Geostrategy
This article possibly contains original research. (September 2016) |
Geostrategy, a subfield of geopolitics, is a type of foreign policy guided principally by geographical factors[1] as they inform, constrain, or affect political and military planning. As with all strategies, geostrategy is concerned with matching means to ends[2][3][4][5][6] Strategy is as intertwined with geography as geography is with nationhood, or as Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan state it, "[geography is] the mother of strategy."[7]
Geostrategists, as distinct from geopoliticians, approach geopolitics from a
Many geostrategists are also geographers, specializing in subfields of geography, such as human geography, political geography, economic geography, cultural geography, military geography, and strategic geography. Geostrategy is most closely related to strategic geography.
Especially following
Definition
Most definitions of geostrategy below emphasize the merger of strategic considerations with geopolitical factors. While geopolitics is ostensibly neutral — examining the geographic and political features of different regions, especially the impact of geography on politics — geostrategy involves comprehensive planning, assigning means for achieving national goals or securing assets of military or political significance.
Original definition
The term "geo-strategy" was first used by Frederick L. Schuman in his 1942 article "Let Us Learn Our Geopolitics."[12] It was a translation of the German term "Wehrgeopolitik" as used by German geostrategist Karl Haushofer. Previous translations had been attempted, such as "defense-geopolitics". Robert Strausz-Hupé had coined and popularized "war geopolitics" as another alternate translation.[13]
Modern definitions
This section contains too many or overly lengthy quotations. (September 2012) |
[G]eostrategy is about the exercise of power over particularly critical spaces on the Earth's surface; about crafting a political presence over the international system. It is aimed at enhancing one's security and prosperity; about making the international system more prosperous; about shaping rather than being shaped. A geostrategy is about securing access to certain trade routes, strategic bottlenecks, rivers, islands and seas. It requires an extensive military presence, normally coterminous with the opening of overseas military stations and the building of warships capable of deep oceanic power projection. It also requires a network of alliances with other great powers who share one's aims or with smaller "lynchpin states" that are located in the regions one deems important.
— James Rogers and Luis Simón, "Think Again: European Geostrategy"[14]
[T]he words geopolitical, strategic, and geostrategic are used to convey the following meanings: geopolitical reflects the combination of geographic and political factors determining the condition of a state or region, and emphasizing the impact of geography on politics; strategic refers to the comprehensive and planned application of measures to achieve a central goal or to vital assets of military significance; and geostrategic merges strategic consideration with geopolitical ones.
— Zbigniew Brzezinski, Game Plan (emphasis in original)[15]
For the
security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.— Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard[16]
Geostrategy is the geographic direction of a state's foreign policy. More precisely, geostrategy describes where a state concentrates its efforts by projecting military power and directing diplomatic activity. The underlying assumption is that states have limited resources and are unable, even if they are willing, to conduct a tous asimuths foreign policy. Instead they must focus politically and militarily on specific areas of the world. Geostrategy describes this foreign-policy thrust of a state and does not deal with motivation or decision-making processes. The geostrategy of a state, therefore, is not necessarily motivated by geographic or geopolitical factors. A state may project power to a location because of ideological reasons, interest groups, or simply the whim of its leader.
— Jakub J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (emphasis in original)[17]
It is recognized that the term "geo-strategy" is more often used, in current writing, in a global context, denoting the consideration of global land-sea distribution, distances, and accessibility among other geographical factors in strategic planning and action... Here the definition of geo-strategy is used in a more limited regional frame wherein the sum of geographic factors interact to influence or to give advantage to one adversary, or intervene to modify strategic planning as well as political and military venture.
— Lim Joo-Jock, Geo-Strategy and the South China Sea Basin. (emphasis in original)[18]
A science named "geo-strategy" would be unimaginable in any other period of history but ours. It is the characteristic product of turbulent twentieth-century world politics.
— Andrew Gyorgi, The Geopolitics of War: Total War and Geostrategy (1943).[13]
"Geostrategy,"—a word of uncertain meaning—has ... been avoided.
— Stephen B. Jones, "The Power Inventory and National Strategy"[19]
Geostrategy is the geographic direction of a state's foreign policy. More precisely, geostrategy describes where a state concentrates its efforts by projecting military power and directing diplomatic activity. The underlying assumption is that states have limited resources and are unable, even if they are willing, to conduct an all-out foreign policy. Instead they must focus politically and militarily on specific areas of the world. Geostrategy describes the foreign-policy thrust of a state and does not deal with motivations or decision-making processes. The geostrategy of a state, therefore, is not necessarily motivated by geographic or geopolitical factors. A state may project power to a location because of ideological reasons, interest groups, or simply the whim of its leader.
