The Background Of Geopolitics

Mohammed Jhilila

Mohammed Jhilila Prof. Mohamed Dellal International Relations May 11th, 2009 The Background of Geopolitics: Jean Gottmann

Synopsis: The author in this article seeks to provide a general overview of how geography has contributed to the emergence of geopolitics as an independent science. For him, geostrategies, since the Greco-roman empire has existed and evolved to get fully crystallized within and in the aftermath of World War I. sovereignty and expansion over territories have permitted the surfacing of geopolitics as a system of planning and taking action for many a one nation. Misunderstood as equal to political geography, the author seeks to differentiate between the two fields with the finality of showing the bias of geopolitics and the respectable status quo of political geography. According to the ideas and arguments Gottmann puts forward, geopolitics cannot be understood

but

through

a

survey

of

how

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political

geography

mushroomed.

Defining political geography and geopolitics: Geopolitics for Gottman is the study of the influence of the geographical and climatic factors on the political demarches of each nation state. Such impacts of the surrounding environment and geography on the govern-mentality of man have existed as far back as man ever engaged himself in politics. Defined as such, geopolitics is different from political geography which for him is the science studying the relationship between political organization and their immediate environment. As an independent

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science, political geography in this respect can be scarcely studied without the immediacy of geography. Geopolitics, however, is nothing but a legitimate son of political geography. Geopolitics is considered a developed phase of political geography that first emerged in France with the ideas of Montesquieu and Turgot, before it got elaborated on by the German geographer Rudolf Kjellen and the British thinker Mackinder. In the United States, the Monroe Doctrine played similar role as that of Geseltat-politik of Pan Germanism. Albeit dating back to the Greco-roman empire, Gottmann starts his reading of geopolitics from Montesquieu’s ideas fathomed in L’Esprit Des Lois. For Gottmann, the book pioneered the debates on how geographic circumferences shaped laws and govern-mentality. The book, states Gottmann, indirectly and unconsciously probed the phenomenon. In it, Montesquieu aimed at providing a historical commentary on the expansion of Rome and its decline. Montesquieu believed that climate influenced differently people living in dissimilar spaces. After Montesquieu, Turgot extrapolated on the same issue but in his own idiosyncratic viewpoints. Turgot’s finality was to systematically analyze the interrelationship between human beings and their physical geography. For him, physical geography stands as the profile of history. It is so because each particular community positions herself either in terms of time or in terms of space. Henceforth, present geography is shaped by past politics. Advised to let go of the idea, Turgot concentrated on economic geography. Since then, political geography never resurfaced. It was dealt with either as a philosophy or as a practice but never as a science. The rigid sense of the fundamental principles of political geography, for Gottmann, originated in America and Europe. The latter believed that political geography took the form of nationalism as people felt an urgent “need to organize themselves within a well-defined territorial frame.”1 In America, the Monroe Doctrine was the first indicator of political geography inclination. The focus of the Monroe announcement went beyond the American territories to the Latin America. The announcement issued by John Quincy Adams and James 1

Jean Gottmann, “The Background of Geopolitics”. Military Affairs, Vol.6, No.4. p: 200.

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Monroe read that no European country including Britain shall entangle Latin America’s domestic affairs, and that the United States were ready to go to war to protect the Western Hemisphere from the incursions of the European powers. Since its issuance, the U.S sense of Manifest Destiny flourished. The Monroe doctrine opened as follows: The United States are responsible before the world for the destinies of the continent, as the United States must regard as an act of hostility committed against themselves any attempt at the oppression of any independent state of America, as also any intermeddling in American affairs by foreign governments2 Feeling the stern European papal decree that aimed at regaining control over Argentina, Venezuela and other Latin American countries; as well as the growth of Pan-Germanism, the United States started modeling a political geography oriented science. The German Prussia (pan-Germanism) was grapevining as an ideology seeking the unification of German, Dutch and Flemish speaking people into a united nation. The problematic this movement generated can be summarized in two main characteristics. First, the Germans were seeking expansion over European territories better than overseas ones. Secondly, that their ‘natural boundaries’ influenced the German geopolitics. It is in this period that political geography ever appeared as an imperialistic fuelling science. During and after the nineteenth century, it was considered as a philosophy of history. The German Prussia movement sought to organize and liberate the Germanic Race from the Napolionean stronghold. Flemish and Dutch were considered lects appertaining to the German linguistic family. Pan-Germanism first appeared as an organized movement in 1894 led by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Ernst Moritz under the name of Alldutscher Verband (pan- German League.) it was based on the Allgernmeiner Deutscher (general German League). The importance of geography was first recognized with the appearance of territory and 2

J. M. Moncada, “Imperialism and the Monroe Doctrine”. Trans. Oloysius C. Gahna (New York : Michigan University, 1911) p : 3. Boorowed from www.pdfcoke.com/doc/8530593/Imperialism-and-the-Monroe-Doctrine-The-jm-Moncada. Last retrieved on 12 May 2009.

