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Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society

Article in Journal of Strategic Studies · June 1999

DOI: 10.1080/01402399908437756

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 Geopolitics, Geography
and Strategy
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L’Iilit‹ti5 Now'ri? Luml Pt›ii ct iii Tliet›i 5 uu‹1 Pt

‹it’ti‹ r edited by Brian Holden Reid EJitors

edited by Geoftre y Till COLIN S. GRAY

(Centre for Security Studies, Universiq! of Hull)
Airf›o\vei. Tlie‹›iq’ ‹lull El ‹i‹ lit e
cJitcd by Juhn Gu‹›ch

The N ilii›ii‹il .¥rr'iii irl' u)! Smtill 3’r‹iics iii ‹i Gfi‹inyiii g il‹›i lil
GEOFFREY SLOAN
edited by Elraitn In bar and Gabriel Shelter tBritannia Ro5!cil Ncn›nl Colle ge)

The riiiiisJ rinntioii oj Sec’ui‘iw iii the As i‹u'P‹icitic Re$inn

edited by Desmond Ball

foci, i‹›ii‹il Sec'tii itv iii th u I/i‹ft//e Eiist: P‹is’t, Present tuul Future
ediied by Zeev NI auz

Isi’iie li Sti‘nte g› ‹fte+‘ Desei‘t Nr‹ai iii — Ler.‹one' oJ the Sec’‹›ii‹l MriilJ° Wait‘
by Aharon Levran

FRANK CA SS
LONDON • PORTLAND, OR
 OR.3Nk t .A SS PUB LIS HEHS
plc ISBS,, bt)4 N.E. 1—Ia›xa1‹i S trcet
Portland, Care bon, 97 2 13-3G44
Contents
C’opyright 1999 Frank C¿tss Piibl ishe r$

British Library Cutalog ti ing in Public atioli Data

Geopolitics, geography and strategy

1. Geopolitics 2. World politics — 1945— 1. Why Geopolitics? Geoffrey Sloan and Colin S. Gray 1
1. Cray, Colin S. (Colin Spencer), 1943— II """•
(Getattrc y R.), 195J—
320. 1 2
ISBN 0-7 l4ñ-4990-2 G E O P OL IT IC A L T H E O RY AN D S T R AT E GY: T HE W O RD S
Ic1c't1i AND TH E H I S TO RY O F I D E A S
ISB N O-7 I 4h-b053-2 I
paper i

Sir Halford Mackinder: The Heartland

Theory Then and Now Geoffrey Sloan 15

3. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Geopolitician Jon Sumida 39

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN (1-7 146 4990-2. — ISBN IN-7 146- Air Power, Space Power, and
5053-2 Geography Benjamin S. Lambeth 63
I . Cccpcliti s. I. Gray, Cclin S. II. Sluan, G
(Geoffrey R.)
JC319.G4b7 1999
99—3 d 173
5. Geography in the Space Age:
320.1 2—dc2 I
An Astropolitical Analysis Everett C. Dolman S3

6. Understanding Critical Geopolitics:

This group of stUdiex first appeared in a double Special Issue on Geopolitics and Risk Security Gearéid O Tuathail 107
’Geopolitics, Geography' and Strategy’
or T!ie Joiiriiiil o)' Strnie gir Snulies (ISSN U14t4 2390) 22/2-3 tJ unc/September I ’
published by Frank Cass. 7. Geopolitics: International Boundaries as
Ewan W. Anderson 125
Fighting Places

8. Information Power: Strategy, Geopolitics

David J. Lonsdale 137
and the Fifth Dimension
P! inted in Great Britain by Antony Row'e Ltd., Chippenham, Wiltshire
11. G E OG RA P H Y .A N D S T R .AT E €a h’: GE OPO L I T IC S I N A CT I O N

9. Inescapable Geography Colin S. Gray 161

I II. Weather, Geography anal N‹tv ul Power in

the Age of Sail N. A. NI. Rodger 17S

11. Some Thoughts on War and Geography Williamson NJurray 2fi 1

12. Geopolitik: Haushoter, Hitler and

LebensratHn Holger H. Herwig ?° lS

1.3. ’Russia Will Not Be Trit4ed With’ :

Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies John Erickson 242

Abstracts

About the Contributors

Index 277
 2-I. These bott]enC cks u ere easy to spot •r a global

y hint› Ferriiri (N Y: Cr
N4cCann 1942 i pp.88—9(J.
Understanding Critical Geopolitics:
30. The L-fi COC l ety has jince
Geopolitics and Risk Society
lOfm0£ fnC mbers sre now
31. Damon (note 10) p.-[Q.
3-. Spacecraft mo› e from their original orbit. and in ihe
I6 how * Shurrle places payloads inro geostarionary process change their inclinations t this
orbit, releasing rhem wirh an reached
upper stage or bus), but the transfer costs additional fuel, ttlCl thdt hud to be placed on the G E A RO ID O TU AT H AIL
launching rocket, ultimately limiting payload weight or spacecraft lifespan.
The fridiUll) constellation orig inully was to
33 element on the Periodic Table. When the have 77 satellites, and v.'as named atter the 77rli
constellation w as scaled back tt3 66 satellites at a
slightly higher altitude, a n une change to Dysprositim (Periodic Table element number 66)
as not made, for commercial reasons. As we complete a century of geopolitics (the word was coined in 1899) it is
34. The TTlOs£ Sbecta¿ular grow th in space both appropriate and necessary to reflect upon its history, meanings and use
dcvelopiretll IU data has arguably been the direct result
of Cold \Var competition, see
in a critically-minded manner. The critique of geopolitics is as old as
the Fi!jti €S i’ti to the Eigmt res
(W tmâo"DC N#on")Da soUPlO8J),uJ ut geopolitics itself but as humanity grapples with the prevailing chaos,
>* B encke, 1"he Pollitt's t j
proliferating risks and pervasive disorder of a turn of a century condition, it
Westview 1997). Cooper alien (Boulder, CO: is vital that we develop a critical perspective on the seductive simple-
mindedness of geopolitics and its dangerous counter-modern tendencies.
Geopolitics can be described as problem-solving theory for the
conceptualization and practice of statecraft. A convenient label for a variety
of traditions and cultures of theory and practice, geopolitics sees itself as an
instrumental form of knowledge and rationality. It takes the existing power
structures for granted and works within these to provide conceptualization
and advice to loreign policy decision-makers. Its dominant modes of
narration are declarative (‘this is how the world is’) and then imperative
(‘this is what we must do’). ‘Is’ and ‘we’ mark its commitment to, on the
one hand, a transparent and objectified world and, on the other hand, to a
particular geographically bounded community and its cultural/political
version of the truth of that world. Its enduring ‘plot’ is the global balance of
power and the future of strategic advantage in an anarchic world.
Geopolitics is of the same ilk as political realism, distinguishing itself by
its proclivity to tind ‘geography’ as a singularly important element in
foreign policy conceptualization and practice.
Critical geopolitics, by contrast, is a problematizing theoretical
enterprise that places the existing structures of power and knowledge in
question. Also a convenient label for a disparate set of literatures and
tendencies that congealed in the 1980s into a developed critique of
’tirlhtadox Geopolitics’ and the dangerous nostrums associated with it, ctitic’ul
getapolitics seek to recover the complex ities of global political life and expoxe the powder
 relationships ihat characterize k nowledge about geopolitics c‹ nc ealed by
orthtidox geopolitics.' Etche w ing explicit interest in providing ’ad vice t‹i
the prince , ritical geopolitics critiques the superficial and selt-interested
w‹iys in u hich orthodt›x geopolitics ‘reads the Worl d pol iti cal H4flp’ bl'
p1 Ojecti nd its own cultural and political assumptions upon it while
concealing these very assumptions.
G**P '°*' ° i i°° S**p* ‹ ‹°ian^ argue, operates with a view from
nr›where’, a seeing thai refuses to See itself and the power relationships that
maLe it possible. As an uni‘el1exively eLirocentric and narrowly rational
cultural practice of ‘experts’ in powerful Western institutions (trom
universities to rnilitai y bureaucracies to slrategic think-tanks’ ), geopolitics
is not about power politics. it is power politics!
Critical geopolitics sin \ es to expose this power politics to scrutiny and
public debate in the name of deepening democratic politics. For critical
geopolitics, the notion o1 is’ is al wuy› an essentially contested perspectival
notion. Knowledge is always sitvi‹ited knowledge, articulating the
perspective ot certain cultures and subjects while marginalizing that of
others. Its ’we’ is a transnational community of citizens skeptical ot the
power concentrated in state and military bureaucracies, and committed to an
open democratic debate about the me.aning and politics ot ‘security’.
During the Cold War, the contrast belween the orthodox geopolitics of
both East and West and critical Geopolitics was stark and clear. Orthc dox
Cold War geopolilics peddled dangerous simplifications about world
politics while justifying the potentially catastrophic militarization of the
European continent and other regions. The practical critical geopolitics of
the European peace and environmental movements opposed the Manichean
reasoning of both East and West, and the militarization of the planet it made
possible.'
Since the end of the Cold War, the irredeemabl e complexity that critical
geopolitics always asserted but orthodox geopolitics tried to repress has
become even more undeniable. The contemporary geopolitical condition
exceeds the ’either-or’ reasoning of orthodox geopolitics, with its proclivity
tor us/them, inside/outside, domestic/foreign, near/tar binaries and its
reliance on mythic binaries li om the geopolitical tradition like the
heartland/rimland, land power/sea power and East/West. The old conceptual
maps of geopolitics do not work in a world of speeding flows, instantaneous
information, and proliterating techno-scientific risks.
Nevertheless , the urge to arrest this teeming complexity of our age by
Geoj›olitics, Geograph y ntiJ Sti‘a te g y
thought’ or ‘the geopolitical tradition’. It is a problematic of intellectuals,
Un‹lerst inkling Ct itical Geopolitic’.s 109
returning world politics to certain ‘fundamental axes’ or timeless truths’
remains, merely lhe latest version ot a long-standing countermodern
impulse to (re)invent certainty in a world where the vertigious ‘creative
destruction’ of transnational capitalist modernity dominates.
Ironically, the vertigo of our contemporary condition has rendercd
critical geopolitics more relevant to policy making than ever betore while
shifting political winds have brought some former peace mo vement figures
to political power (Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic and Josc hka Fischer
in Germany, for example). Critical Geopolitics has long taken the dynamics
of globalization, inforinationalization and ‘risk society’ seriously,
recognizing that a new modernity of ‘and’ (ambivalence, multiplicity,
simultaneity, globality, uncertainty, lormlessness and borderlessness) is
explodin g in our inherited modernity of ‘either-or’ (calculability,
singularity, linearity, nationality, certainty, dimensionality and (b]orders).’
Like orthodox geopolitics, critical geopolitics is both a politically minded
practice and a geopolitics, an explicitly political account of the
contemporary geopolitical condition that seeks to influence politics. Unlike
orthodox geopolitics, critical geopolitics has a much richer understanding of
the problematic of geopolitics’ and a better conceptual grasp, I wish to
argue, of the problems lacing states in conditions of advanced modernity.
This is a brief introduction to critical geopolitics. As an approach,
critical geopolitics begins by arguing that geopolitics’ is a much broader
and more complex problematic than is acknowledged in orthodox
understandings of the concept. To claim that geopolitics is the study of the
influence of ‘geography’ on the practice of foreign policy by states is not to
specify a narrow problematic for ‘geography’ has a multiplicity of different
meanings. All states are territorial and all foreign policy strategizing and
practice is conditioned by territoriality, shaped by geographical location,
and intormed by certain geographical understandings about the world.
