CHAPTER 2

Man-Milieu Relationships

The Role of Environment in International Relations

The growing interest among social scientists with environmental problems

reflects an age-old concern, that of man-milieu relationships. As a definition
of milieu, Harold and Margaret Sprout suggest the "whole spectrum of en-
vironing factors, human as well as non-human, intangible as well as tangible." 1
Aristotle believed man and his environment are inseparable, and that man is
affected by both geographical circumstances and political institutions. Loca-
tion near the sea stimulated commercial activity which expanded into the
city-state; temperate climate favorably affected the development of national
character, human energy and intellect.2 Jean Bodin, too, maintained that
climatic circumstances influence national characteristics, even determining
their foreign policies. The extremes of northern and tropical climates offer
conditions most favorable to building a political system based on law and
justice. Northern and mountainous regions encourage greater political disci-
pline than southern climes which fail to spark initiative.3 Montesquieu, too,
pointed to various climatic factors which he felt influenced man's political
behavior and vitality. The small scale of the political divisions of Western
Europe, in contrast to the great plains of Asia and Eastern Europe, contrib-

1. Harold and Margaret Sprout, The
Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs
with Special Reference to International
Politics (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1965), p. 27. The Sprouts set forth
the following definitions: Environment
may be defined as a generic concept un-
der which are subsumed all external
forces and factors to which an organism
or aggregate of organisms is actually or
potentially responsive. Or environment
may be limited to the material and spa-
tial aspects of the surrounding world to
the exclusion of the melee of human
social relations.
2. Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle,
trans. Ernest Barker (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1961), pp. 289-311.
3. Jean Bodin, Six Books of the Com-
monwealth, trans. E. J. Tooley (New
York: Macmillan Company, 1955), pp.
145-157.

46
utes to a spirit of political independence. Islands can preserve their freedom
more than continental countries because they are protected from foreign influ-
ences.4 Ecological perspectives have made inroads into modern political
theory as well. Both Mahan and Mackinder found a close relationship between
geographical factors and national political capabilities. The German geo-
political school correlated Lebensraum and national power.
Both "Utopians" and "realists" in international relations (examined in
Chapters 1 and 3 respectively), discussed man in relation to his environment.
But they broadened the notion of "environment" to include the products of
human culture as well as the physical features of the earth. Drawing upon the
writings of theorists of the Enlightenment, Utopians claimed that international
behavior could be altered by transforming the institutional setting. Schemes
for international organization and world government, as well as for estab-
lishing norms for international conduct, were designed to alter human be-
havior by changing the international environment. In contrast, as the analysis
undertaken in Chapter 3 reveals, "realists" in international relations often
held that the geographical location of states conditions, if not determines,
political behavior. If the political behavior of national units is in large part
the product of the environmental circumstances, including geography, in
which nations find themselves, the statesman's perennial task is to work within
the parameters established by the environment.
Excluding ecological perspectives would certainly be incongruous with his-
torical precedent. Man's relationship to his environment remains a focal point
of analysis. Writers who have studied politics as a general systems theory have
emphasized environment. Systems models, discussed in Chapter 4, may be
grouped as both "open" or "closed." The "open" systems—both biological
and social—by definition are susceptible to, and dependent for their survival
on, inputs from their environment. Those writers who have developed so-called
"closed" or self-contained systems have eliminated inputs from an external
environment but they have often incorporated environmental factors of great
importance right into their models of the system.

Buckle and Huntington: Climatic Factors

Many nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars were as convinced as the

classical writers of the importance of climate as a conditioner of political
behavior. Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862), a British historian, realized
that climate, food, and soil closely depend on each other. Climate influences
the kinds of crops grown; the quality of the food depended on the soil. Buckle
explained the vigor of the northern laborer as a result of the food supply
available in a cold climate. In nations in cold climates, "there is for the most
4. Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of I, 154-159, 259-274.
Laws (Worcester: Isaiah Thomas, 1802),

