Geopolitics

According to political geographer Saul Cohen, geopolitics “is defined as . . . the analysis of the interaction between . . . geographical settings and perspectives and . . . political processes.” As a field of modern academic inquiry, geopolitics emerged from the era of imperialism, when European countries set about establishing political control over large sections of Africa, Latin America, Asia, Australia, and North America. In competition through the system of mercantilism, these imperialistic powers sought advantage over one another by controlling straits, passages and canals of the world’s shipping lanes, acquiring natural resources to support large-scale industrialization, establishing monopolistic overseas markets, and building powerful militaries. Early modern geopolitical thinkers attempted to develop theories about the nature of the nation-state and the relationships between states. As new powers arose during the late colonial era (Germany, Japan, the United States, Russia) to challenge the supremacy of Great Britain and France, an emphasis on power and strategy tended to dominate the thinking and writing of scholars and policymakers. The strategic advantage some countries appeared to enjoy over others, and methods of obtaining such advantage, became a focus of geopolitical thinking. Geostrategic notions of buffer states, shatterbelts, and other concepts entered the lexicon of geopoliticians between the world wars, as scholars grappled with the changes wrought by the Treaty of Versailles, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the emergence of the Soviet Union. After World War II, American foreign policy was profoundly shaped by geopolitics, especially by the strategy of containment and the “domino theory,” both of which became the foundation for increased American involvement in Vietnam after 1954.