Geopolitics

Geopolitics from Greek γῆ gê "earth, land" and πολιτική politikḗ "politics" is the study of a effects of Earth's geography human together with physical on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually covered to countries and relations between them, it may also focus on two other kinds of states: de facto independent states with limited international recognition and relations between sub-national geopolitical entities, such(a) as a federated states that gain up a federation, confederation or a quasi-federal system.

At the level of international relations, geopolitics is a method of studying foreign policy to understand, explain, and predict international political behavior through geographical variables. These include area studies, climate, topography, demography, natural resources, and applied science of the region being evaluated.

Geopolitics focuses on political power linked to geographic space. In particular, territorial waters and land territory in correlation with diplomatic history. Topics of geopolitics put relations between the interests of international political actors focused within an area, a space, or a geographical element, relations which throw a geopolitical system. Critical geopolitics deconstructs classical geopolitical theories, by showing their political/ideological functions for great powers. There are some working that discuss the geopolitics of renewable energy.

According to Christopher Gogwilt and other researchers, the term is currently being used to describe a broad spectrum of concepts, in a general sense used as "a synonym for international political relations", but more specifically "to imply the global array of such(a) relations"; this usage builds on an "early-twentieth-century term for a pseudoscience of political geography" and other pseudoscientific theories of historical and geographic determinism.

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The Austro-Hungarian historian Emil Reich 1854–1910 is considered to be the number one having coined the term in English as early as 1902 and later published in England in 1904 in his book Foundations of contemporary Europe.

Sir Halford Mackinder's Heartland Theory initially received little attention external the world of geography, but some thinkers would claim that it subsequently influenced the foreign policies of world powers. Those scholars who look to MacKinder through critical lenses accept him as an organic strategist who tried to determining a foreign policy vision for Britain with his Eurocentric analysis of historical geography. His formulation of the Heartland impression was generation out in his article entitled "The Geographical Pivot of History", published in England in 1904. Mackinder's doctrine of geopolitics involved view diametrically opposed to the notion of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of navies he coined the term sea power in world conflict. He saw navy as a basis of Colombian era empire roughly from 1492 to the 19th century, and predicted the 20th century to be domain of land power. The Heartland theory hypothesized a huge empire being brought into existence in the Heartland—which wouldn't need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to remain coherent. The basic notions of Mackinder's doctrine involve considering the geography of the Earth as being divided into two sections: the World Island or Core, comprising Eurasia and Africa; and the Peripheral "islands", including the Americas, Australia, Japan, the British Isles, and Oceania. non only was the Periphery noticeably smaller than the World Island, it necessarily required much sea transport to function at the technological level of the World Island—which contained sufficient natural resources for a developed economy.

Mackinder posited that the industrial centers of the Periphery were necessarily located in widely separated locations. The World Island could send its navy to destroy regarded and returned separately. one of them in turn, and could locate its own industries in a region further inland than the Periphery so they would have a longer struggle reaching them, and would face a well-stocked industrial bastion. Mackinder called this region the Heartland. It essentially comprised Central and Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Western Russia, and Mitteleuropa. The Heartland contained the grain reserves of Ukraine, and numerous other natural resources. Mackinder's notion of geopolitics was summed up when he said:

Who rules Central and Eastern Europe commands the Heartland. Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island. Who rules the World-Island commands the World.

Nicholas J. Spykman was both a follower and critic of geostrategists Alfred Mahan, and Halford Mackinder. His work was based on assumptions similar to Mackinder's, including the unity of world politics and the world sea. He extends this to include the unity of the air. Spykman adopts Mackinder's divisions of the world, renaming some:

Under Spykman's theory, a Rimland separates the Heartland from ports that are usable throughout the year that is, not frozen up during winter. Spykman suggested this call that attempts by Heartland nations especially Russia to conquer ports in the Rimland must be prevented. Spykman modified Mackinder's formula on the relationship between the Heartland and the Rimland or the inner crescent, claiming that "Who rule the rimland rules Eurasia. Who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world." This theory can be traced in the origins of containment, a U.S. policy on preventing the spread of Soviet influence after World War II see also Truman Doctrine.

Another famous follower of Mackinder was Karl Haushofer who called Mackinder's Geographical Pivot of History a "genius' scientific tractate." He commented on it: "Never have I seen anything greater than those few pages of geopolitical masterwork." Mackinder located his Pivot, in the words of Haushofer, on "one of the number one solid, geopolitically and geographically irreproachable maps, presentation to one of the earliest scientific forums of the planet – the Royal Geographic Society in London" Haushofer adopted both Mackinder's Heartland thesis and his view of the Russian-German alliance – powers that Mackinder saw as the major contenders for control of Eurasia in the twentieth century. following Mackinder he suggested an alliance with the Soviet Union and, advancing a step beyond Mackinder, added Japan to his profile of the Eurasian Bloc.

In 2004, at the centenary of The Geographical Pivot of History, famous Historian Paul Kennedy wrote: "Right now with hundreds of thousands of US troops in the Eurasian rimlands and with management constantly explaining why it has to stay the course, it looks as whether Washington is taking seriously Mackinder's injunction to ensure control of the geographical pivot of history."