Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance

Jeremy Black

Description

History and geography delineate the operation of power, not only its range but also the capacity to plan and the ability to implement. Approaching state strategy and policy from the spatial angle, Jeremy Black argues that just as the perception of power is central to issues of power, so place, and its constraints and relationships, is partly a matter of perception, not merely map coordinates. Geopolitics, he maintains, is as much about ideas and perception as it is about the actual spatial dimensions of power. Black's study ranges widely, examining geography and the spatial nature of state power from the 15th century to the present day. He considers the rise of British power, geopolitics and the age of Imperialism, the Nazis and World War II, and the Cold War, and he looks at the key theorists of the latter 20th century, including Henry Kissinger, Francis Fukuyama and Samuel P. Huntington, Philip Bobbitt, Niall Ferguson, and others.

Preface
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Geopolitics before the Term: Spatiality and Frontiers
3. Geopolitics before the Term: Maps
4. Geopolitics of British Power 1500-1815: A Case Study
5. Geography and Imperialism: The World in the Nineteenth Century
6. Geopolitics and the Age of Imperialism, 1890-1932
7. Nazi Geopolitics and World War II, 1933-1945
8. Geopolitics and the Cold War
9. Geopolitics Since 1990
10. The Geopolitics of the Future
11. Conclusions
Selected Further Reading
Index

