Geopolitics

P. Reuber, University of Munster, Munster, Germany

& 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

GlossaryCritical Geopolitics Rooted in post-structuralism,

critical geopolitical inquiry is, at its core, concerned with

the operation, interaction, and contestation of

geopolitical discourses.

Discourse The setting or domain in which words are

used and take on specific meanings.

Geopolitics The study of the impact of geographical

distributions and divisions on the conduct of world

politics.

Nation-State A state in which the territorial

boundaries also enclose a claimed nation which the

state represents.

National Socialism German political

movement initiated in 1920 with the organization

of the National Socialist German Workers’

Party. The movement culminated in the

establishment of the Third Reich, the totalitarian

German state, led by the dictator Adolf Hitler

from 1933 to 1945.

Post-Structuralism Influenced by Heidegger and

Nietzsche, French philosophers such as Derrida and

Foucault suggest that all text has ambiguity and

because of this the possibility of a final and complete

interpretation is impossible. This means first that

language and society are shaped by rule-governed

systems and second that it is impossible to step

outside of discourse and survey the situation

objectively.

Introduction

Geopolitics – that is nothing ‘real’. Nothing ‘real’ from anessentialistic point of view. Geopolitics is a social con-struct, a sort of social practice, a discursive formationdepending on what theoretical perspective you take onthis phenomenon. No wonder that there is no solid coreof knowledge in this respect, geopolitics seems to befluid, runs through your fingers.

As intangible as it might be, a significant impact it stillhas. This phenomenon is neither harmless nor innocent.It is highly politically relevant. Wars are led in the nameof geopolitics. People are driven out and murdered toserve geopolitics. It is a clear proof for how discursiveconstructions turn into social practice, how represen-tations and imaginations grounded in discourse turn intopowerful instruments of political actions.

What exactly is geopolitics, though? What is so fas-cinating about it? Why does it have such an impact? Inorder to answer such questions the line of argumentationfollows two consecutive sections:

In the first section, ‘Geopolitics as a discursive con-struction – some theoretical remarks’ the nature of geo-politics is considered from a conceptual perspective. Thegoal is to refine the nexus – created in terminology andpractice of geopolitics – between society, space, andpower; the nexus which is not essentially preexistent butthat forms a fragment of the hegemonic discourses ofmodernity and has a powerful impact on social practice.These details are considered in subsections ‘The nexusbetween society and space as a basic element ofthe geopolitical imagination’ ‘The nation-state as thefundamental ‘‘territorial trap’’ of the geopolitical im-agination’, and ‘Post-structuralism and discourse analy-sis as a basis for the deconstruction of geopoliticalrepresentations’.

Against this background the next section, ‘The tidalwaves of discourse: geopolitics and geopolitical repre-sentations in different historical periods’, presents ex-amples from the history and development of geopoliticaldiscourses to show how and based on what historicallysituated framings geopolitical representations developand grow their specific impact. The historical comparisonshows how little the geopolitical regionalizations have incommon even when they frequently choose to justifytheir social legitimacy and authority with reference to anultimate ‘scientific objectivity’. From the beginning of thelast century, when the term ‘geopolitics’ itself was firstused by the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellen, therange of explanations widely extends. The subsections‘Geopolitics as a discourse in the historical context ofbiological determinism and geodeterminism at the end ofthe nineteenth century’, ‘Karl Haushofer and geopoliticsin national socialism’, ‘Cold War geopolitics’, ‘Thepluralization of geopolitical representation after the endof the Cold War’, and ‘The new spatial organization ofpower in geopolitical representations after 9/11’ providean overview of the subject.

Geopolitics as a Discursive Construction–Some Theoretical Remarks

From a political–geographical perspective, geopoliticscan be seen as all those elements of discourse and/orsocial practice that deal with the construction of large-scale regional up to global worldviews. The expression

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geopolitics is semantically plurivalent and according totheoretical perspective comprises:

1. geopolitical discourses as representations of space andpower;

2. geo-policymaking of the political actors;3. geo-policymaking of scientists, consultants (in inter-

national relations (IR), political geography, ‘geos-trategic analysts’ in scientific think tanks, etc.), and themedia; and

4. the scientific deconstruction of geopolitics andgeopolitical imaginations from a post-structuralistperspective.

These four aspects, which overlap and unify in the wordgeopolitics, show not only the broad range of contentsthat is represented by this expression, but also points outthe different social groups that are engaged in the field ofgeopolitics – from politics over political advisors and themedia to scientific consultants and critical scientists.

This heterogeneity also expresses in the various the-oretical approaches that form the conceptual basis ofgeopolitics. These approaches partly vary to such a greatextent that they lead to diametrically opposed forms ofscientific analysis, practical recommendations, and pol-itical positioning. What scientists publish under the labelof geopolitics today reaches from latently geodeterministover positivist and structuralist to post-structuralistapproaches.

This variety of concepts has made geopolitics a topicin various scientific disciplines (mainly in the fields of IRand political geography). Due to this variety geopoliticshas quite heterogeneous options of political influence –according to the conceptual orientation. Considering thehistorical development these options reach from phrasinghawky, demagogic Darwinian policy of living space(Lebensraum) at the beginning and middle of the lastcentury to nowadays’ emancipated criticism of the pol-itics of geopolitics.

