Geopolitical Codes: Agents define their geopolitical options

(From Colin Flint, Introduction to Geopolitics, London: Routledge, 2012. Chapter 3)

At the very outset of talk of war upon Iraq in 2003, there was little doubt that Great Britain
would be the United States’ most active and loyal ally. This was not a matter of force. Tony
Blair’s government certainly had the choice to play a minor role in the conflict, or even try to
use diplomacy to challenge President Bush’s plan. Yet somehow it was “understood” that Great
Britain would give political and military aid to its established ally. Tony Blair’s decision illustrates
the features of the geopolitical actions of countries that we will discuss in this chapter: a
country may choose to make particular foreign policy decisions, these choices are limited to
varying degrees, and a partial influence on the choices made is the history of allegiances and
conflicts. The previous chapter provided a means to understand the global geopolitical context.
The goal of this chapter is to focus upon countries as geopolitical agents: the manner in which
they make decisions within the global context. We continue the themes of geographic scale and
structure and agency to interpret how countries make foreign policy decisions within regional
and global contexts.

Geopolitical codes

The manner in which a country orientates itself toward the world is called a geopolitical code.
Each country in the world defines its geopolitical code, consisting of five main calculations:

(a) who are our current and potential allies

(b) who are our current and potential enemies
(c) how can we maintain our allies and nurture potential allies
(d) how can we counter our current enemies and emerging threats
(e) how do we justify the four calculations above to our public, and to the global community
(Taylor and Flint, 2000, p. 62)

For example, Great Britain has defined its primary allies within the transatlantic and
trans-European institutions of NATO and the EU. Furthermore, it has tried to retaininfluence
across the globe through the establishment of the Commonwealth, made up of ex-British
colonies. The latter has had mixed success, for example the expulsion of Zimbabwe from the
Commonwealth for its brutal campaign against white farmers in the face of strong criticism from
Britain. The identification of enemies is also dynamic. Almost overnight, as the Soviet Union
became Russia, it quickly changed from intractable enemy to an ally.
 Attempts to maintain allies take a number of forms (Figure 3.1, for example). Economic
ties are one chief plank. The EU evolved out of relatively modest beginnings to integrate the
economies of France and Germany to cultivate a peaceful Europe after the brutality of the two
world wars. Cultural exchange is also another vehicle for main-taining or nurturing peace.
Educational scholarships such as the Rhodes, Fulbright, and Goethe fellowships encourage
international understanding and long-term ties. Business organizations such as the Rotary Club
are also aimed at establishing linkages. The choice of “good-will” visits for incoming presidents
and prime ministers is indicative of which international relationships are deemed most worthy
of attention (Henrikson, 2005). For example, it is a tradition that the incoming US president
meets with his Mexican coun-terpart at an early date.
Military connections are also seen as a means to maintain international cooperation.
NATO is perhaps the strongest case, in which it is determined that an attack upon one member
is considered an attack upon all. Another means of connecting with allies is the sale of military
equipment that is expected to tie the, normally, weaker buyer to the more powerful seller.
However, there is no guarantee of subservience. Weapons supplied to Iraq during its war with
Iran were subsequently seen as threats by the sellers, the United States and Great Britain. Less
overt, are the relationships fostered by military training.
Means to counter enemies are also varied. A once dominant but now, seemingly,
outdated ingredient of the United States’, Soviet Union’s, and Great Britain’s geopolitical codes
during the Cold War was appropriately named MAD, for mutually assured destruction. Nuclear
capability was strong enough to annihilate enemies many times over. Of course, most of this
weaponry remains. The belief was that as destruc-tion was assured, no one would dare start a
nuclear war and “peace” would reign. At the other end of the spectrum is diplomacy;
negotiations between governments to, at the least, prevent hostilities and, at best, nurture
more friendly relations.
Sanctions are a common non-military means to force enemies to comply with one’s
wishes. An international campaign of sanctions and boycotts put pressure upon the South
African government to end its apartheid policies. More recently, Iraq was targeted in a failed
attempt to force Saddam Hussein to allow full inspection of his arsenal. Sanctions are often
criticized for making the population suffer through lack of food or medical supplies rather than
the politicians who formulate the policies in question. Countries can also change their opinion
on the efficacy of sanctions; the British govern-ment under Margaret Thatcher disparaged the
use of sanctions against apartheid South Africa, the governments of John Major and Tony Blair
were strong advocates of sanctions against Iraq.
The fifth element of a country’s geopolitical code should not be underestimated. The
definition of an enemy, especially when it entails a call to arms, is something that can destabilize
a government and lead to its fall. For example, in March 2004 Spanish Prime Minister Jose
Maria Aznar was defeated at the polls in the wake of his support for the United States invasion
of Iraq. Tony Blair expended political capital making arguments that support for President
George W.Bush’s War on Terrorism, and especially the invasion of Iraq, was essential for British
security. In addition, intensifying the EU in the name of European peace and prosperity has
proved equally exhausting for British governments.
Representational geopolitics is the essence of the fifth element of a geopolitical code. If
enemies are to be fought, the basis of the animosity must be clear, and the necessity of the
horrors of warfare must be justified. Enemies are portrayed as “barbaric” or “evil,” their politics
“irrational” in the sense that they do not see the value of one’s own political position, and their
stance “intractable,” meaning that war is the only recourse. As we will see in the next chapter,
these representations are tailored for the immediate situation, but are based upon stories
deposited in national myths that are easily accessible to the general public.

Scales of geopolitical codes

Every country has a geopolitical code. For many countries their main, if not sole, concern
is with their immediate neighbors: are they friends or enemies, is increased trade or imminent
invasion the issue? But some countries profess to develop a regional geopolitical code in which
they have influence beyond their immediate neighbors. China’s calculations toward expanding
influence in Southeast Asia are a good example, as is Egypt’s role within the Arab world (Taylor
and Flint, 2000, pp. 91–102).
Finally, some countries purport to have global geopolitical codes. The world leaders we
identified in the previous chapter are the primary agents in this role. A challenge to their
authority anywhere on the globe requires a response, for their legitimacy is based upon their
global reach (Flint and Falah, 2004). On the other hand, world leadership requires world
“follow-ship.” Much diplomatic energy is spent to make sure countries are “on-board” the world
leader’s agenda. Any attempt by another country to create a global geopolitical code is
interpreted as a challenge to the world leader. The influence of the Soviet Union within Africa,
the Caribbean, Middle East, and Asia during the Cold War is an historical example of how
combat was part of two competing global geopolitical codes (Halliday, 1983).
Though we can distinguish the power and influence of a country through designating its
geopolitical code as local, regional, or global, it is false to separate local geopolitical codes from
the global geopolitical context. Though the range of geopolitical calculations may be local, the
influence of the global geopolitical context remains. For example, Hungary’s decision to join
NATO involved calculations about ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, and a future
threat from Russia, but was still framed within the global authority and agenda of the United
States (Oas, 2005). Hungary saw the changes in the global geopolitical context, as the world
leader exercised its authority in Europe with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as an opportunity
to advance its own security. The same idea can be applied to the way the “stans,” the republics
of Central Asia, have utilized the War on Terrorism to obtain military aid from the US.

Geopolitical codes and the dynamics of world leadership

The global geopolitical context is the aggregation of the geopolitical codes of all countries. Of
course, some geopolitical codes are more influential than others; the United States’ actions
define the global political scene to a greater degree than those of, say, Belize. If Modelski’s
model is correct, during a phase of world leadership the geopolitical agenda of other countries
will be most strongly influenced by the world leader. It follows that the model predicts phases of
deconcentration and global war to be times when the ability of other countries to pose
geopolitical questions increases. By placing the geopolitical codes of particular countries within
the phases of Modelski’s model we can have an understanding of the opportunities and
constraints that the global geopolitical context defines.
The period of global war that ended in 1945 was waged between the declining world
leader, Great Britain, and its chief challenger Germany. However, as we noted in the previous
chapter, it was Britain’s key ally, the United States, that claimed the mantle of world leader. In
this period, we can distinguish three important geopolitical codes: Great Britain’s attempt to
arrest decline; Germany’s attempt to defeat Britain; and the United States’ realization of world
leadership.

