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Geostrategy

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'''Geostrategy''' is a subfield of geopolitics. As with all strategy strategies, geostrategy is concerned with matching means to ends—in this case, a country's resources with its geopolitical objectives. Geostrategists, as distinct from geopoliticians, advocate proactive strategies, and approach geopolitics from a nationalist point-of-view. Many geostrategists are also geographers, specializing in subfields of geography, such as "human geography", "political geography", "economic geography", "cultural geography", "military geography", and "strategic geography". Geostrategy is most closely related to strategic geography.

Defining geostrategy
Academics, theorists, and practitioners of geopolitics have agreed upon no standard definition for "geostrategy." Most all definitions, however, emphasize the merger of strategy strategic considerations with geopolitical factors. While geopolitics is ostensibly neutral, examining the geographic and political features of different regions, especially the impact of geography on politics, geostrategy involves comprehensive planning, assigning means for achieving national goals or securing assets of military or political significance.

History of geostrategy

Precursors
Herodotus talks about a Greece Greek plan to gain the "empire of the sea." Alexander Hamilton was a geostrategic thinker. Thomas Jefferson understood the balance of power, although he did not design a good navy with which to preserve it. {{sectstub}}

Golden Age
Between 1890 and 1919 the world became a geostrategist's paradise. The international system featured rising and falling great powers, many with global reach. There were no new frontiers for the great powers to exploration explore or colonization colonize. From this point forward, international politics would feature the struggles of state against state. {{sectstub}}

World War Two
After the World War II second world war, the term "geopolitics" fell into disrepute, because of its association with Nazism Nazi ''geopolitik''. Virtually no books published between the end of WWII and the mid-1970's used the word "geopolitics" or "geostrategy" in their titles, and geopoliticians did not label themselves or their works as such. The most prominent Germany German geopolitician was General Karl Haushofer. After WWII, during the Allied Control Council Allied occupation of Germany, the United States investigated many officials and public figures to determine if they should face charges of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials. Haushofer, an academic primarily, was interrogated by Father Edmund A. Walsh, a professor of geopolitics from the Georgetown University Georgetown Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service School of Foreign Service, at the request of the U.S. authorities. Despite his involvement in crafting one of the justifications for Nazi aggression, Fr. Walsh determined that Haushofer ought not stand trial. As the Cold War began, N.J. Spykman and George F. Kennan laid down the foundations for the U.S. policy of containment, which would dominate Western world Western geostrategic thought for the next forty years. {{sectstub}}

Post-Cold War
To be written...

Notable geostrategists
The below geostrategists were instrumental in founding and developing the major geostrategic doctrines in the discipline's history. While there have been many other geostrategists, these have been the most influential in shaping and developing the field as a whole.

Alfred Thayer Mahan
'''Alfred Thayer Mahan''' {{sectstub}}

Halford J. Mackinder
'''Halford J. Mackinder''' {{sectstub}}

Friedrich Ratzel
Influenced by the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, as well as the German geographers Karl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt, '''Friedrich Ratzel''' would lay the foundations for ''geopolitik'', Germany's unique strain of geopolitics. Ratzel wrote on the natural division between land powers and sea powers, agreeing with Mahan that sea power was self-sustaining, as the profit from international trade trade would support the development of a merchant marine. However, his key contribution were the development of the concepts of ''lebensraum raum'' and organic state theory. He theorized that states were organic (model) organic and growing, and that borders were only temporary, representing pauses in their natural movement. ''Raum'' was the land, spiritually connected to a nation (in this case, the German peoples), from which the people could draw sustenance, find adjacent inferior nations which would support them, and which would be fertilized by their ''kultur'' (culture). Ratzel's ideas would influence the works of his student Rudolf Kjellén, as well as those of General Karl Haushofer.

Rudolf Kjellén
'''Rudolf Kjellén''' was a Sweden Swedish political scientist and student of Friedrich Ratzel. He first coined the term "geopolitics." His writings would play a decisive role in influencing General Karl Haushofer's ''geopolitik'', and indirectly the future Nazism Nazi foreign policy. His writings focused on five central concepts that would underlie German ''geopolitik'': #''Reich'' was a territorial concept that was comprised of ''Raum'' (''Lebensraum''), and strategic military shape; #''Volk'' was a racial conception of the state; #''Haushalt'' was a call for autarky based on land, formulated in reaction to the vicissitudes of international trade international markets; #''Geselleschaft'' was the social aspect of a nation’s organization and cultural appeal, Kjellén anthropomorphize anthropomorphizing inter-state relations more than Ratzel had; and, #''Regierung'' was the form of government whose bureaucracy and army would contribute to the people’s pacification and coordination.

General Karl Haushofer
'''Karl Haushofer''' {{sectstub}}

Nicholas J. Spykman
'''Nicholas J. Spykman''' was an Netherlands Dutch-American geostrategist, known as the "godfather of containment." His geostrategic work, ''The Geography of the Peace'' (1944), argued that the balance of power in Eurasia directly affected United States security. N.J. Spykman based his geostrategic ideas on those of Sir Halford Mackinder's Heartland theory. Spykman's key contribution was to alter the strategic valuation of the Heartland vs. the "Rimland" (a geographic area analogous to Mackinder's "Inner or Marginal Crescent"). Spykman does not see the heartland as a region which will be unified by powerful transport or communication infrastructure in the near future. As such, it won't be in a position to compete with the United States' sea power, despite its uniquely defensive position. The rimland possessed all of the key resources and populations—its domination was key to the control of Eurasia. His strategy was for Offshore powers, and perhaps Russia as well, to resist the consolidation of control over the rimland by any one power. Balanced power would lead to peace.

