Classical Geopolitics - A New Analytical Model by Phil Kelly (2016) Stanford Univ
Action Spaces: The ability of some states via distance, isolation, topography, or certain regional balances to remain unaffected by and independent from other states’ actions. American countries tend to enjoy this security from eurasian threats, as do the southern and peripheral world regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Southern Pacific. The Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union reduced action spaces because of their ubiquitous competition. But the US, as later unipolar hegemon, created a tendency for expansion of such autonomous spaces caused by the ending of the earlier strategic rivalry with Russia. Countries positioned more centrally, for instance, such as Germany and Poland, suffered more than average interventions from neighbors, thus experiencing di- minished action spaces. Switzerland, Venezuela, and Australia/New Zealand expe- rienced the opposite.
American Isolationism: Unique within a strategic platform, the United States can better exert pivotal influence by its offshore balancing, an ability to place its naval strength at either extreme of eurasia and then siding for or against certain regional rivals and allies to its advantage. The isolation and distance of America en- hances its aligning with nations for overseas’ regional balances without their fear of territorial absorption by the United States. North American isolation allows it pro- tection from eurasian dangers and involvements, and from threatening American neighbors, thus awarding a focus upon its sea-power capacities without the need for more expensive and politically vulnerable land-power facilities. Within this iso- lation as well, the American could capture the wealth of his continent during past centuries without serious opposition and to dominate Middle America according to the Monroe Doctrine.
Asymmetric States: in Saul Cohen’s terminology, these countries are “sec- ond-order powers” that challenge a status quo by disrupting “the regional [leading states] to rethink long-held positions and, in effect, to open their systems more widely.” Castro’s Cuba ranks as a prominent example; perhaps iran and North Ko- rea do as well. “While these regionally destabilizing states may well exhaust their own energies, the perturbations [instabilities] caused by them play a useful role in forgoing more cohesive regional structures.” 1 Consequently, the outcome of these states opposing the regional leaders assists toward rebalancing an unstable regional system, and to Cohen, ultimately these states will come to play a positive role.
Autarky: A state’s ambition for attaining enough resources, protection, and autonomy to enable self-sufficiency. This is illustrated in pan-regional designs, longitudinal lines separating the earth into three or four distinct autonomous geo- graphic zones, sometimes depicted as Oceania, eurasia, and east Asia. One could surmise this scenario within a more negative Geopolitik of a northern dominance of southern regions, Africa, latin America, and the Middle east, fulfilling Great Pow- ers’ needs for industrial and energy resources. likewise, the more extreme maps of this design could expose a war-prone checkerboard pattern of conflict across the adjacent zones for each other’s wealth. it is generally established by most economists that autarky should not be recom- mended as a modern nation’s policy. Since the earth has distributed its resources unevenly, international trade replaces the alleged merits of self-sufficiency as a more effective path to gaining trading markets and necessary resources for national development and prosperity. enhanced security might arrive in the collective as well.
Balance of Power: A configuration of regional states composed of varying numbers, from one to five normally, positioned for equilibrium or disequilibrium among them depending upon state policies and upon the wider political environ- ment. The outcomes are thus: unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar, and their arrange- ments accommodative (more stable) or hostile (more unstable). Most scholars visualize the classical balance as multipolar and accommodative and as more sta- ble. yet the present unipolar pattern of the United States as hegemon has proven peaceful, since it appears to be accommodative to the major Great Powers. in clas- sical geopolitical terms, security derives more from position than from power, the alignments of checkerboards a prominent instance.
Balancer States; Bandwagoning and Balancing: Balancers locate either as pe- ripheral-within-regions or outside-of-region states, not intertwined within major power alliances and thus able to bandwagon or align with a dominant side of a re- gional balance or balance against a dominant side, evening the power distributions within the region. Traditionally, england played this role within european balances, and presently the United States follows with its offshore balancing strategy. Despite its relative weakness, the central positioning of Paraguay between its larger neigh- bors, Brazil and Argentina, has seen these sorts of balances in its recent history.
Borders-Cause-Wars Thesis: here, a statistically proven association arises be- tween number of international frontiers of states and their number of war involve- ments—or, the more borders, the more wars. The association was shown for South America and the same globally. 4 This rather common sense connection rises statis- tically with countries having more populated borders, 5 and with states possessing never-resolved territorial disputes.