Man-Milieu Relationships 47
part displayed, even in the infancy of society, a bolder or more adventurous
character, than we find among those other nations whose ordinary nutriment,
... is easily obtained, and indeed is supplied to them, by the bounty of nature,
gratuitously and without a struggle." Buckle added that the sparseness of pop-
ulation and thus inflation of wages and living standard fluctuates with food
supply,
advancing when the supply is plentiful, halting or receding when the
supply is scanty. The food essential to life is scarcer in cold countries
than in hot ones; and not only is it scarcer, but more of it is required;
so that on both grounds smaller encouragement is given to the growth
of that population from whose ranks the labour-market is stocked. To
express, therefore, the conclusion in its simplest form, we may say,
that there is a strong and constant tendency in hot countries for wages
to be low, in cold countries for them to be high.
Civilizations with hot climates, and therefore low wage levels, produce large
and depressed working classes, with attendant social and economic conse-
quences. Great inequality in the distribution of wealth, political power and
social influence, according to Buckle, led many ancient civilizations to reach
a "certain stage of development and then to decline." 5
Ellsworth Huntington (1876-1947), the American geographer and ex-
plorer, found climate a determinant not only of man's health, activity, level
of food production and other resource availabilities, but of the migration of
peoples and their racial mixtures as well. Only the most physically fit, intelli-
gent, and adventurous survive migration. And only those subject to economic
distress due to poor harvest and food shortages attempt migration. To support
this view, Huntington cited as an example, the desiccation of central Asia at
different periods of history which led to the invasion of Europe by the bar-
barians, the Dorian and Ionian invasions of ancient Greece, and the Mongol
incursion into southeast Asia. The Arab migration led by Mohammed, and
strengthened by religious motivation, represented a movement from parched
deserts to more fertile lands. Improved economic conditions, stimulated by
climatic factors, liberated large parts of a population from the tasks of gather-
ing and producing food, and permitted them to develop new and advanced
ideas in the fields of art, literature, science and political life. Huntington sup-
ported the supposition of man's disinclination to strenuous labor in hot cli-
mates with the statistic that most of the world's major civilizations developed
where the annual average temperature neared the optimum necessary for
maximum human productivity (65-70° Fahrenheit).6 Great civilizations within

5. Henry Thomas Buckle, History of
Civilization in England (London: Long-
mans, Green and Company, 1903), I,
39-151.
6. Ellsworth Huntington, Mainsprings of
Civilization (New York: John Wiley and
Sons, 1945), especially pp. 250-275; and
Civilization and Climate (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1924), especially
pp. 1-29; 387-411.

48 Contending Theories of International Relations

the tropic zones have risen only on temperate plateaus or along cool seacoasts
where the temperature in no season far exceeded the optimum temperature,
e.g., the Mayas in Mexico and in Guatemala, the Khomens in Indochina, and
the ancient Javanese and Singhalese.

Toynbee: Environmental Challenge and Response

Arnold Toynbee held that civilizations are born in environments that are
unusually difficult, in response to challenges posed by environments.7 He
examined five types of challenging stimuli. Two of these were physical—hard
country, i.e., country possessing a harsh climate, terrain, and soil; and new
ground, that is, the exploration, opening up, and development of a wilderness
into productive land. The three nonphysical stimuli include: (1) external blows
from another state; (2) continuous external pressure against a state; and
(3) a stimulus of penalizations, that is, if a state loses the use of a particular
component it is likely to respond by increasing correspondingly the efficiency
of another component. Toynbee adds that overly severe physical challenge
can arrest the development of civilization. The Polynesian, Eskimo, Nomad,
Spartan and Osmanli civilizations were retarded as a result of physical chal-
lenges which they could not meet.
Civilizations grow when a society undergoes a catapulting series of chal-
lenges. The challenged civilization develops an elan vital, which carries it
through equilibrium toward another challenge thereby inspiring another re-
sponse. The challenge-response cycle is potentially infinite. A criticism of
the challenge-response hypothesis is that it is retrospective, not allowing us to
predict the potential response to a challenge.
The breakdown of civilizations results from the degeneration of the cre-
ative minority into a "dominant minority which attempts to retain by force
a position that it has ceased to merit." This, in turn, provokes a "secession of
a proletariat which no longer admires and imitates its rulers and revolts
against its servitude." 8 Thus the society loses its social cohesiveness.
Vertical schisms between geographically segregated communities and hori-
zontal schisms between classes or groups geographically contiguous but so-
cially segregated—these characterize the disintegration of a civilization. The
horizontal schism may occur when a dominant minority retains its ruling
7. For an examination of Toynbee's affairs, closely related to the balance-of-
challenge-response hypothesis, see A power idea. "Challenge and Response: A
Study of History, abridgement of Vol- Tool for the Analysis of International
umes I-IV, by D. C. Somervell (London: Affairs," Review of Politics, XVIII
Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 60- (1956), 207-226.
139. Andrew M. Scott has proposed the
challenge-response concept as a central 8. lbid.} p. 246. Toynbee defines break-
approach to the study of international down as the termination of growth.