— Krishnendra Meena, "Munesh Chandra asked: What is the difference between geo-politics and geo-strategy?"[20]
Theory and methodology
As a science or science-based political practice geostrategy uses factual and
The geostrategy of location include river valleys, inland sea, world ocean, world island, and so on. For instance, the start of Western civilization was located in the river valleys of the Nile in Egypt and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. The Nile and Tigris and Euphrates not only provided the fertile soil for crop production, but also allowed for the floods that taxed the ingenuity of the inhabitants. The climate of the area was conducive to an existence based primarily upon agriculture. The rivers also provided the avenues of trade in a period when muscles of man and the winds of the sky were the motive power of ships. The river valleys became a unifying factor in the political development of the people.[24]
History
Precursors
As early as Herodotus, observers saw strategy as heavily influenced by the geographic setting of the actors. In History, Herodotus describes a clash of civilizations between the Egyptians, Persians, Scythians, and Greeks—all of which he believed were heavily influenced by the physical geographic setting.[25]
Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow proposed a geometrical science of strategy in the 1799 The Spirit of the Modern System of War. His system predicted that the larger states would swallow the smaller ones, resulting in eleven large states. Mackubin Thomas Owens notes the similarity between von Bülow's predictions and the map of Europe after the unification of Germany and of Italy.[26]
Golden age
Between 1890 and 1919 the world became a geostrategist's paradise, leading to the formulation of the classical geopolitical theories. The international system featured rising and falling great powers, many with global reach. There were no new frontiers for the great powers to explore or colonize—the entire world was divided between the empires and colonial powers. From this point forward, international politics would feature the struggles of state against state.[26]
Two strains of geopolitical thought gained prominence: an Anglo-American school, and a German school.
World War II
The most prominent
Cold War
After the Second World War, the term "geopolitics" fell into disrepute, because of its association with Nazi geopolitik. Virtually no books published between the end of World War II and the mid-1970s used the word "geopolitics" or "geostrategy" in their titles, and geopoliticians did not label themselves or their works as such. German theories prompted a number of critical examinations of geopolitik by American geopoliticians such as Robert Strausz-Hupé, Derwent Whittlesey and Andrew Gyorgy.[26]
As the
Post-Cold War
After the Cold War ended, states started preferring management of space at low cost to expansion of it with military force. Use of military force in order to secure space causes not only great burden on countries, but also severe criticism from the
Notable geostrategists
The below geostrategists were instrumental in founding and developing the major geostrategic doctrines in the discipline's history. While there have been many other geostrategists, these have been the most influential in shaping and developing the field as a whole.
Alfred Thayer Mahan
Alfred Thayer Mahan was a U.S. Navy officer and president of the Naval War College. He is best known for his Influence of Sea Power upon History series of books, which argued that naval supremacy was the deciding factor in great power warfare. In 1900, Mahan's book The Problem of Asia was published. In this volume he laid out the first geostrategy of the modern era.