Geography is not a fixed substratum as some claim but an historical and
social form of knowledge about the earth. To consult 'geography’
historically was not to view raw physical landscape or ‘nature’ but to read
a book. Though otten forgonen today, ‘geography’ is not ‘nature’. Rather,
geography is an inescapably social and political Neo-gr‹ip/ting, an ‘earth
writing’. It is a cultural and political writing of meanings about the world.‘
Similarly, geopolitics is a writing of the geographical meanings and politics
of states.
For heuristic research purposes, critical geopolitics divides geopolitics
into formal, practical, popular and structural geopolitics (see Table 1,
p.l 11). Formal geopolitics refers to what is usually considered ‘geopolitical
institutions and the torces shaping geopolitical thought in partic mar
Uiulerstat
places
i ling
 Criti’‹’al Geoyoliti‹:s T H E f Y P ES O F G E O PO L. I TI CS S T U D I E D B Y CR 1 TSC A L G E OP OL
I T I CS 111
TA B L E I
and contexts. Practical geopolitics is concerned with the geographical Type of €ieopoIitics Object of l'roblematic Research Example
polities involved in the every day practice of foreign policy. It addresses Investigation
how
common geographical understandings and perc-eptions enframe foreign l’ormal I*eopolitics Cieoptiliti cal tho rl g ht
policy conceptualization and decisir n making. A good recent example of and the gcoptil itic;H institutions and their
ti edition theories anal
this is how the geographical notion of ‘the Balkans’ helped condition how
US foreign policy-makers approac-hed, conceptualized and responded to the
Practical Geopolitics The everyday practice Practical getipol i tic ‘Balkanisin’ and its
Bosnian Civil War, w ith damaging results for the region and for European JI reastaning in influence o\'er US
security. Popular geopolitics reters to the geographical politics created and foreign policy lorei pn policy tow
conceptualiz- iircl› Bosnia
debated by the various media-shaping popular culture. It addresses the
social construction and perpetuation of certain collective national and Popular Geopolitics Popular culture, mass The role ot mass
media, and National identity
transnational understandings or places and peoples beyond one’s own b° Graphical and the c‹instructi‹in images of Bosniu into
understandings of’ images of other
borders, what Dijkink refers to as ‘national identity and geopolitical Geopolitics peoples afid places.
visions’ ’ Finally, structural geopolitics involves the study of the structural The contemporary How globalization,
geopolitical condition Global processes,
processes and tendencies that condition how all states practice foreign tendencies and
inforinationalization
and risk society
policy. Today, these processes include, as we have noted, globalization, condition/transform
iniormationalization and the proliferating risks unleashed by the successes geopolitical practices
of our techno-scientific civilization across the earth.
Combining practical and popular geopolitics, I will briefly discuss, first,
thought’ at the expense of geopolitical practice and practitioners (though the
how critical geopolitics has developed a revisionist historiography of
latter two were both). It also tends to be Eurocentric, neglecting Russian and
certain prominent geopolitical figures and the ’geopolitical tradition’,
second, its critical analysis ot practical and popular geopolitical reasoning Japanese geopolitical thought. Most importantly, it tends to elide
in foreign policy and, third, its analysis ot the contemporary geopolitical fundamental questions concerning the specification of ‘geopolitics’ and the
condition. relationship of geopoliticians as intellectuals of statecraft to the power
relationships characterizing their state, its national culture and its political
economy.
FO RM AL G E O PO L I TI C S:
While problematizing constructions of ‘the geopolitical tradition’,
D EC O NS TR UCT I NG THE G E OPOL ITICA L TRAD ITIO N critical geopolitics nevertheless engages the intellectuals, institutions and
texts of this tradition and its histories. In very broad terms, critical
The notion of ’the geopolitical tradition’ is a somewhat arbitrary construct geopolitics seeks to contextualize geopolitical figures and unravel the
that has varied historical origins, central figures and key debates depending textual strategies they use in their writings. lt argues that orthodox
upon the definition and practical understanding of ‘geopolitics’. To most geopolitical utilizations of classic geopolitical figures often neglect the
strategists, geopolitics is a twentieth century tradition of thinking about context within which they lived, ignore the incoherences in their works, and
statecraft that begins with Friedrich Ratzel, Alfred Mahan, Rudolf Kjellen ironically utilize their arguments to close off any openness to geographical
and Halford Mackinder, develops in the interwar period with Karl difference. Critical geopolitics, in other words, seeks to recover the
Haushofer’s German Geopolitik and Nicholas Spykman’s ‘rimland’ geography and geopolitics of ‘geopolitical thought’ while opposing any glib
theories, and finds expression today in the writings ot contemporary figures celebration of the so-called ‘timeless insights’ of certain geopolitical
like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.‘ This ‘great man’ masters.
specification of the tradition is idealist in its concentration on ‘geopolitical This approach is evident in a ‘revisionist’ literature on Sir Halford
Mackinder, a widely celebrated ‘founding father’ of geopolitics (despite the
cardboard figure who is decontextualized from his irtiperialist context, defined by only a
few texts and, in es en ct‘tider versions. by his sloganized version or strategy t who
fact that he never used the term in his w'ritings ‹ind personally dislikcd it).’ controls..’ eic ). The ‘real’ Mackinder is more complex and a1s‹i more mundane, an
The Nlackinder that appears in many c›rthocJox accounts of geopolitics is a tilfim‹itely minor tigtire in ihe history of strategic- thinking. Haltord Nlackinder’s lil‘e and
 w ork was conditioned by the structural geopolitics of British imperial decline.
Mackinder’s liber al imperialist’ ideology was at attempt to modernize the
organization and idea of the British Empire.‘ As tin imperialist thinker met
snbxequent member ot parliament, he stoc›d lor ‘national eiiicienc y’ but the
‘nation’ he imagined was a nati on of white male British gentlemen that were to
be efficient in expl‹aititig Britain’s vast imperial possess icons, maintaining
whitc Anglo- Saxon supremiicy, and subjugating the ’lesser races’ and red ions
of the Empire. He envisioned the discipline of Geography as part of his
overarching project of modernizing the British Empire. Geography was a
cJiscipline that should be used to teach British schoolchildren to think
imperially’.’ The techni •I• *s he sought to establish at its core, visualization,
mapping and drawing, sparse description, were meant as practical skills tor
the man of action’, the merchant, colonial administrator, and statesman."
The discipline of Geography as a whole, tor Mackinder, was geopolitics.
The b ulk of Mackinder’s writings were devoted to geographical
education. Mackinder’s celebrated ’gcopolitical texts’ and his other writings
are marked by the assumption that seeing is a naturalistic and objective
activity. In asserting the innocence of ‘visualization’, Mackinder was
merely naturalizing the political and ideological assumptions of his own
culture and ideology. Mackinder’s texts are marked by a blindspot that tries
to deny interpretative activity while nevertheless relying U pon it."
Furthermore, the geopolitical ‘insight’ of these texts is vastly overrated.
The 1904 ‘Geographical Pivot of History’ address is remarkable in its
neglect or the single most important power of the coming twentieth century,
the United S tates, and the single most significant time-space compressing
technology, the airplane. His geopolitical thesis ubout sea power, land
power and transportation teclinolog y is historically simplistic,
geographically determinism, anal techno logically unidimensional.'
Mackinder’s 1919 text Demo‹’i‘atie’ I‹le‹ils mol Realit y is significant less
too ‘geopolitical insight’ than as an illustration o1 the bizarre nature of
