Geopolitics

Geopolitics, term used to designate the determining influence of the environment (elements such as geographical features, social and cultural forces, and economic resources) on the politics of a nation. The Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén, who developed a system of political science based on the interaction of sociological, political, and physical forces, coined the word geopolitics in his work, Staten som Lifsform (1916; The State as an Organism).

A sovereign state occupies a particular territory with unique physical features that partly determine viable forms of economic, social, political, and military organization. In addition, the geographical location of a state must be considered in relation to those of other states, each with its own unique geopolitical qualities. In the 20th century, for example, Belgium and Poland have been “fighting places”, one located between Germany and France, the other between Germany and Russia.

Geopolitics, as developed by the German general Karl Haushofer, became important in Germany during the period of National Socialism; it provided a pseudo-scientific rationale to justify that nation's territorial expansion. One facet of German geopolitics was the theory called Lebensraum (“living space”). According to this theory, the “living space” is defined as all the territory that a country is alleged to need in order to achieve self-sufficiency.

Many scholars have looked to geopolitics for a deeper understanding of the fundamental structure of power relations between states. For a better conception of the political rivalry between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), for example, geopolitical theorists looked for the roots of foreign policy imperatives in the domestic conditions of those two countries. As early as 1904, the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder noted a geopolitical antagonism between the Eurasian land power (that is, Russia) and the leading sea power (then Great Britain, subsequently the United States). Various geopolitical explanations were offered for the US-Soviet struggle for influence in Africa, Eurasia, and Latin America from the late 1940s through to the early 1990s, when the USSR broke up.