Synopses & Reviews
A new explanation of the course of international politics from the rebirth of the German Empire to the rise of China. This volume contributes to empirically based geopolitical theory and uses that theory to improve our understanding of the major events in the international strategic history of a 150-year period.
Seven key historical chapters cover all the major areas:
- End of the Columbian Era? 1871-1914
- Continental Hegemony and the Road-Test of War, I: 1914-1918
- The Myth of Benign Transformation, I: New World Order, 1919-1939?
- Continental Hegemony and the Road-Test of War, II: 1939-1945
- Continental Hegemony and the Road -Test of (Cold) War, III: 1945-1989
- The Myth of Benign Transformation, II: (Another) New World Order, 1990-2000
- Benign Transformation Postponed (Again): Geopolitics as Usual, 2001-2021
In addition to these historical chapters, this essential text presents clear sections on geopolitical ideas, on possible patterns in strategic history, as well as an extensive 'critique and response' concerning the integrity of geopolitical approaches to world politics.
Synopsis
This volume examines geopolitics by looking at the interaction between geography, strategy and history.
This book addresses three interrelated questions: why does the geographical scope of political objectives and subsequent strategy of states change? How do these changes occur? Over what period of time do these changes occur? The theories of Sir Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman are examined in order to provide an analytical narrative for five case studies, four historical and one contemporary. Taken together these five case studies offer the prospect of converting descriptions of historical change into analytic explanations, thereby highlighting the importance of a number of commonly overlooked variables. In addition, the case studies will illuminate the challenges that states face when changing the scope of their foreign policy and geo-strategy in response to shifts in geopolitical reality. This book breaks new ground in seeking to provide a way to understand why and how the geographical scope of political objectives and subsequent strategy both expands and declines.
This book will be of much interest to students of geopolitics, strategic studies, military history, and International Relations.
Synopsis
This work explains the course of international politics from the rebirth of the German Empire to the rise of China, with particular, though not exclusive, reference to spatial relationships.