no explicit reference to geography or geopolitics and their
relationship to strategy.
There are two notable exceptions to this intellectual black hole into
which geography has fallen in the field of mainstream international relations
theory. First is the work of Colin Gray, who has almost single-handedly
addressed these relationships over nearly four decades of scholarship. In one
of his most important works, he devotes a whole chapter to discussing
‘Terrestrial Action.’14 The second is the work of Evans, who argued in 2001
that the international security system had become ‘bifurcated’: that is, a split
had emerged between the dominant state paradigm and sub-state and trans-
state strata. The implication of this, it was claimed, has been a reduction in
the relative importance of geography in the traditional strategic sense: it was
no longer possible for a state to retreat behind physical borders. However, he
did qualify what he meant by the ‘relative decline’ of geography: “In no
sense does such a phrase imply ‘the end of geography’ in the same sense that
Francis Fukuyma famously spoke of ‘the end of history.’ In terms of
logistics, campaign planning and topographical analysis, geography remains
fundamental to the art of war, while geopolitics remains an important
component of statecraft.”15

11
L Friedman .Strategy: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.p120-122.
12
B, Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
13
C. Hill, Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft and World Order, New Haven: Yale University Press,
2010.
14
See C.S. Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford; Oxford University Press 1999 Chapter 8.
15
M. Evans, From Kadesh to Kandahar, Military Theory and the Future of War, from Strategic Studies A
Reader. T.G.Mahnken & J.A. Maiolo (eds) London : Routledge 2014 p393-394.
 5

This lacuna flies in the face of the epistemological parameters of

Strategic Studies. Wylie has argued that while strategy cannot lay claim to
have the same degree of rigour as the physical sciences, it is an academic
subject in which geographical considerations play a crucial role: “It can and
should be an intellectual discipline of the highest order, and the strategist
should prepare himself to manage ideas with precision and clarity and
imagination in order that his manipulation of physical realities, the tools of
war may rise above the plane of mediocrity.”16
This raises the question why has the usage of the geopolitical concept
all but disappeared in the international relations literature? One reason has
to do with the close association in the Anglo-American mind with the Nazi
geopolitik. Hepple provides an assessment by illuminating the near terminal
effect that the association of geopolitics with the German School of
Geopolitics17 had: “ There does not seem to be any book title in English
using the term geopolitics between the 1940s and Gray’s Geopolitics of the
Nuclear Era in 1977 (with the exception of Sen’s Basic Principles of
Geopolitics and History ,published in India in 1975)”18 The claim is also
made that Henry Kissinger, in the late 1970s, was responsible for a revival
of the term and gave important impetus to new directions in terms of writing
on geopolitics.19 A second reason derives from the tendency in political
science to rely on political variables when explaining political outcomes:
Deudney has argued that: “In the human sciences, the dominant tendency
was to look for the source of change in the development of human
16
J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy :A General Theory of Power Control, Annapolis :UNIP, 1967 P?/ (check p
number)
17
For a detailed analysis of the origins and evolution of the German School of Geopolitics see G.R,Sloan,
Geopolitics in United States Strategic Policy 1890-1987, Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books,1988 p23-57.
18
L.W. Hepple, The revival of geopolitics ,Political Geography Quarterly ,Supplement to Vol 5, No
4,October 1986 p S22.
19
Ibid p S25.
 6

institutions and culture rather than in the physical environment.”20 Grygiel

has summarized these two reasons as follows: “The vast majority of current
international relations literature is characterized by the absence of
geography. Although the perverted versions of geopolitics, notably Nazi
geopolitik, are partly to blame for the current distain for geography, the main
cause for the academic irrelevance of geography seems to be the tendency to
explain political realities only through political variables.”21
This decline in the usage of the concept has not been replicated in the
currency of the term. In fact there exists an acute paradox in this respect.
Geopolitics has never been more popular on the internet. A recent Google
search for geopolitics yielded 5,570,000 results. A search for a more
qualified geopolitical theory produced 3,610,000 results.22 However, this
widespread use has resulted in an etymological transformation: “the term
‘geopolitics’ has enjoyed a ghostly afterlife, becoming a ubiquitously used
while being largely drained of substantive theoretical content, and is used in
so many ways as to be meaningless without further specification. Most
contemporary usages of the term geopolitics are casual synonyms for realist
views of international strategic rivalry and interaction.”23
This ‘ghostly afterlife’ of a once vibrant intellectual concept has been
further reinforced by the capture of the term by post- modern geographers.
They added the adjective ‘critical.’ The result phrase, ‘critical geopolitics,’
suggests, according to Deundey,24 a strongly anti-materialistic vision, one
that emphasizes the point that all geopolitical constructs serve an ideology
20
D. Deudney, Geopolitics as Theory: Historical Security Materialism, European Journal of International
Relations, Vol 6,No 1 2000 p83.
21
J.J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change ,Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press ,2006,
p13.
22
Accessed 15th March 2015.
23
Op cit p79.
24
Op cit p79-80.
 7

while paying scant attention to how the strategic significance of geographic

configurations change. Thus ‘critical geopolitics’ seeks to unmask how a
geopolitical discourse reinforces power relationships, whether found in a
specific text or in a general theory.25 It seeks “to define theoretically
ideological clusters or ‘discursive formations’ which systematically organise
knowledge and experience and repress alternatives through dominance.”26 It
also claims a unique advantage and insight: “how social and political life is
constructed through discourses. What is said or written by political elites–the
whole community of government officials, political leaders, foreign policy
experts and advisors–is a result of the unconscious adoption of rules of
living, thinking, and speaking that are implicit in the texts, speeches, and
documents. This group, on the other hand, is also considered to be the elite
that guides the masses concerning how they should live”.27 The unmasking
of the hidden assumptions behind every geopolitical speech or text is a
precondition for unravelling existing power structures and understanding
geographic configurations.28
Classical geopolitics is interpreted as the antithesis of this approach:
“geopolitics (classical) refers to a fixed and objective geography
constraining and directing the activities of states… such as the disposition of
states in relation to the distribution of the continents and oceans, or fixed

25
There is an academic journal dedicated to this task, Geopolitics. It promotes what could be described as
the political branch of geography. One of its constant themes is the emphasis on globalism. An example of
this literature may be found here: C Flint ,The Geopolitics of Laughter and Forgetting :A World Systems
Interpretations of the Post –Modern Geopolitical Condition, Geopolitics, Vol 6 ,No 3 ,Winter 2001.p1 -16
26
W.Outhwaite ;T.Bottomore (eds),Dictionary of Twentieth Century Social Thought, Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1993 p 161.
27
S.R..Gokmen, Geopolitics and the Study of International Relations. PhD thesis, Middle East Technical
University, August 2010 p79.
28
Two examples of this literature are : M. W. Lewis and K. E Wigen, The Myth of the Continents: A
Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) and J. M. Blaut, The
Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History (New York: The
Guilford Press, 1993).
 8

processes of territorial-economic expansion relative to military strength, are

seen as determining the strategic possibilities and the limits of particular
states”.29 Critical geopolitics makes a claim that is designed to change the
meaning of the term: “by exposing the supposedly objective geographical
element of geopolitics to be a contingent rather than absolute variable,
critical geopolitics becomes the study of the power/knowledge networks that
situate international politics”.30 Black has responded to this argument by
claiming: “critical geopolitics challenges our common understandings of
definitions, categories and relationships, by replacing them with, in some
cases, utopian wishful thinking, by political commitment instead of an
objective appreciation of the causes of conflict, by foreshortened historical
understandings and by a loss of clarity in communicating ideas”.31
The Problem of Paradigm and Ideology
The third problem can be described as a paradigmatic and/or an
ideological one. Perhaps the most common mistaken assumption about
geopolitical theory is its symbiotic relationship to the Realist approach. This
maintains that all thinking about international relations should begin with the
recognition of the primacy of power and that geographical factors are a vital
part of the assessment of power. Realism has always claimed to provide a
practical guide to statecraft. It is here that the nexus with geopolitics was
identified: “Some basic IR theory texts argue that realism provides a guide
based on the principles of realpolitik, for states to pursue their preservation
and interests. When defined as such, it is no different from geopolitics. This
point also tells us that the consistency between classical geopolitics and

29
J. Agnew and S. Corbridge, Mastering Space, London: Routledge, 1995, p 3.
30
J.P. Sharp, “Hegemony, Popular Culture and Geopolitics: the Reader’s Digest and the Construction of
Danger”, Political Geography, Vol. 15, No. 67 (1996), p 559.
31
J. Black, Geopolitics, London: Social Affairs Unit, 2009, p 3.
 9

realism turned out to be compulsory and inevitable.”32 Both approaches are

assumed to have common perspectives: practitioners and analysts in the field
of international relations assume the international arena to be anarchical;
states are viewed as the primary actors in that arena; the fundamental aim of
states is the pursuit of power; their ultimate goal is the achievement of
primacy and failing that, security. In short, the realist and the geopolitical
analyst are assumed to share the same world view.
Deudney has contested this point of view. “Contrary to the
contemporary identification of geopolitics with realism … early geopolitical
theory gave prominent attention to the relationships between material
context and liberal forms of political associations ranging from city–state
republics to large federal unions.”33 Mackinder, one of the founders of
classical geopolitical theory34 was an advocate of federalism in his seminal
work Democratic Ideals and Reality35 .He believed that in these political
structures as many functions should be devolved to provinces, regions and
communities as possible. This was better for people and their well being. In
1931 he applied this hypothesis to international relations: “Unless I am
mistaken, it is the message of geography that international co-operation in
any future that we need consider must be based on the federal idea. If our
civilization is not to go down in blind internecine conflict, there must be a
development of world planning out of regional planning, just as regional
planning has come out of town planning.”36

32
Ibid p177.
33
D. Deudney, Geopolitics as Theory: Historical Security Materialism, European Journal of International
Relations, Vol 6,No 1 2000 p78.
34
Mackinder’s ideas will be fully examined in Chapter Two.
35
Chapter Seven of his book, which is titled the Freedom of Men, is devoted to this topic.
36
H.J. Mackinder ,The Human Habitat, Records of the British Association of Advanced Science.1931,
Quoted in. W. H. Parker: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft, Oxford :Clarendon Press .1982 p86.
 10

Not only is classical geopolitics not tethered to the administrative state

– with its standing armies and its top-down fiscal apparatus – but it is also
not to be identified exclusively with conservative political ideologies. In
perhaps the most notable prediction to emerge out of an application of
classical geopolitics, Collins distils its principles and hypotheses into a
theory of explaining the stability of states and then applies that theory to the
Soviet Union. In his magisterial essay, “The Future Decline of the Russian
Empire,” Collins predicted the breakdown of the Soviet Union due to the
presence of unassimilated ethnic minorities that remained geographically
concentrated in territories positioned along the rim of an empire dominated
from Moscow by Russians.37 Collins, a conflict theorist and sociologist, was
prompted to write this essay because he was concerned that the pressures the
Reagan Administration applied to the Soviet Union could lead to a nuclear
conflict.38
Classical geopolitics is empirical in sprit; it recognizes the fact-based
nature of geographic configurations, some of which may be overcome
typically at great cost, economically or politically; but it is a grave mistake
to believe that it is associated exclusively with any ideology or with any
institutional framework for attaining a community’s security.