The Problem of Asia divides the continent of Asia into 3 zones:
- A northern zone, located above the 40th parallel north, characterized by its cold climate, and dominated by land power;
- The "Debatable and Debated" zone, located between the 40th and 30th parallels, characterized by a temperate climate; and,
- A southern zone, located below the 30th parallel north, characterized by its hot climate, and dominated by sea power.[30]
The Debated and Debatable zone, Mahan observed, contained two
North of the 40th parallel, the vast expanse of Asia was dominated by the Russian Empire. Russia possessed a central position on the continent, and a wedge-shaped projection into Central Asia, bounded by the Caucasus Mountains and Caspian Sea on one side and the mountains of Afghanistan and Western China on the other side. To prevent Russian expansionism and achievement of predominance on the Asian continent, Mahan believed pressure on Asia's flanks could be the only viable strategy pursued by sea powers.[30]
South of the 30th parallel lay areas dominated by the sea powers – the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and Japan. To Mahan, the possession of India by the United Kingdom was of key strategic importance, as India was best suited for exerting balancing pressure against Russia in Central Asia. The United Kingdom's predominance in Egypt, China, Australia, and the Cape of Good Hope was also considered important.[30]
The strategy of sea powers, according to Mahan, ought to be to deny Russia the benefits of commerce that come from sea commerce. He noted that both the
In this contest between land power and sea power, Russia would find itself allied with France (a natural sea power, but in this case necessarily acting as a land power), arrayed against Germany, Britain, Japan, and the United States as sea powers.[30] Further, Mahan conceived of a unified, modern state composed of Turkey, Syria, and Mesopotamia, possessing an efficiently organized army and navy to stand as a counterweight to Russian expansion.[30]
Further dividing the map by geographic features, Mahan stated that the two most influential lines of division would be the Suez and
Halford J. Mackinder
This message was composed to convince the world statesmen at the Paris Peace conference of the crucial importance of Eastern Europe as the strategic route to the Heartland was interpreted as requiring a strip of buffer state to separate Germany and Russia. These were created by the peace negotiators but proved to be ineffective bulwarks in 1939 (although this may be seen as a failure of other, later statesmen during the interbellum). The principal concern of his work was to warn of the possibility of another major war (a warning also given by economist John Maynard Keynes).
Mackinder was anti-
Mackinder's work paved the way for the establishment of geography as a distinct discipline in the United Kingdom. His role in fostering the teaching of geography is probably greater than that of any other single British geographer.
Whilst Oxford did not appoint a professor of Geography until 1934, both the
Mackinder is often credited with introducing two new terms into the English language: "manpower" and "heartland".
The Heartland Theory was enthusiastically taken up by the German school of Geopolitik, in particular by its main proponent Karl Haushofer. Geopolitik was later embraced by the German Nazi regime in the 1930s. The German interpretation of the Heartland Theory is referred to explicitly (without mentioning the connection to Mackinder) in The Nazis Strike, the second of Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" series of American World War II propaganda films.
The Heartland Theory and more generally classical geopolitics and geostrategy were extremely influential in the making of US strategic policy during the period of the Cold War.[32]
Evidence of Mackinder's Heartland Theory can be found in the works of geopolitician Dimitri Kitsikis, particularly in his geopolitical model "Intermediate Region".
Friedrich Ratzel
Influenced by the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, as well as the German geographers Carl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt, Friedrich Ratzel would lay the foundations for geopolitik, Germany's unique strain of geopolitics.
Ratzel wrote on the natural division between land powers and
Ratzel's ideas would influence the works of his student Rudolf Kjellén, as well as those of General Karl Haushofer.[33]
Rudolf Kjellén
His writings focused on five central concepts that would underlie German geopolitik:
- Reich was a territorial concept that was composed of Raum (Lebensraum), and strategic military shape;
- Volk was a racial conception of the state;
- Haushalt was a call for autarky based on land, formulated in reaction to the vicissitudes of international markets;
- Gesellschaft was the social aspect of a nation's organization and cultural appeal, Kjellén anthropomorphizinginter-state relations more than Ratzel had; and,
- Regierung was the form of government whose bureaucracy and army would contribute to the people's pacification and coordination.[34]
General Karl Haushofer
Haushofer defined geopolitik in 1935 as "the duty to safeguard the right to the soil, to the land in the widest sense, not only the land within the frontiers of the Reich, but the right to the more extensive Volk and cultural lands."[28] Culture itself was seen as the most conducive element to dynamic expansion. Culture provided a guide as to the best areas for expansion, and could make expansion safe, whereas solely military or commercial power could not.[33]
To Haushofer, the existence of a state depended on living space, the pursuit of which must serve as the basis for all policies. Germany had a high population density, whereas the old colonial powers had a much lower density: a virtual mandate for German expansion into resource-rich areas.[33] A buffer zone of territories or insignificant states on one's borders would serve to protect Germany.[33]
Closely linked to this need was Haushofer's assertion that the existence of small states was evidence of political regression and disorder in the international system. The small states surrounding Germany ought to be brought into the vital German order.