The Nexus between Society and Space as aBasic Motive of the Geopolitical Imagination

From a theoretical point of view, geopolitics is the dis-cursive coupling of social and spatial categories. Thedecisive point in linking social and territorially definedelements lies in the resulting ‘purification of space’. Bythis kind of discursive practice the ‘self ’ and the ‘other’ isframed along spatial categories and provided with bor-ders. This results in the construction of culturally/so-cially homogeneous territorial groups. Such constru-ctions can be found as geopolitical representations in allhistorical epochs (see below). As much as their contentsmay vary according to the hegemonic discourses oftheir time, (e.g., if they exploit expressions like race,class, or cultural diversity when constructing putative

homogeneous spaces), as uniform their decisive mode ofdistinction is in the construction of homogenous socialspaces that separate from the other.

In this way, the politics of geopolitics is a structuringelement in social negotiation processes and conflicts.Geopolitical imaginations offer the option to society tofind something like orientation, straightforwardness, andassumed safety in the contingent diversity of being. Theyare historically alterable narratives and – apart fromstable phases in which they may appear to be virtuallyobjective formations – are subject to constant negotiationand renegotiation. From the geographical perspectivespace and place are of crucial importance in the con-struction of geopolitical representations.

The Nation-State as the Fundamental ‘TerritorialTrap’ of the Geopolitical Imagination

Concerning this matter in the epoch of modernity, thenation-state advanced to be the territorial masterframefor countless political strategies of containment and ex-clusion. The nation-state was the basis of FriedrichRatzel’s biologistic Staatsorganizismus. He represented theterritorial container of the nation-state as the putativelogical outcome of a corresponding development ofhuman history. Even though Benedict Anderson’s long-standing conceptualization of nations as ‘imagined com-munities’ has once more characterized them as socialconstructions, the nation-state order has become such apersistently successful framing that it is taken for grantedas a kind of ‘realistic’ entity in the discourses on identityover the last two centuries. Even in the times ofincreasing globalization its effect appears to hold itsground – despite the undeniable and partly grave powerloss to the transnational networks of ‘global governance’.

John Agnew calls this stiff fixation on the space con-tainer of the nation-state a ‘territorial trap’. This ex-pression characterizes the unreflected taking over of theconcept of nation-states, or more precisely, a virtualontologization of the territorial principle as a decisiveframing of social, especially political structuring. Ac-cording to Agnew, the territorial trap is based on threemain assumptions that must be analytically separated butoverlap in social practice. The territorial ‘logic’ of mod-ernity expresses in the fact that

1. the sovereignty of the modern state requires definedregional authorities;

2. the internal and foreign policy are strictly separated;and

3. the territorial state serves as the spatial container ofnational societies.

Based on these assumptions the geopolitical order ap-pears as a patchwork of separated, secluded, and in-dependent entities, implicitly marginalizing the fact that

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all individual elements of such a territorial structure aresocially constructed and – when looking at the longeduree of historic eras – are constantly renegotiated.

Post-Structuralism and Discourse Analysis as aBasis for the Deconstruction of GeopoliticalRepresentations

Though scientific methods of analyzing geopoliticalrepresentations are discussed in further detail in othercontributions of this handbook (compare keywordssuch as critical geopolitics, political geography, post-colonialism, geographical imaginations, postfeminism,etc.), it may be helpful for understanding the followingreconstructions of historic geopolitical narratives tomention at least some core aspects and basic principlesout of the wider field of theoretical and methodologicalreflections concerning this matter.

Most of the theoretical framework can be found inpost-structuralist theories, especially in discourse an-alysis and semiotic analysis. The deconstruction ofgeopolitical representations in particular works againstthe reemergence of strongly traditional, sometimespractically natural-determinist ideas, for which geo-politics is the doctrine of the influence of the physicalspace on the politics of a state. Post-structuralist rea-soning in political geography show how such a con-ceptualization of geopolitics leads to an ideological aswell as an epistemological cul-de-sac. Post-structuralistapproaches are characterized by a general shift of per-spective. They take the geopolitical discourses them-selves as the object of their analysis. The issues toaddress from this point of view are: (1) the constructionof discursive and cartographic representations and (2)how these representations intersect with political andsocial imaginations.

Beyond such lines of research more strictly orientedto post-structuralist discourse analysis, we can find abroad range of approaches that consider geopoliticalnarratives and imaginations more as a discursivestrategy of intellectuals of statecraft serving toward thelegitimization and achievement of their aims (criticalgeopolitics).

Both approaches follow a constructivist perspectiveand a linguistic (respectively semiotic) turn which re-gards geopolitical representations as constructionsusing geographical semantics, metaphors, symbols, etc.Such a perspective sharpens the awareness of the nor-mative character of competing imaginations. The greaterthe extent to which their relativity and their subtle rolebecome apparent, the less they can fulfill their occa-sionally problematic role in the geopolitical debate onpower and space – both in political discourse itselfand in the polarization and instrumentalization of publicopinion.

The Tidal Waves of Discourse:Geopolitics and GeopoliticalRepresentations in Different HistoricalPeriods

The following analysis of selected geopolitical repre-sentations follows a more post-structuralist approachwhich directs its interest toward the discursive pro-duction of space. Echoing Said’s Orientalism and Gre-gory’s Geographical imaginations geopolitical discourses areregarded in Foucault’s sense as linguistic formations ofpower and space.