The Contribution of Geopolitics

These three problems notwithstanding there is a continuing relevance
of geopolitics to international relations. Geopolitics highlights the point that
37
R. Collins, “Imperialism and Legitimacy: Weber’s Theory of Politics,” “Modern Technology and
Geopolitics,” and “The Future Decline of the Russian Empire,” Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 145-166, 167-185, and 186-209.
38
For further comment on Collins’ prediction see L. Hochberg, The Language of National Insecurity:
Prediction, Strategy, and Geopolitics,” Advances in Competitiveness Research 2002 (10, 1);
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Advances-in-Competitiveness-Research/89491191.html, accessed
September 8, 2015.
 11

securing political predominance is not merely a question of having power in

the sense of the availability of natural resources, the acquisition of wealth or
a capacity for projecting force, but it is also dependent on the configuration
of the field within which that power is exercised. Over time, that field
within which power is exercised may expand (or contract) given the
changing nature of alliances, the emergence of new adversaries and enemies,
shifts in where technological advances occur, mistaken policy decisions, and
a number of other salient factors. Obviously, one goal of policy makers is to
extend the geographic configuration over which power is exercised.
Geopolitical practice and the conceptualisations that it produces over
time remain pertinent to the practice of international relations because
“Geopolitical thinking is inherent to the very practice of foreign policy,
though this is not always made explicit”.39 Furthermore, it is from choices
made by policy makers that political importance or relevance is attached to
geographical configurations or locations. The geographical factors which
influence politics are a product of policy makers selecting particular
objectives and attempting to realise them by the conscious formulation
strategies vis-à-vis potential or realized adversaries. In short a geographical
perspective is inevitable if an international policy is to be formulated and
successfully implemented in the teeth of inevitable opposition: “In nearly all
international transactions involving some element of opposition, resistance,
struggle or conflict, the factors of location, space and distance between the
interacting parties have been significant variables. This significance is
embodies in the maxim, ‘power is local’. That is to say, political demands

39
S.R. Gokmen, Geopolitics and the Study of International Relations, PhD Thesis, Middle East Technical
University, August 2010 p192.
 12

are projected through space from one location to another.”40 As a result, the
formulation of foreign policy should remain cartographically dependent.41
This the departure point for understanding the contribution of
geopolitics, both as a tool of analysis and as a guide to practice. Since the
industrial revolution, and the attendant technological revolutions in overland
transport (via railway) and communication (via the telegraph), states have
transformed the territorial jurisdiction through nationalizing the economy
and centralizing political functions.42 Indeed, during the construction of
railroads beyond the borders of a state and via favourable locations enabled
imperial powers to attempt the assertion of economic hegemony, the
projection of military force and the diffusion of values into previously
isolated and/or contested regions.43
Perhaps the most significant instance a geopolitically-inspired
reconfiguration of terrain in the modern period was the building of the
“artificial strait” connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific Oceans across the
Isthmus of Panama. Aguirre details the efforts by the foreign policy elite to
secure the terrain through which the canal would be built, the construction of
a doctrine of extra-territoriality to accommodate control, the geopolitical

40
H, &M. Sprout, (to be finished)
41
J. Hillen, “Foreign Policy by Map: What Geopolitics Is, and Why We Need It.” National Review
February 23, 2015; https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/413255/foreign-policy-map, accessed
September 8, 2015.
42
The literature on this point is extensive. Examples include E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The
Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976); D. E. Showalter;
Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology and the Unification of Germany (Archon Books, 1975); S. G.
Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850-1917
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
43
For instance, S. McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for
World Power (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2010); D. Lewis, Iron Horse Imperialism: The Southern Pacific
of Mexico, 1880-1951 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007); D. Devine, Slavery, Scandal, and Steel
Rails: The 1854 Gadsden Purchase and the Building of the Second Transcontinental Railroad Across
Arizona and New Mexico Twenty-Five Years (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2004). And for more recent
examples, see M. Z. Ispahani, Roads and Rivals: The Political Uses of Access in the Borderlands of Asia
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
 13

consequences for the United States as it sought to become a nation with a

two-ocean navy, and the current Panamanian repurposing of the Canal as a
national asset over which they should have control.44 Once a reconfiguration
of terrain occurs, policy makers must then face a new challenge. The
approaches to the reconfigured location must be secured, thereby potentially
setting in motion a further round of power projection into new regions.45
The Place of Geopolitics: A Trinitarian Perspective
Geopolitics should therefore be considered a synthetic field of study,
one that addresses questions at the confluence of three disparate academic
disciplines and their fundamental concerns: geography, strategic studies, and
history.46

GEOGRAPHY

Geo-strategy Historical Geography

GEOPOLITICS

STRATEGY HISTORY

Diplomatic
History

FIG 1.1

44
R. Aguiree, The Panama Canal (Leiden: Martinus Nijhof, 2010).
45
See Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality, 89 for how Palestine flanks the Suez Canal.
46
B. Haggman argued that “Geopolitics, both as Kjellen saw it and in its main Western i.e. Anglo-Saxon
stream (Mackinder, Spykman et al) is a science which borders on history, geography and political science,
but can also be regarded as an aid to all three. It is, to a great extent, a method of analysis more than a
science in itself.” in “Rudolf Kjellen and Modern Swedish Geopolitics, Geopolitics, Vol 3, No 2, Autumn
1998, p. 107.
 14

Geography
At its core, geography is the study of the “manifold features, physical
and human, which diversify the earth’s surface.”47 The physical
configuration of the earth’s surface, its mountains, plains, deserts, rivers,
coastline, and seas, remains the stage on which the human drama that is
politics is played out. Mountains and deserts were oftentimes barriers to
human interaction whereas vast riverine plains opened before determined
raiders, traders (in luxuries) and proselytizers. In the pre-industrial world,
overland travel was relatively easily achieved, provided provisions could be
seized or purchased en route; however, travel overseas remained
monopolized by those who could afford it. In order to keep out or regulate
the presence of undesired travellers, polities erected borders along defensible
positions, ideally in mountainous terrain or along the banks of rivers. The
formation of states, which may be defined as the monopolization of the
legitimate use of force within a jurisdiction, necessitated the creation of
borders, ideally defensible borders. Natural barriers, even when reinforced
by defensive bulwarks and manned borders, have never achieved perfect
security.
Travel across the surface of the earth is only one feature of human
geography; transport is another. In the era prior to the mechanization of
overland transport, the friction of terrain, even across the vast expanse of the
Eurasian plains, limited the range of movement of bulky goods (even given
the use of ox-drawn carts) to relatively short distances. Maritime transport
(historically relying on access to free energy in the form of buoyancy and
wind power) facilitated the movement of bulky goods (given a ship and a

47
S. W. Wooldridge and W. G. East, The Spirit and Purpose of Geography (London: Hutchinson
University Library, 1967 reprint), p. 11.
 15

crew that had to be fed) even over long distances, thereby enhancing an
opportunity for regional specialization of production. Given the variability
of the earth’s surface, the opportunities and limitations for travel and
transport enabled local populations to found polities that primarily operated
through an overland exchange of communications among administrators and
military officers, or through maritime exchanges of goods that generated
great wealth.48 Ultimately the logistics underpinning these distinctive
polities is grounded in physics and is the primary source the objectivity
associated with the study of geography.
Strategic Studies
The field of strategic studies, in the modern context, examines the
interactions between or among adversaries, engaged in conflict, potential or
realized. A strategy is not merely a static plan of action, rather it is a
dynamic awareness of one’s goals, an evaluation of the efficacy of means,
and an appreciation of consequences – given the fact that one’s adversaries
are also implementing their strategy to secure a desired, and perhaps even a
mutually unattainable, outcome. As one adversary becomes aware of
opponents and their capabilities, means may change, even goals may change
as the consequences of seeking that which may be achieved only at an
unacceptable cost.
Strategic studies, at the individual or institutional level, often focus on
stratagems for attaining economic success, power, or sexual gratification.49

48
E. W. Fox, History in Geographic Perspective: The Other France (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971)
49
For a comprehensive treatment, see the multivolume effort by R. Greene, The 48 Laws of Power, The
Art of Seduction, and Mastery, New York: Penguin Books, 2000; 2001, and New York: Viking Penguin,
2012, respectively. Greene is also the author of a book that is more exclusively macro in focus, The 33
Strategies of War, New York: Viking Penguin, 2006. Politicians often write about strategy. Consider D.
Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life (New York:
HarperCollinsPublishers, 2012). For a game theoretic approach to this subject see A. K. Dixit and B. J.
Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Poltiics and Everyday Life (New
 16

Across time and space, adversarial relationships reveal five several essential
processes. First, parties engaged in conflict seek to surprise their enemies
through the use of deception and propaganda; second, they clandestinely
gather sensitive information by deploying spies; third, in order to obtain a
competitive edge, they develop new military or productive technologies;
fourth, by engaging allies through diplomacy, they negotiate favourable
shifts in the balance of power; and, fifth, they resort to violence or the threat
of violence in order advance their interests or preserve their security.50
Adversarial relations are fraught with uncertainty; miscalculation and
mistakes cannot be discounted in any analysis. Parties to a conflict rarely
know for certain what an adversary’s intentions, capabilities and tolerance
for risk might be. Therefore, in the heat of battle, which is the singular
moment of strategic action, chance and contingency may overcome
meticulous planning; and these uncertainties are termed the fog of war.51
The process of making strategy is often elusive and hard to do:
“strategy is neither policy nor armed combat; rather it is the bridge between
them .The strategist can be thwarted if the military wages the wrong war
well or the right war badly. Neither experts in politics and policy making nor
experts in fighting need necessarily be experts in strategy. The strategist

