Basic Concepts and Historical Development of of Geopolitics, Strategy and Geostrategy, Geoeconomy and Geoculture

Geopolitics, in its broader definition, is the analysis of the geographic influences on power relationships in international relations. Etymologically consisting of the words “geo” meaning earth, land and “politics”; geopolitics is a discipline emerged out of political geography.

In the survey of geopolitics’ historical evolution, we encounter different periods where geopolitical ideas were produced:

The pre-modern period is the period before geopolitics was founded as ascientific research area in the 19th century.

The historical journey of geopolitical thought and theory passed through the classical era,

the Cold War era

 and entered the current geopolitics of the post Cold War era.

In the Western tradition, ancient Greek and Roman philosophers are the first sources regarding geopolitical thinking. In this manner, Aristoteles (BC 384 -322) stands out among his contemporaries. He discussed many topics which can be now

classified as geopolitics, more than twenty centuries before the term was coined. Aristoteles analyzed the relationship between climate and human nature, the impact of geography on states economic and military preferences.

The Medieval era had contributed to the geopolitical understanding of subsequent ages, primarily through the geographical discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries. With the discovery of new geographies, oceans, peoples, and states, European thinkers became aware of the importance of geography for the strategic and economic benefits of states. The emergence of capitalism in the 16th century, on the other hand, was the main driver for new geopolitical works along with the development of colonialism. In this line, the writings of Jean Bodin (1530 – 1596) are worth mentioning. Bodin followed the ancient idea that the natural environment is a determining factor of human character and he suggested that for establishing the structure and laws of the state, environmental conditions should be taken seriously into account.

Classical geopolitics refers to the period from the beginning of the 20th century, when the transition from political geography had actualized until the end of the Second World War. The main geopolitical approaches of this period are, Friedrich Ratzsel’s “lebensraum” or “living-space”, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s “sea power theory”, Halford Mackinder’s “heartland theory”, Rudolph Kjellen and Karl Haushofer’s perspectives and Nicholas Spykman’s “Rimland theory”.

German geographer Friedrich Ratzel pioneered the founding of political geography as an area of research and hence contributed to the formation of geopolitics. He was not involved directly in the formation of geopolitics, but he inspired the first geopolitical theorists, particularly Haushofer and Kjellen.

Ratzel is the first theorist who introduced and used space and location as a means of analyzing the state. His theory of state was based on the organic state idea that accordingly suggests that states are living organisms which are born and have to grow. For a state, to grow a sufficient life-space (lebensraum) is imperative, therefore in order to grow, states have to expand by changing existing borders. Lebensraum was defined by Ratzel as the geographical surface area required to support a living species at its current population size and as population grew it had to expand. In this sense Lebensraum seemed to place Darwinian natural selection in the spatial and environmental dimensions (Smith, 1980: 53) in the shape of social Darwinism. This theory provided the base for expansionism in foreign policies of states, especially the German state.

In 1904 Halford Mackinder published his article “The Geographical Pivot of History” (Mackinder, 1904) which represents the birth of political geography. He introduced a number of key elements and concepts within his theory, one of which is the “heartland”. Mackinder’s writings were mainly concerned with the grand strategy of the British empire and at this juncture geography was the pivot for a clear understanding of world politics.

 Writing in early 20th century, Mackinder was aware that with the end of the 19th century the imperialist expansionism of Europe had reached its boundaries and thus was trying to reveal the pivot region for world dominance. He described Eurasia, which is inaccessible by sea power, as the geographical pivot of world politics. This pivot region in this sense is the key to dominate world politics and thus the main root that the imperial grand strategy should be directed. Including Siberian forests in the north and the steppes in the south and bordered by Turkestan deserts, this pivotal region was ruled by the Russian Empire at that time, but the other potential dominant could be Germany allied with Russia or China.

 In 1919 Mackinder re-examined his argument and concluded that his thesis was still valid and applicable. In his new book “Democratic Ideals and Realities” he replaced the term pivot with heartland and expanded its boundaries as to encompass also Eastern and Central Europe. In this work, he also postulated that “Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland. Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island. Who rules the World Island commands the world”

 Mackinder’s concepts have influenced many subsequent theorists, including Spykman and Mahan and furthermore policy makers for half a century.

German geopolitics encompasses different viewpoints of different geopolitical thinkers, but they share some common views. These common viewpoints can be summarized as follows;

• The main political unit is the state and states are treated as living organisms.
• The life of the state as a living organism is dependent upon its geographical area.
• States are inclined to expand.
• Interactions between states are based on rivalry and hence war is a normal and expected result of state relations.
• Economic self-sufficiency is vital for states and this self-sufficiency is contingent to geography

The main source for his containment theory is an article George Kennan published in 1947, in Foreign Affairs, but under the pseudonym “Mr. X”. Since Kennan was a member of the US Department of State during the Truman administration, he could promote the idea of containment. Containment, according to Kennan, is the “application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy”  Kennan suggested that the US should use its economic power to assist Europe and Japan in their way to reach again the great power status. This vision of Kennan was formalized in the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and the Marshall Plan in 1948.

