Of Earth and Politics

Geopolitics is the study of how geography influences politics. It’s a field that has been dominated by the Anglo-American theorists of the past two centuries, beginning with H. Mackinder, A. T. Mahan and continuing with men such as N. J. Spykman, H. Kissinger, and Z. Brzezinski. They and their writings have influenced political administrations in the United States and across the West. They have been immensely important in the formation of foreign policy and international affairs.

The international system feels the effects of their ideas even today. American involvement in Eastern Europe and Ukraine -culminating with the indirect involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict in 2022- is a direct product of thoughts traced back to Mackinder’s theories on Eurasia and the “Heartland”. The interplay of such theories and the isolationist or interventionist tendencies in American foreign policy respectively, is a dynamic that has defined diplomatic history post-World War II.

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Nevertheless, the prevalence of the Anglo-American school of geopolitics and its centrality in the formation of the political science and international relations disciplines in academia and government of the West, have led to other schools of geopolitics becoming overshadowed. One such school is the Munich School or the German school of Geopolitik. The Japanese also had their own; the Kyoto School, developed on the eve of World War II. Both the Anglo-American, the German, and the Japanese schools had geography as a central influence of their political interpretation of history and international relations.

With the coming of the new year, and knowing full well the importance of geopolitics as well as the increasing complexity of the international political environment, I think it would be beneficial to examine the intricacies of such forgotten schools as well as of their prevalent American counterpart.

The purpose of this is twofold. Firstly, the polarization of the global political system and the rise of powers such as China, India or the possible entrenchment of American global power leaves a gap in terms of grand strategy for many players reliant on the status quo. Europe struggles to find strategic significance. Post-war Russia will too. The third world nations, BRICS and other power blocs in Africa and South-east Asia only confirm the problem. Traditional Anglo-American geopolitics might not serve the diplomats of tomorrow best in handling this uncertain and multipolar future.

Secondly, I believe that there is great value in understanding the role that these other schools of geopolitics played in the shaping of diplomatic and military behavior for both Germany and Japan respectively, during the two World Wars. What inspired the leadership of Imperial and Nazi Germany, as well as of Imperial Japan during the first half of the 20th century was owed to thinking which today is not only poorly understood but also seldomly discussed. Sheding light on these approaches to geopolitics tells us more about great power behavior and gives us ideas about evaluating future possibilities and tendencies in international relations.

I will be drawing from three types of sources:

• never-before translated German publication: Zeitschrift für Geopolitik

• writings and essays of influential geopolitical thinkers

• Strategic documents and essays of prominent Americans and Europeans

Through these I will analyze and provide pieces of insight on various geopolitical schools, forgotten or prominent. The point is to provide a better understanding of how geopolitics affects foreign policy; both historical and contemporary. These will come in no particular order but will be independently produced so as to avoid confusion.

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