The continued primacy of geography - A Debate on Geopolitics

ORBIS, Spring, 1996 by Colin S. Gray

Because "geopolitics" is a word - as well as a basket of associated ideas - that all but begs to be abused by the unscrupulous, the following definition may prove useful: geopolitics refers to "the relation of international political power to the geographical setting."(1)

But what, then, is "geography"? The concept of geography is perilously all-embracing and, like other factors that purportedly explain everything, has the potential to end up explaining nothing in particular. One can speak of physical geography, human geography, economic geography, political geography, cultural geography, military geography, strategic geography, and many more. Unfortunately for neatness of analysis, the geographical setting for international political power must embrace all of these.

That is not to deny that "geography" and "geographical" are frequently used as if they implied only the physical setting for human activity. After all, geography in its narrowest sense is the descriptive science of the earth. But the earth is the physical setting for human activity of, say, an economic, political, or strategic kind. Thus, though geography is conceptually distinct from economics, politics, and strategy, it influences each of these categories of human behavior, and the relationships between geography and economics, politics, and strategy can therefore be studied as geoeconomics, geopolitics, and geostrategy.

In addition to these objective geographies, as one might call them, there is also psychological geography, a concept closely associated with the notion of culture. Physical conditions limit what a polity can achieve at any one time by particular methods, but what that polity seeks to achieve, as well as the methods it prefers, depends in part upon what it has taught itself about itself and the world. Historically, such geographical backing for political and strategic ideas has proved powerful, even seductive.

Today, notwithstanding the reality and exaggeration of transnational phenomena, world politics is still keyed to territorially based and defined states. The challenge, therefore, is not to defend or assault the proposition that there is geopolitical influence upon international security; so much is evident. The challenge, rather, is to identify important truths about the forms, structure, and intensity of that influence.

Geopolitics: Some Basics

Strictly speaking, geography does not require political behavior of any particular kind. Nonetheless, it:

defines the location of the national (or multinational) territory;

describes the physical character of that territory in all respects;

distinguishes the (national) territory of the state from the territories of other states (in one important sense geography selects neighbors and, more arguably, friends and foes);

defines a polity's cultural zone or civilization (e.g., in the American case, was the region colonized by the Spanish and Portuguese, or by the French and British?); and

conditions, shapes, and influences the course of a polity's historical choices.

Thus, though the geographical setting does not determine the course of history, it is fundamental to all that happens within its boundaries. Writing a history of modern Europe, one would not mention casually that the German Empire was located in the continental heart of Europe or that Great Britain is an island. German and British statesmen can pursue a wide variety of policies and adopt a wide range of strategies from their respectively continental and maritime geographical settings. But those different settings impose distinctive constraints and provide distinctive opportunities that have profound implications for policy and strategy.(2)

The argument, therefore, is neither that geographical setting determines policy and strategy in some all-but-mystical way, nor that the implications of that setting remain constant as technology evolves, but rather that geographical factors are pervasive in world politics. Geography defines the players (which are territorially organized states, or would like to be), frequently defines the stakes for which the players contend, and always defines the terms in which they measure their security relative to others.

Admittedly, it can be difficult to rein in the claim for geopolitical influences upon international security, and those who think geopolitically are often accused of determinism. But to discern geopolitical patterns in the course of strategic history is not deterministic. For example, it is simply accurate to note that in modern times maritime powers and coalitions have either won or drawn all the great wars they have waged with continental powers and coalitions. Thus, in what British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder called the Columbian Age of 1500-1900, maritime powers apparently enjoyed a strategic advantage in their struggles with continental powers. In ancient and medieval times, exactly the reverse was true: the conditions of, including the geographical setting for, continental polities' strategies appear to have been more tolerant of fault than was true for maritime polities.