Introduction to Geopolitics

What is Geography?
Includes physical and human geography.
Human geography focuses on understanding spatial relationships:
why the ‘where’ matters.
 Geographers study the spatiality of different things and processes.
 Everything has a spatial dimension.
Geopolitics
• The study of how geography impacts politics, demography, and
economics, especially with respect to developing foreign policy and
international conflicts.
• A term used to describe how nations or groups of people interact
with or exert their influence over other peoples or surrounding
nations.

• Refers to one nation’s sphere of influence over its neighbors.

• Human geography may be defined as: “Systematic study of what

makes places unique and the connections and interactions between
places” (Knox and Marston, 1998, p. 3).
• A key to understanding geopolitics is understanding that political
attitudes and actions in the past are important factors in determining
the current world condition.

• These attitudes develop in large part in response to the nation’s

geographic situation in the world.
• John Agnew’s (1987) definition suggests that places are the
combination of three related aspects: location, locale, and sense of
place.
• Location is the role a place plays in the world, or its function. The key
industries and sources of employment within a place are a good
measure of location—whether it is a steel mill, coal mine, military
base, or tourist resort.
 Activity

Write down four or five features of your hometown that make it

distinctive.
What is Political Geography?
Political geography focuses on how politics and power are spatial
 “Political geography is the study of how power is spatial: how power
struggles both subtle and spectacular are shaped by and shape the
places in which they occur” (Smith, 2020: p. 2)
 Political geography includes territory, the state and governments, the
nation, identity and citizenship, elections ,the environment, and
geopolitics.
 Political geography gives us the tools to understand geopolitics as
more than something that ‘just happens’.
 What is Geopolitics?
• Geopolitics is a word that conjures up images. In one sense, the word
provokes ideas of war, empire, and diplomacy: geopolitics is the
practice of states controlling and competing for territory.

• Geopolitics creates images: geopolitics, in theory, language, and

practice, classifies swathes of territory and masses of people.
• For instance, the Cold War, was a conflict over the control of territory
that was provoked and justified through geographically based images
of “the Iron Curtain” and the “free world” and the “threat” of
Communism from the perspective of Western governments and the
“imperialism” of America from the Soviet Union’s view.
 Geopolitics is…
 “The geographical dimensions of power” (Storey, 2009)

 “The struggle over the control of geographical entities with an

international and global dimension, and the use of such geographical
entities for political advantage” (Flint, 2006)
• Geopolitical theoreticians have made claims that they can view or
understand the whole globe.

• They operate under the belief that the whole world is a “transparent
space” that is “seeable” and “knowable” from the vantage point of
the white, male, and higher class viewpoint of the theoretician.

• Geopolitical theoreticians classify the world into particular regions

while also defining historical trends.
• The feminist critique rests on the idea that all knowledge is “situated”
and, hence, “partial.”
• The very fact that the classical geopoliticians were from privileged
class, race, and gender backgrounds in Western countries meant that
they had absorbed particular understandings of the world; they were
unable to know the whole world.
• The identification of “situated knowledge”: geopolitics is not just a
matter of countries competing against countries, there are many
“situations” or, in other words, the competition for territory is
broader than state practices.
• Geopolitics is the multiple practices and multiple representations of a
wide variety of territories.
The origins of the ‘science’ of geopolitics
• Coined in 1899, by a Swedish professor of political science, Rudolf
Kjellen, it has often been taken to signify a hard-nosed or more
realistic approach to international politics that lays particular
emphasis on the role of territory and resources in shaping the
condition of states.

• This ‘science’ of geopolitics posited ‘laws’ about international politics

based on the ‘facts’ of global physical geography (the disposition of
the continents and oceans, the division of states and empires into
sea- and land-powers).
• It was intended to investigate the often unremarked upon
geographical dimensions of states and their position within world
politics.
 Geopolitics as a distinct subject

• Three factors contributed to the establishment of geopolitics as a

distinct subject.
• First, economic nationalism and trade protectionism was on the rise
as imperial European states such as Britain and France agonized over
the shifting and increasingly interconnected nature of the global
economy.
• The rise of the United States as a trading power created further
unease amongst these European powers.
• Second, imperial powers pursued an aggressive search for new
territories in Africa and elsewhere in the mid to late 19th century.
• While imperial accumulation was on the rise, European powers
confronted each other over ownership and access to those colonial
territories.
• Britain and France were embroiled in tense encounters in North
Africa, and Britain and Russia in Central Asia in the ‘Great Game’.
• Finally, the growth of universities and the establishment of geography
as an academic discipline created new opportunities for scholars to
teach and research the subject.
• The alleged scientific status of geopolitics was important in
establishing claims to intellectual legitimacy and policy relevance.
• Many mechanisms can be used by a nation to exert its influence
over another country.
Ø Military force
• Ø Trade
Ø Foreign aid
• Ø Mass media
• Ø Religion
• Ø Economic sanctions and Industrial Development
• Energy and Pollution
• Population Policies
• Geopolitics- the study of geography and its effects on politics and
trade.

• Trade relations

• Agreements

• Policies
 An understanding of geopolitics

• Geopolitics offers for many a reliable guide of the global landscape

using geographical descriptions, metaphors, and templates such as
‘iron curtain’, ‘Third World’, and/or ‘rogue state’.

• Each of these terms is inherently geographical because places are

identified and labelled as such. It then helps to generate a simple
model of the world, which can then be used to advise and inform
foreign and security policy making.
• We could focus our attention on how geopolitics actually works as an
academic and popular practice.
• So rather than simply assume that labels such as ‘iron curtain’ and
‘axis of evil’ have a certain heuristic value, we proceed to question
how they generate particular understandings of places,
communities, and accompanying identities.
Participants in Geo-politics & Globalisation

• There can be two actors in this play

• State Actors- Leaders, Government, Military
• Non-State Factors- Companies and Globalisation
 Geo-Political Strategies

• Hegemony- Influence a region with military and economic

power
• Autarky-Nationalism and protection of domestic industries
• Multilateral ties- a blanket approach to harmonising trade
• Bi-lateral- a one-on-one deals with countries on trade