SoLiXG:Geopolitics
Geopolitics
The term ‚Geopolitics‘ has its roots in the imperialist phase of Intereuropean state rivalry at the beginning of the 20th century. It was first coined by Karl E. Haushofer (1869-1946), an academic, geographer, general and mentor of both Rudolf Hess and Adolf Hitler. The whole theory, as Dan Diner has argued, can be understood as one of the “ideological forms of continental German imperialism” [1] This understanding of geopolitics was characterized by the affirmation of pre-industrial, ‘organic’ agriculture, the rejection of international law, Anglophobia, Antisemitism as well as by neo-Malthusian ideas concerning population growth [2]. It was explicitly formulated to counter Marxist theories of imperialism, which connected territorial conflicts to the expansionary drive of the capitalist mode of production. Geopolitics on the other hand saw territorial expansionism as a result of natural laws. According to one of the pioneering thinkers of geopolitics, Rudolf Kjellén, states have to act according to a categorical imperative to expand territorially through colonialism, diplomacy or conquest to acquire their required ‘Lebensraum’. During the Cold War geopolitical thinking in the German tradition was incorporated into Neo-realist theories of International Relations. The notion of ‘Geopolitics’ was explicitly revived and rehabilitated in the 1970es when Yves Lacoste proclaimed the nouvelle géopolitique and defined it as an academic field concerned with “the study of power rivalries over territory”. While the usage of the term ‘geopolitics’ due to its origin in German imperialism and its connection to Nazism remains problematic, there have been more recent attempts to develop a critical understanding of geopolitics. In those different strands of critical International Relations theories such as world-systems-theory, Neo-Gramscianism and Neo-Marxism the naturalization of territorial expansion which defines classical geopolitical thinking as well as some of its realist adoptions was explicitly questioned. [3]Different modes of geopolitical relations and dynamics have been related to different modes of center-periphery relations, international divisions of labor, hegemonic blocks and modes of production. Thereby the geopolitical was thoroughly historicized and was turned into a concept for the analysis of different constellations of territorially delimited powers on a global scale.
- ↑ Diner, Dan. 1984.'Grundbuch des Planeten'. Zur Geopolitik Karl Haushofers, in Vierteljahresheft für Zeitgeschichte, 32/1, p. 2, our translation.
- ↑ Teschke, Benno. 2001. „Geopolitik“. In Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, Hamburg: Argument, p. 322–34.
- ↑ See for instance Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World System, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press.; Cox, Robert W. 1987. Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History. New York: Columbia University Press.; Rosenberg, Justin. 1994. The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations. Verso. Teschke, Benno. 2020. The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations. Verso Books.