Bridge Countries; Gateway States and Regions: Areas and states that attract outside entry into and through them into more expansive regions and continents in the interests of security, investments, and energy-industrial resources. Brzezinski saw Western europe as “America’s essential geopolitical bridgehead on the eurasian continent,” 2 and Cohen visualized these areas as financial and trade centers.
Buffer States: Smaller and weaker countries positioned between/among larger neighbors such that direct contact, and thus possible warfare among the larger ad- jacent states, are likely avoided. in most cases, as in South America, these buffers stabilize regions by cushioning conflict among the larger powers and by absorbing territorial losses to the benefit of the more powerful. Middle America tends to iso- late the Southern from the Northern hemisphere similarly.
Camino del Sol: A geopolitical reference to the isolation of South America from the northern Great Powers, 7 and hence to an alleged world dominance of the Northern hemisphere. The farther a country from a latitudinal line connecting the major northern capital cities—Washington, DC, london, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, and Tokyo—the less global impact that state possesses. A similar picture arises in the equatorial paradox, which posits a 70 percent likelihood that the level of devel- opment of a nation will correspond to its distance from either north or south of the equator. explanations for this tendency extend from tropical diseases hampering human energies to the tropics providing easy foodstuffs without need for innova- tion and hard work that would be required of the challenges of colder and harsher northern climes. These references parallel henry Kissinger’s pentagonal thesis, which numbers a global power monopoly of only the five major power centers of the north that “count.” Also within this mix, a condominium concept resembles these five Great Powers of the north controlling major international events of importance. Some evidence exists that the world’s more productive temperate landforms, the areas historically spawning the leading civilizations, happen more plentifully in the north than in the south, where in the latter case, such zones extend mostly over ocean waters and the smaller fertile landforms that are scattered and isolated.
Cataclysmic Events: This thesis resides at the one extreme between environ- mental determinism and possibilism, the former of these being events within nature that directly and immediately impact upon a country’s political and gov- ernmental behavior—earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, global warming, polluted water and air spaces, pandemics, and scarcities of oil, water, land, and other en- ergy and human/industrial resources. Some political scandals and popular upris- ings have followed earthquakes and tsunamis in Nicaragua, 1972, and in Japan, 2011. Cataclysmic events occur so devastatingly that they determine political out- comes.
Challenge and Response: humans facing and overcoming difficult terrain, climate, and other harsh conditions—these representing, for instance, dangerous jungle environments and rugged mountain ranges when confronted by migrat- ing peoples. American exceptionalism might pose a further example, its success in transforming a wilderness into a rich continent, or manifest destiny, its alleged inherent right and duty to do so despite the daunting challenge.
Checkerboards: A leapfrog configuration of states within a region whereby neighboring states appear as enemies but neighbors of neighbors farther out figure as allies. This mandala patterning can be found in contemporary South America, instilling a stable structure to the continent. For the ancient Greek Peloponnesian war, its checkerboard was rigid and war-prone, 8 creating a setting for thirty years of destruction. Thus, geopolitical patterns can differ within these structures, the outcomes being either stable or not. Checkerboards occur elsewhere in the Middle east, Middle America, and Southeast Asia.
Choke Points: Pivotal land and sea corridors show as choke points, these be- ing straits, passages, canals, channels, and river estuaries whose positions exert im- pact over an extended distance beyond their immediate locations. Good examples would include the Straits of Malacca and of Gibraltar, the Panama and Suez canals, New Orleans and the Mississippi River estuary. Countries compete for control over such points.
Clash of Civilizations: huntington and others have asserted that previous ideological and nationalistic competitions among nations and blocs of the Cold War have shifted onto different social and cultural dimensions of conflict. 9 Now, rival “civilizations” struggle in armed strife. Wars will be fought in march lands or frontiers that separate the various civilizations, particularly in borders showing contemporary hostility—the Muslim, Chinese, and Western lands. huntington be- lieved that the cultural centers themselves would remain united and not engage in civil warfare.
Climatology Theory: A link is fixed between climatic conditions and human and political behavior, perhaps the most prominent example the alleged vigor and health of temperate climates in contrast to the lethargy and stagnation alleged of tropical and polar zones. Another example comes in the connection between lower rainfall prompting migration, depression, chaos, and stagnation. Some evidence derives from the climatic disruptions of global warming in which inconsistent weather may contribute to conflict. Finally, it is possible that favorable climates assisted the industrial rise of europe and North America after the “little ice Age,” giving rise to domination over Asia and Africa.