Mackinder’s organic conserv’atism ‹ind countermodern fantasies.
Mackinder’s strategic ideas had understandably little influence over
British foreign policy at the time anal might well have sunk into obscurity il
socialization
of individuals into CCft’dii1 national’ identities and geogr
events. Practical gem 9^ iti0al reasoning is
ordinary and informiil everyday
discourse. If is taught ii1 ed u cu tiotiul S t’dbl1shments, part ot the
1 13
it were not for the historical accident of their ‘re-discovery’ during World
War H amid sensationaJist and ill-informed media speculation about Karl
Haushoter and German Geopolitik.
To understand the appeal of formal geopolitics to certain intellectuals,
institutions and would be strategists, one has to apprCciate the mythic
qualities of geopolitics. Geopolitics is Inythic because it promises uncanny
clarity and insight in a complex world. It actively closes down an openness
to the geographical diversity of the world and represses questioning and
difference. The plurality of the world is reduced to certain ‘transcendent
truths’ about strategy. Geopolitics is a narrow instrumental form of reason
that is also a form of faith, a belief that there is a secret substratum and/or a
permanent set of conflicts and interests that accounts tor the course of world
politics. It is letishistically concerned with ‘insight’ , and ‘prophecy’.
Formal geopolitics appeals to those who yearn for the apparent certitude
of ‘timeless truths’. Historically, it is produced by and appeals to right wing
countermoderns because it imposes a constructed certitude upon the unruly
complexity of world politics, uncovering transcendent struggles between
seemingly permanent opposites (‘land power’ versus ‘sea power’, ‘oceanic’
versus ‘continental’, ‘East’ versus ‘West’) and folding geographical
difference into depluralized geopolitical categories like heartland’,
‘rimland’, ‘shatterbelt’, and the like. Foreign policy complexity becomes
simple(minded) strategic gaming."
Such formal geopolitical reasoning is anti-geographical in its
conceptualization and representatio n of the world. It is also a flawed
foundation upon which to construct a foreign policy that needs to be
sensitive to the particularity and diversity of the world’s states, and to global
processes and challenges that transcend state-centric reasoning.
P RA CT IC A L AND POP U L A R G E O PO L ITIC S: G E O P O
L IT ICA L R E A S O N I NG I N THE PRA C TI C E O F
STAT E C R AFT
Formal geopolitical reasoning is worth distinguishing from the practical
geopolitical reasoning foreign policy decision-makers utilize in the
everyday conduct of statecraft. In contrast to the formalized theories and
grand strategic visions of geopolitical intellectuals, foreign policy decision-
makers use practical and pragmatic geopolitical reasoning whenever they
try to make spatial sense of the world, implicitly utilizing inherited forms of
geographical knowledge to enframe particular questions and tacitly
deploying cultural geographic discourses to explain certain dramas and
hical/historianI
 Uiitlerst‹iiiding Ct-itical Geopolitics Sea." The belief was erroneous but the term entered the vocabul‹iry of
travelers and scholars nevertheless though few had a precise idea of its exact
meaning.
con5ciotisnes5es."
political The transition of ‘the Balkan peninsula’ to ‘the Balkans and the
culture, i: has the
remarkable emergence o1 the geographical category as a s’erb (to
ethnt centric, 8 tCFeotypical formulate t Fm Of kn owledge about ‘balkanize’ ) was a consequence of the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire
and
WOrld that produces bad toi-ei its in the region and the violence of the Balkan wars and World War I. For most
gn Common sense geopolitics °' '°y once tualiz ation s and practices. ot the nineteenth century Todorova argues that ‘there was no common
p
geopc›litics. CHOC S II(I I Fl e Ce s Sar il y ijj;jpe such, „
e Western stereotype of the Balkans’, not because there were no common
The power 0Fl d significance of pi Ctical geopolitical
stereotypes but because ‘there was no common West’.” The Balkan Wurs
reasoning can be
illustrated by considering the power of and World War I, however, crystallized a dominant and thoroughly negative
Balkanisin’
American foreign policy ambit alence towards the in conditioning image of the region. The Balkans became an abstract symbol of the violence
and the Bosnian War. The section of the breakup of Yugoslavia and instability that supposedly is a consequence of the mixture of
Balkans begins with the toflowing ABC News Website devoted to the heterogeneous nationalities in one region. Various discourses stressed racial
observation: and/or civilizational explanations for the ferocity and brutality of the
There are countless explanations for the violence. Discourses employing the concepts of ‘southern Slavs’, ‘racial
volatility ot the ‘Balkan
Powderkeg’. Historians variously blame hybridity’ and ‘primitivism’ abounded as did geographically determinist
disputes over resources,
ancient hatreds or meddling by Great Powers intent on keeping the notions about the ‘blood feuds of mountainous peoples. ‘The complex
region unstable. But geography is also ethnic mixture was held responsible for the instability and disorder of the
the Danube river, the Balkans region, a powerful clue: Lying south o1 peninsula, which was diagnosed as afflicted by ‘the handicap of
UTC Afghanistan, is composed
ot scarce fertile valleys, separated by
high mountains that fragment heterogeneity.”'
the area’s ethnic groups, even though
many have similar l anguages In dominant Balkanist discourses, the Balkans were a location on the
anal or i gins.' edge of Europe, territorially within Europe but not part of modern European
This dCscription is part of the discourse or ‘Balkanism’ that
space and time. ’the region was a homeland of essential and primitive
the Bosnian war in the helped define nationalist passion, a liminal zone where European civilization ended and
D*tiitF1 O]3tll0r imagination. In this discourse, an ‘other’ non-European zone began. None of these discourses adequately
‘hlstory’ and ’geograph
y’ Se rve as ilei s x ma‹’liiim explanations for the described the political complexities of southeastern Europe and the key role
war. The Bosnian Wdr happened bec:mse it was in ’the Bal of the geopolitical strategies of the great powers in fermenting violence in
Ot ’ancient hatreds’. Geograph y helped make kans . It was a
conflict inevitable. In the region for their own ends. The Balkans served as a projection zone for
her srudy of Balkanist discourse, Nlaria Todorova
approaches ’the Balkans’ European powers, a region which enabled them to see themselves as
in a manner inspired by Edward Said’s approach to the Orient’, that is as
modern and advanced while they displaced their own nationalism and
an historic al geographical construct that
reveals as much about the violence upon the region. As an ‘other’ to Europe, ‘the Balkans’ were
geopolitical consciousness of ‘the West’ as it does
About the region it ironically quintessentially European.
purpOrts to describe." Once a synonym for the mountain Haemus, the Alter World War 11, the Balkan region was generally perceived as part
signifier ‘Balkan’
o1 Venice and thebecame a designator of the vast
Black Sea in the constructio nregion between the Bay of an ‘Eastern Europe’ defined by Communist Party domination and
‘Balkan peninsula’, first
used by the German geographer August Zeune control. Elements within the Yugoslav state sought to overcome the
in 1808 and subsequently by
Robert Welsh, a British traveler in 1527. The historical legacy of ‘the Balkans’ by constructing a supra-ethnic civil
reason for the inflation of the
signifier seems to have been the persistence ot an nationalist identity ‘Yugoslavian’. Flawed as it was by reliance on Tito’s
ancient Greek belief that
Haemiis was a majestic mountain chain linking personality, Communist myth, and a rotational system of governance that
the Adriatic to the Black
ironically perpetuated ethnic identities, the Yugoslavian federal state was an
histtaric cffr rt ter reject the myth t›f ‘the Balkans’. Geography would not be region
Balkan war or the ‘thousand year old hatreds’ that characterized the
historical destiny. An alternative universe ot belonging and identity could
served to enframe thC Bosnian War within Balkanist discourse. The

be constructed. When the structures of Communist piiiver came crumbling the

genocide in Bosnia was balk‹tni7ed, that is made meaningful within
dow n in ’Eastern Europe’ and this previously rinditlerentiated hloc w as of a flawed stereotype ot the region and its history. This enabled
terms
George Bush, Secretary of
given the lrecdoni to geographically ditterentiate itself, the key questions in certain policy analysts, most notably President
›'iew the parties in the war
Yugoslav ia z ere w’liethe i the identit y Yugos lavian con ld sur› ive the State James Baker and General Colin Powell, to
otential ‘quagmire’ tor
collapsed legitimate y ot ConHnunis in or whether the federal state wotilrl as e•r lvalent and to designate the whole region as a pEuropean continent thiit
the United States rather thafl its il Vital region of the
succumb to ‘Billkanizatioli NATO credibility
required stabilization by NATO. ' US foreign policy andtlawed discourse of
The not ion ‹at ’southeast Europe’ w as al ways an alternative geographical sutfered for four years because of the persistence of the
identity for the Balkan region evcr since it was first proposed in the late that made
‘Balkanism’, a hegemonic order of ‘common sense’ geopolitics
nineteenth century. Originally proposed as a neutral, non-political and non-
idea logical geographic designation, the ter+n became associated with the the development o1 good sense’ geopolitics more difticu!t. help
geopolitical vision of the Nazis in the 1930s."’ Yet the term was never
Critical geopolitics is relevant to policy making in that it can
essentially Nazi for it emerged independently in other linguistic traditions at
geopolitical conceptions
deconstruct the persistence of such stereotypical
the time. Used interc hangeably with the classification ‘the Balkans’ ever and notions in popular and political culture. With its sensitivity to
since World War Il, the term southeastern Europe’ is nevertheless not
, strategic
geographical difference and its critique of ethnocentrism it forces
without political and symbolic significance. Unlike the Balkans’, the to
thinking acknowledge the power ot ethnocentric cultural constructs in
designation firmly and unambiguously locates the region within ‘Europe’
our perception of places and the dramas occurring within them. Critical
and thus within the same geographiC ttl Bj4 lTloral universe of ‘European
geopolitics is also cognizant ot how technolog res of time-space
civilization' Read as part of ‘the Balkans’, Bosnia is e‹isily designated as strategic value of
compressio n like global media networks transforms the
beyond the West’s universe ot responsibility, as being located in a non-
places in the global information age. Ostensibly niarginal geopolitical
il
locations like Bosnia can become sy mbolically strategic after a while
European zone ot marginal strategic significance. Read as part of projected from the region by
images of genocide and chaos are persistently
southeastern Europe’, it is imaginatively closer to ’the West’, part ot “our’
Western television networks and media outlets. As I have argued elsewhere,
I would add, is currently
domain o1 strategic responsibility. Sec uring its stability, consequently, was this is precisely what happened with Bosnia and,
a much more urgent and pressing priority because it is part ot ’Europe’, part happening with KosoVo."
of ‘us’ as opposed to ’them’.
From a critical geopolitics standpoint what is important is the socially
constructed nature of rhe categorics of ’the Balkans’ anal “Europe’ and the STR U CTU RA L GEO P O L IT IC S: U N DE R STAN D I
power relations involved in their deploy ment and uti1iz.ation as N G T H E C O NT E M P O RA RY G E O P O L ITICA
frameworks for understanding the Bosnian War. One can argue that the L C O N D ITI O N
ambivalent positionality of Bosnia between the discourses ot ‘southeast
profound changes in the
Europe’ and ‘the Balkans’ in the Western geo-political imagination helps Even before the end of the Cold War, certain
y that were transforming the spatiality and
accounts for the West’s failure to intervene decisively to end the war until international system were underwa
Globalizatio n is the name given to a
temporality of world politics. variety o1
the summer of 1995. Within many European states, particularly those which are binding the
tendencies
different cultural and economic together and dissolving the ability of any
geographically close to and familiar with the former Yugoslavia, the world’s largest economies closer
discourse of ‘southeast
Europe’ had greater resonance than it had within the United States where, single state to full control and manage its own economic destiny."
 with a political culture with little genu ine geographical knowledge of the
region, the imaginative geography ‹at ‘the Balkans’ tended to be more
dominant.
Discourses that persistently ret‘erred to the ‘ancient origins’ of the
11S
Interestingly, the rhetoric of Cold War geopolitics is re-appearing with a
new financial int4ection as ’enters ing market’ become dominoes’ tottering
on the brink of failure and in neecl of financial bailouts by overstretched and
underltinded regulatory institutions. The crises of globalization are initially
financial but these can quic fly become geopolitical ‹ind geo-strategic-.
Facilitating the otten dizzying pace at which these crises can develop is
a second structural process, infc›rmationalization. Like globalization, this
too is a buzz word for a multiple of related tendencies: the transformation
ot manufacturing and the service sector by inf orination tec hnologies, the
creation of virtual built en v ironnients, the de velopment of global
telecommunicational systems, and the cultural experience ot media
saturation and information overload. B bit it too has transformed the
spatiality and temporality of world politics. In a world where an infosphere
of codes, ilows and networks is the vital operational system for the
technosphere ot cities, states, economies and megamachinic bureaucracies,
notions of ‘here’ and ‘there’, us’ anal ‘them’, ‘domestic’ and foreign’,
‘close’ and ‘far’ are ntat what they used to be. Space appears to be displaced
by pace while ielemetricality appears more signiticant than territoriality.
Geopolitics is becoming postmodern."
A third structural transtorindtion alreiidy unleashed well before the end
of the Cold War was the qualitatively new world of risks created by the
successes of advanced techno-scientific civilization. Since the explosion of
the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, it has been evident that
humanity w‘ds capable of inventing technologies that could radically alter
the conditions of human life on the planet. The development of nuclear
power, the widespread use ot chemicals in all aspects of life after the war,
and the more recent breakthroughs in genetic engineering have created a
qualitative I y new universe ot risks too human kind. Environmental
poisoning, ozone depletion and global warming are part of modernity’s
increasingly evident ’side effects’ and boomerang processes.
lnformationalization has also created new dependencies and vulnerabilities,
as the Y2K problem, communications mishaps, and network system crashes
demonstrate.
These risks are diffuse and difficult to âe sect, risks that pervade
everyday life in the advanced modern world. Unlike the ‘natural’ risks of
the pas t, the risks of advanced techn o-scientific civilization are
manufactured and have potentially catastrophic consequences. Though
and the creative
Globalization is most pronounced in financial markets
destruction’ unleashed by unregulated transnation al finance has created
system.
considerable volatilit y and instability in the international
1 19
Uii‹lers trinr/i ris Ci itical Geoyollti£’S
symbolized riiost dramatically by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986,
are now not only possible but inevitable, predictable ‘unanticipated
consequences’, for even the most unlikely event will occur in the long run.
For sociologists Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, industrial modernity
reflexive
has been so successful that it has gr‹iduated to a new modernity, a
modernity of ‘risk society’." Industrial society is a victim ot its own
success; ‘high-powered industrial dynariaism is skidding into a new society
without a bang Of a revolution, bypassing political debates and decisions in
piirliaments and governments’ .” This new society is a society ot generalized
and globalized techno-scientific risks. I gnored or ioldCd into the
overarching East—West divide by the strategic community in the past, thc
tu1l dimensions of this new global risk condition are only now being
grasped by this community as it confronts problems of post—Cold War
nuclear proliferation, chemical weapons production, bioterrorism and
iniormation warfare. ’
Globalization, into rmationaliza tion and proliferating techno-scientific
risLs have transforrried the d imensionality and territoriality of geopolitics at
this marks ‘the
the end of the twentieth century. Some have even suggested
War conception
end of geopolitics’ btlt Stich arguments have a narrow Cold
