A BRIEF HISTORY OF

GEOPOLITICS
The 20th century
Mahan and Sea Power (1890)

•Importance of acquiring naval

bases overseas  not acquiring land
(the USA as an anti-colonial
country)

•Truly great powers are naval

powers

•Bellicose masculinity

•Civilizational interventionism
3
Liquefied natural gas routes 4
Ex xina

5
Mackinder: The Pivot Area (1904)
 Mackinder: The Pivot Area (1904)
Key theory: The pivot area (renamed “The Heartland” Theory)
• Whoever rules East Europe commands the Heartland.
• Whoever rules the Heartland commands the World Island.
• Whoever rules the World Island commands the world.

Factors shaping international affairs:

- The biological inheritance of races ( see Social Darwinism)
- The conditioning influence of the environment  geographical
causation as determinism
- The different efficiency of the states

Other elements:
- It was dismissed by the British (but followed closely by General
Haushofer in Germany)
- Mackinder feared a Russian-German alliance.
 Theodore Roosevelt
and American Imperialism (1905)
 Haushofer:
The German Lebensraum
Germany Looks Eastwards (1941)
 END OF WORLD WAR II

FEBRUARY 1945: YALTA AGREEMENTS

GERMANY DIVIDED INTO FOUR ZONES

EUROPE DIVIDED INTO TWO AREAS OF INFLUENCE

THE IRON CURTAIN WOULD DIVIDE EUROPE FOR 45 YEARS

A Bipolar world (1945)
ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
1. SUPERPOWER STRUCTURE

1945 - 1989

BIPOLAR EQUILIBRIUM
 INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
(1789 – 2001)
THE LONG 19th CENTURY (1789-1914):
The modern international system (Westphalia):
Multipolar

THE SHORT 20th CENTURY (1914-1989):

1st World War against empires
2nd World War against Fascism
Cold War against Communism: Bipolarity

FIRST GLOBAL ORDER (1989-2001?)

War on Terror and weapons of mass destruction
Post-Westphalia world
Unipolarity and multilateralism / unilateralism
 COLD WAR

1945-1948 1947
STALIN CONSOLIDATES TRUMAN DOCTRINE
USSR AS A WORLD POWER
CONTENTION
RISE OF THE DISUASSION
SOVIET BLOC MARSHALL PLAN
 COLD WAR

“Finally, you have broader considerations

that might follow what you would call the
‘falling domino’ principle. You have a row
of dominoes set up, you knock over the
first one, and what will happen to the last
one is the certainty that it will go over very
quickly. So you could have a beginning of a
disintegration that would have the most
profound influences.”

1954
EISENHOWER
 COLD WAR

MARCH 1983
THE STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE
“STAR WARS”
 THE FALL
OF THE BERLIN
WALL
November 9, 1989

USSR implodes + USA wins the Cold war:

• Cultural
• Economical
• Technogical

•“Empires do not fall. They rather fall apart,

usually very slowly” (Puchala, D. 1994)
DISSOLUTION OF THE USSR
December 31, 1991
A Unipolar world (1991)
1991-… NATO ENLARGEMENT

22
 1990s
“RUSSIA’S DARKEST YEARS”

Svetlana Alexievich
Nobel Prize 2015

“Second-Hand Time” (2013)

23
“there is no more international law to
protect us”
“We are seeing a greater
and greater disdain for
the basic principles of
international law. And
independent legal norms
are, as a matter of fact,
coming increasingly
closer to one state’s legal
system. One state and, of
course, first and foremost
the United States, has
overstepped its national
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlY5aZfOgPA
borders in every way.”

Putin's speech on 10 February 2007 at 43rd Munich Security Conference 24