Closed Spaces: At the nineteenth century’s end, a concern was raised by sev- eral writers, halford Mackinder and Frederick Jackson Turner among these, of the disappearance of lands for colonization and development, thus creating a scarcity causing national rivalries and wars. Such a scenario extends today to overpopula- tion, diminished lands for food production, exhaustion of sustainable resources, and other such factors within the environmental context. The law of valuable areas represents a variation of the closed spaces in which available resources and agricul- tural lands lie open to potential colonization but primarily those located in isolated and difficult-to-exploit spaces. A similar prediction of Great Power warfare accom- panies this law, a likely example being for petroleum resting in Central Asia.
Contagion: A diffusion phenomenon exhibiting the spread of riots, rebellion, democracy, military dictatorships, and other instances across international fron- tiers. This “demonstration effect” tends toward a higher likelihood in centrally po- sitioned countries within regions. The “falling dominoes” example, sans its ideo- logical taint, represents another instance of contagion.
Containment Policy: The source for this strategy originated in George Ken- nan’s warning of likely Soviet expansion over eurasia and onto its rimlands, this threat adhering to Mackinder’s heartland thesis. The general assumption held that the Soviet Union, either for nationalistic or ideological reasons, sought to extend its territories to the whole of eurasia and beyond, perhaps bent upon world dom- ination. hence, to turn back this threat of a united and hostile Russia, eurasia, the United States, and its allies must erect “rimland dykes” along the continent’s pe- riphery to contain the Russian expansion in the hope that once the allied success in halting the advance occurs, Russia’s recognition of its being contained would either mellow into seeking a status quo or instead the empire would collapse as a result of the costs and stresses of its failed seeking of new lands. Violence could develop in this latter case with global war following a Soviet collapse.
Convergence Theory: A possible pre-shatterbelt condition visualized by Cohen in areas centrally positioned between the interests of outside but often adjacent Great Powers. 10 These zones could show either as gateway or shatterbelt patterns. Perhaps pre–World War ii Poland might qualify, and contemporary iraq before the US occupation.
Demography: A spatial characteristic of distributions and densities of peoples over lands and resources that exert a political, economic, or other impact, such as under- or overpopulation upon places on the earth. excessive human congestion in southern megacities could foster failed states, and from these would spread beyond themselves to adjacent areas such problems as crime, migrations, poverty, disease, political violence, and other such disruptions.
Dependency: A core-periphery regional and global structure featuring the technologically advanced and thus wealthy and powerful core countries and re- gions dominant over an outer rim of weak, poor, and dependent countries. A mal- distribution of natural resources accompanies this pattern, the rich areas more am- ply endowed in resources than the poor areas. A further claim arrives in that those in poverty are kept in plight within a colonial or neocapitalist pattern, the powerful becoming wealthier at the expense of the poor.
Distance-Weakens Argument: The claim that closer lines of communication will lend certain advantages of nearness—lower costs of transport and travel, co- operative security interests, assembling of influence spheres and key nations, and accomplishment of regional integration. Disadvantages accrue with distance, al- though some argue against these claims, asserting that modern technologies of communications negate the disadvantages of distance. Despite such technologies, many affirm that this traditional thesis of distance weakening still pertains in the majority of cases.
Earth Dependence/Emancipation: in the instance of earth dependence, man es- sentially is limited in his capacities by nature, with few exceptions. Not able to escape the fetters of his environment, he is “nature limited.” Nonetheless, in the more liberal instance of emancipation, humans hold greater capacity for freedom, given this by science and human ingenuity, which will remove many of nature’s constraints. Such a dichotomy can be visualized in states as well as in humans, states being either at the mercy of difficult regional and spatial limitations or able to achieve gains from their own skills and flexibility that would lend them more freedom.