Against this background, it becomes apparent howmuch geopolitical imaginations and representations aresituated within their social and/or discursive context.This means that geopolitics is subject to change that –from a discourse-theoretic perspective – takes placealong the slow oscillating of hegemonic discursive for-mations. In order to show this, some basic elements of thegeopolitical framings of different historical eras areshortly and exemplarily discussed in the following. Evenin this shortened form it becomes clear to what extentgeopolitical representations – from Ratzel’s bio- andgeodeterminism to Huntington’s cultural deterministicClashing Civilizations – are interwoven with the hege-monic discourses of their times in order to construct thecorresponding historical-specific context of society,space, and power. To illustrate these correlations thefollowing phases (periods/eras) will be discussed:

1. discursive establishment of the sciences of politicalgeography and geopolitics in the historical context ofbiological determinism and geodeterminism at theend of the nineteenth century;

2. political use of the (scientific) geopolitical discourse incontext with imperialism, colonialism, nationalism,and national socialism;

3. discursive framing of the foreign policy and IR in thepost-war phase (Cold War); and

4. development of new geopolitical representations afterthe end of the Cold War.

Geopolitics as a Discourse in the HistoricalContext of Biological Determinism andGeodeterminism at the End of the NineteenthCentury

Generally, it was argued that geopolitical representationshave always been part of the hegemonic discourse of theirtime. Nevertheless, the kind of geopolitics that developedat the end of the nineteenth century is special in thisregard for two reasons: first, this period is characterized bypowerful discursive framings of territorial order. Thisexpressed in political everyday life where the concept ofthe nation-state emerged to be one of the most important

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structuring principles of society. The nation-state – fol-lowing Foucault’s considerations about the development ofgovernmentality – had successively formed to be a crucialelement in replacing the feudalistically organized societyby a civil society. In the following period of a state-centered imperialism and colonialism, a geopolitics of na-tion-states and their global areas of influence established.

Second, this period lies in a phase in which naturalistand biologistic narratives in European societies for thefirst time in history widely diffused into the discourse ofthe whole society. At the same time they worked as keyconcepts in science and thus greatly influenced newlydeveloping disciplines, for example, sociology and – asthe science of space – geography.

For the development of geopolitical framings it wasessential that spatial and biologistic fragments of dis-course began to interact. Some examples can demonstratethis. As Schultz states geopolitics is founded on the tra-ditional natural geographical concept, which, for ex-ample, is reflected in Herder’s construction of nations aslargely influenced by climatic geography. ‘‘Nature pro-duces families; the most natural state therefore is apeople with a national character. y A people is a plant ofnature as well as a family, but one with many branches’’.(Herder cited by Schultz, 1998: 87)

Ritter, one of the founders of modern geography,shows a similar understanding in combining fragments ofspatial and naturalistic discursive fragments. In general,ideas concerning the power of space began to enter man’sconception of the world at the end of the nineteenthcentury. As Windelbrand so aptly sums it up in 1809: ‘‘Nomatter what part of the earth we observe, we find religionfighting against religion, denomination against de-nomination, race against race, people against people in atougher conflict than ever before. As the last centuryrationalised, ours wants to nationalize.’’

It is not surprising that such a construction of geo-politics in the political contexts of its time fell on fertileground. As a scientific support to imperialism geopoliticsgained sovereign tasks rather quickly. Consequently, theglobal space was segmented, conquered, and measured.Quantifying the earth according to exact space measuressuch as circles of latitude and degrees of longitude wasonly possible from the imagination of the world ‘‘... as adifferentiated, integrated, hierarchically ordered whole’’(Gregory, 1998). Geopolitical constructions served thisimagination by dichotomizing along and with the help ofspatial demarcations. The developing parts of the worldbecame the excluded Other: West against East, Northagainst South, Orient against Occident, and sea poweragainst land power – these are only a small part of thebroad range of such dichotomizations.

Some of these binary imaginations of the nineteenthcentury achieved prominence that partly can still befound in geopolitical discourses today. For example, the

construction of an antagonism between sea and land,between sea power and land power, formed the basis forMackinder’s (1861–1947) model that becomes an im-portant part of Anglo-American geopolitics (Figure 1).In 1904, he presented a dichotomy of power to the RoyalGeographical Society that separated the world in statesof sea power and land power and thus formed the basis ofmany geopolitical imaginations still valid today. In thiscase, Russia is seen as the power center of the continentalempire – the heartland (‘pivot area’) – without sufficientwaterways to the ocean. All around it there is a seam ofareas that do have access to the seas. They stand out dueto their conflict causing middle positions and are subjectto both oceanic and continental impacts. Around thisseam the rest of the world is arranged being purely underoceanic influence (rimland). Among these we find Japan,Great Britain, and the United States. The ‘balance ofpower’ within this dual world system is the main drive ofany development in the field of foreign policy. Theconflicts are mainly carried out in the rupture zones.That is why Mackinder considers Eurasia to be the pivotof world politics. For him, controlling this area meansreigning the world. From the perspective of the seapowers he sees the danger for them to be reigned by theland power center sooner or later. He confronted the sea-based British Empire with this horror scenario. Thesuccess of his representation is therefore mainly due tothe construction of a discourse of threat and securityunderstandable for the British Empire.

Nicholas Spykman (1893–1943) used this threat andsecurity scenario for the American administration in therun-up to World War II. In contrast to Mackinder’s at-tention to the heartland Spykman emphasized the rim-lands. In order to prevent predominance of an individualpower in the area of the rimlands he thought it was ne-cessary to pursue an interventionist foreign policy.Otherwise the security of the USA would be at stake.This imagination was to become a central element of thegeopolitical discourse during the Cold War.