York, W. W. Norton and Company, 1991.) W. Duggan draws on anecdotes from business to instruct
readers on The Art of What Works: How Success Really Happens, New York: McGraw Hill, 2001. For an
anthropologic approach to strategy, see F. G. Bailey: Stratagems and Spoils, Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1980; Morality and Expediency: The Folklore of Academic Politics, London: Guildford and Worcester,
1977; Humbuggery and Manipulation: The Art of Leadership, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988; and
The Tactical Uses of Passion: An Essay on Power, Reason, and Reality, Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1983. Not for the faint of heart is H. von Senger’s The Book of Stratagems: Tactics for Triumph and
Survival (ed. and trans. by M. B. Gubitz), New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
50
L. Freedman, Strategy, p. 3 mentions “deception and coalition formation, and the instrumental use of
violence” as three “elementary features of human strategy that are common across time and space.” To his
list, we can add technological innovation and espionage. That these features of strategic thought and
action are transhistorical and transcultural deserves further investigation.
51
Clausewitz, On War, p. 101 describes war as occurring in a fog of uncertainty, where “A sensitive and
discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.”
 17

must relate military power (strategic effect) to the goals of policy…Strategy

is difficult because, among other things, it is neither fish nor fowl. It is
essentially different from military skill or political competence.”52 It is
through the use or the threat of the use of force that strategy has real
purchase.
History
History, the third aspect of the Trinitarian relationship that constitutes
geopolitics, is traditionally defined as what historians do : “Historical study
is not the study of the past but the study of present traces of the past.” By
emphasizing the collation and assessment of surviving documents,
historians, such as G. R. Elton, believed their field of study could be saved
from preconceived notions. Furthermore, he argued that historians have
three “habits [of mind] peculiar to history: its concern with events, its
concern with change, and its concern with the particular.” 53 For many
traditionally minded historians, the “particulars” of the past are unique and
the quest for understanding of the past is an appreciation of its difference
from the present.
All these claims are now hotly contested.54 Pertaining to the
documentary fixation of history, E. H. Carr55 has argued:
The fetishism … of facts was completed and justified by a
fetishism of documents. The documents were the Ark of the
Covenant in the temple of facts. The reverent historian

52
C. Gray, Why is Strategy Difficult, from Strategic Studies A Reader ,(eds) T. G.Mahnken and
J.A.Maiolo, London: Routledge, 2008 p 394.
53
G. R. Elton, The Practice of History, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1967, pp. 9 and 10.
54
J. H. Hexter, Doing History, Bloomingdale: Indiana University Press, 1971; P. Gardiner, The Nature of
Historical Explanation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961; P. Burke, History & Social Theory, Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1992; E. H. Monkkonen (ed.), Engaging the Past: The Uses of History Across the
Social Sciences, Durham: Duke University Press, 1994; T. J. McDonald, The Historic Turn in the Human
Sciences, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
55
E. H. Carr, What is History? New York: Random House, 1961, pp. 15-16.
 18

approached them with bowed head and spoke of them in awed

tones. If you find it in the documents, it is so. But what, when
we get down to it, do these documents—the decrees, the
treaties, the rent-rolls, the blue books, the official
correspondence, the private letters and diaries—tells us? No
document can tell us more than what the author of the
document thought—what he thought had happened, what he
thought ought to happen or would happen, or perhaps only what
he wanted others to think he thought, or even only what he
himself thought he thought. None of this means anything until
the historian has got to work on it and deciphered it.
The writing of history has changed, too.56 No longer is there an exclusive
emphasis on change and events arrayed in a narrative. Historians and social
scientists57 have increasingly turned to writing about the “structures” of the
past in which change, as their primary concern, has given way to an
exploration of persistence. Some historians and social scientists have
remained interested in change, but have abandoned the study of isolated,
sharp, quick events in favour of a view of events embedded in long cycles.58

56
J. R. Hall’s Cultures of Inquiry: From Epistemology to Discourse in Sociohistorical Research,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 is the best book on how the social sciences and history have
sought to overcome the divide between generalizing and particularizing intellectual approaches. A useful
reminder on the presence of exceptions in social scientific phenomena is to be found in J. H. Levine,
Exceptions are the Rule: An Inquiry into Methods in the Social Sciences, Boulder: Westview, 1993.
57
The list of contributors to this shift is overwhelming. A number have incorporated a geographic
perspective in their writing. F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of
Philip II, Vols. I and II (trans. by S. Reynolds), New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973. . J. L. Abu-
Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989. E. Le Roy Ladurie, “History that Stands Still,” The Mind and Method of the Historian (trans.
by S. Reynolds and B. Reynolds), Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981, pp. 1-27.
58
I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Vol. I, Capitalist Agriculture and The Origins of the
European World-System in the Sixteenth Century, Vol. II, Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the
European World-Economy, 1600-1750; Vol. III, The Second Era of the Great Expansion of the Capitalist
World-Economy, 1730-1840s; New York: Academic Press, 1974, 1980, 1989 respectively. G. Modelski,
Long Cycles in World Politics, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987. C. Earle, “The Periodic
 19

From the perspective of geopolitics, history should be understood as

an appreciation and utilization of temporal frameworks that enable an
observer to describe and analyse conflicts that have occurred in the past or
break out in the present, and possibly even predict their future emergence
and resolution. Whether the subject of geopolitics is the persistent
geographic constraints on the options available to policy makers engaged in
conflict,59 or the cyclical manner in which territorial integration and
disintegration of dynastic empires occurs.60 Perhaps the most appropriate
temporal approach to history, from the perspective of strategic studies, is the
“analytical narrative,” an approach … [that] combines analytic tools ... with
the narrative form….”61 This approach is simultaneously “analytic in that it
extracts explicit and formal lines of reasoning, which facilitate both
exposition and explanation.” Why is the analytic narrative the desired
approach? Because the strategic element essential to the study of geopolitics
requires that, at some point, the analyst will attempt to engage the disparate
intentions, capabilities—technological and otherwise—goals, and/or risk
calculus pertaining to the consequences of the parties to the conflict. The
great strengths of the analytic narrative approach are that it permits the
analyst to tell stories of the back and forth of conflict, incorporate the
assessments of the parties to the conflict—all from a robust appreciation of
how strategy is related over time to geography.
Connections
Geography and Strategy: Geo-strategy

Structure of the American Past: Rhythms, Phases, and Geographic Conditions,” Geographical Inquiry and
American Historical Problems, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992, pp. 446-540.
59
Braudel, The Mediterranean, pp.
60
G. W. Skinner, “Presidential Address: The Structure of Chinese History,” The Journal of Asian Studies,
44, 2 (Feb., 1985), pp. 271-292.
61
R. H. Bates, A. Greif, M. Levi, J.-L. Rosenthal, and B. R Weingast,, Analytic Narratives, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 10.
 20

In order to capture the connection between geography and strategy,

Grygiel coined the holistic expression, geo-strategy. By this he meant, “the
geographic focus of a state’s foreign policy, or where a state directs its
power. It is a descriptive and not a normative concept because it does not
propose where a state ought to direct its attention and project power.”62 In
the context of the projection of force, where the study of strategy and
geography overlap, logistics, which is the “practical art of moving armies
and keeping them supplied,”63 stands out. A large armed force is essentially
a city on the move; it must be fed, fuelled and provided with ammunition if
it is to be effective on the battlefield. Thus, “[i]t follows that war, with its
numerous tentacles, prefers to suck nourishment from main roads, populous
towns, fertile valleys traversed by broad rivers, and buy coastal areas. All
this will indicate that the general influence that questions of supply can exert
on the form and direction of [military] operations, as well as the choice of a
theater of war and the lines of communication.”64
Obviously, since Clausewitz wrote these words, weaker military
adversaries have come to adopt guerrilla warfare; they disperse forces
amongst the civilian population that simultaneously provisions and hides the
warriors until their more conventional opponents are worn down by
attackers whose status as civilians or warriors remains in doubt.65 Although

62
J.J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006,
p. 36.
63
M. V. Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977), p. 1; see also the classic considerations by C. von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. by
Michael Howard and Perter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976) and A. H. Jomini, The Art
of War (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1862). J. Thompson, The Lifeblood of War: Logistics in
Armed Conflict (Washington: Brassy’s, 1991) and J. A. Lynn, ed., Feeding Mars: Logistics In Western
Warfare From The Middle Ages To The Present (Boulder, CO; Westview Press, 1994) provide historic
overviews. For an interesting case study drawn from ancient history, see D. W. Engles, Alexander the
Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978.)
64
Clausewitz, On War, p. 338.
65
R. Smith, War Amongst the People
 21

the routes over which the materiel must move to the site of battle may be
direct and efficient or hidden and dispersed, move it must, often across
terrain that is inhospitable, broken, and even contested.66 As Sun-Tzu stated,
“One who does not know the topography of mountains and forests, ravines
and defiles, wetlands and marshes cannot maneuver the army. One who
does not employ local guides will not secure advantages of terrain.”67
Sun Tzu’s book of aphorisms, The Art of War (400 BC), makes the
following point: “know the enemy, know yourself; your victory will never
be endangered. Know the ground, know the weather; your victory will then
be total”.68 Strategy must take into account geography and an acute
appreciation of the actual terrain across which an armed force has to fight
can be critical to success. Sun Tzu developed a typology that would be of
utility to the military commander. Geography not only shapes strategy but
has a purchase on the operational and tactical levels of war: “warfare, the
making of war, is first of all about the making the most of one’s chances
with the constraints imposed by nature.”69
A successful military strategy has been accessed as having the
following components: “clearly identifying political goals, assessing one’s
comparative advantage relative to the enemy, calculating costs and benefits
carefully, and examining the risks and rewards of alternating strategies.”70
The purpose of military strategy is a singular one: “Strategy is designed to
make war useable by the state, so it can, if need be, use force to fulfil its