Encirclement: Of course, all countries encircle and are encircled, a premise cen- tral to classical geopolitics. What one studies within the phenomenon of encircle- ment are the supposed advantages and disadvantages of this positioning. locating on the periphery might award some protection yet deprive the resident of impact within the region. Other factors on either side of this discussion have been outlined elsewhere in this volume. This term can exude a balancing phenomenon and even hostile intent, in which certain nations might seek protection and power with alli- ance to an outside power. Or they could align with others against a more dominant regional nation. Brazil being encircled by the Spanish republics offers an example, Brazil’s neighbors having been successful in denying it access to the Pacific and to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The United States, in its capacity as an offshore balancer, exhibits another instance of its involvement in the regional bal- ances on either eurasian fringe, encircling China or Russia in preventing any sort of aggressive intentions. North America can limit its encirclement by eurasia by itself encircling the continent’s rimland expanses.
Environmental Determinism/Possibilism: We might want to avoid the charge of geopolitics being “deterministic,” a claim that holds some justification. yet the query must be considered: how dominating to ourselves and county is our physi- cal environment—excessively or selectively? here, we see an evolution of thought and controversy in this theory’s divide, evolving from an inevitable causality of earlier writers to the contemporary acceptance of a “possible” or “conditioning” effect toward humans and states toward their spatial surroundings. Accordingly, we presently hold a common acceptance for countries’ settings impacting upon their international actions and policies in certain instances. We can do no more to clarify this attachment. Nonetheless, let us refrain from asserting a strict “determinism” and instead stay with the environment as possible “conditioner.”
Falling-Dominoes Thesis: The more popular and notorious depiction of this thesis attaches to the spread of communism, one state succumbing to socialism and this “disease” or “flood” then advancing onto neighboring states being tainted similarly, such countries “falling [like] dominoes.” hence, this unproven ideological premise takes this dominoes assumption out of the realm of classical geopolitics. Still, examples of a contagion effect happening among contiguous countries occur within nonideological descriptions of this phenomenon, such as political instabil- ity, economic depression, democracy, riots, and the like. 11 Accordingly, when the concept of falling dominoes or sequential happenings may occur among neighbor- ing countries, in these instances we can accept the theory of dominoes falling as tied to contagion, and thus, it will be given a place within the geopolitical model. Two additional theories could stick to falling dominoes, both being expansive to the dominoes question above. A field-theory structure broadens the original thesis by adding types of borders, comparative population levels, historical and cultural rivalries among the adjacent players, and so forth. here, the additional variables add more depth beyond the mere one-dimensional frontiers. Additionally, a modi- fied-linkage model serves much the same purpose, replacing national borders with connected functional nodes that erase political lines, these being multinational metropolitan and trade networks, traffic routes, and like regional extensions.
Fluvial Laws: Spatial patterns of rivers and seas would pertain to an assortment of theses: interior land-locked countries inherently striving for an ocean outlet; centripetally flowing rivers unifying countries; states dominating single river water- sheds; countries competing for river estuaries; states controlling estuaries tending to dominate the immediate coastlines; and directions of countries’ rivers determin- ing the regional directions of their foreign policies.
Frontier Thesis: The argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner that the unique North American wilderness and its frontier, with colonists moving westward, helped form America democracy and such other traits as equalitarian- ism, individualism, distrust for authority, violence, and less interest toward artistic and scientific achievements. The earlier settlers encountered environmental chal- lenges in overcoming the wilderness and developing its uncultivated lands. his the- sis prompted a variety of offshoots, such as manifest destiny, Monroe Doctrine, exceptionalism, isolationism, and resistance to immigrant and racial diversity.
Geostrategies: Policies designed and implemented by successful statespersons that gained their countries’ vital resources and trade routes, protected frontiers, national unity, and other pertinent geopolitical needs of their states.
Great Game: This idea originated in the nineteenth-century rivalry between imperial Russia and Great Britain for Afghanistan and to a lesser extent for Tibet and surrounding areas. Several later authors revived the Great Game, including Brzezinski and Megoran, 12 with Admiral Mahan predicting a land-power/sea- power confrontation over a “Middle Strip” within Central Asia also resembling this rivalry.
Heartland Thesis: Mackinder’s 1904 address outlining his heartland thesis be- gan the Anglo–North American version of traditional geopolitics, the emphasis upon the internal lands of central eurasia and its strategic inward pivot. Central position afforded several advantages: (1) protection from invasion resulting from isolation, longer distances, harsh weather and topography, and great expanse of territory; (2) maneuverability within and beyond a central pivot; (3) access to con- tinental resources; and (4) ability to probe vulnerabilities of the outer ring of coun- tries and of the maritime bases of the rimland. Mackinder’s eurasian heartland thesis stands as the leading geopolitical concept, one that alleges world domination would reward the heartland’s possessor. The Charcas heartland of Bolivia in South America is recognized within the literature, too.