Man-Milieu Relationships 49
position by force but loses its right to that role as a result of its loss of cre-
ativity. Toynbee's schema is related to modem, more complex theories of
social revolution. (The correlations and distinctions are made in Chapter 8.)

Geographic Factors of National Power

For the most part, those writers concerned with the interaction between man
and his environment have tended to stress the importance of environmental
factors as determinants, or at least conditioners, of political behavior. Environ-
ment not only limits human conduct, it provides opportunities. Of particular
importance are climatic and geographical factors. These theorists assume that
uneven distribution of resources and differences in geographical and climatic
endowments affect the potential power of a nation. The size of the country
influences the availability of natural resources; and the climate affects the
mobilization of human resources necessary for exploiting these natural re-
sources. Variations in these factors may crucially affect the structure of
political systems, even influencing their ability to survive under stress.
If political behavior is affected by environment, man has the capacity to
alter political behavior by manipulating the environment. Of particular im-
portance to writers such as Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), an American
naval officer and historian, and Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947), a British
geographer, as well as the Sprouts, is the impact of technological change upon
man's environment. Technology, it is suggested, does not render environ-
mental factors unimportant, or obsolete. Rather, it alters the importance of
environmental factors once considered crucial, replacing them with still an-
other set. Mahan saw naval power as the key to man's control of space;
Mackinder saw the technology of land transport as crucial; and the technology
of airpower and outer space exploration are two other environmental factors
in space control. Even in this age of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)
analysts engaging in the constant calculus of deterrence consider a country's
size and population distribution, and weapon deployments which conform
to the configuration of land and sea.
Though possessing a limited capacity to change his environment, man's
behavior remains circumscribed by environmental factors. A French school
of geographic "possibilist" thought, represented by Lucien Febvre and Vidal
de la Blache, rejected the determinism of Anglo-American and German
environmental theories. Drawing upon the intellectual heritage of the Enlight-
enment, French students of geography suggested that man can modify his
natural environment. In fact, human free will ultimately determines the op-
tions open to man. Environment, geography in particular, is but one of many

50 Contending Theories of International Relations

forces governing the development of man's activity.9 Twentieth-century geo-
political writers fall somewhere between a strictly determinist and possibilist
interpretation. If environment does not determine the boundaries of human
conduct, it provides nevertheless an important, if not crucial, conditioning
influence. As Ladis K. D. Kristof has suggested, "the modern geopolitician
does not look at the world map in order to find out what nature compels us
to do but what nature advises us to do, given our preferences." 10
We turn now to the writings of geopolitical theorists from the United States
and Europe. Among the Americans we focus on Mahan and the Sprouts.
Mahan concentrated on the impact of naval power upon national political
potential. The Sprouts probed the implications of a broad range of environing
factors for political behavior. In addition to Mahan and the Sprouts, a list of
the most eminent American students of geopolitical relationships includes
such diverse writers as Frederick Jackson Turner, Homer Lea, Nicholas J.
Spykman, Ellen Churchill Semple, General William Mitchell, George F. Ken-
nan, Karl A. Wittfogel, Owen Lattimore, Alexander P. de Seversky, Stephen
B. Jones, and Robert Strausz-Hupe. Moreover, as we shall note in Chapter 3,
realist writers have directed attention to geopolitical relationships.

