The continued primacy of geography - A Debate on Geopolitics

ORBIS, Spring, 1996 by Colin S. Gray

First, technological progress cannot be owned or retained by one security community alone. Aircraft, radio, and nuclear weapons all have considerable utility. That utility, however, is more than a little reduced by the achievement or acquisition of militarily parallel instruments by potential foes. Secondly, it remains a fact of enduring significance that "the ultimate determinant in war is the man on the scene with the gun."(8) Man is a territorial animal in many senses, and he must inhabit continental physical geography. Human beings can be intimidated by threats from afar, blown apart by bombardment from altitude, and spoken to at the speed of light. But the exercise of continuous influence or control requires the physical presence of armed people in the area at issue. In some important ways, conflict cannot occur "beyond geography." (Makers of U.S. policy in the Balkans, please note.)

The third major consideration of relevance here pertains to the materiel needed by "the man on the scene with the gun." People can reach the scene of action at fairly high subsonic speeds, but coming by air they will arrive with little other than personal weapons, light artillery, and an embarrassingly small ammunition load. In other words, one can all but cancel geographical distance by the rapid air insertion of paratroops, or by the less rapid forward deployment of troops to air bases in the combat theater, but with what will they fight, and for how long? If anything, Mahan understated the matter when he wrote that "notwithstanding all the familiar and unfamiliar dangers of the sea, both travel and traffic by water have always been easier and cheaper than by land."(9) For the movement of heavy and bulky goods, marine transportation continues to enjoy a decisive, nay an absolute, advantage over air transportation. If wars reliably could be concluded decisively and victoriously by means of "raids" of various kinds, then indeed modern technology might be said to have canceled out the influence of much of what we term geography.

Outside the abstract realm of some modern strategic theory, conflict occurs within particular geographical environments. For example, it mattered enormously that the Falklands War of 1982 was waged in a maritime theater and that the reconquest of Kuwait in 1991 was effected in a desert environment. The maritime character of the Falklands War dictated the notably slow pace of military events, while the desert environment of Kuwait and Iraq magnified the strategic effect of air power (as had been true in Palestine in 1917-18 and the Western Desert in 1941-42).

Communications and culture. What can geopolitical analysis have to say to a world where CNN can transmit to all societies, where facsimile transmission makes a mockery of attempts at state censorship, and where billions of dollars, yen, or deutschemarks can be traded electronically in near real time? Whatever the political and military institutions that still appear to stand guard for international order, is it not a fact that the "global village" has arrived at long last?