Hydraulic Despotism: Related to fluvial laws, several ancient empires of despo- tism formed because of rulers’ control of irrigation systems in climates of drought. This premise rests on elite castes’ dominance over flood control and water that brought them ownership of adjacent lands and peoples. yet in contemporary times, we may be returning to this image of political rivalry for scarce water, lands, and resources by elites and their corporations.
Immigration: The movement of peoples over spaces that eventually impact upon local cultures and governments as well as upon foreign policies. examples would cover later political and economic fragmentation within lands hosting new immigrants, as with contemporary europe and with illegal migration across bor- ders where workers seek better employment opportunities but create other dislo- cations associated with their movement. european colonization of North America probably lent to foreign policy the ideals of exceptionalism, manifest destiny, im- ages of racism, and attitudes of unilateralism.
Imperial Thesis: All empires expand, almost by definition, and such expansion carries advantages and disadvantages. expansion brings security and wealth—se- curity in distance frontiers and in isolation from enemy countries; wealth in the resources the imperial state can access in the newly gained territories. yet empires must face problems of encirclement by suspicious neighboring countries alarmed at the expansion. Absorbing alien peoples in newly gained territories could stimu- late rebellion against the center. in addition, imperial states must bear the costs of expansion and encirclement, all of these liabilities forcing an eventual contraction of space away from the periphery to the original core and toward imperial disinte- gration.
Integration/Globalization: integration erases national commercial boundaries and political sovereignties as ways to broaden regional markets by eliminating tar- iffs and by coordinating policies, the best example being the european Union. Glo- balization reflects the advancement of communications such that distant peoples and countries come closer via the new electronic technologies.
Intermarium: Similar to a buffering configuration, “the [european] coun- tries from the Baltic to the Black seas have a common interest in limiting Russian power and the geopolitical position to do so if they act as a group.” 14 But, for energy sources, Turkey is reluctant to alienate Russia by joining this buffer configuration. No decision has been made to date.
Irredentism: Advocating annexation or combining of territories as a plan for uniting long-separated peoples of common ethnicity or of past national identity into forming new states or into joining adjacent existing states. The Kurds in iraq, iran, Syria, and Turkey, desiring a unified homeland, are one example, others being the Zionist claims for israel and the Aztlan of Chicanos for the American South- west. The contemporary Ukrainian shatterbelt offers an example as well.
Key Nation Thesis: An alleged tactic of the Nixon foreign policy whereby cer- tain strategically positioned states in outlying regions would receive US assistance meant for them to stabilize such areas that would also forward US interests. ex- amples include Brazil, iran, and Nigeria. “Using subordinate regional powers as surrogates, exchanging their willingness to incur risks from a major power opposed to the US for substantial benefits. These [benefits] range from strategic guarantees and support against smaller neighbors to trade advantages and technology trans- fers. The recovery of West Germany and Japan during the Cold War are classic ex- amples of this.”
Land-Locked Countries: Those being continentally interior nations without extensive seacoasts, such states normally suffer isolation, less economic and po- litical development, and weaker international involvement and recognition than coastal ecumenes would enjoy. For some, gaining a sea outlet would appear prom- inently in their foreign-policy goals. Paraguay maintains some ocean contact from the Paraguay River and from overland-transit agreements with Brazil. Traditionally, Russia and Bolivia have sought an ocean outlet as well.
Linchpin States: A concept tied both to shatterbelts, containment, and the eur- asian rimlands, these states possess locations of strategic value between the margins of potential Soviet expansion and of Western resistance to that expansion. exam- ples include Poland, Germany, iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Korea, and the Philippines.
Linkage Thesis: Kissinger’s assertion that Third World instabilities and an- ti-Westernism were connected to Soviet intrigue. To break this linkage, the West would offer rewards to the Russians to reverse such actions, the West affording re- laxation of tensions, exchanges of trade and technology, and cooperation within international organizations.