Mahan, the Seas and National Power

Mahan wrote during the period of the last great wave of European expansion
and the rise of the United States to the status of a world power. He was a
close friend and advisor of Theodore Roosevelt on military and naval affairs.
As assistant secretary of the navy and, later, as president, Theodore Roosevelt
made a major contribution to the development of the United States as a
leading naval power. Mahan's analysis of maritime history, particularly the
growth of British global influence, led him to conclude that control of the
seas, and especially of strategically important narrow waterways, was crucial
to great power status.11 Mahan based his theory on the observation that the
9. See Sprout and Sprout, The Ecological and Evolution of Geopolitics," Journal of
Perspective on Human Affairs, pp. 83- Conflict Resolution, IV (March, 1960),
98; Lucien Febvre, A Geographical In- 19.
troduction to History (New York: Alfred 11. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence
A. Knopf, 1925), pp. 358-368; P. W. J. of Seapower Upon History, 1660-1783
Vidal de la Blache, Principles of Human (Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
Geography. Edited by Emmanuel de Mar- 1897), especially pp. 281-329. See also
tonne (New York: Henry Holt and Com- Margaret Tuttle Sprout, "Mahan: Evan-
pany, 1926). O. H. K. Spate, "How De- gelist of Sea Power," Edward Mead
termined Is Possibilism?" Geographical Earle, ed.. Makers of Modern Strategy:
Studies, IV (1957), 3, 8; George Tatham, Military Thought from Machiavelli to
"Environmentalism and Possibilism." In Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University
Griffith Taylor, ed., Geography in the Press, 1943), pp. 415-445; Harold and
Twentieth Century (New York: Philo- Margaret Sprout, The Rise of American
sophical Library, 1951), pp. 128ff, 15Iff. Naval Power (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
10. Ladis K. D. Kristof, "The Origins versity Press, 1942).

Man-Milieu Relationships 51
rise of the British Empire and the rise of the British navy had occurred simul-
taneously. The world's principal sea routes had become the Empire's internal
communication links. Except for the Panama Canal, Britain controlled all the
world's major waterways: Dover, Gibraltar, Alexandria, the Cape of Good
Hope, and the Straits of Malacca at Singapore. The ocean commerce of
Northern Europe passed either through the narrow Strait of Dover under
British guns or round the northern tip of Scotland, where the British navy
maintained constant vigil. Britain and the United States enjoyed greater access
to the oceans than Germany and Russia. The facility for sea transport was
easier than movement over land, and the land masses were surrounded by
oceans. States with ready access to the oceans had greater potential for great
power status than states which were landlocked. Islands had an advantage
over land-bordered states. Maritime states formed alliances more for purposes
of commerce than aggression.
Mahan advocated a large United States navy to deal with the inevitable
international conflicts resulting from commercial rivalries. He recognized the
influence of additional factors of geographic position, land configuration,
population and government on a country's capacity to achieve great power
status. A nation such as Britain or Japan, isolated by water, had the strategic
advantage of concentrating its defenses in one roving navy. Whereas nations,
such as France or Italy, with two coastlines and a land border, found their
energies dissipated by the dispersal of their forces. Thus, land was a geophysi-
cal factor in Mahan's philosophy. Harbors and rivers played a role in provid-
ing ports necessary to international trade. In Mahan's analysis the length of the
coastline and quality of harbors were more crucial factors than square mileage.
Similarly, he concerned himself not with raw population statistics but with
analyses of the labor force available for shipbuilding and occupations related
to naval power. Mahan held that an aptitude for commercial pursuits, particu-
larly those of international trade, indicated a capacity in a nation to become
a major power. To summarize, Mahan correlated national power and geo-
graphical mobility. Because the "frictionless" seas afforded greater mobility
than land at the time he wrote, naturally Mahan attached great importance to
seapower.

Mackinder and the Heartland

Like Mahan, Mackinder saw an intimate relationship between geography

and technology. If the technology of the nineteenth century had enhanced the
mobility of seapower over land power, the technology of the twentieth century
restored landpower to the dominant position. The railroad effectuated rapid
transportation across the vast expanses of Eurasia. Until then the inner regions

52 Contending Theories of International Relations

of the Eurasian land mass were landlocked. Eurasia's river system drains into
none of the major seas of the world. The Arctic freezes much of the northern
Eurasian coast. With the coming of the railroad, the Middle East was now as
accessible to Germany by land as it had been to Britain by sea. India and the
Far East were accessible to Russia as well as Britain. While Britain, as a small
island, was the legatee of a depreciating estate, the major Eurasian powers
sat astride the greatest human and natural resources available to man. Mac-
kinder saw the struggle between the landpower and the seapower as a unifying
theme of history. The first cycle in the evolution of seapower was completed
in the closing of the Mediterranean Sea by the Macedonians. Mackinder traced
the next cycle in the evolution of seapower in noting that Rome, a land power,
defeated maritime Carthage and once again the Mediterranean became a
"closed sea." 12 In both these cycles in the ancient era—the Macedonian-Greek
and the Roman-Carthaginian—a land power had successfully challenged a
seapower. In modern times Britain, initially a seapower, dominated the sea.
In the twentieth century, however, Britain found it difficult, if not impossible,
to withstand pressures from land powers. In the contemporary world, sea-
power was dominant for only a passing era. Land power was becoming more
significant. Technology, once favorable to seapower, was now tipping the
advantage to land power.
Mackinder suggested twice that the "pivot area" of international politics
would be the East European and Siberian plains. He suggested it first in a
famous paper read before the Royal Geographic Society of London in 1904,
and later, at the end of World War I, in his book Democratic Ideals and
Reality.