Haushofer and the Munich school of geopolitik would eventually expand their conception of lebensraum and autarky well past a restoration of the German borders of 1914 and "a place in the sun." They set as goals a New European Order, then a New Afro-European Order, and eventually to a Eurasian Order.[34] This concept became known as a pan-region, taken from the American Monroe Doctrine, and the idea of national and continental self-sufficiency.[34] This was a forward-looking refashioning of the drive for colonies, something that geopoliticians did not see as an economic necessity, but more as a matter of prestige, and of putting pressure on older colonial powers. The fundamental motivating force was not economic, but cultural and spiritual.[33]
Beyond being an economic concept, pan-regions were a strategic concept as well. Haushofer acknowledged the strategic concept of the
Nicholas J. Spykman
Nicholas J. Spykman was a Dutch-American geostrategist, known as the "godfather of containment." His geostrategic work, The Geography of the Peace (1944), argued that the balance of power in Eurasia directly affected United States security.
N.J. Spykman based his geostrategic ideas on those of Sir Halford Mackinder's Heartland theory. Spykman's key contribution was to alter the strategic valuation of the Heartland vs. the "Rimland" (a geographic area analogous to Mackinder's "Inner or Marginal Crescent").
George F. Kennan
Kennan advocated what was called "strongpoint containment." In his view, the United States and its allies needed to protect the productive industrial areas of the world from Soviet domination. He noted that of the five centers of industrial strength in the world—the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, and Russia—the only contested area was that of Germany. Kennan was concerned about maintaining the
Here Kennan differed from Paul Nitze, whose seminal Cold War document, NSC 68, called for "undifferentiated or global containment," along with a massive military buildup.[39] Kennan saw the Soviet Union as an ideological and political challenger rather than a true military threat. There was no reason to fight the Soviets throughout Eurasia, because those regions were not productive, and the Soviet Union was already exhausted from World War II, limiting its ability to project power abroad. Therefore, Kennan disapproved of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and later spoke out critically against Reagan's military buildup.
Henry Kissinger
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out his most significant contribution to post-Cold War geostrategy in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. He defined four regions of Eurasia, and in which ways the United States ought to design its policy toward each region in order to maintain its global primacy. The four regions (echoing Mackinder and Spykman) are:
- Europe, the Democratic Bridgehead
- Russia, the Black Hole
- The Middle East, the Eurasian Balkans
- Asia, the Far Eastern Anchor
In his subsequent book, The Choice, Brzezinski updates his geostrategy in light of
In his journal called America's New Geostrategy, he discusses the need of shift in America's geostrategy to avoid its massive collapse like many scholars predict. He points out that:
- the United States needs to shift away from its long-standing preoccupation with the threat of a nuclear war between the superpowers or a massive Soviet conventional attack in central Europe.
- a doctrine and a force posture are needed that will enable the United States to respond more selectively to a large number of possible security threats to enhance deterrence in the current and foreseeable conditions.
- the United States should rely to a greater extent on a more flexible mix of nuclear and even non-nuclear strategic forces capable of executing more selective military mission[42]
Other notable geostrategists
Name | Nationality |
---|---|
Brooks Adams | United States |
Thomas P. M. Barnett | United States |
Saul B. Cohen | United States |
George Friedman | United States |
Julian Corbett | British |
Colin S. Gray | United States |
Homer Lea | United States |
Otto Maull | German |
Alexander de Seversky | United States |
Robert Strausz-Hupé | United States |
Ko Tun-hwa | Republic of China (Taiwan) |
See also
- German geostrategy
- Indian geostrategy
- Pakistani geostrategy
- Geostrategy in Taiwan
- Geostrategy in Central Asia
- Oil geostrategy
- Geoeconomics
References
- ^ Dr. Cabral Abel Couto (1988). Elementos de Estratégia. Vol I. Instituto Altos Estudos Militares, Lisboa.
- ^ Dr. John Garafano (5–9 July 2004). "Alternate Security Strategies: The Strategic Feasibility of Various Notions of Security" (PDF). International Peace Research Foundation. Retrieved 2006-05-19.
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(help) - Secretary General (20 April 2001). "No exit without strategy: Security Council decision-making and the closure or transition of United Nations peacekeeping operations" (PDF). S/2001/394. United Nations Security Council. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2004-01-13. Retrieved 2006-05-19.)
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(help - ^ Col. David J. Andre (Autumn 1995). "The Art of War—Part, Present, Future" (PDF). Joint Force Quarterly: 129. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2004-11-14. Retrieved 2005-05-19.
- ^ Philip Babcock Gove, ed. (September 1961). Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press.
strategy: the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace and war
- ISBN 978-0-19-503097-6.
The process by which ends are related to means, intentions to capabilities, objectives to resources.