The geopolitical representations in the field ofGerman geopolitics in the late 19th cnetury were com-pletely different. They were based on the deterministconcept of an exceptional geographical position of theGerman Reich. This thinking led Sombart to unanimousrejection of anything that was somehow close to Englishor Western European thinking or feeling. The aversionexpressed here was directed toward liberalism, positiv-ism, and subjectivism. These concepts were opposed bythe ideas of community, entireness, and organism. In thisnationalist-oriented climate the German protagonists ofgeopolitics – Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer –developed their geopolitical representations. They wereso successful because they fit to the prevailing discourse,and so the way from their imaginations to Hitler’s geo-politics of living space (Lebensraum) was not very far.

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The State as an Organism – Ratzel’sBiodeterministic Construction of GermanGeopolitics

The basic element of Ratzel’s mode of constructionconsisted of the nation-states’ dependency on naturedynamic, namely, the biological plan of natural selection.Ratzel (1844–1904), who had moved from zoology togeography in his scientific career, built his politicalgeography entirely on a positivistic natural-scientificconception of the world. His construction of the rela-tionship between politics and space is determined by thephysical basis of the nation-state. Societies, culture, andeconomics and their effects on the nation-state are hardlydealt with in his discussions. Another crucial point in hisconstruction is his biological analogy of the nation-stateas an ‘indigenous organism’. The nation-state in this re-spect is attributed with the traits of a living being, anorganism that only displays health and strength when it iscapable of growth, in other words, territorial expansion.This form of geopolitics according to Darwin’s hypoth-esis legitimates every form of imperialism and ex-pansionism. Following Ratzel, as a result of a growing andhealthy population, a nation-state needs more space tocontinue the development of its civilization. In thismanner, a struggle for more space automatically developsbetween nation-states.

Repeatedly Ratzel makes a close connection betweenthe growing population and the growing space and putsthis claim into practice regarding the German Reich inthe run-up to World War I:

Wherever you look space is won and space is lost. Set-

back and progress everywhere; there will always be

reigning and serving peoples. Even the peoples must be

ambos and hammer. In no case Germany must limit itself

to Europe; as a world power among world powers it can

only hope to protect the ground for its people that it

needs to grow. (translated from Ratzel, 1906: 377)

That is how Ratzel delivered with arguments of sci-entific repute the geopolitical basis for the colonial policyand fleetpolitics of the German Empire. Even after WorldWar I the connection of politics and scientific geopoliticalrepresentations carried out here led to a fast expansion ofpolitical geography at the universities. With his discourseof the ‘logic’ of growing space Ratzel gave the essentialimpulse for the development of the ideology of livingspace (Lebensraum).

Thus Ratzel’s theory could not only be connected to the

classic concept of geography but also to the ideology of

living space of the Third Reich. The reorientation to race

as the decisive power in history was already started

there.’’ (translated from Schultz, 1998: 217)

Source: Mackinder 1904 cited to Ó′Tuathail 1996 modifiedDraft:Graphic: Schroer

Reuber a. Wolkersdorfer

Figure 1 Geopolitical representations of intellectuals of statecraft: Mackinder’s natural seats of power. Modified from Reuber &

Wolkersdorfer, 2004.

Geopolitics 445

The term ‘geopolitics’ itself was first used by theSwedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellen. For him, geo-politics implied teaching about the state as a geographicalorganism or as an appearance in space. His geopoliticsbuilds upon Ratzel’s ideas and forms the basis for es-tablishing geopolitical discourses both in science andpolitics.

Karl Haushofer and Geopolitics in NationalSocialism

Karl Haushofer (1869–1946) is of particular interest be-cause in his person, as well as in the history of his family,the discursive significance of the geopolitical concept canbe clearly portrayed. In this respect, Haushofer and hisfamily are of interest within the line of argumentation inthis article because of the effect on the development ofthe geopolitical discourse in Germany as well as in theUSA.

Karl Haushofer, who considered Ratzel his mentor,shaped the German geopolitical discourse more than anyother individual in that time. During World War I he wasan officer, rising to the rank of major general. After re-lease from the military after World War I, his career as aprofessor of geography at the University of Munich(1921–39) began. He published many books and papers,was editor of the Zeitschrift fur Geopolitik (Journal of Geo-

politics, 1924–44), and president of the German Academy.Haushofer’s position in the Third Reich was shaped byhis close relationship with Rudolf Hess and by the pol-itical standing of his sons Heinz and Albrecht in the Naziregime. Through these contacts the geopolitical repre-sentations of Karl Haushofer had direct influence on thepolicy of the Third Reich and became eminentlypowerful. So in the years between World War I and IIgeopolitical representations achieved, at least inGermany, a hegemonic position in discourse.

For this development, Haushofer’s chief pupil, RudolfHess, had special significance. Through the extensivecontact between Hess and his mentor Haushofer, whichamong other things led to Haushofer hiding Hess for afew months at his place after the Putsch in Munich hadfailed, Haushofer’s geopolitical imaginations became partof the Nazi ideology. During Hitler’s and Hess’ period ofarrest in Landsberg, the ideological basis of national so-cialism originated with Haushofer’s active participation:The myth of the Fuhrer and the demand for more Le-bensraum (living space) got into the writings in Mein

Kampf. That Haushofer did not appear more visiblywithin the national-socialist government was, accordingto many historians, a result of seeing himself as an emi-nence rise in the background.