George F. Kennan
'''George F. Kennan''', U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, laid out the seminal Cold War geostrategy in his ''Long Telegram'' and ''The Sources of Soviet Conduct''. He coined the term "containment", which would become the guiding idea for U.S. grand strategy over the next forty years, although the term would come to mean something significantly different from Kennan's original formulation. Kennan advocated what was called "strongpoint containment." In his view, the United States and its allies needed to protect the productive industrial areas of the world from Soviet domination. He noted that of the five centers of industrial strength in the world—the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, and Russia—the only contested area was that of Germany. Kennan was concerned about maintaining the balance of power between the U.S. and the USSR, and in his view, only these few industrialized areas mattered. Here Kennan differed from Paul Nitze, whose seminal Cold War document, NSC-68, called for "undifferentiated or global containment," along with a massive military buildup. Kennan saw the Soviet Union as an ideology ideological and political challenger rather than a true military threat. There was no reason to fight the Soviets throughout Eurasia, because those regions were not productive, and the Soviet Union was already exhausted from WWII, limiting its ability to project power abroad. Therefore, Kennan disapproved of U.S. involvement in Vietnam War Vietnam, and later spoke out critically against Ronald Reagan Reagan's military buildup.

Henry Kissinger
'''Henry Kissinger''' implemented two geostrategic objectives when in office: the deliberate move to shift the polarity in international relations polarity of the international system from bipolar to tripolar; and, the designation of regional stabilizing states in connection with the Nixon Doctrine. In Chapter 28 of his long work, ''Diplomacy (Kissinger) Diplomacy'', Kissinger discusses the "opening of China" as a deliberate strategy to change the balance of power in the international system, taking advantage of the Sino-Soviet split split within the Sino-Soviet bloc. The regional stabilizers were pro-American states which would receive significant U.S. aid in exchange for assuming responsibility for regional stability. Among the regional stabilizers designated by Kissinger were Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Indonesia. {{sectstub}}

Zbigniew Brzezinski
'''Zbigniew Brzezinski''' laid out his most significant contribution to post-Cold War geostrategy in his 1997 book ''The Grand Chessboard''. He defined four regions of Eurasia, and in which ways the United States ought to design its policy toward each region in order to maintain its global primacy. The four regions (echoing Mackinder and Spykman) are: *Europe, the Democratic Bridgehead *Russia, the Black Hole *The Middle East, the Eurasian Balkans *Asia, the Far Eastern Anchor In his subsequent book, ''The Choice'', Brzezinski updates his geostrategy in light of globalization, September 11, 2001 attacks 9/11 and the intervening six years between the two books.

Criticisms of geostrategy
To be written...

See also

Other geostrategists
Listed below are other geostrategists whose works, while not developing the foundations of geostrategy as a discipline for their respective eras, were important for their insights of influence nonetheless: *Brooks Adams, American geostrategist *Aleksandr Dugin, Russian geostrategist *Homer Lea, American geostrategist *Otto Maull, German geostrategist

Geostrategy by country
The following articles discuss geostrategy from the sole perspective and history of a single country, taking into account each respective country's unique strategic goals: *British geostrategy *Chinese geostrategy *French geostrategy *Geopolitik German geostrategy *Russian geostrategy *United States geostrategy

Geostrategy by region
These articles discuss geostrategy in regions of the world. They discuss the various historical and current strategic interests that competing outside states have had in each region. (They do not discuss strategy from a specific point-of-view, see above.) *Geostrategy in Central Asia *Geostrategy in East Asia *Geostrategy in Europe

Geostrategy by topic
These articles discuss geostrategy as it relates to a specific strategic means or resource: *Oil geostrategy *Naval geostrategy *Space geostrategy :''See also:'' Geoeconomics.

Geostrategic places
Listed here are geographic features that are of enduring strategic value: {| border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #AAA solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;" |- style="background: #E9E9E9" ! Straits !! Passes !! Islands !! Regions |- | valign="top" | *Palk Straits *Bering Strait *Cape of Good Hope *Dardanelles *Florida Strait *Gulf of Aden *Kattegat *Panama Canal *Straits of Dover *Straits of Gibraltar *Strait of Hormuz *Suez Canal *Straits of Malacca *Taiwan Strait *Tsushima Strait | valign="top" | *Bolan Pass *Brenner Pass *Cumberland Gap *Fulda Gap *Great St. Bernard Pass *Iron Gate *Jelepla Pass *Khunjerab Pass *Khyber Pass *Nathula Pass *St. Gotthard Pass *Torugart Pass *Wakhan Corridor | valign="top" | *Andaman Islands *Nicobar Islands *Lakshadweep Islands *Antilles *Balearic Islands *Crete *Cuba *Cyprus *Great Britain *Guam *Hawaiian Islands *Iceland *Japan *Malta *Ryukyu Islands *Sicily *Singapore *Taiwan *Philippine Islands | valign="top" | *Caspian Sea *Caucasus *Fergana Valley *Flanders *Hindu Kush *Iraq *Kashmir *Kuwait *Mississippi Delta *Mitteleuropa *Moldavia *Morocco *Nile Delta *Nova Scotia *Palestine (region) Palestine *Provence *Rhine River Valley *Ruhr Area Ruhr Valley *Steppe *Transoxiana |}

Further reading
*Brzezinski, Zbigniew. ''The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives.'' New York: Basic Books, 1997. *Gray, Colin S. and Geoffrey Sloan. ''Geopolitics, Geography and Stategy.'' Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999. *Mackinder, Halford J. ''Democratic Ideals and Reality.'' Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996. *Mahan, Alfred Thayer. ''The Problem of Asia: Its Effects Upon International Politics.'' New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003.

External links
To be written... Category:Geopolitics es:Geoestrategia fr:Géostratégie it:Geostrategia zh:战略学

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