Lintel States: like buffer states, a single state positioned between two larger countries that stabilizes the surrounding area, like a doorway or window lintel placed above the arch. The two larger countries are poised against each other, as neither can dominate or absorb the lintel state. As in the case of Paraguay juxta- posed astride Brazil and Argentina, it may play a balancing or bandwagoning for- eign policy toward its two larger neighbors that may stabilize the entire region.
Manifest Destiny: A space concept within geopolitics when shorn of its nation- alistic and religious connotations, the term refers to the inevitability of a country occupying outlying territorial spaces. Such an expansion often manifests as a right or obligation to civilize and develop the new lands. This factor is seen in both Bra- zilian and US manifestos to spread westward, only the United States being success- ful. The nineteenth-century attempts to exploit the rubber lands of the Congo and of Brazil by european nations parallel this description.
Monroe Doctrine: President James Monroe’s original address that sought to prevent european bases and strategic influence in Middle America, a goal that would work against the formation of shatterbelts in the region. Also a part of the containment policy of the Cold War, violated in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis when the Soviet Union placed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. The doctrine could later be extended to the eurasian rimlands, the American objective being offshore balancing against a possible hostile eurasia.
Natural Borders: Frontiers formed by rivers, oceans, mountains, and deserts that denote march borderlands, although river watersheds tend to unify as well as to divide state boundaries. This clarity of natural demarcations attracts fewer territorial disputes among neighbors and therefore brings more regional stability. Harmonic and equilibrium frontiers show similar tendencies, with the latter being the outer limits of expanding empires or the farthest points their natural power can take them.
Natural Resources: Abundant resources possessed by countries bolster their national prosperity and international impact. Fortunately for some and not so for others, the earth’s riches are not evenly distributed, North America perhaps being the most provisioned with such wealth. The dependency thesis would reflect this scenario as well, the core areas wealthy because of their abundant inheritance of natural riches. The petro-politics dilemma poses a different and negative view of such wealth. Future wars could well be fought over resource competition when en- ergy and other wealth become depleted.
Normative and Alternative Geopolitical Processes: Two alternating geopoliti- cal processes, the “normative” in which the successful expansion of a universal or hegemonic state would come to extend domination beyond its immediate regions such as to place adjacent areas under some level of subservience. Such Great Powers control their cores and peripheries to the extent that lesser states accept their stan- dard of domination. After these empires falter, the smaller countries will attempt to resume their autonomy by constructing regional associations that will protect their newly gained independence. The Cold War resembled the first process; the contemporary european Union the second. 16 The imperial thesis and action spaces resemble this depiction as well.
Ocean Cycles; Age of the Pacific; Westward Movement of Civilizations: Cer- tain centrally located rivers, seas, and oceans have ed the rise of civilizations in the ancient Middle east, the Nile, euphrates-Tigris river ways, and elsewhere in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, the North Atlantic, and more recently, the Pacific Ocean Rim. These bodies of water appear to favor maritime nations, placing such waterways as pivotal to success in broadening countries’ impact and prosperity and toward their utilizing many of the advantages of central position in regions and continents. Some find in the contemporary Age of the Pacific a prediction of this basin as the coming world focus of importance, power, and conflict. Finally, the thesis forms that major world civilizations have moved westward, from Greece through Rome and Britain, onto North America, and perhaps to the Pacific era and China. Somewhat europe-centric and mentioned by Mackinder, 17 these civiliza- tions drew strength from sea and oceanic features nearby, the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, and later, the Pacific.
Offshore Balancing: An alternative Grand Strategy of the United States, a shift away from Cold War preponderance, suggesting these changes: the United States should (1) retrench from commitments to Japan and Germany and allow these countries’ rise to Great Power status. Resist intervening in peripheral areas meant to enhance Japanese and German stability. No longer oppose the rise of such sta- tus for China. Accept an eventual shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world; (2) forsake the current interdependent trade policies, replacing these with a neomer- cantilism that will place primary emphasis on protecting US national wealth and on meeting its current domestic needs; and (3) rely upon the US Navy to assist in offshore balancing adjacent the eurasian rimlands favorable to American national interests, particularly in positioning against an expansionist China by aligning with its encircling Asian rivals.
