The Encyclopedia Britannica defines geopolitics is “analysis of the geographic influences on power relationships in international relations”[1], whilst the Cambridge dictionary is providing two definitions of the term: as “the study of the way a country’s size, position, etc. influence its power and its relationships with other countries” and as “political activity as influenced by the physical features of a country or area of the world”.[2]
The Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis provides the definition of an American geographer, Saul Bernard Cohen who defined geopolitics as interaction between geographical features, patterns and visions, on the one side, and political processes, both local and international ones. Geographical settings as well as political processes are dynamic and mutually influenced by each another. Generally, geopolitics examines the outcomes and aftermaths of those interactions.[3]
The first to use the term of “geopolitics” was Swedish geographer and political scientist Rudolf Kjellen (1864-1922) in 1898. Kjellen was a professor of history and political science at the University of Uppsalla and Goteborg University. However, he was an active participant in politics, he held a seat in parliament, and his politics were distinguished by an underlying Germanophilic orientation. Kjellen was not a professional geographer, but he developed the basics of geopolitics as part of political science. Both him and his counterpart, German geographer Friedrich Ratzel, were the proponents of the “organic state” theory and “compared the state with a living organism that, in order to develop, must extend its space and constantly expand”.[4] In accordance to this idea, Kjellen has defined the geopolitics as “a study of the state as a geographic organism or phenomenon is space; that is as a land, territory, area, or, most pregnantly, as a country”.[5] Kjellen’s most important work on geopolitics was Staaten som Lifsform, (trans. “Der Staat als Lebensform”, 1917), in which he had developed the “concept of a state as a living organism engaged in a perpetual struggle for geographical space – a repository of all resources- since in the struggle for life among the states only the fittest and the most powerful survive”, led to the popularization of the term “geopolitik” outside the Sweden and soon entered German popular language.[6] Kjellen viewed the geopolitics as one of five major disciplines for understanding the state alongside with Demopolitik – the politics of population; politics of society named Sociopolitik; Oekopolitik[7] (economy/economic resources of a state), and governmental and Constitutional politics called Kratopolitik. For Kjellen, the greatest asset of a strong state was its territory and, as such, geopolitik (geography of state) was the most developed among all political processes. If former were more theoretical in their nature and concerned how a state could and/or should be, geopolitics had shown how actually it is. [8] These five disciplines, in Kjellen’s view, were the main hallmarks or steps in analyzing a state.
[1] Deudney, Daniel. “Geopolitics”. Encyclopedia Britannica, http://global.britannica.com/topic/geopolitics [20.03.2016]. [2] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/geopolitics [20.03.2016]. [3] Saul Bernard Cohen, Geopolitics of the World System, (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., Maryland, 2003), 12. [4] Kinga Smolen. “Evolution of Geopolitical Schools of Thought”, Maria Curie – Sklodowska University of Lublin, vol. 7 (2012): 6. [5] Rudolf Kjellen, Der Staat als Lebensform, Leipzig: Hirzel, 1917 quoted by Pascal Venier, Main Theoretical Currents in Geopolitical Thought in the Twentieth Century, L’Espace Politique, vol. 12 (2010). DOI : 10.4000/espacepolitique.1714. [6] Ramesh Dutta Dikshit, Political Geography: The Spatiality of Politics, 3rd edition, (New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Company LTD, 2000), 25. [7] age. [8] Gerard Toal, “Critical Geopolitics and Development Theory: Intensifying the Dialogue”. Institute of British Geographers. vol. 19 no. 2, (1994): 228-233 quoted by Mattew David Greenwood, International Aid and the Geopolitical Imagination after the Cold War: A Case Study of Development Aims and Aid Policies for post-Soviet Russia, (Master’s Thesis, Durham University, 2010), 10-12.