66
H. A. Winters with G. E. Galloway, Jr., W. J. Reynolds, and D. W. Rhyne, Battling the Elements:
Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
67
Sun-Tzu’s Art of War, trans. by R. D. Sawyer in The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1993), p. 182.
68
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Oxford: Oxford University Press.1963 p129.
69
D. Moran, “Geography and Strategy”, from J. Baylis, James J. Witz and C.S. Gray (eds.), Strategy in the
Contemporary World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, p116.
70
T.G. Mahnken& J.A. Maiolo, Strategic Studies A Reader ,London :Routledge.2014 p2.
 22

political objectives.”71 Both these standard definitions fail to address

relationship of geography with strategy. Indeed, Gray has argued that this
relationship between geography and strategy has become largely invisible:
“so habituated are we to the affirmations of the importance of geography for
strategy, and so arguable are those claims, that the theory explaining why
and how geography really counts is, in effect, missing in action”.72
Other analysts have suggested that a geographic perspective is
essential to the realization of strategy. Aron, for instance, underlined the
centrality of this relationship in the following way: “Strategy is movement; it
is influenced by means of transport or communication. The utilisation of the
terrain is essential to tactics.”73 Owens has taken this point a step further by
claiming that “by discerning broad geographical patterns, one may develop
better strategic options by which a state can assert its place in the world”.74
The state still has to ensure that the geographical structure of the field within
which its power is exercised is as favourable as possible, while ensuring that
its enemies or potential enemies are disadvantaged when operating within
this same field.
Political objectives should dictate military strategy; and strategy
should anticipate how force is successfully projected from one location to
the next, each of which contains configurations of both physical and human
geography. Proximate locations may often be perceived as roughly similar
across a homogeneous region, but ultimately they are unique. The very fact
of proximity may, for instance, lead to a local rivalry, which is all but
71
H. Strachan, The Lost Meaning of Strategy, Survival, Vol 47,No 3,Autumn,2005 p49.
72
C.S. Gray, “Inescapable Geography”, from C.S. Gray and G.R. Sloan (eds.), Geopolitics, Geography and
Strategy, London: Frank Cass, 1999, p162.
73
R. Aron, Peace and War, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson ,1966 p181.
74
M. T. Owens, “In Defence of Classical Geopolitics”, Naval War College Review, Vol. 52, No. 4
(Autumn 1999), p63.
 23

invisible to an outsider. Therefore, for the policy-maker and the military

commander, understanding how geography mediates a state’s security is not
a discretionary consideration. Sir Julian Corbett, writing in 1911, addressed
this issue: “since men live upon the land and not upon the sea, great issues
between nations at war have always been decided – except in the rarest cases
– either by what your army can do against your enemy’s territory and
national life, or else by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your
army to do.75 Beaufre drew attention to “material factors” in the different
geo-strategic contexts of maritime and overland military activity: “the fact is
that strategy must to a large extent be governed by material factors and the
material factors characteristic of each field of activity differ, producing
therefore a different chain of consequences applicable only to that field; for
instance naval strategy has always been distinct from land strategy.”76
Geography, when it is manifested as geo-strategy, can best be
understood in the context of a specific theatre of military operations. For the
military commander, not every aspect of the fauna, flora, terrain and climate
is of interest. Geographical features become more abstract, simplified and
schematized in an effort to select for closer consideration only those
geographical features that are relevant to the military objective.
Cartographic design for military purposes reflects this consideration. In a
chapter entitled “Terrain,” Sun Tzu argued that every situation, and the
options that it facilitated, should be subject to an analysis by the commander.
The terrain and the way in which it may be used must be analyzed so that
“clever positioning” could facilitate both tactical and operational advantage.
The key relationship between the commander and these “positions” was the

75
J S Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, London: Longmans, Green & Co 1911, P12
76
A. Beaufre, An Introduction to Strategy, London: Faber and Faber, 1965, p30.
 24

need to recognise and analyse whatever new situation he found himself in:
“To estimate the enemy situation and to calculate distances and the degree of
difficulty of the terrain so as to control victory are virtues of the superior
general. He who fights with full knowledge of these factors is certain to
win, he who does not will surely be defeated.”77 The ‘positions’ were
abstract and relational concepts: accessible, entrapping, indecisive,
constricted, Precipitous, and distant. In each, Sun Tzu outlined how the
commander, must integrate these positions with his plans when conducting
operations against an enemy.
In the following chapter, entitled ‘The Nine Varieties of Ground,’ Sun
Tzu focused on how troops can be deployed and employed to the greatest
tactical advantage on the terrain that they find themselves. Ground is
classified as dispersive, frontier, key, communicating, focal, serious,
difficult, encircled and death. The ability to calibrate the use of troops
against this diverse typology is regarded by Sun Tzu as the commander’s
premier skill: “The tactical variations appropriate to the nine types of
ground, the advantages of close or extended deployment, and the principles
of human nature are matters the general must examine with the greatest
care.”78
Today these geographical considerations fall under the military’s term
“combat intelligence”: "leaders at all levels must therefore focus on those
aspects that most directly affect their units' mission. Platoon leaders
concentrate on streams, ditches, wood lines, fields and individual hills;
division commanders are concerned with transportation networks, drainage
patterns and hill systems. In either case, the leaders analyze the potential for

77
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1963, P128
78
Ibid P133
 25

cover and concealment, movement and obstacle effect, and observation and
direct fire effect."79Among the military, there is (and often unstated,) a
powerful continuity between Sun Tzu’s aphorisms and the modern approach
to informed leadership in combat.
The relevance of geography to military operations has found
expression in the classic writings of Carl Von Clausewitz. In On War,
which was published in 1832, there was a chapter titled “The Elements of
Strategy” wherein Clausewitz developed a typology of key variables that a
military commander must consider before engaging in battle. They
consisted of: psychological elements, including morale; military force,
including its size, composition and organisation; geometry of the situation,
including the relative positions and movements of forces and their
relationships (distance, etc.) to obstacles, channels, objectives etc; terrain
including mountains, rivers, woods and roads, all of which might influence
military activities; and supply, including the amount given the size of the
force, the means for securing it and the sources. It can be suggested that the
relative importance, scale, and components of these factors may have
changed, but they remain the basic elements of strategy.80
Where in these Clausewitzian elements of strategy is geography? To
Clasusewitz, the geometry of operations, the environment of operations, and
the sources and means of support are all geographic elements. This, in turn,
raises the question: are these three geographic factors determinative of
victory in land warfare? Clausewitz was careful to spell out the key
relationship that pertained between these three geographical based factors

79
.E.J. Palka, Geographical Information in Military Planning, Military Review, Vol LXV111 No. 3 March
1988,p53.
80
For an updated view of Clausewitz see: R Carlyle, Clausewitz’s Contemporary Relevance, The
Occasional, Number 16, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1995.
 26

and the psychological: “the effects of physical and psychological factors

form an organic whole which, unlike a metal alloy is inseparable by
chemical processes. In formulating any rule concerning physical factors, the
theorist must bear in mind the part that moral factors may play in it;
otherwise he may be misled into making categorical statements that will be
too timid and restricted, or else too sweeping and dogmatic.”81 Clearly, for
Clausewitz, the question of supply may limit the capacity of an army to
engage an enemy effectively, nevertheless the paucity of supply is never the
final word – an army that is highly motivated may secure victory despite
these limitations.
Nor can we be certain that these three geographic factors discussed by
Clausewitz are or have been equally useful in discussing the projection of
naval and air power. Gray has argued “the geographical dimension of
strategy is ubiquitous and permanent, yet varied in its specific influence
upon particular conflicts at particular times.”82 Peltier and Pearcy, in their
1966 classic, argued that the three geographical mediums of war – land sea
and air – have each their own geography at the tactical and operational level,
albeit one that is highly abstract and schematized.83 In terms of land
warfare, they claimed that three factors are important: objectives, channels,
and obstacles. There were two approaches to securing an objective:
“separate into simple movements by a single force and multiple movements
by divided forces. The simple movements may be conducted as a direct
assault along a front, a penetration or a flank attack. The multiple
movements may be in the form of diversionary action, convergent attack

81
C Van Clausewitz, On War, Edited by M Howard & P Paret, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1976, P184
82
C.S Gray, Modern Strategy Oxford :Oxford University Press,1999.p41.
83
G Etzel Pearcy & L C Peltier, Military Geography, New York: D /Van Nostrand, 1966
 27

including envelopment, or coordinated attack along a front.84 The ultimate

military objective of land warfare consists of the exercise of control over a
people; this goal does not apply for war conducted in the other two
mediums, conflict on the sea or in the air. Therefore, in all three mediums of
war, there is no such thing, in an absolute sense, as a common target or
objective, the identification of which depends in each upon the larger plan of
war.
Yet, the role of geography in land warfare depends greatly on the use
to which both sides put contested terrain. According to Winters, “The
record shows that the outcomes of many battles are decided as much by the
loser’s errors as the winner’s astuteness. In that process geographical factors
often have, in one way or another, a multiplying effect on a military
operation. The continuing problem is that no one can precisely predict how
the environment will influence the progress or outcome of the next battle.
All one can be sure of is that in some way they will be formidable. Then, as
unknowns appear, evolve and multiply, training, leadership, intelligence and
innovation become increasingly important”85
By way of contrast, the geography of warfare at sea has a focus on
accessibility and mobility. Except in the case of amphibious assault, the
objectives of sea warfare focus on the mobility of ships and fleets. Relative
movement dominates the strategy of the sea. The speed of advance and
radius of action have been the most important considerations. The post-
1945 technological addition to maritime combat has been the introduction of
radar, the impact of which has altered the range of target identifications and
the range of fire. The sustainability of movement at sea and related factors

84
Ibid, p53.
85
H. D Winters, Battling The Elements, P 269-270
 28

depends to a degree on the presence of land support and basing. In a

geostrategic, sense the location of shore bases for resupply and repair
facilities form the skeletal framework of a naval strategy. This raises the
question of the extent to which advantage can be derived from a far flung
system of operating naval bases and well-equipped dispersed fleets?
The geography of air warfare, while being unique in many respects,
has elements which are redolent of both land and sea warfare. Its
geographic dimension is concerned with basing to promote target
identification and accessibility which requires the presence of air bases
within the range of the relevant aircraft. Although the “area bombing” of the
Second World War was the embryo of a strategic air force, the strategic
function of air power came to prominence after 1945 with the advent of
nuclear weapons. However, since the late 1980s, technological innovations
have been so remarkable that they have imbued non-nuclear air power with a
qualitative improvement in its ability to achieve theatre joint-force
objectives directly.86
The key event prompting this re-evaluation of non-nuclear air power
was the 1991 Persian Gulf War when the lethality and effectiveness of air
weapons underwent the most dramatic transformation since the war in
Vietnam: “The prompt attainment of allied air control over Iraq during the
opening night of operation ‘Desert Storm’ and, more important, what that
control allowed allied air assets to accomplish afterwards by way of enabling
the rapid achievement of the coalitions objectives on the ground marked, in
the view of many, the final coming of age of air power.”87 The main change
in recent military aviation technology has been the introduction of low
86
B S Lambeth, Air Power, Space Power and Geography. From Geopolitics Geography and Strategy, eds.
Colin Colin S Gray & Geoffrey Sloan, London: Frank Cass, 1999,
87
Ibid p 63.
 29

observability to enemy radar and infrared sensors, more commonly known

as “stealth”. The main implication of this technology has been the
exponential growth of the two key elements of the geography of air warfare:
target identification and accessibility. “The large force packages that the US
Air Force and Navy routinely employed during the air war over North
Vietnam offered the only way of ensuring that enough aircraft would make it
to their assigned target to deliver the number of bombs needed to achieve the
desired outcome. Today improved battle space awareness, heightened
aircraft survivability, and increased weapons accuracy have made possible
the effects of massing without having to mass. As a result, air power can
produce effects that were previously unattainable.”88
If there is one independent variable that is frequently cited as having
an impact on geography’s pertinence to strategy, it is technology: “strategic
geography actually changes over time. The primary cause has been
technological change.89 The consequence has been that new strategic
circumstances came into being that posed fresh strategic problems”.90 Thus
states do not find themselves in a geographical strait-jacket; instead,
locations rise and fall in the calculus of strategic significance with the
introduction of new technologies; politicians and military commanders rely
on technological change to alter geographical configurations in their favour