Organic Borders and States: An earlier German concept whereby states tend either to expand in territory or to contract spatially, based upon their national “ages”: youth, maturity, or elderly. Survival would rest with expansion, defeat with contraction. Borders would broaden or shrink in relation to this dynamic nature, the outer skins of the state. Manifest destiny approximates this phenomenon, as well as containment, the imperial and dependency theses, and, more distantly, Mackinder’s heartland.
Pan-Regions: The thesis of three or four global longitudinal sectors enclosing regions and continents—Pan-America, Pan-europe, Pan-eurasia, and the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Common examples are shown in George Orwell’s novel 1984, and in Fascist world maps. Such a structure sought to achieve self-sufficiency and autonomy for the sequestered sectors, dominated by the northern Great Na- tions. Checkerboard conflicts might arise within this configuration. Similar pat- terns of northern power would include condominiums and the key nation aspects.
Petro-Politics: A “resources curse” shown in a nation’s dependence upon ex- porting oil and gas while yet reaping great wealth. Nonetheless, this will see a de- cline in civil rights and democracy, causing an inverse statistical association be- tween resource dependence and individuals’ freedom.
Pivotal Locations and Positional Supremacy: Pivotal locations represent an es- sential element of traditional geopolitics, a unique placement giving impact further out from the central leverage. A variety of other concepts reflect this pivot: choke points, heartlands and rimlands, dependency, ocean cycles, and buffers, among similar terminology. Positional supremacy offers a similar description, that being a “key area requisite for world domination.” 18 Such a core area could be a heartland or rimland or both, outlined by cultural or “functional” factors during historical periods advantaging a particular state or alliance.
Rimlands: Periphery lands of the eurasian margin astride Mackinder’s heart- land that would include Western and Southern europe, the Middle east, and Southeast and east Asia. Mackinder’s and Spykman’s visions differed on their de- scriptions of this encircling region, the former seeing it as passive, the latter more active and as essential to global stability as the heartland. Many tend to side with Spykman, 19 who recognized that both world wars were found in divided rimlands with either extreme, heartland and outer oceanic margins united against opponents of the rimland.
Sea Lanes of Communication: Transport paths vital to countries dependent upon international trade and upon resources they require but must import. A good example would be Japan. Strategic maritime straits or choke points factor into this concept, as well as offshore balancing and sea power vs. land power, two perspec- tives vital to North American interests.
Sea Power–Land Power: Countries exhibiting either a maritime or a continen- tal emphasis in their geopolitical projections. A maritime nation would reflect a coastal position with good harbors and an oceanic projection. landward nations normally lack a sea orientation, being placed internally within continental cores. A common debate stirs over the favored orientation for national power, with naval proponents arguing for the benefits of trade and continental proponents for the weakness of sea powers for vulnerable land bases.
Shape and Size of Countries: A state’s configuration affects its national unity, territorial security, and economic vitality. The rectangular shape of the United States, tied together within by internal waterways and passable terrains, facilitates communications, whereas the irregular shapes of Chile, Brazil, and Canada hinder unity. in general, circular and rectangular shapes might strengthen unity, whereas elongated and irregular configurations could be disruptive. A nation’s greater terri- tory will factor into strength and prosperity, the larger powers tending to be more active in international relations.
Shatterbelt: A region showing two levels of conflict: (1) a strategic rivalry be- tween outside Great Nations; and (2) a local conflict among countries of that re- gion. A shatterbelt arises when strategic competitors and the regional competitors form opposing alliances within the area. 20 A threat of conflict escalation is common to these configurations.
Space Consciousness and Space Mastery: Drawn from German and South American spokesmen (Friedrich Ratzel and Julio londoño londoño), the idea of space consciousness claims that larger states have appetites for additional space, particularly if these nations visualize as profitable open and vacant spaces nearby. Such awareness of additional lands marks success in a survival-of-the-fittest in- ternational environment. Space mastery posits that states should populate and develop their peripheral hinterlands so as to prevent absorption of such lands by aggressive neighbors.
Spheres of Influence: Regions under domination by an outside adjacent or nearby Great Power, examples being Middle America by the United States and east- ern europe by Russia during the Cold War. A shatterbelt structure would replace these influence spheres in that a rival outside competitor would intrude into the area.
Weapons States: These smaller powers aim to gain in security and prestige by the acquiring or producing of “weapons of mass destruction,” nuclear, chemical, and biological.