The historical evaluation of Haushofer’s role, and thesurviving myth surrounding him, will surely continue.Interestingly enough, the allegorical figure of Haushofer

offered an opposite picture in German and Anglo-American historical reconstructions. Especially inAmerican reconstructions, all geopolitics in the German-speaking sphere seemed to be developed throughHaushofer. As a consequence, part of the Americangeopolitics of the post-war era originated from the mytharound the Geopolitical Institute and its director,Haushofer. At least here, Haushofer was considered the‘scientific brain’ behind Hitler. His discursive excesseseven got as far as Hollywood, where in an Americanpropaganda film Haushofer and his Geopolitical Instituteare represented as the headquarters of national socialism.As O Tuathail shows in his Critical Geopolitics, Haushoferand his imaginary Geopolitical Institute in Munich wereconsidered the beginning of the conviction that ‘‘... geo-politics was something that America had to know.’’ Itwas assumed that there were hundreds of scientists oc-cupied with forming strategic designs of national-socialistexpansion. When the Americans liberated Munich in1945 their special mission was to locate this institute atthe University of Munich. Reality remained well belowthe level of the visitors’ expectations. Instead of theGeopolitical Institute, they only found a professor’soffice.

The American geopolitician Edmund A. Walsh, whowas assigned to participate in the Nuremberg Trials,could not conceal his admiration for Haushofer andhence did not criticize the mode of geopolitical repre-sentation itself, but accused Haushofer of pursuing thewrong type of geopolitics. His demand for a ‘true insteadof a false’ geopolitics locates the discipline within thedemocratic structure of Western society and can be ex-plained at the level of modernizing basic theoreticalassumptions.

Cold War Geopolitics

The years after 1945 were characterized by new forms ofgeopolitical representations that developed to a muchgreater extent than before in the scientific and politicalthink tanks of the USA. Their goal was mainly areframing of the American relation to the Eurasiancontinent. From the perspective of discourse theory, it isinteresting to see to what extent these new represen-tations rely on long-standing geopolitical imaginationslike Mackinder and Spykman. They incorporated the oldargument of a ‘natural’ line of conflict between a Westernsea power (now the USA) and a central land power (nowthe Russian Federation). The practical consequence ofsuch a geopolitical representation was the assumptionthat the political situation after 1945 did not allow for astable order on the Eurasian continent without the per-manent American presence. This was to prevent the ex-pansion of the Soviet land power. The geopoliticalconstruction of Mackinder’s heartland theory is more

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than apparent here – it is the core element of the newgeopolitical doctrine of the Cold War.

The prevailing geopolitical representation led to aclear change or realignment of American foreign policy.You can distinguish here:

1. the post-war period with the Truman doctrine thatbrought the intervention decisions in favor of theouter margins of the Eurasian continent. They becameapparent, for example, in the American engagement inthe conflicts in Germany, Turkey, and Vietnam and

2. the relaxation of tensions phase under Nixon/Kis-singer with its policy of opening toward China as thebeginning of a genuine American geopolitics of‘realism’.

The geopolitical imagination of an upcoming ‘Cold War’was first formulated by the American journalist WalterLippmann in 1947. The discursive construction of geo-political enmity was charged with ideological opposites.Seen from the perspective of the USA it was a fight be-tween liberty, democracy, and market economy on theone hand and communism, totalitarian dictatorship, andcommand economy on the other. From the perspective ofthe Soviet Union, the framing of good and bad went justthe other way round.

On 12 March 1947 the American president Harry S.Truman announced his new geopolitical representationin the American congress. With its dualistic approach andits universalistic claim (liberty vs. totalitarism) it polar-ized even the parts of the world that so far had not beeninfluenced by post-war geopolitics. After the Trumandoctrine it became a basic principle of the foreign policyof the USA to deliver active support to all peoples whoseputative liberty seemed to be endangered by communistor socialist states or by inner, left-wing, and militantminorities. The first examples were Turkey and Greece,but with hindsight also (Western) Germany. For decadesthe Truman doctrine became the discursive legitimationof the American containment policy and the basic leit-motif of the Cold War. A further milestone in this geo-political representation was the domino theory that wasannounced by US president Eisenhower on 7 April 1954.It said that if one state falls, that is, it becomes com-munist, the neighbor states will also fall – like dominostones. Regarding, for example, the inner conflicts ofSoutheast Asia that meant: if South Vietnam becomescommunist the neighboring states will become com-munist too. ‘‘Like apples in a barrel infected by onerotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iranand all to the east. It would also carry infection to Africathrough Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe throughItaly and France, already threatened by the strongestdomestic Communist parties in Western Europe.’’

The politics of containment of the immediate post-war years formed, however, no consistent structure of

argumentation. It much more oscillated between differ-ent axes of argumentation. One scenario for the conflictconsidered the power struggle between the USA and theSoviet Union to be ended only at the level of inter-national confrontation. The other argumentation as-sumed that sooner or later the Soviet system would erodeinternally so that in the political power struggles inMoscow those would win whose will for peace wouldlead to a quasi-self-containment of the Soviet ex-pansionism. The perspective mentioned first implies thatthe own security and the security of the West as a wholedepends completely on the USA, decisively and activelycontaining the Soviet Union mainly within the NATOalliance; the second perspective prefers solutions thatgive global security over to collective institutions like theUnited Nations in order to prevent history-based fears ofSoviet threat. These two argumentations might be quitedifferent contentwise; at the level of geopolitical repre-sentation, however, they both support the underlyingbinary worldview of ideological bloc-confrontation andthe inherent blaming of the ‘other’.

From a post-structuralist perspective it can be saidthat the geopolitical representation of the Cold War wassuccessful because it could be connected to from bothends.