or geopolitics." What can be said is that the problematic of ‘national
security’ has itself become globalized, inlormationalized and, I would
argue, is itself a threat to us i1 conceptualized in countermoder n rather than
reflexive ways. Adequately addressing the various dimensions, challenges
and dangers of our contempor ary geopolitical condition is not possible here,
so 1 can do no more that briefly note three critical geopolitical arguments
about this condition.
The first argument is that the problematic of ‘national security’ in the
contemporary era is now global. While regional and state-centere d threats
are still significant security concerns, the most pressing security challenges,
from terrorism to international organized crime and proliferating weapons
the
or mass destruction, are now ‘deterritorialized’ and global. Most within
Western security community now recognize this and have a strong
appreciation o1 the value of coordinated international diplomatic efforts
through diplomacy, international assistance, arms control, and non-
rarely considered, many of these consequences are beyond conventional
 proliferation initiatives to shape the international geopolitical
environment. However, two tendencies tend to undermine
rational calculations, beyond the local and the personal, beyond even human
lifetimes and the human species. In addition, catastrophic accidents,
such efforts, the first a unilateralist and neo-isolationist reflex in states
(like the US) which
disparages international cooperative initiatives, the second an unwillingness
to reflexively
on the part o1 Western states, alliances and economies
examine how they themselves may be contributing to global insecurity with
their own narrow technet-sc ientific- rat ionalit y, neol ibera1 nostrums,
intorniaiional networks, prod igate cnfl sumption, unc4 export o1 dC‹\dl y
weapons and toxins.
This relates to the second argument made by criticdl geopolitics: that the
institutions ‹Of Western rriodernity are experiencin g a victory crisis’. Beck
suggests that ‘more and more often we find ourselves in situations w hich the
prevailing institutions and concepts ct politics can neither grasp nor
adequately respond to’. ’ he described an ironic legitimation crisis for the
political institutions ot the West at the end of the Cold War, as one world ot
risks passes and the new has not yet been fully grasped.^ The institutions
experiencing a ‘victory crisis’ inC1U(JC the free market, the welfare state,
multiparty democracy, national s€ vercignty, and ‘national security’
bureaucracies. This ‘victory crisis’ is one of capability and rationality.
Industrial society institutions cannot handle, manage and respond to the
problems ot nsk society; our regulatory institutions cannot keep up with the
global plurality of risks proliferating as we enter the second millennium.
Furthermore their calculus ot risk is sus}iect. Potentially catastrophic hazards
hat c bccome normalized. Acceptable risks has e become accepted risks. ‘Thc
inherent pluralization of risks . . calls the rationality of risk calculation into
c}uestion’ "
This ‘v’ictory crisis’ is also one at lost historical foundations, as
particularly national security’ institutions designed to light one type of threat
now operate in il WOfJ WhCfC tint threat has disappeared. Cold War era
security institutions have a problematic existence in a world ot transnational
threats and global dangers. They promise security against a territorial threat
but are struggling to respond to ‘non-traditional’ threats that often cannot be
seen and have no agreed territorial source. Finally, the ‘victory crisis’ is one
of contradiction. The new universe of global risks faced by ‘national
security’ institutions are products o1 thc success of these very institutions.
Some ot the mOSt imlTlediate threats now faced by the West, for example
the threat of kaqi weapons of mass destruction and the terrorism of
ñindamentalists based in Afghanistan, are threats the West had a hand in
producing itself within its universities, its transnational chemical companies,
its biological research labs and its intelligence services (the bases bombed
by the US in August 1998 were originally established by the CIA to train
Afghans to fight the Soviet invasion of their country). Contemporary
geopolitics is characterized by many ‘boomerang effects’ with the
institutions that are supposedly producing security’ actually producing the
opposite.“
The policy implications ct this disjuncture between unreilexive Cold
War institutio ns and the conte nipor‹try post-Cold War era of global risk
North Korea and China. "terrorisrri heroines the problem of rogue states’
society is the neecJ for radical institutional reforms to create global systems
of regulation and governance. Feeble movement in this direction has begun
with the G7 attempt to overhaul the institutions regulating the global
financial system. More radical structural reforms are needed to, am ong
other things, re-cast NATO as a broad European security institution (with a
no first use’ nuclear policy), overhaul the United Nations Security Council,
strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons and the
Biological Weapons Conventions, and establish a permanent United
Nations rapid reaction force.
The di”tticult politics of getting these reforms enacted brings us to the
third argu ment made by critical geopolitics about the contemporary
geopolitical condition: the dangers of countermodernity. Countermodernity
is a persistent feature ot modernity, a thoroughly modern restraining twin of
the “creative destruction’ unleashed by modernization. The essence of
countermodernity is its attempt to manage the chaos and upheaval caused
by modernization. It does so by resorting to myth and violence, by inventing
mythic traditions and communal fundamentalisms while drawing borders
’an 6 organizing violence against those it designates as ‘outsiders’ to its
naturalized community and ‘chaotic’ elements in its aesthetic visions of
society. Finding expression in resurgcnt nationalism, religious
fundamentalism and assertive unilateralism in the contemporary era,
countermodernity is an aggressive creed o1 simplification, a political effort
to discipline the chaos and uncertainties of living in a global world with
‘timeless truths’ and ‘imagined essences’.
Historically, orthodox geopolitical discourse gave voice to such
countermodern tendencies and inclinations. Today, this danger persists,
particularly as institutions and intellectuals used to thinking in ‘either-or’
terms confront the uncertainties and unruliness of dnd’. As a largely
conservative community, some within the ‘national security’ establishment
persist in thinking about the problems o1 risk society using conceptual
understandings wedded to simple modernization and Cold War rhetoric and
rationality. They attempt to reduce the irredeemably global problems of risk
society to an ‘either-or’ logic and represent risks as enemies, draw
boundaries against this enemy, and then apply instrumental rationality to
‘solve’ the threat they pose.
One can find evidence o1 this countermodern tendency in certain
contemporary geopolitical crises where global threats are territorialized as
threats from ‘rogue states’.” The problem of weapons of mass destruction,
for example, becomes the problem of Saddam Hussein and what to do about
Iraq. The problem of ballistic missiles becomes the problem of Iran, Iraq,
like Sudan and Afghanistan. Indeecl, the CJint‹in adriiinistration’s August
1995 cruise niissilC itIf‹lC US il illfls t Sudan and Af ghams tan illustrate the
impulse t‹ discipline ‘and’ by ’either-or’ think in u. A formless transnational
terroris: attac k tin US e irbassies i n .Africa demanded a resolute response. A
weakened Pt evident and his inner circle decide, with de b‹itable intelligence
infoniiation, that a series of sites, former CI.4 bases in Afghanistan, a
pharmaceutical plant outs ic4e Khartoum, are terrtirist bases and facilities that
present ’an immanent threat to the ii‹itionul sectii ity of‘ the United S mites’.“
Eighty cruise missiles are then sent to demo nitrate ‘a resolutc response to
international terrorism’. The world of ‘an ci’ is resi inplitied by the ‘either-or’
of state violence. The Dcccniber 19°9S bombing of Ir‹iq is another example.
The absurdity of bombing to stop certain states developing weapons of mass
destruction illustrates thC COIitemporary geopolitical condition, a world
where either/or institutions are despei ately trying to grapple with the risks
Llnderstnn‹liii g Ci‘itic’al Geopolitics 123
initiative, control and environmental quality. lt is radical in that it critiques
the persistence of our ethnocentric assumptions, the narrowness of our
rationality (for it is not rational enough), the failings of our institutions, and
the false solutions of our countermodern myths. The challenge of our
contem r ••• ‘y geopolitical condition is to live with the ambivalence ot
global risk socicty and to strive for the construction r›l security at a global
level. Whether this is possible in a world of clashing modernities,
contradictory riitionalities, competing states and dislocating change remains
to be seen.