Geopolitical codes of declining world leadership and challenge

British geographer and geopolitician Sir Halford Mackinder, introduced in Chapter 1, was intent
in maintaining his country’s supremacy, he identified a German threat, and thought the
maintenance of the British Empire was the appropriate means. In his mind, the British Empire
would secure Britain’s economic power, and its global presence. Mackinder is noted for his
identification of conquest of Eurasian “Heartland” as a means to control the world. He feared
that Germany was utilizing the “new” railway tech-nology to mobilize resources in Eurasia and
challenge Great Britain. Mackinder’s response was “sea-power,” or more accurately a system of
global reach built upon empire that required a large navy.
Senior British politicians were also able to make the linkage between control of Europe
and world domination. In practice, their geopolitical code, in an echo of Mackinder’s concerns,
required a united empire and battleships. In a 1911 conference on imperial defence, Sir Edward
Grey (Foreign Secretary) stated:
 So long as maintenance of Sea Power and the maintenance and control of the sea
communications is the underlying motive of our policy in Europe, it is obvious how that
is a common interest between us at home and all the Dominions.

(Quoted in James, 1994, p. 342)

His audience agreed, and there was cross-party support for a campaign to build four
Dreadnought battleships a year. The naval arms race between Great Britain and Germany saw
plans for Germany to construct 61 battleships between 1898 and 1928.
The material aims of maintaining the British Empire to secure world leadership were
represented in a way that emphasized a civilizing mission. War was a personal and national
“duty” couched in religious language - personal loss was for a higher goal thannational
self-interest: in 1911 a National Service League pamphlet proclaimed “war is not murder, as
some fancy, war is sacrifice - which is the soul of Christianity,” and, remarkably, “fighting and
killing are not of the essence of it [war], but are accidents” (quoted in James, 1994, p. 334). In
other words, when the geopolitical code of the declining world leader required preparation for
war, it required a representational politics of sacrifice for the benefit of all humanity. Walk
around an old British church, and read the gravestones and plaques on the wall—one can see
the loss of life suffered by the population of the world leader memorialized, and the losses
given meaning in a mixture of nationalist and religious sentiments. Of course, what of the
greater suffering of those subjugated under British imperialism? Representations of such losses
are less readily available to most of us, producing a slanted and partial understanding of the
“costs” and experiences of British world leadership.
The geopolitical code of a challenger is, by definition, aggressive. Germany felt
“under-sized”; it did not possess the territory that it deserved given the status of the German
culture. The expansionist geopolitical code of the Kaiser Wilhelm II was given a theoretical basis
by the geopolitical theories of Rudolf Kjellen and Friedrich Ratzel (also introduced in Chapter 1).
They emphasized the organic nature of the state, the state was an organism that would
“naturally” grow (or increase the extent of its boundaries). Which state would control which
territory was also justified through a biological analogy - the geographic realm. In other words,
the “superior” culture would best manage the land and hence have the geopolitical right to
possess it. Ratzel’s allusions to American seizure of “Indian” territories was translated into the,
for him, obvious benefits of German culture controlling the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe, to
increase the lebensraum (or living space) of the German people (Smith, 1986).
But territorial expansion within Europe was not the only element of Germany’s
geopolitical code. The acquisition of new colonies was also paramount, hence the need for a
new fleet of battleships. Germany believed that it was “owed” colonial possessions to the same
degree as Britain and France, and the new emergent industrialists in Germany promoted this
policy of Weltpolitik in its attempt to secure markets and resources. However, it should be noted
that geopolitical codes are contested. Germany’s landed aristocracy favored the acquisition of
new agricultural land through expanding Germany’s European borders through policies of
lebensraum, while the industrialists favored the Weltpolitik strategy of securing colonies
(Abraham, 1986). The twin aspects of Germany’s geopolitical code of world leadership challenge
enabled Great Britain to secure a coalition of support both across its Dominion possessions as
well as traditional European rivals France and Russia.