Historically ... the Cold War served the interests of both

the USSR and the United States. For this reason neither

sought to alter the nature of the relationship once it had

been established. Their goal, therefore, was not so much

victory over the other as the maintenance of balance. In

this sense the Cold War was ... a carefully controlled

game. (Cox 1990, cit. in O Tuathail/Dalby, 1998: S. 51f.)

The 1970s marked in many ways the turning point ininternational relations. Nixon’s and Kissinger’s geo-political imaginations of the ‘grand design’ was the con-ceptual consequence of the developments since thebeginning of the 1960s (mainly the war in Vietnam)which had not necessarily diminished the power of theUS but had made its application in a more and morediversified world much more difficult. Kissinger called itthe return to politics of realism and thus a policy closelyoriented to the putative political facts and realities. Alongwith that the ideological discourses of American–Sovietpower struggle were reduced whereas the geodeterministframings were enhanced (referring to e.g., natural re-sources, economic potentials, and the geographicalposition).

The Pluralization of Geopolitical Representationafter the End of the Cold War

With the end of the Cold War the geopolitical repre-sentation of a world of ideological blocs and iron curtainsfell apart. Facing new processes of regional fragmentation

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within a global network society, this imagination fadedaway within just a couple of years. New patterns of poweron a global scale demanded for new interpretations, newgeopolitical representations to deliver a frame for theongoing transformations, worldwide conflicts and wars ofthe 1990s, and the new millennium (see Figure 2).Against this backdrop it is not surprising that, already inthe early 1990s, a series of new geopolitical narrativesbegan to appear. All of them claimed to offer plausiblediscursive framings for changing global constellations ofpower. They did not only arise from the classical field ofIR sciences (see below). Among them were, for example,geoecological narratives, which the politicians of Westernindustrial nations and transnational organizations some-times used to frame neocolonial policy. However, thosekinds of arguments still did not lead to a stand-alonegeopolitical regionalization on a global scale. This par-ticular discourse rather goes along with established di-chotomies with roots in colonial history and the debateon developing countries, that is, spatial dichotomies suchas North versus South or developed versus less-developed countries, etc. A similarly implicit kind ofglobal geopolitics came at the beginning of the 1990s inthe form of an effort to substitute ‘geoeconomics’ forgeopolitics. According to Luttwak, political conflicts weremore and more fought with economic weapons in this eraof increasing (mainly economic) globalization. Visions ofa network society, including new forms of global gov-ernance, were challenging the traditional relationship ofpolitics and space, especially the role of the nation-statein international relations.

The deployment of such alternative discourses chan-ged due to the conflicts and wars of the last decade. Since

then new geopolitical framings developing during thebeginning of the 1990s have been on an upswing in bothpolitics and the media. To bring the recent master framesof these ‘politics of geopolitics’ into some kind of per-spective, one might work out two lines of argumentationthat can be separated only for academic purposes andthat interact in the current geopolitical discourses invarious ways: (1) the geopolitics of cultural difference,fragmentation, and conflict; and (2) the geopolitics ofuniversalism and hegemonic superpower.

The Geopolitics of Cultural Difference,

Fragmentation, and Conflict

In the aftermath of September 11 the discourse of a ‘clashof civilizations’, which had already been promulgated byHuntington in 1993 and immediately used by himself todiscursively frame the Balkan Wars, appeared ubiqui-tously in the media and public opinion. Even thoughmany politicians sought to emphasize repeatedly that theevents did not represent a clash of civilizations, they stillreified the basic idea of a geopolitics of cultural differ-ence. Huntington was not solely responsible for this. Heonly gave new life to an underlying discourse of culturaldifference that had developed over more than two cen-turies. Huntington updated the discursive mapping of theself and the other from the perspective of the ‘modern’West. These representations had their roots in historicgeographical imaginations of power such as Ritter’s‘Gang der Kulturen uber die Erde’, Kolb’s ‘Kulture-rdteile’, and the Orientalism discourse, which hasbeen a central focus of Western thought at least since theera of colonialism. As O Tuathail (1996) so aptly sumsit up: ‘‘Huntington’s thesis is not about the clash of

The collapse of the USSR, the German reunification, and the end of the Cold Warlead to a pluralization of representations

Geopoliticalrepresentations

Geoeconomicalrepresentation

Environmentalrepresentation

Fragmentationand conflict

Samuel Huntington:Clash of civilizations

Michael Klare:Rough-state-doctrine

Globalizationand hegemony

Francis Fukuyama:The end of history

Zbigniev Brzezinski:The grand chessboard

George Bush:New world order

Hard and Negri: Empire

Edward Luttwak:Geo-economics

Manual Castells:Network-society

Vandana Shiva:Global ecology

The Earth Summit inRio de Janeiro

Al Gore:Global warming

Draft: Reuber/Wolkersdorfer 2007; Graphic: Schroer

Figure 2 Different geopolitical discourses after the end of the Cold War. Modified from Reuber & Wolkersdorfer, 2004.

448 Geopolitics

civilizations. It is about making global politics a clash ofcivilizations.’’