88
Ibid P73
89
For an introduction to the literature on military technology,See: J. U. Nef, War and Human Progress: An
Essay on the Rise of Industrial Civilization, New York: W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1963; W. H. McNeill,
The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000, Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1982; G. Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West,
1500-1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; M. van Creveld, Technology and War: From
2000 B. C. to the Present, New York: The Free Press, 1991; and J. Keegan, A History of Warfare, New
York: Alfred Knopf, 1994; G. Friedman and M. Friedman, The Future of War: Power, Technology, and
American World Dominance in the 21st Century, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1996; and M. Boot,
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and The Course of History 1500 to Today, New York: Gotham
Books, 2008.
90
J.Gooch ,History and the Nature of Strategy from The Past as Prologue, W.Murray and R.H.Simreich
(eds),Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2006,p141.
 30

and overcome those that seemed previously insuperable.91 However, the

nature of this impact is not always straightforward: “at a time when
precision-guided missiles can destroy a specific house hundreds of miles
away, while leaving the adjacent one deliberately undamaged, small groups
of turbaned irregulars can use tortuous features of an intricate mountain
landscape to bedevil a superpower. In the latter case the revenge of
geography is clear. But in the former case, too, those missiles have to be
fired from somewhere, which requires a land or a sea base, thus bringing us
back to geography, albeit to a less intimate and traditional kind”.92
In the final analysis, the relationship between geography and strategy
is a complex one. The strategic thinker must ensure that the geographical
structure of the field in which military power is exercised remains as
favourable as possible while ensuring that enemies, potential or otherwise,
are disadvantaged with respect to the geography in which they must operate.
Gooch acknowledged this by citing Britain’s historical experience: “while
geography was fixed, strategic geography was not. British strategy makers
faced many difficulties in that the significance, value, and strategic
vulnerability or defensibility of particular parts of the globe varied
depending on political configuration and the level of sophistication of local

91
Culture is another factor influencing the relationship of strategy with geography. "Geography does not
determine national strategic culture in some simple and mechanistic fashion, but the geographical
circumstances of all kinds of a community cannot help but play a large role in the course of that
community's historical experience. Strategic culture may be understood to be a set of socially transmitted
attitudes, beliefs, and preferred procedures that members of a society learn, practice and teaches its new
members. It is close to self-evident both that geographical factors (location, size and character of national
territory, character of neighbours, and so forth) must permeate defence thinking, sometimes as an idée fixe.
Although some of those geographical factors are subject to change and to a changing significance as
technology and trade flows (inter alia) alter."91 See W. Murray& A. Bernstein ,eds The Making of
Strategy, Cambridge University Press, 1994 p 7-23, and p?for quote. For relevant examples: W. Murray,
MacG. Knox, and A. Bernstein (eds.), The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994); G. Dijkink, National identity and Geopolitical Visions: Maps of Pride
and Pain (London: Routledge, 1996); and, for a good overview of the subject, A. I. Johnston, “Thinking
About Strategic Culture,” International Security 19, 4 (Spring 1995), pp. 32-64.
92
R.D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography, New York :Random House,2012p125-126.
 31

communications”.93 Though the technology may lead to a reassessment of

the significance of a particular location, the security of communities, city
states, nation states and empires is dependent on geography, or more
specifically the scope and configuration of a field of military action.
According to Gray: “Each geographically tailored form of military power
contributes to the course and outcome of the war in the super-currency of
strategic effect. This idea shapes the treatment of ‘the grammar of strategy’
across all distinctive geographical environments of conflict.” 94 The impact
of geography on strategy occurs whether in providing opportunities, in
imposing limitations and in shaping the deployment and utilization of armed
forces. Political goals in warfare must take these considerations into account
for success to occur.
Politics, too, shapes the execution of strategy in the geographical
context and there is a complexity to this process which is rarely articulated.95
Policy makers attach significance to certain locations based on strategy, but
also on access to distant raw materials, the availability of far flung transport
routes, and even attachments to sites of cultural import.96 The formation of
strategy is a process that involves internal political influences and
idiosyncrasies of individual behaviour as well as the process of external
events and threats.97 The geographical factors which influence politics are a
product of policy makers selecting particular objectives and attempting to
realize them by the conscious formulation of strategies. A geographical
perspective is required if policy is to be realised.
93
J.Gooch ,The Weary Titan, Strategy and Policy in Great Britain,1890 -1918p282(check)
94
C.S. Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford :Oxford University Press,1999,p209.
95
R. Smith, Utility of Force, p.?
96
G. W. White, Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe, New
York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000.
97
W. Murray ,MacGregor Knox ,and A. Bernstein ,The Making of Strategy ,Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press ,1994 p20.
 32

The relationship between geography and strategy can be distilled to

the ability of senior commanders to collect, collate and develop an
understanding of the geography, given the technology at hand, that can be
used as a force multiplier when preparing plans for war and implementing
the conduct of operations.98 Senior military commanders recognize that
their efforts must be effective given that which is known, that which is
unknown and, in the Rumsfeld’s memorable phrase, the presence of
“unknown unknowns.”99 Chief among the unknown unknowns is the ability
of the adversary to surprise. O’Sullivan argued that: “Geography is
fundamental to the calculations and judgements involved in mobility and
surprise and they have a dual relationship. Movement creates surprise, and
surprise generates movement. The possible configurations of this couple are
constrained by the lie of the land and sea, the logistic possibilities and
time.”100 Strategy depends on the conscious selection of certain
geographical locations and the movements of forces, given the parameters of
an overall plan, which must be flexible enough to encompass and respond to
surprise, so that the possibility of defeating an enemy is enhanced or, in
failing to achieve that ideal, survival of one’s own country’s is ensured.
Geography and History: State Formation and Disintegration
Historical geography addresses how geography has shaped the
formation of cultures, economies, societies and polities. Thucydides, in the
first book of The Peloponnesian War, encompassed geographic factors to
explain the divergent paths Sparta and Athens took in becoming,
respectively, the foremost military and naval powers in the era after the
98
Within this context Peltier and Pearcy have identified six specific elements that make up the parameters
of strategic geography :accessibility, mobility, visibility, communicability, availability, and vulnerability.
99
D. Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld’s Rules, p. 324.
100
P.M. O’Sullivan, The Geography of War in the Post Cold War World, Ontario: Edwin Meller Press,
2001, p. 113.
 33

Persian War.101 Despite frequent attempts by Enlightenment thinkers, such

as Montesquieu, severe doubts remained over reliance on climate and other
environmental factors in explaining political culture and institutions.102
Hegel dissented from the use of geography as the determinant of political
outcomes:
Nature should not be rated too high or too low; the mild Ionic
sky certainly contributed much to the charm of the Homeric
poems, yet this alone can produce no Homer. Nor does it
continue to produce them; under Turkish government no bards
have arisen.103
Nevertheless, social scientists have appreciated geographic factors as a
significant determinant, if rarely the determinant, of political
development.104
In order to capture the nature of the political conflict within, beyond
and across the borders of states, the Swedish political scientist, Rudolf
Kjellen,105 coined the term “geopolitics,” which was part of a typology
designed to provide an understanding of how geography, which was but one
element of an organic system of political science, would promote an
understanding of the development and survival of a state. In his 1901 book

101
R. B. Strassler (ed.), The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to The Peloponnesian War,
New York: Free Press, 1996, pp. 3-16.
102
Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. by Thomas Nugent, New York: Hafner Publishing
Company, 1949, pp. 221-27 and 320-21.
103
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. by J. Sibree, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
1956, p. 80.
104
Fox, History in Geographic Perspective, p. XYZ, disposes of “geographical determinism” by calling
attention to the human ability to take geography into account when taking decisions, ignoring it at one’s
peril, successfully transform circumstances or developing new technologies to overcome challenges, or in
making mistakes.
105
He taught at the University of Gothenburg from 1891 until 1916. In 1917 he was appointed Professor of
Political Science at Uppsala University.
 34

titled “Staten Som Lifsform,”106 he argued that it was possible to identify

laws that governed state development. His aim was to parry a legalistic
view that interpreted the state merely as the sum of the articles of its
constitution and other basic laws. There were five important elements in
Kjellen’s system of political science; the first was “Geopolitik,” which
described the conditions and problems of the state which have their origins
in its geographical characteristics, such as its position, configuration, and the
nature of its territory. Secondly, there was “Ecopolitik” which looked at the
economic foundations of a state; the third was “Demopolitik” which looked
at ethnic composition and the population trends of a particular state; the
fourth was “Sociopolitik” which advanced a sociological perspective on the
state; and the final was “Cratpolitik” which emphasized the governmental
institutions comprising the state’s apparatus. Despite this promising early
start, geopolitics languished for many years as social scientists turned their
attention to universal propositions pertaining to international conflict and
state formation.
In the aftermath of the Second World War social scientists focused
on general theories of economic and political development.107 In the United
States the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Science
Research Council sponsored a series of volumes on political development,
one of the most notable of which was Crises and Sequences in Political
Development. This volume of collected essays addressed political and
social development in Africa and elsewhere, sought to explain
developmental outcomes as the result of how polities handled “the five
106
This was subsequently republished in Germany in 1916 under the title Der Staatals Lebensform (The
State as a Living Form)
107
Geographers were not immune to this generalizing impulse. See R. Hartshorne, “The Functional
Approach in Political Geography,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 40 (1950),
pp. 105 and 110 for his discussion of centrifugal and centripetal forces.
 35

crises of identity, legitimacy, participation, penetration and distribution .”108

National security was not explicitly mentioned as a crisis and, to the extent
territorial issues were discussed, they were subsumed under the crisis of
identity (societies identify with the territory occupied) or the crisis of
penetration and government capacity (polities must cope with conquest or
regional variation.)109
Four years after the publication of Crises and Sequences, an
intellectual sea change occurred.110 Tilly edited volume 8 in the Studies in
Political Development: The Formation of National States in Western
Europe. By narrowing the scope to the European historical experience, the
contributors prioritized the quest for national security, along with war
making, policing, and military organizations in their analyses. 111 In Stein
Rokkan’s essay, “Dimensions of State Formation and Nation-Building.” a
“cognitive map” of European development outlined titled “A Schematic
Geopolitical Map of Europe.” . He articulated a five-fold a typology of
regimes (i.e., “Seaward Peripheries,” “Seaward Empire-Nations,” “City-
State Consociations,” “Landward Empire-Nations,” and “Landward
Peripheries.” It was an attempt to classify the early-modern starting points
for European polities—within an overarching geopolitical context of

108
L. Binder, J. S. Coleman, et al, Crises and Sequences in Political Development, Studies in Political
Development 7, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971, p. viii for quotes and pp. 112-114 , 220-23 for
discussion of territory in the context of the identity and penetration crises. An attempt was made to apply
this approach to historical case studies by Raymond Grew (ed.) Crisis of political Development in Europe
and the United States, Studies in Political Development 9, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
109
J. LaPalombara, in his essay “Penetration: Crisis of Governmental Capacity,” Crises and Sequences, p.
221 skirts how the quest for glory and security resulted in territorial expansion among the Enlightenment
European monarchs, thusly: “… in the administrative histories of several Western nation-states … [t]he
most fascinating among these are Brandenburg-Prussia and France … the rulers of a particular polity
sought to expand the geographic areas over which they could exercise control. What motivated these
ambitions and attempted changes need not detain us here….”
110
Fox, History in Geographic Perspective, 1971 and I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, I, 1974
both appeared.
111
 36

neighbouring regimes—as they began the respective processes of

development or possible destruction.112
The question of how geography has influenced the formation and
survival of states and other political institutions, such as feudal monarchies,
city-states or multinational empires, or maritime empires is of paramount
importance. The eternal and critical challenge that all statesmen face is how
to ensure that their state as an organisation of land and people sustains itself
as an organised unit. A key aspect of this is the need to ensure that the forces
that bind disparate geographical regions and ethnic groups together are
sustained. Furthermore, these forces need to hold at bay destructive forces,
which are expressed politically, and could result in regional secession,
revolution and state disintegration or conquest.113Geographic factors and
how they are understood can explain the survival or disintegration of states.
Geography is particularly useful in explaining how states survive.
First, there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ state with ‘natural’ boundaries.
Policy makers have to secure defensible borders, even at the risk of
incorporating into their territorial jurisdiction irredentist populations. Calls
for socialization, sometimes strenuous in nature, directed at these minority
populations represent attempts to advance loyalty among the citizenry. In the
contemporary period, ethnic cleansing has resulted from this impulse toward
homogeneity. Political instability can arise from attempts of a particular
ethnic group to give its folk traditions legal expression, thus creating a

112
Stein Rokkan, “Dimensions of State Formation and Nation-Building: A Possible Paradigm for Research
on Variations within Europe,” Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe,
Studies in Political Development 8, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975, pp. 562-600 and 578-79
specifically for
113
See T.F.Fazal, State Death in the International System, International Organization Vol 58 ,Spring 2004
,pp311-344.
 37

power struggle over social prestige and the economic benefits.114 The
boundaries of a state are rarely coterminous with the national society living
within the jurisdiction of a state—let alone coterminous with a fully
integrated national economy.115 Because borders were in doubt, the holder
of the final and legitimate decision-making authority, i.e. sovereignty,
remained contested until such time that “a more permanent political
geography” was established. 116
Second, because commerce may traverse the borders of the state, the
impetus to control—abolish, regulate and tax—it is a significant impetus to
the formation of the modern state.117 Feudal lords claimed the power to
regulate control within their domains; however, would-be absolute monarchs
of the early modern period sought to concentrate control over the economic
life of the state by abolishing feudal privileges. Hirst has argued that a
synthesis of territoriality and sovereignty bestowed a number of permanent
tangible benefits on the institution of the state: most notably, the state
becomes the “superior political agency that determines the role and powers
of all subsidiary governments.”118
Third, states may also promote the self-conscious realization that an
ethnic group is in fact a community, with an attachment historically to a
given territory, a distinctive culture, and a unique historical fate. Niebhur

114
For one example in the early history of the United States see A. R. L. Cayton, Frontier Republic:
Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780-1825, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986.
115
Consider: during the industrial revolution, iron and coal deposits may be found across a border in the
territories of adversarial powers.
116
R.J. Johnston, Geography and the State, London: Macmillan,1982 p41 and for the exclusivity of
political control over a territory, see A. James, Sovereign Statehood, London: Allen & Unwin ,1986 p13.
117
An alternative perspective that sees the empire in terms of its relationship to geography as
foreshadowing the modern state’s control over the economy: “The state apparatus seems to have emerged
as sedentary farming produced a surplus for exchange, allowing for trade, occupational specialization, and
an increasing stratification of society. Evidence from the Middle East, the Indus basin, and the Nile valley
suggests the growth of trade and specialization stimulated agglomeration in specialized communities, the
early towns.” R.E.H. Mellor, Nation, State, And Territory, London: Routledge,1989 p41-42.
118
P Hirst, War and Power in the 21st Century, London: Polity Press, 2001, p45.
 38

made a crucial insight to the degree of artifice, which can vary from state to
state, that is required to hold the nation state together: “it was tempting to
forget that communities are composed of organic and of contrived forms of
cohesion. In civilised societies both are necessary. The necessity for both
forms is constant, but the proportion between them is variable according to
the culture, the degree of education in a nation and the intensity of the means
of communication”. 119 To some extent, all national communities were
“imagined communities,” either intellectuals invented such communities or
they systematized and glorified ethnic traditions as the essence of a new
nation.120 In either event, standards—laws, regulations, and norms—were
imposed.
Although the historical circumstances of every state has been
different, in terms of their development, every nation state, in Europe at
least, had a common starting point. The process began by the expansion of
what Pounds and Ball called “core-areas” [See figure 1.2].121 These core
areas had three salient qualities: first, they had to be able to defend
themselves from attack and encroachment; secondly, they had to be capable
of generating a surplus income to pay for the armed forces that could, if
required, facilitate further expansion; thirdly, they had to have the capability
to participate in long-distance commerce, which was usually river borne, to
obtain materials which were not available locally. To these three, Hechter
suggests a fourth: a more or less homogeneous ethnic group that dominated
the area that comes to be identified with the state: Castile in Spain, Ȋle de
France in France, the Home Counties in England, etc. “Each of these small
119
R. Niebuhr, Nations and Empires, London: Faber and Faber, 1959, p. 260
120
B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London:
Verso, 2006.
121
N.J.G.Pounds &S.S.Ball, Core Areas and the Development of the European States System ,Annals of
the Association of American Geographers Vol 54 ,No 1,1964.
 39

areas had, to varying degrees, distinct cultural practices from those of

outlying, peripheral, areas.”122 These “core-areas” were all well developed
by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
In comparison to these core areas, the peripheral, outlying areas were
relatively isolated from one another and from the dynamism characteristic of
the core area. For example in south western region of medieval France,
there was a pattern of settlements called ‘bastides’. These fortified
settlements in rural habitats were located in the contested zone between the
Kings of England whose rule extended south to Aquitaine, which was part of
the Angevin Empire, and the lands ruled by the Count of Toulouse.
Between 1222 and 1373 over five hundred ‘bastides’ were built and they
enabled the local population to benefit from the important economic,
political and strategic functions these constructions performed. In this
contested zone, local populations, occupying diverse pieces of land, had the
political resources to declare or withhold political allegiance.123
The importance of core areas in the European state system was
enhanced by two related developments that took place in the 16 th and 17th
centuries. First, the growth of central authority within medieval kingdoms
gradually succeeded in undermining the autonomy of feudal units within
their domain. Secondly, the central authority, usually the king, managed to
seal their state against the incursions of outside authorities. It was that
process that led to the modern concept of sovereignty: “[the ruler] has the
power to constrain his subjects, while not being so constrainable by superior
power. The decisive criterion thus is actual control of one’s ‘estate’ by
122
M. Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, Transaction
Publishers, 1998, 2nd ed., p. 5. See also N. J. G. Pounds and S. Bell for a map of the “also rans” among the
core areas that failed to construct or preserve an autonomous state in “Core Areas and the Development of
the European State System,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 54, 1 (1964), pp. 24-40.
123
See G. Bernard, The Bastides of South-West France, Toulouse: Diagram Edit Eur, 1991.
 40

one’s military power, which excludes any power within and without.”124
These processes, internal directed against feudal competitors and external
against emperors and popes, marked the end of the medieval structure.
These processes were not peaceful. “The ‘fixing’ of national spaces
on the European map took place in the midst of widespread violence and
warfare, particularly during the Reformation, the Counter–Reformation and
the Thirty Years War, a conflict that claimed up to 30 per cent of the
population in parts of central Europe.”125 European states were in a
“competitive geopolitical environment”126 and thus policy makers had a
powerful motivation to build administrative infrastructure enabling the
extraction of revenue from the ruled societies in order to pay for military
campaigns and standing armies. The territorial state became the dominant
political form in Europe because it : “triumphed over other possible forms
(empire, city-state, lordship) because of the superior fighting ability which it
derived from access to both urban capital and coercive authority over
peasant taxpayers and army recruits.”127
The ambiguity of border areas, the mutability of commerce, and the
non linear progress for national community meant that the formation and
consolidation of the modern state took much longer128 than is normally
supposed. Although the inception of the modern state is often dated from
the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, its consolidation, according to Smith, in
the practice international politics is relatively recent: “the First World War

124
J.H. Herz, “Rise and Demise of the Territorial State”, World Politics, Vol. 9 (1957), p479.
125
M. Heffernan, The Making of Europe Geography and Geopolitics, London: Arnold ,1998 p17.
126
G. Gill, The Nature and Development of the Modern State, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian,2003
p186.
127
T, Ertman ,Birth of the Leviathan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1997 p4.
128
“Instead of scattered islands of political power, each almost isolated from the other, there was a solid
block of territory in which one ruler had final authority. It took centuries to attain this result.” J.R.Strayer,
On The Medieval Origins of The Modern State, Princeton: Princeton University Press ,1970 , p. 31.
 41

achieved a kind of final geopolitical shakeout, establishing a discrete system

of national territories throughout Europe. It was final not in the sense that no
further geopolitical change occurred; clearly it did. Rather the form of the
territorial system of nation states-decades, even centuries, in evolution –
truly came to fruition only after World War One.”129 The articulation of an
international norm was required, one that suggested that each nation should
exercise “self-determination” through acquiring an exclusive territory and a
state apparatus. Such a norm did not abolish conflicts between states, but
provided a new rationale for territorial redistribution through subversion
and/or conquest.130
Beyond the European experience, the failure of modern state
formation is oftentimes attributed to the artificiality of the borders imposed
on African and Asian colonies by the maritime European powers, with the
incorporation into these territories of disparate ethnic groups. Yet, the
European experience also required rulers to deal with disparate ethnic
groups residing in territories incorporated behind artificial borders.
Nevertheless, the relationship between the core areas and their respective
peripheries has allegedly gained little traction in the formation of states
beyond Europe. Acemoglu and Robinson have argued that these core-
periphery processes generate little explanatory power: “Geographic factors
are unhelpful for explaining not only the difference we see across various
parts of the world today but also why many nations such as Japan or China

129
N. Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003, p. 118.
130
J. D. Hardy and L. J. Hochberg, “The Ukraine Crisis, Part II: Borderland” Mackinder Forum, April 9,
2014: http://www.mackinderforum.org/commentaries/the-ukrainian-crisis-part-ii, accessed September 30,
2015.
 42

stagnate for long periods and then start a rapid growth process.”131 What
seems to have been absent in much of the rest of the world is the reinforcing
processes of a sovereign territorial state penetrating the society, a dynamic
market economy which facilitated the goal of a self-perpetuating growth,
and a strenuous geopolitical environment that spurred economic and military
competition.
In much of the Middle East states and the indigenous Asian empires
this dynamic was attenuated: they were largely agrarian in focus and “did
not penetrate the society very effectively and certainly not as deeply as the
states of the West….” Second, “the absence of geopolitical competition for
Asia empires robbed them of the impetus to rationalize structures at home
and encourage innovation in technological development … the Mughal,
Caliphate and Ottoman empires did not penetrate deeply into the societies
over which they ruled. The linkages between centre and region were weak
and extended, with central power at best exercised directly only on an
episodic basis.”132 In Africa the formation of nation states was different
again. Here was the product of a specific colonial process whereby the
131
D. Acemoglu & J.A.Robinson, Why Nations Fail, London: Profile Books, 2013, p. 56 for quote. These
authors also endorse (on p. 51) a mono- causal economic explanation that sets geography aside: “The great
inequality of the modern world that emerged in the nineteenth century was caused by the uneven
dissemination of industrial technologies and manufacturing production. It was not caused by divergence in
agriculture performance.” Darwin has argued that there were also cultural influences at work: “Absolute
loyalty to a territorial state and its ruler conflicted with notions of an Islamic community of believers- the
umma –and the autonomous authority of those who interpreted the Korean and the sharia.” J. Darwin,
After Tamerlane, London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 498.
However, in Europe there also was an unequal access to technology among the various rulers
which spurred mercantilist and other controls over economic development. The contest between monarch
and pope for the allegiance of Christians in Europe was resolved in favour of the monarchs. It is not clear
why unequal access to technology or the quest for universalistic cultural factors embedded in powerful,
trans-national institutions should operate differently in Africa and Asia—and not be susceptible to a
geographic analysis. There is no guarantee that the outcomes will be the same, but perhaps the
fundamental point is that the newly independent former colonies and protectorates of the European powers
have not had enough time to redraw their borders. If the European experience is a useful temporal yard
stick against which state-formation might be measured, the sixty years since the end of World War II and
the beginning of decolonization is simply not enough time for the relevant processes to have occurred.
132
G. Gill, The Nature and Development of the Modern State, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmilian ,2003
p186.
 43

maritime European powers leveraged a clear advantage from their ability to

use and apply a specific number of technologies: “The steamship and the
railway were the battering rams with European traders could break the
monopolies that the African coastal elites and their inland allies had tried to
maintain over their commercial hinterlands.”133 China was a product of yet
another unique process. At times, there were periods of dynamism; yet its
constituent elements were different from the competitive geopolitical
environment of the European states: “The Chinese Empire, relying upon a
highly developed bureaucracy drawn from the society generally and held
together by the discipline imposed by ideology, the Chinese state during its
periods of strength probably exercised at least as much power over many of
its regions as did any large European state.”134 China perceived itself
culturally as the ‘middle kingdom,’ with a periphery of weaker and smaller
states all of which were expected to acknowledge Chinese superiority and
offer tribute.135
Today the nation state remains pivotal: it is still the basic unit of
international relations and it still dominates the state’s jurisdiction, though
both have been significantly challenged since the end of the Cold War. One
thing is certain: the geography of the state is not a static phenomenon; it has
undergone transformations in the past, is undergoing significant ones now,
and will do so in the future. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War,

133
J. Darwin, After Tamerlane, London :Penguin Books,2008 p305.
134
G.Gill, The Nature and Development of the Modern State, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,2003,p186.
135
Historical sociologists have, by and large, been responsible for the literature on state-formation and
revolution: B. Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making
of the Modern World, Boston: Beacon Press, 1966; C. Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in
Western Europe, 1975; R. Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule, Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1978; T. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France,
Russia, and China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979; J. A. Goldstone, Revolution and
Rebellion in the Early Modern World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Mainstream authors
in international relations in general have not recognized how these processes of state formation impinge on
the international system.
 44

political scientists proclaimed the end of the state. Globalization had

defeated geopolitical considerations. The most important challenge to the
state and the territory over which it was sovereign was the advent of “a
process in which capital moves on the globe in search of profit with no
constraints on its activities. As a result of this process national states are
weakened and deprived of regulatory capacity”.136 Given the impact of
globalization, the borders of the state and the international arena beyond
have become more porous: “as sovereignty is weakened, whether by people
identifying with some ‘world-culture’ other than a national one, or through
the increased activities of multinationals operating as economic units within
the open lattice-work of nation-states, the power of the nation-state to
determine the futures of its citizens is slackened too. However, the
weakening of the power of the nation-state within its own borders tends to
unleash countervailing forces to the global ones in the form of intensely
nationalist sentiments.”137 “Globalisation” in its economic (movement of
capital and emergence of free markets), cultural (challenges to traditional
values via new forms of communication), political (the irresistible victory of
liberal-democracies) and demographic (the welcoming of immigration,
including illegal immigrants) manifestations remains vigorously
contested.138 Advocates and detractors mobilize cosmopolitan versus
national values in their various defences and attacks on this process.139

136
N. Kliot and D. Newman, Geopolitics at the End of the Twentieth Century, London: Frank Cass, 2000, p
2.
137
S. Waterman, “Partition, Secession, Recession and Peace in our Time”, Geojournal, Vol. 39, 1996, p.
351.
138
From the end of the First World War to the end of the Cold War the line between the state and the
international system in which it operated was assumed to constitute two separate, hermetically sealed,
entities. This binary line and the assumptions that went with it dissolved in a manner that few policy
makers or academic writers have anticipated: “That the high politics of diplomacy and strategic affairs
could and should be separated from the low politics of domestic politics and transnational relations is no
longer valid. Ethnicity, with its ability to influence state behaviour both domestically and internationally –
perhaps most obviously through secessionist and irredentist movements in a number of critically important
 45

Furthermore, the process of globalisation has been interpreted as

removing two of the most important rationales for the existence of nation
state: the ability to engage in self-defence and the competency to wage war.
Ignatieff has summarised the enduring salience of these two qualities:
a new interdependence might be emerging in the economic
realm, but there is no discernible alternative to the nation state
as the chief provider of foreign and domestic security for most
human populations. Commerce may be borderless, but human
beings cannot be. They need secure territories to live in, and
these can only be provided by states with monopolies over the
legitimate use of force. It is difficult to imagine any global,
regional or continental body replacing the state in these
functions, because these bodies lack the democratic legitimacy
if citizens are to be sent to kill and to die.140
In the aftermath of the attacks on 11th September 2001, Professor John Gray
endorsed Ignatieff’s views by sounding the death knell of this era of
unrestrained globalization: “the conventional view of globalisation as an
irresistible historical trend has been shattered. We are back on the classical
terrain of history, where war is waged not over ideologies, but over religion,
ethnicity, territory and the control of natural resources.”141
The implications of this argument should not be ignored. The
independent states that exist today are products of very different processes of

regions –is now the very essence of high politics.” S.R. Gokmen ,Geopolitics and the Study of International
Relations, PhD thesis, Middle East Technical University ,August 2010, .p. 174-175.
139
The literature on this subject has been vast as it has been the varied. For example: E.N. Luttwak, “From
Geopolitics to Geo-Economics,” National Interest, Vol. 20l, (1990), pp17-24; R. Boyer and D. Drache
(eds.), States Against Markets: The Limits of Globalisation, London: Routledge, 1996; and K. Ohmae, The
End of the Nation State, London: Harper and Collins, 1995.
140
M Ignatieff, Virtual War, London: Vintage, 2001, p176.
141
J. Gray, “The Era of Globalisation is Over”, New Statesman, (24th September 2001), p25.
 46

state formation; however, all have a relationship to the territory that they
penetrate, control and secure. Their function remains to sustain the artificial
entity that is the nation state and ensure that its borders are successfully
defended. The decision makers in a state must sustain its geopolitics by
retaining and balancing three capabilities : first, the geo-strategy of military
defence; second, understand the historical geography of nation and faculitate
state cohesion; and, third, engage other states through diplomacy in order
maintain alliances and deprive potential and realized enemies of a
favourable field of action. This last function still has a an echo with some
erstwhile policy makers.John Hillen, the former US Assistant Secretary of
State between 2005-07, has argued: there are too many world-views,
ideologies, and half-baked assumptions informing the formation of US
foreign policy. To this cacophony of preconceived sentiments and
assumptions about human nature and utopian fixes to the use of power in the
international arena, he offers the following corrective:
The answer should be the map — literally, the physical map,
and more broadly, geopolitics classically defined, which of
course has political geography at its root. A geopolitical
analysis of the United States and the rest of the world offers
better guidance for a consistent, smartly managed, prudent, and
unapologetic exertion of American power and leadership than
any particular political philosophy or perspective on human
nature. Of course, the map doesn’t spit out easy answers or
perfect policies, but geopolitical realities — many of which
move as little as the mountains of the Hindu Kush have moved
 47

in the past several thousand years — can point one in a very

sound direction.142
Conclusion: Looking Back and Looking Forward
This chapter has sought to provide an understanding of the scope of
geopolitics. It sought to address a fundamental question: ‘ what is this field
of study about’? Despite problems of definition, usage, and the alleged taint
of ideology, geopolitics has been redefined and positioned intellectually as a
field of study growing out of geography, strategic studies and history. The
interdisciplinary relationships between these three academic disciplines –
that is, geo-strategy, the geography of state formation- inform how
geopolitics can be carried forward in a systematic fashion. 143
The relationships between these three fields do not emerge without
paradox. Geo-strategic thinking and action, which emerges out of the
juxtaposition of the constraints of geography with the manoeuvres of
enemies, are conditioned also by cultural expectations and technological
changes, neither of which are static and each of which change according to
different temporal dynamics. Geography does not directly condition
strategy; instead, it is refracted through prisms of culture and technology.
With respect to the geography of state-formation, the most important
paradoxical development of the past century is the rise of transnational
ethnic groups and the international flow of commodities, finance and
migrants- globalization. Even as the state became the unambiguous
sovereign over its domain, ethnic minorities and economic developments,