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resources as crucial for the whole Europe. In 1897, the first book concerned itself with the interdependent relationship between the state and its territorial frame. Ratzel, for Gottmann, focused on the ideas of Raum and Lage which mean space and location respectively. For Ratzel as the author states, those who lack the sense of space Raum do not have tendency towards expansionism. Later on, Ratzel published two books dealing with the crucial role naval powers have then played in the strengthening of the sense of statism. For Mackinder a British geographer, this sense is incarnated within all groups of nations which, for him: Becomes accurate and permanent when founded on a territorial basis, the Saxons brought with them across the narrow Seas an organization according to families, hundreds, and tribes, dependent, that is on blood relations3 London inhabited by Atrebates of Silchester did not surface as an important space, but its occupation by the Trinobantes and the Catuvelauni shaped its nucleus of a small empire. The physical space was then subdivided into three geostrategic districts: the Iceni, the Cantii and the Belgae. In The Position of Britain, Mackinder shows how England was living out of Europe when the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries were winning over more territories. After the Columbian discoveries, Britain showed up on the globe through her navy power and her focus on the ‘Mediterranean Ocean’. In The British Seas, Mackinder speaks about how island living people tend to liberty more than any other ones. For him, as we can read: But as liberty is the natural privilege of an island people, so wealth of initiative is characteristic of a divided people. Provinces which are insular or peninsular breed on an obstinate provincialism unknown in the merely historical or administrative divisions of a great plain; and this rooted provincialism, rather than finished

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Colin S. Gray, Geoffrey R. Sloan Geopolitics, geography, and strategy http://books.google.co.ma/books?id=iEraO0XJ55sC&dq=geopolitics+and+geost rategy&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots. Last retrieved on 12 May, 2009.

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cosmopolitanism, is a source of the varied initiative without which liberty would lose its significance4 That geography played a crucial role in the field of political geography is an undeniable fact. But Paul Vidal de la Blanche furthered his ideas rather differently from the German and the British geographers. De la Blanche believed that there are ‘des conditions géographiques des faits sociaux’ for him, the existence rigidly localized of a product of primary necessity might engender social and political consequences.5 For de la Blanche people invent and appropriate tools and handcraft materials according to the milieu they live in. the differences for him lie in the position the societies believe they have. He states: La cause qui, d’après nous, introduit le plus de différences entre les sociétés, est la position. Suivant qu’une contrée est vouée à l’isolement, ou qu’elle est ouverte, au contraire, aux courants de vie générale6 Geography in this respect no longer considered as an independent field was implicated in politics in the rigid sense of the term when the rivalry between Germany, France and Britain was intensified. After World War I, the world was to be rebuilt and reconstructed while improved to achieve peaceful neighborhood. The League on Nations was alarmed by Mackinder’s warning that wars might resurface. His ideas about naval strength sovereignty over territorial Waters inspired the emergence of submarines as an adequate engine that might misbalance old powers. For him, Maritime power could change, is changing and will continue to change the face of the world. 7 In 1925, Dr. George Kiss was the first to publish an article that hit directly to the heart of the matter. He proclaims that politics is nothing but about space, the shaping of space, centering and re-centering of it, branded as the public domain. 4

H. J. Mackinder, Britain and The British Seas ( New York: Questia online Library, 1902) P: 15. 5

Paul Vidal de la Blache, “Des conditions géographiques des faits sociaux” 1902. P : 3. http://classiques.uqac.ca/ 6 Ibid., P: 5. 7 Jean Gottmann, “The Background of Geopolitics”. Military Affairs, Vol.6, No.4. p: 203.

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Rudolf Kjellen was the first to coin the term geopolitics as indicative of an expansion mentality towards beyond extended etatism. For Kjellen, the state is like man, she eats grows, speaks and acts. She needs the materialistic resources found in territory and the spiritual. Recognized as a dangerous theorization that espoused Ratzel’s organic state theory to dynamic state theory, the American and European considered Kjellen’s ideas as tools of war against their interests.

Commentary: J. Gottmann’s last paragraph shows a meticulous defense on political geography and bitter criticism towards the German Geopolitik. Gottmann seeks in the article to dismantle the canonized and biased inclinations of such authors as Mackinder and Bowman whose ideas brought more complexities than they undid the world political problems. However, the text shows a biased aura as the author does not elaborate on the ideas contained in the Monroe declaration, while he gives more examples from the German Geopolitical School. The Monroe declaration is as imperialistic as the German expansionistic Dynamic state theory. While considering R. Kjellen’s ideas as pejoratively expansionistic, the Monroe doctrine is viewed as an innocent declaration. If the value judgment Gottman provides about Pan-Germanism (Prussia) is based on expansion, the Monroe announcement was as expansionist as was Pan-Germanism. J. M. Moncada, a Nicaragua former Interior minister, states that the declaration denied Latin American countries the advancement of their prosperity and self-governance which for him are two lawful ambitions of man and of nation.8 Giving the example of the incursions done by Zelaya, an American Commander in Chief, during the war against Honduras, he delineates another view about the Monroe Doctrine. During that war Zelaya provided Terencio Sierra with “materials of all kinds to enable him to march 8

J. M. Moncada, “Imperialism and the Monroe Doctrine”. Trans. Oloysius C. Gahna (New York : Michigan University, 1911) pp :7-8 . Boorowed from www.pdfcoke.com/doc/8530593/Imperialism-and-the-Monroe-Doctrine-The-jm-Moncada. Last retrieved on 12 May 2009.

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against Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.”9 The Roosevelt Administration then sought to bring amendments to its geostrategies in what was known as Knox notes. But even then, the U.S troops were conquering Honduras through hundreds of military troops led by William Walker. Does the American Monroe declaration differ from the Hitlerian and Kjellean expansionistic theorization? Of course it is not.

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Ibid., P : 7.

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