None of this is to suggest that so-called rogue states’ are not threats that
sometimes require resolute international response. Rather, it is to challenge
the ways in which the threat is represented as a territorial threat ‘out there’ 1. Critical geopolilics v uries from political economy analyses of w'or1d politics to largely
from “non-Western others’ rather than ‹is a persuasive threat from our very
own techno-scientific modernity. Behind the territorializing of global risks
in ‘rogue states’ is a broader geopolitical question that is central to
geopolitics today and likely to remain so into the twenty-first century: how
does the West respond to the iiie vitable diffusion of weapons of mass
destruction and ballistic missiles, techno-scientific capabilities pioneered by
superpower military-industrial cc mplexes, to developing states, to rogue
2.
states and even to failing states‘? Put dil’terent1y, how is the Enlightenment
West going to deal with the diffusion of its most deadly weapons, 3.
substances and delivery vehicles to the non-West‘? Whether the West
responds by acknowledging th‹it the problem is techno-scientific modernity
as a whole — acknowledging that ‘we ttoo are the enemy’, that ‘our’
laboratories, ’our’ corporations and ’our’ scientisis first developed most of 4.
5.
the weapons that now threaten us — or whether it responds by
territorializing logics that view the problem as ‘out there’ with ‘them’ is a
crucial question. No state or national security complex has a monopoly on 6.
rationality and good sense. Acknowledging this and developing a critique of
our own bureaucracies and techno-scientific rationality is part of the politics
ot critical geopolitics. This politics is conservative in that it opposes the 7.
‘creative destruction’ ot capitalist modernization and unfettered techno-
scientific ‘progress’ for its own sake in the name vt conserving human
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
NOT ES
textual anal yses of foreign policy reasoning, inspired by Foucaultiali discourse theory and
Derridean deconstruction. For the former see John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge, U‹isierinJ
Space. Hy gemon y, Te rritoi-y a ml late rtiotioti‹il Politic al E‹ onorii v (London: Routledge
1995) and John Agnew, Geopolitics f Londtin, Routledge 1996). For the latter see Gearoid O
Tuathail, Criti’c‹il Geoy‹›litic’s: The Politic cil ‹›j Wt’itiii g Global Political Sj›iic'e
(London: Routledge 199a). See also the special issues on ‘Critical Geopolitics’ in the
journals Emi if ‹›iiineiit rna/ Humming D: . oc’ietv nn‹l SJ›‹ire 12/5 (1994) and Politic'‹il
Geop r‹iyli» 15/6/7 (1996), Gearoid O Tuathail and Simon Dalby (eds.) Reth inking
Geopoliti‹’s (London: Routledge 1996) and ident and Paul Routledge (eds.), T!ie Geupofiri‹
i Gen‹hi (ibid. 1998).
See E.P Thompson, The Heavy Dtiii‹-ers (NY: Pantheon 1985) and Mary Kaldor, The
Imagiii‹ir) 1f‹ii . Lfticlers faJltling the Exist— West Cor pict (Cambridge: Blackwell 199(I).
This contrast between ‘either-or’ and ‘mid’ was fii st developed by Wassily Kandinsky in a
1927 ossuy. lt is developed further in the works of the German sociologist U hich Beck. See
his Risk SocietS. To ii ar 1s a New Mo‹lei nity (London: Sage 1992); E‹’olo gical Politic s
iii an Age oJ lisJ (Cambridge: Polity 1995); T/ic fieizi re/i/ion of Politic's (ibid. 1997) and
Denuic'r‹/cj 1fii/ir›«r tneoiies (Oxford: Blackwell 1998).
See Derek Gregory, Geog rclyhiciil linagiiuitioiis (Oxtord. Blackwell 1994).
Ger-tjan Dijkink, Nati‹›iiul Itleiitit y aii‹l Geopoliticn 1 Visions (London: Routledge 1996).
On popular geopolitics see Joanne Sharp, 'Hegemony, popular culture and geopolitics: the
fea‹le re Digust and the construction of danger’, P‹›liti‹’‹il Geogi ‹tp!is! 1? ( 1993) pp.491
—503.
F‹o a discussion ot these figures see John O’LO"8 hlin (ed.) The Dic'tioiinry ‹›J'
Geoyolitic's (Wcstport, CT: Greenwood 1994). For a consideration of traditions ot
geopolitics sec Klaus Dodds and David Atkinson (eds.) Geopolilie’al Ti’ii‹litious.’ Critical
Histories clii Ceiititry oj‘ C!cof›olitic'‹il Thought (London: Routledge 2000).
See, for example, Gerry Kearns, ‘The imperial subject: geography and travel in the work ot'
Mary Kingsley and Halford Mackinder’, Traiis«’tioiis, In.stitute u/ Bi itisli Geog rapliei’s
22 (1997) pp.450—72 and James Ryan, ‘ Visualizing imperial geography: Halford
Mackinder and the Colonial Otfice Visual Instruction Committee, 1902—11 ’, Ectrnune 1 (
1994) pp.157-76.
Gearoid O Tuathail, ‘Putting Mackinder in his place: Material transformations and myth’,
Political Geogi apliy 1.1 ( 1993) pp.100—18.
Haltord Mackinder, ‘On thinking imperially’, in M.E. Sadler (ed.), Le c'tiires on Eitipire
(London: privately published 1907).
Marked not only by racial and imperialist discourses, geopolitics is also uncritically
patriarchal in its assumptions, reasoning and heroic style. Getipolitics is a deeply
irasculinist practice that appeals to heroic public subjectivities.
This point is developed at length in Ch.3 ot Ui-itic«f Geopolitics. (note 1).
This argument is developed in Geopoliti‹’s Re‹itler (note 1) pp.15—1 8.
For a contemporary example see Zbigniew Brzezinksi, The Grand Cliessboar I (NY: Basie
 I? éidf?9£?/Elf t 3 N6t7 jf ti/i/i \ if/f I/ .Off rf Iey 1
Vi
ew