At this point, it is worth mentioning another theory which provided the base for the containment to be actualized. This is the domino theory which essentially was based on the idea that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow it in a domino effect. It was first suggested in 1947 by William Bullit  and was adapted in policies of the Kennedy and Nixon administrations.

While geopolitics gained its former reputation again in the post-Cold War period, it was not the traditional understanding that came back. It was rather critical geopolitics which became more prominent. Critical geopolitics has been studied since late 1980’s, however, it can be said that the turning point for critical geopolitics was 1992 when John Agnew and Gerald Ó Tuathail’s article “Geopolitics and Discourse” was published in Political Geography.

Critical geopolitics is concerned with the geographical assumptions that underlie the making of world politics. It is not a unique category, but all critical geopolitical studies focus on the relationship between political practice and territorial definition.

Early works of critical geopolitics focused on deconstructing existing geopolitical discourses and as Ó Tuathail puts it, attempted to reveal how international politics has been spatialized by core powers and hegemonic states as to represent it as a world of particular types of places, peoples and events (Agnew and Ó Tuathail, 1992: 192). On the other side, feminist geopolitics within the critical strand attempted to reveal the gendered aspect within geopolitics by deconstructing it.

While the early critical geopolitical studies were more historical analyses, aiming at deconstructing mainstream or Cold War geopolitics, it has further developed to combine the critical vision with new visions of alternative political spaces.

• Geopolitics is not an area limited to the works of a small academic group, but a political act of political actors.
• Traditional geopolitical reasoning produces spatial representation of world which is determinant in shaping and founding political perceptions. For example, the representation of the Soviet and communist regions as the axis of evil during the Cold War.
• Core states or hegemonic powers have the privilege to form geopolitical perceptions of the rest of the world.
• Emphasizing geopolitical differences gives geopolitics a salient role in identity politics.

A geopolitical approach which made a great impact is Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. Huntington’s approach is not based on the struggle for gaining control over geographical areas, or in other words the determining factor for struggle in Huntington’s theory is not geography but civilization. In Huntington’s words, “the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or economic. [But instead] the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural”

There is not a consensus on the definition of geostrategy. It is defined as “a subfield of geopolitics”, or for others it is “the foreign policy of a state based on geopolitics”, or in Brzezinski’s words “the strategic management of geopolitical interests”

Another strand defines geostrategy as “the combination of geopolitical and strategic factors that determines a region”. Geostrategy is also widely aligned to military strategy which produces its narrowest meaning.This narrow meaning links war strategy with geography, by placing the planning and management of war in the geographical characteristics of the operational region. However, this narrow meaning is out of date where the military strategy gradually eliminates the physical content of geography like location and space because of the new military technologies that undermined the mportance of geography.

Great powers are states that can exert their power on a global scale and can influence global politics in favor of their own geopolitical interests. Great powers are thus global powers and formulate global geostrategies. A global geostrategy is formulated to realize global geopolitical interests which require at first a great military power and a greater economic power to pay for it and other power capabilities as well.

Middle powers on the other hand are states that can influence regional politics but their influence on global politics are marginal, or if ever then indirect as a side effect of regional politics. Middle powers are largely categorized as regional powers and therefore have their own geostrategies, focusing on their regional geopolitical visions.

Turkey is a good example under this category due to not only its being a middle power but also the huge impact of its geostrategic position on its power formation. In other words, it would be difficult for Turkey to be counted as a regional power if its geostrategic position were not as crucial for world politics as it is in actual.

Turkey has a location neighboring three different and key geostrategic regions; the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East. It is located between the industrial West and its main sources of energy in the Middle East and the Caspian. The possession of the straits is another aspect of the geostrategic importance of Turkey, which gives Turkey the opportunity to have an influence in international politics. In this sense, Brzezinski defined Turkey as a geopolitical pivot, which means “a state whose importance is derived not from its power but rather from its sensitive location and from the consequences of its potentially vulnerable condition for the behavior of geostrategic players”

Geo-economics is the use of economic instruments to produce beneficial geopolitical results.

It is important to highlight the main difference between geo-economics and geopolitics. The difference lies in the means-ends order of the definition. In other words, while geopolitics can be about gaining economic benefits for a country by using military means, the means of geo-economics are economic but the ends could be geopolitical.  A state can pursue a geoeconomic strategy for multiple interests at the same time, be it geopolitical or purely economic, but the means should be economic.

Geo-culture was coined by Immanuel Wallerstein to refer to the cultural framework of the modern world system. Geo-culture in his conception is representing the cultural framework within which the world-system operates. In this line, approaches to cultural domination or hegemony of the world comes to the fore -such as globalization, Westernization, Americanization, Islamization- as explanations of cultural convergence.

In geo-cultural respect, globalization as a phenomenon becomes the globalization of the world-system globalization of the world-system  together with its economic, political and cultural factors to form a universal world culture, the geoculture. Individual cultures, or anti-systemic formations also belong to the same geo-culture or in other words are products of it.