The Geopolitics of Universalism and Hegemonic

Superpower

The second major geopolitical narrative of the post-ColdWar era serves the imagination of a new hegemon, the‘only superpower USA’: Francis Fukuyama’s thesis of The

End of History at first glance does not seem to aim for ageopolitical segmentation of the world after the ColdWar. Nonetheless, it still has distinct geopolitical impli-cations. Fukuyama believes that we are entering an eracharacterized by ‘‘the end point of mankind’s ideologicalevolution and the universalization of Western liberaldemocracy as the final form of human government.’’Fukuyama or ‘George W. Bush’s Aristotle’ (a headline ofthe Sueddeutsche Zeitung) represents the USA as the ul-timate democratic state. His ideas are informed by a re-ductionist interpretation of Hegel’s idealistic philosophyof the end of history. This construction, in all its sim-plicity, marks the beginning of a geopolitical narrativethat helps to pave the way for a new discourse ofAmerican hegemony after the end of the Cold War. Evenif the ‘end of history’ thesis does not mark the beginningof geography in geopolitical discourse, it still contains anunderlying geopolitical narrative which is only a shortstep away from the Bush (Sr.) doctrine in the first Gulf

War, and still continues in the geopolitical represen-tations and mappings of US foreign policy after 9/11(Figures 3 and 4).

The New Spatial Organization of Power inGeopolitical Representations after 9/11

The attacks on New York and Washington formed the‘discursive event’ in the face of which the emerginggeopolitical representations rose to prominence. At thesame time these events may be regarded as a shift in thegeopolitical representations of power. For the first timethe traditional order of ‘modernity’ (the Westphaliansystem of territorially defined nation-states) was chal-lenged by an enemy, who was organized (and acting)according to the principles of network societies. In re-sponse to September 11, politics and the media haveimpressively shown how difficult (if not impossible) it wasto comment on and to react to the attacks beyond thespatial framings and representations established in tra-ditional geopolitical discourses. Thus, the narrationabout the conflict had to be (and was) partly reframed asa ‘war between nation-states’. This was indispensablesince, to quote Dalby, (2003) ‘‘the modern geopoliticalreasoning ... operate(s) in terms of a political ontology ofstates.’’ In this respect, soon and once again the nation-state became the most important symbol framing

North AtlanticOcean

South PacificOcean

South AtlanticOcean

American predominanceon the oceanAmerican sphere ofinfluenceAmerican geopoliticalhegemony

IndianOcean

NorthPacificOcean

Source: Brzezinski 1997 modifiedDraft: Reuber a. WolkersdorferGraphic: Schroer

Figure 3 Geopolitical representations of intellectuals of statecraft: Brzezinski’s only superpower. Modified from Reuber &

Wolkersdorfer, 2004.

Geopolitics 449

political reactions as well as the innumerable reports inthe media. Since the attacks were understood as ‘national’affront and ‘attack on America’ (as a nation) – and theproposed counter measure was the ‘international coali-tion against terrorism’, this refers to the ‘nationalization’of the ‘terrorist attacks’ on World Trade Center andPentagon.

The demand to ‘localize’ the Al Qaeda terrorist net-work led to the necessity to attach them to a place re-spectively; and Afghanistan was established as a firsttarget hosting the enemy. This framing rests on geo-political imaginations, which have been developed al-ready during the last decade, for example, by the ‘roguestate’-doctrine of Michael Klare, George Bush’s (Sr.) ‘axisof evil’, or more general by the discourse about ‘failedstates’ coming from IR think tanks in the USA. Thus, thenew storyline of a global ‘war against terrorism’ turnedincredibly fast into one of the most powerful doctrines ofinternational geopolitics.

For this change the subtle interplay of the two above-mentioned geopolitical representations of hegemony (theonly superpower) and fragmentation (the clash of civil-izations) were particularly helpful. Both of them servedas framings for the numerous speeches of politicians aswell as reports and comments in the media. Most of themreified the underlying concept of a cultural fragmen-tation of the world deriving from that the necessity of astrong US leadership within a ‘coalition of the willing’.Based on such an imagination the wars against Afghani-stan and Iraq could be justified toward the world publicmore easily. However, Huntington’s rhetoric of conflict

did not only fit into the discourses of Western militarystrategists and politicians but also into the saga of theholy war of the opposite side. Thus, the narrative of theclash of civilizations offered a discourse that also an-tagonists such as Osama Bin Laden would easily accept.To quote Agnew, ‘‘Bin Laden is the Samuel Huntingtonof the Arab world y He is a prophet and organizer ofinter-civilizational conflict. Bin Laden is the modernArab geopolitician par excellence’’ (Agnew, 2001).

As parts of the currently circulating representations offragmentation and hegemony even traditional elementsof classic American geopolitical imaginations reoccur.This is reflected explicitly, for example, in Brzezinski’sremarks on the USA’s political and military engagementin Eurasia. He suggests that in order to reduce the dangerof the USA being on the geopolitical rim their troopsalways have to be stationed on the borders of the Eur-asian continent to have a massive impact on the countriesin the Eurasian hinterland in case of a conflict. Brzezinskicalls Eurasia the grand chessboard and thus the regionwhere a potential competitor of the USA for the worldpower might grow up. In his opinion, the priority of anAmerican geo-strategy must be to support their geo-political interests in Eurasia. Brzezinski’s reasoningscontain elements of geopolitical imaginations that weredeveloped in the middle of the last century. In particular,Nicholas Spykman argued already in 1944 that thecoastal areas of Eurasia or the ‘rimland’ (as he called it)are the key to control the center. With such a concept heupdated the British geographer and geopolitician HalfordMackinder. To some extent, therefore, the geopolitical

Confucian-Buddhistic

Western-ChristianLatin-AmericanOrthodoxIslamicAfricanHindu Source: Huntington 1996 modified

Draft: Reuber a. WolkersdorferGraphic: Schroer

Figure 4 Geopolitical representations of intellectuals of statecraft: Huntington’s clash of civilizations. Modified from Reuber &

Wolkersdorfer, 2004.

