Geoffrey Parker - Western Geopolitical Thought in the Twentieth Century

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

Volume 10

WESTERN GEOPOLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

WESTERN GEOPOLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

GEOFFREY PARKER

First published in 1985

This edition first published in 2015
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1985 Geoffrey Parker

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ISBN: 978-1-138-80830-0 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-74725-5 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-81330-4 (Volume 10)
eISBN: 978-1-315-74712-5 (Volume 10)

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WESTERN GEOPOLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Geoffrey Parker

1985 Geoffrey Parker
Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row,
Beckenham, Kent BR3 1AT

Croom Helm Australia Pty Ltd, First Floor,
139 King Street, Sydney, NSW 20001, Australia

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Parker, Geoffrey, 1933

Western geopolitical thought in the twentieth century.
1. Geography, PoliticalHistory20th century
I. Title
320.12091821 JC319

ISBN 0-7099-2056-3

Typeset by Leaper & Gard Ltd. Bristol, England
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Billing & Sons Limited, Worcester.

The author acknowledges the permission granted by the following for the reproduction of the copyright material as stated below:

In the first chapter of this book I have endeavoured to define geopolitics as I understand it. The term Western is taken to comprise Central and Western Europe, together with North America. The central theme of the book is an examination of the thinking on this subject which has taken place in four particular countries, namely Great Britain, Germany, France, and the United States. They have been foremost in this field during the present century. Geopolitical terminology in English, French and German has normally been used without any specific explanation, but definitions of terms are to be found in the Glossary of Geopolitical Terms at the end of the book.

I acknowledge with gratitude the assistance which I have received from the libraries of the Royal Geographical Society and the University of Birmingham. Acknowledgement is specifically made to those authors and publishers who have kindly granted permission for their maps to be reproduced here. Finally, I take great pleasure in thanking my wife, Brenda, for her valuable and constructive advice, assistance and criticism throughout the writing of the book.

Geoffrey Parker

Political and international power are complex and elusive phenomena and one must be wary of generalising too much about them. Thomas Carlyles opinions on the nature and purposes of power had little in common with those of Karl Marx, while Lord Acton had different ideas from them both. What is evident is that its possession ultimately determines the international pecking order at any one time. It is the great powers which have invariably been in the best position to influence the world situation in what they judge to be their own best interests. History, however, shows us that power is as ephemeral in a nation or empire as it is in an individual, its possession being no guarantee of its permanent retention. Inevitably it will slip away, and the reasons for this can be as difficult to explain as was its initial emergence.

Political geographers believe that power is firmly rooted in the physical nature of the world itself. Just as the giant Antaeus, offspring of Ge and Poseidon, the gods of Earth and Sea, drew his mighty strength from contact with the ground on which he stood, so the power of the modern state is derived from the territory which it occupies. If the earth were exactly round and polished like a billiard ball, said Jean Gottmann, then there could be no justification for such a study.1 But the earth has great variety in climate, vegetation, soil, geology and altitude, together with an uneven distribution of the land masses, and these factors have made its surface into far more than merely the stage upon which the drama of human history has been enacted.

The terms political geography and geopolitics, together with their respective adjectives politico-geographical and geopolitical have come to be widely used during the present century. However, the exact sense in which they are used is sometimes unclear, and there can be a danger of slipping into fine-sounding verbiage which is rather weak on precise meaning. What these terms do have in common is that they seek to identify an area of study which is concerned with the interface of geography and politics and with their mutual interactions. In some quarters the terms have come to be regarded as being virtually synonymous and at most as denoting degrees of emphasis. Distinctions, when they have been made, have often tended to take on an emotional or historical character. Thus by the middle of the present century geopolitics had come to be closely identified with German Geopolitik which was tarnished by its association with the Nazis. Apart from this, the whole area of study was seen by many as being an actively propagandist version of the more scholarly political geography, and thus its claims to being an academic subject were often considered to be highly suspect.

In marked contrast to the persistence of such attitudes to geopolitics, the adjective geopolitical has, in recent years, assumed considerable popularity with politicians, academics and journalists alike. Almost overnight, as it were, everything appeared to gain a geopolitical dimension, this being understood in general terms to signify an awareness of the importance of geographical factors in human affairs. Mention of the term nowadays is calculated to conjure up visions of oil supplies, strategic minerals, agricultural potential, dangerous sea routes, vulnerable frontiers and, possibly, dwindling natural resources. It is no bad thing that the importance of geography has thus come to be implicitly recognised so widely, but more precision on the exact subject of the study becomes even more important.