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- ^ "Brzezinski Institute on Geostrategy". Center for Strategic and International Studies. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
- ^ Hillen, John; Michael P. Noonan (Autumn 1998). "The Geopolitics of NATO Enlargement". Parameters. XXVIII (3): 21–34. Retrieved 2006-12-22.
- .
... is often divided into two main schools: the organic state branch and the geostrategy branch ...
- S2CID 145259554.
Geopolitics, broadly defined, may actually be seen as two distinct schools that comprise the organic state theory and geostrategy.
- ISSN 0011-3530.
- ^ S2CID 153746163.
- ^ Rogers, James; Simón, Luis (14 March 2010). "Think Again: European Geostrategy". Archived from the original on 24 April 2010. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
- ISBN 978-0-87113-084-6.
- ISBN 978-0-465-02725-5.
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- ^ Joo-Jock, Lim (1979). Geo-Strategy and the South China Sea Basin. Singapore: Singapore University Press. p. 4.
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- ^ "Munesh Chandra asked: What is the difference between geo-politics and geo-strategy? | Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses".
- ^ a b Deiniol Jones, Cosmopolitan Mediation?: Conflict Resolution and the Oslo Accords, Manchester University Press, 1999, p. 43
- ^ Andrew S. Erickson and Lyle J. Goldstein, [Xu Qi], "21世纪初海上地缘战略与中国海军的发展" Maritime Geostrategy and the Development of the Chinese Navy in the Early 21st Century, 中国军事科学 [China Military Science] (Vol. 17, No. 4) 2004, pp. 75–81, Naval War College Review Vol. 59, No. 4, Autumn 2006, pp. 46–67
- ^ Saw Swee-Hock, Sheng Lijun, Chin Kin Wah, Asean-China Relations: Realities and Prospects, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005, pp.136–137
- ^ Fifield, Russell H. (The Journal of geography, Vol.- No.-, [1944]) [SSCI, SCOPUS]
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- ^ a b c d e f g Mackubin Thomas Owens (Autumn 1999). "In Defense of Classical Geopolitics". Naval War College Review. LII (4). Archived from the original on 2001-03-06. Retrieved 2004-01-11.
- ^ H.J. Mackinder, The geographical pivot of history. The Geographical Journal, 1904, 23, pp. 421–37; Pascal Venier, "The Geographical Pivot of History and Early 20th Century Geopolitical Culture", Geographical Journal, vol. 170, no 4, December 2004, pp. 330–336.
- ^ a b c Walsh, Edmund A. (1949). Total Power: A Footnote to History. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
- ^ "이화여자대학교 도서관".
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7658-0524-9.
- JSTOR 1796597.
- ^ Sloan, G.R. Geopolitics in United States Strategic Policy, Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1988.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8046-0112-2.
- ^ a b c d e f Mattern, Johannes (1942). Geopolitik: Doctrine of National Self-Sufficiency and Empire. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.
- Mackinder, Halford J. (1942). Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (PDF). Washington D.C.: National Defense University Press. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2009-03-05.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-208-00654-7.
- ^ X (July 1947). "The Sources of Soviet conduct". Foreign Affairs (XXV): 575–576.
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- American Prospect, 5 February 2006
- ^ Brzezinski, Zbigniew (Foreign affairs, Vol.66 No.4, [1988]) [SSCI, SCOPUS]
Further reading
- Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
- Brzezinski, Zbigniew. America's New Geostrategy. Council on Foreign Relations, 1988
- Gray, Colin S. and Geoffrey Sloan. Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999.
- Mackinder, Halford J. Democratic Ideals and Reality. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996.
- Mahan, Alfred Thayer. The Problem of Asia: Its Effects Upon International Politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003.
- Daclon, Corrado Maria. Geopolitics of Environment, A Wider Approach to the Global Challenges. Italy: Comunità Internazionale, SIOI, 2007.
- Efremenko, Dmitry V. Russian Geostrategic Imperatives. Collection of Essays. Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences, 2019.
- European Geostrategy
- Ukrainian Geostrategy
- The GeGaLo index of geopolitical gains and losses assesses how the geopolitical position of 156 countries may change if the world fully transitions to renewable energy resources. Former fossil fuels exporters are expected to lose power, while the positions of former fossil fuel importers and countries rich in renewable energy resources is expected to strengthen.[1]
- hdl:11250/2634876.