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Geopolitics of the world system: Saul B. Cohen, Rowmann &

LittleField, Lanham, Maryland, 2003, 435 pp

Article  in  Political Geography · August 2004

DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2004.04.004

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 Book reviews / Political Geography 23 (2004) 797–806 801

Often there is a tendency towards disciplinary specialization, and few political

scientists, geographers or historians are so capable of leaping disciplinary bound-
aries and synthesizing such diverse phenomena. Landscape, Nature, and the Body
Politic should find a wide audience among historians, geographers and students of
political theory. The sense that political principles may be expressed architecturally
is an idea that has been expressed occasionally before in connection, for example,
with the observation that, when the United States of America desired to make the
point that its Constitution was founded on reason and natural law, it enshrined
those principles in the classical architecture of the Capitol, while Canadians desir-
ous of emphasizing the ties between their parliamentary government and the
ancient British Constitution, selected Gothic architecture for their Parliament
buildings.
James Mellon,
1271 Church Street, Apartment 511, Halifax, NS, Canada B3J 3L3
E-mail address: j.mellon@chebucto.ns.ca

doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2004.04.002

Geopolitics of the world system

Saul B. Cohen, Rowmann & LittleField, Lanham, Maryland, 2003, 435 pp.
Geopolitical equilibrium. This has been for decades the major concern to Saul B.
Cohen. Since the early 1960s, when his first book was published (Cohen, 1964),
Cohen has conceived geopolitics not as a tool of conquest and dominance in the
interests of some national states, but as a tool for promoting and managing equi-
librium amongst powers in the interest of the whole world. In the 1950s, another
geographer, Taylor (1953), aimed to convert geopolitics into an instrument of
peace. Taylor’s Geopàcifics, however, cannot be assimilated to Cohen’s geopolitics.
Apart from the fact that in Cohen there is not the same explicit moral agenda as in
Taylor, the major difference is that Cohen actually does not envision any future
world of peace. He is in fact aware, in political realist terms, that conflicts and riv-
alries are structural components of the world. Therefore, it is only realistic to wish
for a ‘dynamic geopolitical equilibrium’, which can keep the world in balance in
the face of dynamic changes.
Espousing a comparative developmental approach that draws on the organic
concepts of Herbert Spencer, the developmental psychology theories of Heinz Wer-
ner and the general systems principle of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Cohen puts for-
ward a ‘reality-based geographical geopolitics’—a rather obscure definition not
further explained—by which to predict and formulate the structure and the direc-
tion of the world system. Cohen maintains that ‘‘the structural components of the
global system evolve from stages of atomization and undifferentiation with rela-
802 Book reviews / Political Geography 23 (2004) 797–806

tively few parts, to specialized integration with many parts at different geoterritor-
ial scales. Equilibrium is maintained by moving from one stage to another through
responses to short-term disturbances’’ (p. 26). The explicit assumption that makes
predictions possible is that the structure of the world system can be conceived not
as a ‘pane of glass’, which produces fragments of unpredictable size and shapes
when it breaks, but as a diamond, which breaks along existing cleavages. In geo-
political terms, these cleavages are associated with existing—even though chan-
ging—physical, cultural, religious and political boundaries.
Cohen’s geopolitics can be considered as a perfect, yet belated example of Erd-
kunde. Not only does he, like Karl Ritter, conceive the world as an organic whole,
whose parts are linked one to another according to some given patterns (Cohen’s
‘latent cleavages’), but like Ritter and Von Humboldt, Cohen too envisions a geo-
graphical knowledge that is closely linked to the power of transforming the world.
Significantly enough, this kind of direct link was later to be reproduced by German
Geopolitik (see Farinelli, 1989).
In Cohen’s perspective, the world system is made of geopolitical structures which
are essentially organized along two hierarchically ordered spatial levels: geos-
trategic realms and geopolitical region. To these two levels, is associated a third
level, that of the national state, which is the linchpin of Cohen’s whole world sys-
tem.
A geopolitical structure is defined in terms of its ‘patterns’ (shape, size, physical/
human geographical characteristics and the networks that tie them together) and
‘features’ (political–geographical nodes, areas and boundaries that contribute to
the unit’s uniqueness and cohesiveness). Consistent with his developmentalist
approach, Cohen affirms that geopolitical structures possess different degrees of
‘maturity’, evolving in fact from atomization/undifferentiation to differentiation
and then to specialized integration. For example, while Western Europe is the most
mature region of the world’s geopolitical system, Sub-Saharan Africa is the least
mature one. Thus, it is not the world system as a whole that advances towards pro-
gressive stages of development, but its singular parts or geopolitical structures.
The distinction between geostrategic realms and geopolitical regions is merely a
hierarchical one, the former being the most extensive spatial level of the world sys-
tem and the latter mostly a spatial subdivision of the former—although it is not
said why the term ‘geostrategic’ is hierarchically superior to the ‘geopolitical’ one.
In order to better convey the idea of this hierarchy, Cohen equates geostrategic
realms and geopolitical regions, respectively, to major geological plates and sub-
plates. Geopolitical changes are described as geological changes brought about by
the movement of underlying plates and sub-plates. To Cohen, ‘‘geopolitical sys-
tems behave like physical systems’’ and as such they evolve in predictably struc-
tured ways (pp. 58–59). Under ideal conditions, after any disturbances, equilibrium
is regained through self-correction, although more often such equilibrium requires
the intervention of all the major and regional powers (p. 60. 403)—a clear message
against the unilateralism of present US foreign policy.
At the level of geostrategic realms, the fundamental separation is between mar-
itimity and continentality. This classic geopolitical distinction is slightly modified in
 Book reviews / Political Geography 23 (2004) 797–806 803

Cohen’s definition of the two terms. For Cohen, in fact, being exposed to the sea is
a condition necessary but not sufficient for defining maritimity. Trade or, better the
percentage of international trade to GDP, is in fact the essential criterion that
defines ‘maritimity’.
While Europe, North and Middle America, and the Asia-Pacific Rim belong to
the Maritime Realm, the Heartlandic Russian region (Eastern Europe and Mon-
golia included) constitute the continental realm. Compared to Cohen’s original
theory of 1964, a new East Asia realm (centered around China) has now been
introduced, which shares both characteristics of continentality and maritimity.
Interestingly enough, Cohen does not look at this emergence as menacing the
Maritime Realm. In fact, as during the Cold War mutual nuclear deterrence had
guaranteed geostrategic equilibrium between Washington and Moscow, similarly
increasing economic interdependence (or mutual economic vulnerability) can today
guarantee geostrategic equilibrium between Washington and Beijing (p. 269).
Having been a student of Derwent Whittlesey, Cohen does not limit his analysis
only to the global or geostrategic level, but enriches his perspective with a regional-
ist dimension. As in the early 1960s, so today the uniqueness of Cohen’s geopolitics
resides indeed in his regionalist approach. Global equilibrium is not just a product
of the equilibrium at the geostrategic level, but also of that at the regional level,
since geopolitical regions are structural components of the geostrategic realms—the
only exception being South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar), which
constitutes an independent geopolitical region shattered by continuous turmoil.
This latter region together with the Middle East Shatterbelt (which, for Cohen,
include also Libya, Egypt and Sudan) form what he calls an ‘‘arc of geostrategic
instability’’—interestingly enough, this arc reproduces almost exactly Mackinder’s
Inner Crescent, Spykman’s Rimland or, more recently, Brzezinski’s ‘arc of crisis’.
Compared to Cohen’s original theory, Southeast Asia is no longer a shatterbelt, i.e.
a region of geostrategic confrontation, having been in fact divided between the
East Asian realm (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) and the Maritime Realm (Thailand,
Malaysia and Singapore). On the contrary, an uncertain destiny awaits another
shatterbelt of the past, Eastern Europe, which for Cohen can in future either
remain a shatterbelt or transform into a gateway—a destiny that also awaits the
region from the Trans-Caucasus through Central Asia.
What is missing from this geopolitical frame is a great part of the southern
hemisphere. For Cohen, this part of the world (Latin America and Sub-Saharan
Africa) falls indeed outside of his ordering system and accordingly he labels it the
‘Quarter-Sphere of Marginality’.
Cohen’s demarcation of geostrategic and geopolitical boundaries is highly debat-
able. For instance, it is rather unclear why he insists on keeping Eastern Europe
separate from Western or Maritime Europe when many of these countries have
already joined the EU. Equally controversial is the fact that he considers the
Maghreb as part of Maritime Europe, when a clear cultural divide seems to exist
between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea—the same
divide that prevents Turkey becoming part of the EU. If we consider that since
1995 a EU-Med partnership has been at work between the EU and all Mediterra-
 804 Book reviews / Political Geography 23 (2004) 797–806

nean countries is not even clear why only the Maghreb should be part of Maritime
Europe.
Similarly controversial is Cohen’s split of Southeast Asia between two distinct
geostrategic realms. Why, in fact, given the numerous contacts amongst the coun-
tries of this area a geostrategic logic of division should prevail over a drive towards
geopolitical regional unity?
Although Cohen mentions in the introduction the importance of global cities
and international social movements as new actors on the world geopolitical stage,
at the end his geopolitics remains very much a geopolitics of the state. Yet, in con-
trast to a certain geopolitical tradition, not for the state to which he belongs, but
for all major and regional states on whose decisions geopolitical equilibrium finally
relies.
In sum, Cohen’s book is a wonderful tour du monde géopolitique, and due to its
well-informed accounts of contemporary world politics it might serve as a useful
reading for upper undergraduate classes in political geography.

References
Cohen, S. B. (1964). Geography and politics in a world divided. London: Methuen.
Farinelli, F. (1989). Jugend ohne Erdkunde’: la natura della Geopolitik. In F. Adamo, S. Conti, M.
Fumagalli, & P. Sereno (Eds.), Atti del XXIV Congresso Geografico Italiano, Vol. IV. (pp. 303–311).
Bologna: Pàtron.
Taylor, G. (1953). Geopolitics and geopacifics. In G. Taylor (Ed.), Geography in the twentieth century
(pp. 587–608). London: Methuen.

Marco Antonsich,
Department of Geography, University of Colorado at Boulder,
Boulder, CO 80309-0487, USA
Tel./fax: +27-43-726-0709
E-mail address: marco.antonsich@colorado.edu

doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2004.04.004

Thinking geographically: space, theory and contemporary human geography

Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin, Brendan Bartley & Duncan Fuller; London/New York:
Continuum Books, 2002, pp. x þ 274, ISBN 0 8264 5625 1
We are warned: to the uninitiated, a procession of perspectives on how geogra-
phy purports to leverage space may prove bewildering (at best) or chaotic (at
worst). But a geographer requires developing a skill repertoire which includes the
ability of appreciating different theoretical perspectives; then selecting and applying

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