As we consider this rapid review of the broader currents of history,

does not a certain persistence of geographical relationship become
evident? Is not the pivot region of the world's politics that vast area
of Euro-Asia which is inaccessible to ships, but in antiquity lay open
to the horse-riding nomads, and is today about to be covered with a
network of railways? 13

This area, which coincided with the tsarist Russian Empire "occupies the
central strategical position" and possesses "incalculably great" resources.
(This "pivot area" Mackinder called the Heartland.) This region, he suggested,
was surrounded by the "river crescent," which includes such countries on the
periphery of Eurasia as Germany, Turkey, India, and China. This region, in
turn, is surrounded by the Outer Crescent, which includes such countries as
Britain, South Africa, and Japan.
Mackinder formulated the famous dictum:

12. Halford Mackinder, Democratic Ideals 13. Mackinder, "The Geographical Pivot
and Reality (New York: W. W. Norton of History," Geographical Journal, XXIII
and Company, 1962), pp. 35-39. (April, 1904), 434.

Man-Milieu Relationships 53
 Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland
Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island (Eurasia)
Who rules the World Island commands the world.14
Mackinder feared the rising power of Germany and later the Soviet Union,
for both countries might be able not only to rule the Heartland, but to become
great naval powers and thus to threaten Britain. While emphasizing the grow-
ing importance of land power, Mackinder did not deprecate the role of sea-
power. Seapower was as vital to world power as it had ever been. In the
twentieth century, however, broader land bases were necessary for seapower
than had been needed in the nineteenth century. The World Island had the
potential to become the greatest seapower, though its "heartland" would
remain invulnerable to attack by seapower. In the twentieth century the power
controlling the "heartland" and hence the World Island would control sea-
power in the same way as Macedonia and Rome, though primarily land
powers, had gained control of the seas.
In fact, he foresaw international politics of the twentieth century as a
struggle between Germany and Russia for control of the Heartland and adja-
cent areas on the Eurasian land mass.
Mackinder's geopolitical framework is similar to that of certain realist
writers examined in Chapter 3. The realists, like Mackinder, considering the
Eurasian land mass the key to world power, dealt with this so-called World
Island as a major factor in the balance of power. Without referring to Mac-
kinder or stating their assumptions as explicitly, American policymakers have
aimed, through the twentieth century, to prevent the domination of the Eu-
rasian land mass by a hostile power.
During World War II Mackinder reassessed and revised his geopolitical
theory. In 1943, he saw in an Atlantic community a counterpoise to the aggre-
gation of power in the Eurasian land mass. Although the Soviet Union would
emerge from World War II as the "greatest land power on the globe" and
"in the strategically strongest defensive position," the nations of the North
Atlantic basin would form a counterpoise.15 Together, Britain, France, and
the United States could provide power adequate both to prevent a resurgence
of Germany and to balance the Soviet Union. Other writers, such as Nicholas
J. Spykman and Stephen B. Jones, suggested that the "rimland" of Eurasia
might prove strategically more important than the Heartland if new centers
of industrial power and communications were created along the circumference
of the Eurasian land mass. The "rimland" hypothesis lays the theoretical
foundations of George F. Kennan's famous postwar proposal for a "policy of
containment." 1(5

14. Mackinder, op. cit., p. 150. See also
Hans W. Weigert, "Mackinder's Heart-
land," The American Scholar, XV (Win-
ter, 1945), 43-54.
15. Halford J. Mackinder, "The Round
World and the Winning of the Peace,"
Foreign Affairs, XXI (July, 1943), 601.
I6 See Stephen B. Jones, "Global Strate-
gjc vjews>" Geographical Review, XLV
(October, 1955), 492-508; Nicholas J.

54 Contending Theories of International Relations