ON GEOPOLITICS
ON POLITICS
L. Sandy Maisel, Series Editor
On Politics is a series of short reflections by major scholars on key subfields within political science. Books in the series are personal and practical as well as informed by years of scholarship and deliberation. General readers who want a considered overview of a field as well as students who need a launching platform for new research will find these books a good place to start. Designed for personal libraries as well as student backpacks, these smart books are small format, easy reading, aesthetically pleasing, and affordable.
Titles in the Series
On Foreign Policy, Alexander L. George
On Ordinary Heroes and American Democracy, Gerald M. Pomper
On the Presidency, Thomas E. Cronin
On Legislatures, Gerhard Loewenberg
On Environmental Governance, Oran R. Young
On Geopolitics, Harvey Starr
On the Supreme Court, Louis Fisher
HARVEY STARR
ON GEOPOLITICS
Space, Place, and International Relations
First published 2013 by Paradigm Publishers
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Starr, Harvey.
On geopolitics : space, place, and international relations / Harvey Starr.
p. cm. (On politics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59451-876-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Geopolitics. 2. International relations. 3. World politics. I. Title.
JC319.S73 2013
327.101dc23
2012041696
ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-876-8 (hbk)
ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-877-5 (pbk)
T his book draws from work I have done over almost four decades of research and writing, and provides a synthesis of basic research suitable for students at a variety of levels. My hope is to offer an overview of several fieldsgeography, international relations, and conflict analysis chief among themand to show how they interrelate. The relationship between geopolitics and international relations across the years has been one of alternating centrality and neglect. I try in this book to show how the current relationship is built on a view of geographical and spatial possibilism as well as multiple versions of space. These approaches have resurrected interest in geography and geopolitics, and rescued them from the determinist and ideological dungeon to which they had been consigned since World War II. In this book I stress the importance of the spatial context for understanding international relations, highlighting the need to take both time and space into account, as well as both a locational view and the perceptual/symbolic/constructed view of space and place. By situating my discussion within an increasingly globalized, interdependent, and transnational world system, I also demonstrate how the relationship between geopolitics and international relations covers state and non-state actors alike.
Basic Assumptions and Interests
The study of international relations (or international politics, or world politics) sits at the convergence of human inquiry that crosses both time and space. In terms of time, analysts fall back on the seeming simplicity of locating events and explanations in the past, the present, or the future. Without such apparently simple categories, spatial or geographic elements have not been as frequently used to locate analysis. Yet, as geographers are always willing to tell us, no matter where you go, there you are.
Geography is inextricably intertwined with the study of international relations as one of the two primary components to the context within which events and explanations occur (and lets be sure to throw in description, understanding, and prediction as well!): time and space. For example, Anthony Giddens (1984, 132) argues that contextuality involves the notion that, All social life occurs in, and is constituted by, intersections of presence and absence in the fading away of Geography is also inextricably intertwined with the multi-disciplinarity required to study international relations, as well as with scholars need to cross boundaries in order to do so. These are the key themes upon which this book rests.
I think it is important to begin with two (hopefully non-controversial) considerations. The first is that the substance and study of international relations are concerned with the basic questions of politics in the sense of Harold Lasswells famous definition: who gets what, when and how. That is, we are concerned with authority and power, in both their institutionalized and informal structures and processes, and their variety of outcomes and consequences for states and non-state international actors alike. To deal with this definition without the geographic or spatial context would be grossly incomplete. This book will address a number of the ways in which international relations may be joined to geography, both theoretically and empirically.
The second observation is that the study of international relations is, by nature, a multidisciplinary enterprise. As students of international relations range across levels of analysis (from the global system to the idiosyncrasies of individuals) and a complex of issue areas and problems, they encounter the phenomena and foci of many academic disciplines. Indeed, many current approaches to the analysis of international politics, in the words of Bear Braumoeller, reflect theories that posit complex causation, or multiple causal paths (2003, 209). Our concern with multi-disciplinarity and geography may be approached using Davis Bobrows (1972, 4) two imaginary visits to the international relations (IR) section of a library. Even in a 1946 visit, the IR collection would cover several disciplines, composed of materials from political science, history, and law. Although the same disciplines are also represented in Bobrows 1972 trip, he finds a number of fields have been added: economics, psychology, sociology, organizational behavior, cybernetics, operations research, systems analysis, and general systems theory. Note that a striking omission from both libraries is