Sujets

• International Relations
• Political Science
• Histoire
• Diplomacy
• Theory
• Politics
• Diplomatie (homonymie)
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 25 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253018731
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance
Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance
Jeremy Black
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2016 by Jeremy Black
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress .
ISBN 978-0-253-01868-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01870-0 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-253-01873-1 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
For Jane Hayball and Mark Ormerod
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
1 INTRODUCTION
2 GEOPOLITICS BEFORE THE TERM Spatiality and Frontiers
3 GEOPOLITICS BEFORE THE TERM Maps
4 THE GEOPOLITICS OF BRITISH POWER 1500-1815: A Case Study
5 GEOGRAPHY AND IMPERIALISM The World in the Nineteenth Century
6 GEOPOLITICS AND THE AGE OF IMPERIALISM , 1890-1932
7 NAZI GEOPOLITICS AND WORLD WAR II , 1933-1945
8 GEOPOLITICS AND THE COLD WAR
9 GEOPOLITICS SINCE 1990
10 THE GEOPOLITICS OF THE FUTURE
11 CONCLUSIONS
Notes
Selected Further Reading
Index
Preface
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY DEFINE THE OPERATION OF POWER , not only its range but also the capacity to plan and the ability to implement. The study of power in time and space-and, more specifically, foreign policy and military action-is therefore an important element in the understanding of international relations, military history, and the development of states and of state systems. This study is the subject of this book. It provides a significant angle on strategy and policy, the spatial angle, and relates this angle to the changing perceptions of commentators. These perceptions throw light on the understanding of power and the international system. These perceptions also prove an important aspect of the soft power and related practice of acceptance (if not compliance) that are so important to the reality of power, both on the international scale and within states.
Thus, geopolitics, although claiming in some hands a scientific precision, is as much about ideas and perception as it is about the actual spatial dimensions of power. Moreover, the latter themselves are not as precise as they might appear. Indeed, the real, latent and possible, spatial sources and degrees of strength are all open to debate. Certainly that helps explain why the subject of geopolitics is both fascinating and valuable, for it throws light on how ideas have developed and on the varying political resonances of control over space. As such, the subject repays consideration.
History and geography: this book also reflects two linked interests of mine. As a historian, I have always been fascinated by geography; indeed I nearly took the subject as a university student. Subsequently, I have pursued the interest with a number of books on maps and also in my teaching. This concern with geography is relatively unusual among British or American historians, which unfortunately helps impoverish the subject. In this book, I am in part troubled by not only the lack of engagement with geopolitics on the part of most historians, but also by the modish and somewhat politicized account of geopolitics provided from within the discipline of geography. Thus, this book can be understood, in part, as a sequel to my Maps and Politics (1997).
In addition, while writing in the mold of classical geopolitics, I take the opportunity to introduce various understandings of geopolitics and to probe them over a longer chronological range than is conventional. The purposes of the book are, first, to bring up to date the scholarship in this area; second, to create a much broader temporal and conceptual framework for envisioning the subject; third, to consider several new methodologies and disciplines in the field; fourth, to appraise leading geopolitical thinkers, as well as governmental figures tapping into their doctrines; fifth, to assess the consequences of incomplete and opportunistic geopolitical theorizing and execution; sixth, to recast geopolitics and its policy implications in the era that followed the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union; seventh, to demonstrate that the fluidity, indeed mutability, of geopolitics is conceptually both an opportunity and a problem; and last, to suggest that only through incorporating all possible inputs can geopolitical thinking be a liberating force in the world order. Geopolitics emerges as most useful as a sphere for consideration, and not as a formal analytical doctrine. Moreover, the historical dimension is crucial. While geopolitics provides a valuable way to study influences and pressures, it risks a serious ahistoricism unless sufficient weight is placed on contemporary understandings of these processes.
I have benefited from teaching a maps and history course at Exeter and from lecturing at the Strategy and Security Institute there, while opportunities to give outside lectures also helped me clarify aspects of my argument. These venues included the 2002 History Institute for Teachers, on Teaching Geography and Geopolitics ; the Carls-Schwardefeldt lecture at Union University; and lectures to the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Waseda University, a Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre-Mackinder Forum Workshop at Shrivenham, the Japanese National Institute of Defence Studies, the Japanese Press Club, RUSI s Japanese branch, a conference on the Limits of Empire in the Early Modern World, held in Columbus, Ohio, and another titled Maritime Security in the Twenty-First Century, held in Copenhagen.
I am most grateful to Mike Mosbacher for giving me permission to use material already published by the Social Affairs Unit, and to John Andrews, Brian Blouet, Pete Brown, Kelly DeVries, Klaus Dodds, Gwilym Eades, Colin Flint, Leonard Hochberg, Alex Johnson, Phil Kelly, Matthew Mosca, Rupert Smith, and Marin Solarz for their comments on all or part of earlier drafts, and to advice from Ahron Bregman, Peter Cain, Sean Carter, David Cohen, Art Eckstein, John France, Jan Glete, Michael Grow, Andrew Lambert, Stewart Lone, Peter Lorge, Timothy May, Rana Mitter, Keith Neilson, Ryan Patterson, Susan Schulten, Harvey Sicherman, Joe Smith, Gareth Stansfield, and Hywel Williams. None is responsible for any errors that remain. Bob Sloan has again proved a most helpful publisher. It is a great pleasure to dedicate this book to two good and longstanding friends, whose company and joie de vivre give Sarah and me great pleasure.
Abbreviations
ADD - Additional Manuscripts
AE - Paris, Minist re des Relations Ext rieures
ANG - Angleterre
BL - London, British Library
CP - Correspondance Politique
FO - Foreign Office
LH - London, King s College, Liddell Hart Archive
NA - London, National Archives
SP - State Papers
Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance
Geography provides strategy with an underlying continuity.
HEW STRACHAN 1
ONE
Introduction
EMPLOYED FROM 1899, GEOPOLITICS IS AN AMORPHOUS concept, both efficacious and misfiring, and a plastic or malleable (as well as controversial) term. Different working definitions have been advanced, and there is no universally accepted definition and, indeed, no agreed definition in English. All definitions of geopolitics focus on the relationship between politics and geographical factors, although that relationship has been very differently considered and presented. In this context, politics is approached principally in terms of the composition and use of power. The geographical factors that are treated vary, but space, location, distance, and resources are all important. Geopolitics is commonly understood as an alternative term for all or part of political geography 2 and, more specifically, as the spatial dynamics of power. In practice, there is a persistent lack of clarity about whether geopolitics-however defined-and, more particularly these dynamics, should be understood in a descriptive or normative sense. Moreover, what in 2002 the American geopolitical commentator Harvey Sicherman termed the facts of geopolitics-the resources and locations of various peoples and states 3 -involves subjective as well as objective considerations, and the significance of the former is commonly downplayed. This is true across the varied dimensions of geopolitics.
Four levels of assessment can be differentiated although, in both theory and practice, they interact to a considerable degree. At the first level, geopolitics can be considered as both concept and practice, each of which can, in turn, be classified. At the second level, it can be approached as a malleable doctrine heavily dependent upon the casuistries of leaders and politicians conducting statecraft. At the third level, the roles and approaches of professional intellectuals and commentators command attention-roles and approaches that have been, and are, very different. Whereas a geographer has a formal qualification, usually a university degree, anyone can be a geopolitician, including ardent polemic