142
J. Hillen, “Foreign Policy by Map: What Geopolitics Is, and Why We Need It,” National Review,
February 23, 2015, https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/397926/foreign-policy-map, accessed
September 29, 2015.
143
For a recent example of how geo-strategy and historical geography should be incorporated into
explanations of how diplomatic history unfolds, see R. W. Aguirre, The Panama Canal, in International
Straits of the World, vol. 15, ed. by Gerard J. Mangone (Boston: Martinus Nijohoff Publishers, 2010).
 48

each with their own geographies, called the state’s dominance in

international relations into question.
The next chapter will examine the method and theories of geopolitics.
Methodological discussions seek to raise the question, “how to.” How does
geopolitics answer the issues raised by theories that juxtapose geography,
strategy and history in international relations? This question is important for
two reasons. Geopolitical methods point toward the description of the
constellation of forces which exist or existed at a particular time and within a
particular geographical context. Geopolitical theories may suggest
contemporary and even future significance of the various forces as they play
out across specific locations and contexts; they juxtapose the enduring with
the ephemeral thereby providing a way of explaining past change and
predicting future developments.144 An important caveat is that any theory
has its limitations: “Although theory is never complete and is always bound
to be at least somewhat wrong, it performs several very useful functions
when it defines, categorizes, explains, connects and anticipates.”145
Geopolitical political theories need to be applied to relevant case studies for
the efficacy of the theories to be evaluated. One result of this intellectual
exercise will be a more systematic explanation as to why policy makers were
both successful and unsuccessful in bringing about changes in the
geographic scope of their policy objectives.

144
Aron has summarised the constituent elements of geopolitical theory: “The theory itself is constructed
on the basis of geographical design, by the simultaneous consideration of a constant element (the land–sea,
continental–seafaring opposition) and of three variable elements (the technique of movement on land and
on sea, the population and resources utilizable in the rivalry of nations, and the extension of the diplomatic
field.” To these variable elements, we would add technological factors. R. Aron, Peace and War ,London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson ,1966, p. 192.
145
H.R. Winton, An Imperfect Jewel: Military Theory and the Military Profession ,School of Advanced Air
and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air Force base ,Alabama p4
 49

The case studies will utilise a number of different geographical

contexts. They will draw attention to an idiographic perspective which has a
focus on differences rather than sameness: “The military effects of actual
situations primarily depend on the level of military technology, the
characteristics and distribution of military forces, the missions of these
forces, and the geographic characteristics of the area involved. Within this
matrix, military geography concerns the effects induced by the area and
seeks to predict the effects of specific conditions in specific places upon
specific military operations.”146 This has a strong echo with respect to one of
the puzzles that social science has to address: “Social life is set in a material
world and that variations in circumstance and resources, individual and
collective, affect what goes on.”147 The aim will be to focus on the
differences in the geographical context and go beyond description and
relating one fact to another. It will facilitate analysis and explanation.
Despite the variations in context, there is a particular similarity across all the
case studies; namely strategy thought and action seeks victory, variously
defined, in military contests.Thus, in situations where geo-strategic
considerations are at play, geography is intimately related to strategic
objectives: “The locations and movements selected arise from some
overarching design aimed at defeating the enemy. The objective of strategy
is to minimize the prospects of resistance by maintaining mobility and the
capacity to surprise.”148 It is this effort to develop these contrasting, yet
elusively comparable, case studies that constitute the main dimension of this
book.

146
L.C. Peltier and G.Etzel Pearcy, Military Geography ,New York: Van Nostrand,1966 p167.
147
M. Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ,1994 p202.
148
P.M. O’Sullivan, The Geography of War in the Post–Cold War World, Ontario: Edwin Mellen
Press,2001 p113.
 50

There are five case studies; the first four are historically based. The
last one has a contemporary perspective. All five have been selected to
demonstrate the effects of the interaction between policy makers and the
natural environment. Furthermore, they will show that the outcome of this
interaction is not predictable, and the assumption that political outcomes
could be explained by focusing exclusively on the material environment as
the causal factor is no longer valid. The implications for the three states to be
examined: Britain, United States and China will be an ability to evaluate the
uniqueness of their approach to the geography with respect to the state they
each control and the geographical locations where they attempted to project
military and political power. This was conditioned by geography but not
determined by it. Other factors such as domestic politics, culture and
changes in transport and weapons technology impacted as well.
The first examines one of the episodes in Halford Mackinder’s
career; his time as British High Commissioner to South Russia during the
Russian Revolution. This case study explores two important changes. The
first is what Smith called the geopolitical ‘shakeout’ that occurred after the
First World War with the demise of multinational empires. The second
addresses how the challenges and the internal domestic influences led
eventually to a British Coalition government, led by Lloyd George, to
consciously withdraw geo-strategically from South Russia where it had been
providing military aid to the White Russian Army and to reduce the
geopolitical scope of British foreign policy. This was despite Mackinder
presenting the British Cabinet with a plan that advocated geostrategic
engagement, albeit on a smaller and more sustainable level.
The second case study focuses on the consequences of erroneous
geopolitical assumptions and the abject failure to recognise the geostrategic
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implications of changing geopolitics during World War II. Pivotal to these

errors and failures was the development of a transportation and weapons
technology revolution encapsulated by the U boat. The fall of France in
1940 had nearly terminated Britain’s sea control and sea denial around the
British Isles. Britain soon thereafter attempted to re-establish a favourable
geographical field of operations that could sustain operations against the
Kreigsmarine in the Battle of the Atlantic. The key aspect of this campaign
was the increase geostrategic importance attached to Northern Ireland, a
location which enabled a more efficient protection of merchant convoys
across the Atlantic. The conduct of these operations based in Northern
Ireland led to a revaluation of the geopolitics of the British Isles. When the
Irish Free State announced it was leaving the Commonwealth in 1949, a
British Cabinet document concluded : “it has become a matter of first–class
strategic importance to this country that the north should continue to form
part of His Majesty’s dominions.”149
The third case study examines the changing relationship between the
geographical scope of US foreign policy and subsequent strategy from the
late 1930s through the World War II. Did US policy makers conclude that
existing geopolitical and geostrategic conceptions of the role of the United
States had become inadequate? America’s entry into this conflict raised two
questions about the utilization of geopolitics. First, was geopolitics merely
used as a tool of propaganda, its function merely to convince the public that
the two powerful enemies of December 1941 deserved to be defeated and
that a global conflict was justified? Or was geopolitics used to educate the
US citizenry, soldiers and policy makers? The need to wage a global war
brought about the involvement of professional geographers on an
149
Ireland: report of working party of officials .1 st January 1949 TNA CAB/29/32.
 52

unprecedented scale. What was the nature and content of that education?
In the final analysis, both policy makers and senior military commanders
appreciated the changes that were taking place, changes that suggested the
reduced utility of absolute as compared to relative space.
The fourth case study will address the geopolitical challenges that the
United States faced in the post-War world. The emergence of a new
geopolitical reality on the Eurasian continent, a victorious and expansive
Soviet Union, caused the United States to formulate a grand strategy of
containment, the scope of which would extend to the whole of the Eurasian
rimland and entail an unprecedented peacetime expansion in the scope of
U.S. foreign policy.Containment across Eurasia required a new geo-strategy
that underlined a new capability to project military power on a global scale
that was without precedent. This would reach its apotheosis with perceived
threats in a number of geographical locations, each of which was vested with
a strategic importance that was not merited in terms of the existing
geopolitical realities. In order to escape from these assumptions regarding
the unrelenting spread of Communism, President Richard Nixon and Henry
Kissinger reappraised the Sino-Soviet split and the US relationship with
China as a new way of balancing and containing the power of the Soviet
Union.
The last case study addresses the expansion of contemporary China.
The realities of Chinese expansion are dissolving the Cold war era
geopolitical dichotomy of a Eurasian heartland contained by an alliance of
maritime powers situated along the continental rimland. The Chinese state
is now constructing a number of ‘amphibian ports’ that have fused together
overland transport via rail, road, and pipeline with intermodal maritime
shipping via containerization. The geostrategy implications of these
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developments will be examined in the context of what Darwin has described

as a “pattern of persistence.”150 He has argued that with exception of India,
European domination of Asia was partial at best; China, on the other hand,
endured the high water mark of European imperialism in a manner that is
unique: “The idea of China survived both the end of the imperial monarchy
in 1911 and the forty years of turmoil, occupation and war that followed
soon after. More surprising, perhaps, was China’s retention of its huge Inner
Asian empire: Manchuria, Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet. Despite the
desperate crisis of the 1930s and 40’s, all were held on to.”151 This case
study will speculate on, first, whether China is now in the process of uniting
the Eurasian Heartland utilizing a different geo-strategy and, second, if the
United States and its allies, in the future, will be challenged by a land-power
that will bear little resemblance to the challenges that emerged from Eurasia
in the twentieth century.
This book addresses three interrelated questions: why does the
geographical scope of political objectives and subsequent strategy of states
change? How do these changes occur? Over what period of time do these
changes occur? Taken together these five case studies offer the prospect of
converting descriptions of historical change into analytic explanations,
thereby highlighting the importance of a number of commonly overlooked
variables. In addition, the case studies will illuminate the challenges that
states face when changing the scope of their foreign policy and geo-strategy
in response to shifts in geopolitical reality.

150
J. Darwin ,After Tamerlane ,London: Penguin Books,2008 p496.
151
Ibid p496.
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