7
pu
bli Elooks 1 °J97 ), a book that manaf es tti a\ taid 5‹4rne of the into st presst rig prohle matic s of oti r ii
cat
ion me: gli›bJli ziilitin, inl ormm itinal izui1 i cii, c'rii i upiitin. and de terri tort u I i red item ate
sta
ts
14. Ftir an cxccite nt stud \' of geopolitical con,citiiis nei s see .Unssi Paas i, Ter u ;rr›ric i, 6r›ii,i‹/tit ie i
‹in‹/ Uon›’r ‹r›iiJiie.\'i.' The U/i‹iny‹n3 C/crigJ ‹ip/rim' oJ the N//iiii.Hi - Rii.›’;i‹i,i fi‹›,‹/e/- (C’hic hes ter,
John Wife y 1996).
15. . See ‘-fi Be ginneri Guide to the B alkan›’. .A B C“Ne\\ s. ut http://\\ \\ \ uf›cnei\ s.ct iii/sect ion s'
› orId/balkan con tent/ | ay ailable No\. 199b |.
16. klari a Tod‹art» a //iiri q iiiin3 r/ie £iti /t‹iJi›' I N \ : II UP 1 "0'97 1: fid\\ urd S ii id, éli i ciii i //siii (NY:
Vinta gc 1'97'91.
17. Ibid p 25
Geopolitics: International Boundaries
1 S. I bill. p. 1.1 ñ.
19. 1 bi d. p. I 2b. as Fighting Places
20. Ibid. pp.27—d.
21. For a discu5sicin of the ‘quaint ire’ and the competing ’1tolocii uit’ s atiali zation of the
Bosnian War see O ’luathai1, Criiit ‹i1 Cre‹›/›oli/ir i (note 1 j Ch.h.
22. Gearoid O Tuathail, ’A Strategic Sign: 4’he Geopolitical Sit niticance ot Bosnia in U.S. E WAN W. A N D ER S O N
Ftirei,n Pt›1ic y’, Eli i'iroiuweiii ‹will Pl‹iimiiiy D.' S‹›c'ir/y hurt S/auc e, 17 forthc ending.
23. The extent and significance ‹at globa1iz:ation is deeply contested. For alternative views see
Bt›bert Reich, The l10i1 oJ Aim/c'iii’ (N â": Knopf l9^7 I ) anlt Patil Hirst and Grahiiinc
Thtampson, G/iihu/i:tiiic›n iii (jues i/mn (Carnbri dge: Polity 1996). On the geographical
diinensltins of g lobalization see Kc v in Cox t ed ) S j›‹i‹ e s rJ Glohiili:‹i iron (NY: Gui1f‹ird The focus of geopolitics is upon the use of geography to illuminate politics
1997 i and .Andre w Herod, Gcar6id O Tuathail, and Silsan Roberts t eds. ) .4ii Uiii i it› 1l‹›i‘/‹/:' and particularly political decision-making. Despite the increasing effects ot
24. f'or a disc tiss ion o I' our contemporary geopolitical condition as ’postmodern ge‹opo1ifics’ sec globalization, the basic unit in the contemporary world political system is
Gearoid O Tuathail , ’Postmodeni Gcopolitic '! The k lodern Gctipo litical I muginat ion anal the state. It is an internationally recognized political and juridical entity
Beyond', in Reiliiii Liu g Geoy‹›/init s (note 1 pp. I 6-35, and Timothy Luke and Cearoid 0
fuathail, ‘Thinking Geopolitical Space: The Sputiality of \Var, Speed and Visi‹m in the Work which claims sovereignty over a specific area of land and possibly adjacent
of Paul Virilio’, in 8 like Crang and N incl Thri ft (eds. ) 7“fiinlin¿ N/i‹ir e (Londoli: Routledge sea, the inhabitants of the area and the resources located therein. This area
25. See note 3 und Anthony Giddens, Bee ‹›ii‹l Left ‹uul ki gmt. The Future ‹i) R‹i‹li‹ al P‹›liii‹’s is delimited in the minds of individuals and groups owing allegiance to the
istanir›rd UP 1994› state, in most cases on cartographic representations of the state and in some
26. Beck, Reiii i'eiitioii oj Politre’.s (note 3) p.2t›.
27. Richard Falkcnrath, Robert Ncwinan and Bi udley Thayer, .4 incrir ri \ .4‹ /ii/fr› feel.' Niic’le‹i i,
cases on the ground itself, by boundaries. Boundaries indicate the accepted
Bir›lo,gic'rif, ii/i‹f Ufieniic'‹i/ Te rr‹›ri›ni ‹nut C“‹› i e rr A i i‹ir i (Cir iiibri dge, fvlA: MIT Pre.s5 territorial integrity of the state and the extent of government control. In the
1998); Leonard Cole, The Pte renr/i PlaOur: The Ni›fiiic 4’ uJ Bii›/r›yic’iif ruii/ C/tcJiiiciif y of cases boundaries are legally recognized by the states which
ll‹ii)iirc (N Y:
W.H. Freeman 1996); John Arquillit, Da v id F. Ronlcldt and Alvin Toft4cr (eds. j /n .1their a share them and also by the international community.
Caring. Prefuiriii g Jc'r C‹›iijli‹’t iii the 7iJi iiiiiii‹›n .4ge (Santa âlonica, C.A: Rand Corp. 1998); However, partly at least as a result of the global geopolitical changes
Gearoid O Tuuthail , ‘Deterritorialized "fhreats and Global Dangers: Geopolii ice, Risk
Society and Reflex ive 41odcrnization’, Geopr›/i/ics’ It), special issue on ‘Postinodcrnity, over the past decade, approximately one-quarter ot the world’s land
Territory and Boundaries’ ( 1999) Iorthcoining. boundaries can be classified as unstable. In addition, some two-thirds of the
28. Gearoid O Tuathail, ’At the End of Geopc'lilics‘! ltelJections on a Plnrullzing Problematic at
the Century’s End' , Afrrrx‹iiii'cs S‹›‹ init Trim› ji›i iiuitioii ini‹l ñiiriiiiJir G‹›i'criiim‹ r 22 (
global maritime boundaries have yet to be settled.' Since the possession of
1997) pp.35—55. agreed boundaries has a crucial bearing upon state security and is also of
?9. Beck, Rein› eniiou of Politic s (note 3) p.7. great political, economic and social significance, conflicts related to
boundaries are likely to remain a key component of the international scene.
I 30. Ibid. pp.12—13.
31. Ibid. p.32. In the current global political system, the state is the highest level of
32. The Pentagon is one of the largest polluters in the United S tates. The weapons produced in political decision-making body. States have to agree to acquiesce in the
thc name of ‘national security’ at US military facilities across the country, such as the
Hantord ntic lear reservation in Hichland, Washing ton, Rocky Flats in Colorado, have ieii u decisions of supra-national bodies such as the United Nations (UN), the
permanent lcgac y of toxic it y. Producing nuclear ’national security’ has ••s be ncr3teâ European Union (EU) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). To be a
generational community in sec urity. a ‘side cftect’ of hold War Geopolitics that wilt be around
for centuries. LaLe Karachay neur the former Son iet Union’s 'secret’ weapons complex at
member of such a super-national body therefore involves a certain loss of
Chelyabinsk has been describert as ’the ni‹ast polluted spot on earth’. See Tom Athanasiou, sovereignty. However, in contrast to the internal operation of a state, there
Llii'ii1eñ Planet: The E‹ elm g› o] Ri‹’li rural Poor t Athens: U. of Georgia Press 19961 p. 120. is no set means of law enforcement. Sanctions or even political force may
3.3. klichael K fare, Re g me Stir ice mm Na‹’leiii’ Outla ii s (NY: Hill and \Vang 1993).
34. On the ambiguous intelligence about the Khartoum plant see Sey rnour Hersh, ‘The Guns at
A ugtist’, The Nei‹ iñ/kc/ , 12 Oct. 199S.