450 Geopolitics

representation of Mackinder serves as a persistent blue-print of the foreign policy of the USA: Who rules EasternEurope – so this imagination – rules Central Asia, andwho rules Central Asia rules Eurasia, and who rulesEurasia rules the world.

The Pentagon’s New Map

Geopolitical representations like the ones mentionedabove are, of course, not the end of all storylines. Due tothe changing circumstances in IR at the beginning of thenew millennium another couple of them entered thescene. To pick out just one of them, Thomas Barnett’sgeopolitics of ‘core and gap’ shall be discussed just in itsvery general terms in order to show some similarities anddifferences to the framings above. Thomas P.M. Barnett,professor at the US Naval War College and after Sep-tember 2001 a close advisor of US Defense SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld, has designed a ‘new world map of thePentagon’ (Figure 5). It has been published in the Esquire,March 2003, and in different journals of political scienceand has called a lot of attention among advisors. InBarnett’s representation, the war against Iraq marksgeopolitically a kind of historical turning point – themoment when Washington ‘really’ takes over its role as aguardian of the strategic security in the age of global-ization. Barnett’s simplistic geopolitical world order is:regions with stable governments and a high standard

of living often are, at the same time, well connectedwithin the globalized network society where democracy,liberal media, civil security, and human rights pro-tection are part of the basic normative assumptions ofsociety. These parts of the world he calls the ‘functioningcore’.

In opposite, regions that are hardly touched by glob-alization and suffer from repressive regimes with wide-spread poverty and diseases and – most important inBarnett’s opinion – with chronic conflicts in which thecoming generation of global terrorists is brought up, hecalls the ‘arc of instability’.

Barnett isolates his geopolitical representation in botha simple and radical way: he draws a line around themajority of US military interventions abroad, and by thishe maps the ‘nonintegrating gap’. Obviously, there areoutliers excluded geographically by this simple approach,such as Israel isolated in the ‘gap’, a North Korea adriftwithin the ‘core’, or a Philippines straddling the line.Looking at this mode of representation, it is hard to denythe hidden logic behind the picture: If a country is eitherlosing out to globalization or rejecting much of thecontent flows associated with its advance, so the implicitmessage of Barnett’s suggestions, there is a far greaterchance that the US will end up sending forces at somepoint. Conversely, if a country is largely functioningwithin globalization, it tends not to have US forces sent

Draft: Reuber a. WolkersdorferSchroer

Source: Barnett 2003 modified

Graphic:

Figure 5 Geopolitical representations of intellectuals of statecraft: Barnett’s Pentagon’s new map. Modified from Reuber &

Wolkersdorfer, 2004.

Geopolitics 451

there to restore order and to eradicate threats. The sci-entist was selected as the ‘strategist of the year’ in 2003 bythe magazine Esquire.

See also: Cold War; Critical Geopolitics; Discourse

Analysis; Foucauldianism; Hegemony; Imperialistic

Geographies; Political Geography; Poststructuralism/

Poststructuralist Geographies.

Further Reading

Agnew, J. A. (1998). Geopolitics. Re-Visioning World Politics. London:Routledge.

Agnew, J. A. (2001). Not the wretched of the earth. Osama Bin Ladenand the ‘clash of civilizations’. The Arab World Geographer 4,112--117.

Agnew, J. A., Mitchell, K. and O Tuathail, G. (2002). A Companion toPolitical Geography. Malden: Blackwell.

Albert, M., Reuber, P. and Wolkersdorfer, G. (2006). Geopolitik.In Schieder, F. & Spindler, M. (eds.) Theorien der internationalenBeziehungen. Eine Einfuhrung, pp 501--535. Opladen: UTB.

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Originsand Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Ed.

Barnett, T. P. M. (2005). The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace inthe Twenty-First Century. Berkley: Berkley Trade.

Brzezinski, Z. (1998). The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy andIts Geostrategic Imperatives. New York: Basic Books.

Dalby, S. (2003). Calling 911. Geopolitics, security and America’s newwar. Geopolitics 8(3), 61--68.

Dodds, K. J. and Sidaway, J. D. (1994). Locating critical Geopolitics.Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 12, 515--524.

Fukuyama, F. (1992). The End of the History and the Last Man. London:Perennial.

Gregory, D. (1998). The geographical discourse of modernity. InGebhardt, H., Meusburger, P. (eds.) Explorations in Critical HumanGeography: Hettner-Lectures 1, pp 45–70. Heidelberg: University ofHeidelberg.

Huntington, S. P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking ofWorld Order. New York: Touchstone.

Mackinder, H. J. (1904). The geographical pivot of history. TheGeographical Journal, 23, 421–444.

O Tuathail, G. (1996). Critical Geopolitics. The Politics of Writing GlobalSpace. Minneapolis, MN: Routledge.

O Tuathail, G. and Dalby, S. (eds.) (1998). Re-Thinking Geopolitics.Towards a Critical Geopolitics. London: Routledge.

Ratzel, F. (1906). Kleine Schriften. Munchen: Oldenbourg.Schultz, H.-D. (1998). Herder und Ratzel. Zwei Extreme, ein

Paradigma? Erdkunde 52(2), 127--143.Sprengel, R. (1996). Kritik der Geopolitik. Berlin: Akademie.Walker, R. (1993). Inside /Outside. International Relations as Political

Theory. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

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