Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy

Geopolitical conditions influence all strategic behaviour. Even today, when co-operation among different kinds of military power is expected as the norm, action has to be planned and executed in specific physical environments. The geographical world cannot be avoided - we cannot operate beyond geography - and it happens to be 'organised' into land, sea, air and space (and possibly, the electromagnetic spectrum including 'cyberspace'). Although the meaning of geography for strategy is a perpetual historical theme, explicit theory on the subject is only 100 years old. Ideas about the implications of geographical, especially spatial, relationships for political power - which is to say 'geopolitics' - flourished early in the twentieth century.

However, those ideas fell into neglect, not to say opprobium, when geopolitics was found guilty by association with German Geopolitik, when the subject seemed to encourage an unhealthy determinism, and when new technologies appeared to place geography at a severe discount.

Divided into two sections, on theory and then practice, this volume takes a fresh look at geopolitics. It covers the big names such as Mackinder, Mahan and Haushofer as well as looking back at the vital influence of weather and geography on naval power in the long age of sail (16th to 19th centuries). It also looks forward to the consequences of the revival of geopolitics in post-Soviet Russia and the new space-based field of 'Astropolitics'.

The authors of Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy rescue their subject from its unwarranted neglect, demonstrate how geography can be mentally and nationally subjective, as well as physically objective, and generally show what geopoliticians can contribute to the better understanding of strategy and statecraft.

Contents

• Why Geopolitics?

• Sir Halford Mackinder: The Heartland Theory Then and Now
• Alfred Thayer Mahan, Geopolitician
• Air Power, Space Power, and Geography
• Geography in the Space Age: An Astropolitical Analysis
• Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Security
• Geopolitics: International Boundaries as Fighting Places
• Information Power: Strategy, Geopolitics and the Fifth Dimension

• Inescapable Geography
• Weather, Geography and Naval Power in the Age of Sail
• Some Thoughts on War and Geography
• Geopolitik: Haushofer, Hitler and Lebensraum
• `Russia Will Not Be Trifled With': Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies