Phil Kelly - Classical Geopolitics: A New Analytical Model

CLASSICAL GEOPOLITICS

A New Analytical Model

PHIL KELLY

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kelly, Philip, author.

Classical geopolitics : a new analytical model / Phil Kelly.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8047-9664-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8047-9820-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Geopolitics. 2. International relationsSoviet Union. I. Title.

JC319.K424 2016

320.1'2dc23

2015021622

ISBN 978-0-8047-9950-8 (electronic)

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper. Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/14 Minion.

Contents

Preface

Despite its usage in the press and occasionally in academic writings, the term geopolitics has stayed blurred in definition and misused in application, in part, because of its past associations with disreputable and discredited theories and ideologies. Only recently has the term experienced more visibility, although this has come largely in the media, where the label connects to international disruptions harmful to international tranquility and to stock market profits. It has not been available in a positive sense for extending the insights one might see in its potential yet hidden contribution. Accordingly, the goal of this book is to convince the reader that geopolitics should deserve a higher respectability and utility within the realm of international-relations theory and policy.

As a contemporary label, one can trace two paths of origin,Halford Mackinder, and Nicholas Spykman its standard bearers. Both versions enjoyed respect and consideration by foreign policy makers and scholars.

But following World War I, these classical sectors suffered, almost to their demise, from their alleged ties to General Karl Haushofer and his Munich school of geopolitics and to the aggressions of Adolf Hitler, both sources seen as linked in their promotion of war and racism. The tradition largely disappeared from the extant IR literature for the following decades, only later to be raised to a limited visibility in the statements and writings of Henry Kissinger. showing a title indicating also some academic resurrection of our concept.

Geopolitics has experienced of late at least two confusing and faulty meanings that have seriously diminished its legitimacy: (1) a power politics and realpolitik description of manipulation alleged to the larger nations, probably derived from the misperception that geopolitics resides within the realist international-relations model that emphasizes power. Rather, the focus of geopolitics, away from realism, should rest upon states geographic positions reflective of the terms spatial heritage; and (2) once more, an image of catastrophe and crisiswars and threats of wars and other economic and political news depressing world financial marketsoften heard in reference to Wall Street reporting. Neither of these versions receives any sort of definition; both are negative and reference a world at fault. Until these negative images are corrected and deflected from classical geopolitics, our study of spatial impacts upon policythat is, geopoliticswill not see a full contribution. To repeat, that correction represents the goal of this book, the restoring of acceptance to classical geopolitics.

The traditional term offers an objective and neutral tool for students and statespersons to enlist as an insightful guide toward description and analysis within the milieu of foreign affairs, the assumption being that geographic placement of countries can impact upon their actions. This spatial linkage derives from pure common sense! Such a reliance upon a geographic location conditioning international events has been in evidence for millennia, perhaps being the earliest of military and foreign affairs models. This continued widespread practice of geopolitics as a policy and action guide in itself should lend some credibility as a usable IR model.

The author will structure this book according to these three objectives:

1. Purpose: to construct a classical geopolitical model.

2. Aim: with such a construction, to demonstrate the utility and the legitimacy of classical geopolitics as an important IR model.

3. Approach: three ways (below) that will show the benefit of classical geopolitics:

A first way will mark out a standard definition of the traditional version, a not-too-difficult task since it appears that most classical depictions tend closely to parallel, their emphases resting upon the geographic placement of states affecting their foreign affairs behaviors.

A second way will be to locate relevant theories that will enter the geopolitical model, a model being merely a container for theories that will fit the definition of geopolitics. This author has located more than sixty generalizations that relate to the positional-geographic dimensions of geopolitics; all will be described and some applied later on in this book. This second way of locating relevant theories likewise will help to legitimize the traditional model.

Thirdly, and with more difficulty than the first two ways, any series of theories that attach themselves to a particular model should each be useful to shedding good insights into foreign affairs policies, actions, and events. In a later chapter, four methods for such theory-application will be suggested, followed by an assortment of contemporary and historical case studies as testing places for the gathered theories in the hope that these instances will further the authors goal of demonstrating the utility of geopolitics as an acceptable and useful international-relations model.

Classical geopolitics is the study of the impact or influence of certain geographic featuresthese being positions and locations of regions, states, and resources plus topography, climate, distance, immigration, states sizes and shapes, demography, and the likeupon states foreign policies and actions as an aid to statecraft. Accordingly, this study lends itself to a description and analysis both of theory and of policy.

The classical label is raised here to separate traditional geopolitics from postmodern critical geopolitics, the latter differing quite extensively from the former. The traditional emphasizes the gathering and applying of objective and interpretive theory; the critical focuses upon deconstructing alleged exploitation, blaming geopolitics itself for assisting in the exploitation, with theory largely ignored. This book is about the classical.

A model denotes a listing place for theories that correspond to the definition of a particular international-relations approachin the current case, to geopolitics. One approach of this book lies with the collection of relevant theories, heartlands, shatterbelts, checkerboards, sea-land power, buffer states, distance and location, among many that are assembled within that model. Appropriate theories can be taken from the model when these might shed some light on a particular international incident.

The approach in this text, enlisting theories attached to models, differs from other international-relations models. Yet the author believes that his stance may contribute to the literature and particularly to a revitalized classical geopolitical perspective. The following example shows the confusion frequently seen in the contrasting of models with theories, for the two labels differ.