Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy
Edited by Colin S. Gray, Geoffrey Sloan
Routledge – 1999 – 304 pages
Geopolitical conditions influence all strategic behaviour - even when cooperation among different kinds of military power is expected as the norm, action has to be planned and executed in specific physical environments. The geographical world cannot be avoided, and it happens to be 'organized' into land, sea, air and space - and possibly the electromagnetic spectrum including 'cyberspace'. Although the meaning of geography for strategy is a perpetual historical theme, explicit theory on the subject is only one hundred years old. Ideas about the implication of geographical, especially spatial, relationships for political power - which is to say 'geopolitics'- flourished early in the twentieth century.
Divided into theory and practice sections, this volume covers the big names such as Mackinder, Mahan and Haushofer, as well as looking back at the vital influence of weather and geography on naval power in the long age of sail (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries). It also looks forward to the consequences of the revival of geopolitics in post-Soviet Russia and the new space-based field of "astropolitics".
The British Army Review
"For those for whom geopolitics is a closed subject, or are unclear as to what it is all about, this book (or parts of it at least) provides an interesting and painless entry. "
Geography, July 2000
"Many geographers might think that there was little new to say, but these essays reveal subtle and dynamic view of the world order from the past. [sic] Crucially, the ideas are now extended into new areas in this book. … This is a significant and readable book which ought to be essential reading for any serious student of geopolitics.
1. Why Geopolitics? Part 1. Geopolitical theory and strategy - The Words and the History of Ideas 2. Sir Halford Mackinder - the heartland theory then and now 3. Alfred Thayer Mahan, geopolitician 4. air power, space power, and geography 5. Geography in the Space Age - An Astropolitical Analysis 6. Understanding Critical Geopolitics - Geopolitics and Risk Security 7. Geopolitics - International Boundaries as Fighting Places 8. Information Power - Strategy, Geopolitics and the Fifth Dimension Part 2. Geography and Strategy - Geopolitics in Action: Inescapable Geography 9. Weather, Geography, and Naval Power in the Age of Sail - Some Thoughts on War and Geography 10. Geopolitik - Haushofer, Hitler and Lebensraum 11. "Russia will not be Trifled With" - Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies