Geography and Political Power

The Geography of Nations and States

Peter M. Slowe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138957282
• eBook ISBN: 9781317341024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Focusing on the relationship between geography and power, this book, originally published in 1990, isolates five sources of political power – might, right, nationhood, legality and legitimacy – and demonstrtes the centrality of geography to the argument of each case. The author stresses the value of geographical expertise to political decision-making and illustrates this through the use of case—studies. His analysis of the sources of power goes deep into an understanding of politics and explores the implications for geography of political thought.

Chapter one

Power through might

Introduction

The aggressive use of brute force for conquest and domination is an important cause of change in the world’s geography. Political geography is obviously affected, but authoritarian governments and aggressive states have profound effects on economic and social geography as well. At the same time, geography itself influences those who take political decisions, and so a two-way relationship evolves. The aim of this chapter is to unravel the relationship between geography and political power which is based on force: ‘power through might’.

First, the chapter introduces the philosophy of power through might, which traces the thought which culminated in German geopolitical ideas and ultimately in Hitler’s doctrine of territory. Machiavelli, the philosophers of absolutism, and Utopian philosophers represent three traditions which, when applied, result in the domination of the state by one person or one elite group. Nietzsche, Treitschke, and the philosophers of Fascism attribute a personality to the state itself and it was this philosophy which lay behind the idea of a dominant state and behind ultimate German domination in Europe.

The second part of the chapter links philosophy to action through the philosophy of assertion applied to individuals and groups. There are three fields to consider. First, man’s individual aggression is important for there could be no conquest and no domination without it. Second, man’s aggression is all the more effective when he is a member of a group, such as a national or racial group. Third, a desire for power for its own sake, a desire for security, and a romantic yearning for glory are all shown to be crucial in turning ambitions and temperament into the battles and victories of aggressive wars. These are the wars without morality, the wars in which power is asserted through brute force.

Four main themes can be discerned where geography is related to the philosophy of power through might and the psychology of assertion. The first of these is geopolitics and Hitlerism; the case of Nazi Germany (case-study 1.1) looks at the role of geographers in the development of Nazi thought and the practice and consequence of Hitler’s geopolitics. The second theme is the more general aim of controlling territory for purposes of security and status. This is illustrated with reference to the Amazonas (case-study 1.2), including Brazilian geopolitics in theory and also in practice in Brazil’s internal frontier on the Amazon, and the importance of the empty Amazon Triangle to Ecuador and Peru which have twice been to war over it. The third theme arises from the current debate between socialists and neo-conservatives about the domination by an elite group in a state over its wider population, and there is no better example of indisputable elite domination than South Africa and Namibia (case-study 1.3). This includes the origins, theology, and economics of the apartheid system of white domination and its effect on Namibia. The fourth theme is individual and group aggression and this has obvious consequences in battle: the Western Front in the First World War (case-study 1.4) looks at methods of gaining territory in battle, especially in waves of attack, and at the way many people enjoy the fight. It also highlights how places where battles were fought and lives were lost become shrines for pilgrimage and memorials to glory in subsequent years.

Overall, this chapter shows that the assertion of power by the simple use of superior strength is a complex phenomenon rooted in a long history of philosophy and requiring a deep understanding of human psychology. This aggression has important effects on human geography, and geographical thought has profoundly influenced the politics of assertion.

The philosophy of power through might

Individual power within the state

Machiavelli is a good starting-point for looking at the philosophy of power through might. It is the ideas he proposed in The Prince at the end of the fifteenth century that lie at the basis of the concept of statecraft as a means of maintaining a central authority not necessarily by consent but rather by guile or force (Machiavelli 1961). The Prince was written at a time when the need for a strong central authority was felt by a rising bourgeoisie, and it was a time when the apparently natural morality of medieval ecclesiastical thinking was no longer universally accepted. It was a time which called for a kind of political realism where force is the essential characteristic of the state and the basis for all action. The accumulation of the means to use force and the actual use of force were therefore the fundamental values of politics. The new spirit of Machiavelli’s ruling class was enforcement, the enforcement of the will of the minority over the majority. People were either obstacles or instruments. These were not the values of the common man or of the peasantry, who were merely the masses to be inspired by a morality and by a religion to become useful instruments of authority.

Machiavelli was the first to link the existence of a system of states to political prudence. At a time when states were few and very fragile, their rulers were keen to develop the idea of the sovereign state that recognized no limits to its power within its boundaries. The ruler sits firmly at the peak of the hierarchy which overtly puts order before justice, since justice and humanity are only possible when essential authority is established – and it is not clear how complete that authority has to be. Order is the first concern of the state. The ruler is a supreme legislator above all laws. Law is first and foremost the instrument of authority of the ruler. The only limit to that authority is the territorial boundary of the state.

In the following two centuries, Calvin, Bodin, and Hobbes added some significant thought to the philosophy of state power. Calvin said relatively little about political structure, but his Institutes of the Christian Religion were important for their great influence and their emphasis on the citizen’s duty to obey while having certain liberties which should be respected by any wise authority (Calvin 1980). Bodin’s Six Livres de la République (1961) discussed further the natural liberty of the citizen but limited it still in the Machiavellian tradition of strong, unchallengeable, monarchical authority. Bodin was the strongest advocate of enlightened absolutism; absolutism limited by the natural freedom of individuals or self-limiting in the light of the implicit aim of keeping citizens happy. Hobbes’s ruler was extremely powerful, but in both De Cive and Leviathan he conceded great new personal liberties to citizens. These included religious freedom, educational freedom, and a whole range of liberties likely to enhance trade, peace, and good order (Hobbes 1949, 1968). All this contrasts with the more demanding totalitarian states advocated by, or implied by, influential Utopian philosophers.

Individuals play no part in Plato’s Utopia, a grim Republic with a strictly hierarchical and oligarchic rule; and Plato was the model for a school of philosophy which longed for an imposed regimented state (Plato 1955). Morelly in his Essay on the Human Spirit (de Foigny 1952), for example, noted that private property led to greed and misery, therefore private property should be abolished. Morelly planned a paradise, enforced by drastic penal laws, in which every unit of work and every individual had a controlled place. Saint-Simon, originator of the Saint-Simonian communes, backed this up with the argument that progress in the form of welfare, efficiency, prosperity, and the elimination of poverty can only be brought about by a society headed by men of industry and science who will, by nature, be decent and not tyrannical; any form of democracy is irrelevant (Manuel 1965).

As firmly in the totalitarian tradition as Plato, Morelly, and Saint-Simon were (if unwittingly) the power-from-below Utopians such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx. Admittedly, the desire to force history and geography into shape was not so overt, but it amounted in practice to much the same thing.

Rousseau declared that liberty consists less in doing one’s own will than in not being subject to the will of another; yet his obsession with the ‘general will’ (which represents what people actually want rather than what they think they want, and which can only be understood by a great ruler) leads inevitably to totalitarianism – for example the enforcement of a new religion (Rousseau 1968a). Hegel’s Philosophy of Right leads the same way by another path; Hegel gave the state primacy over individuals; he argued that in the end individuals will wish to surrender their liberty because the legal status of one man is interwoven with the rights of everyone else, and so individuality is best subsumed to the will of an undemocratic and very powerful state with just a few safeguards such as the guaranteeing of some religious freedom (Hegel 1942). Arguably, Marx follows a similar line when he alludes to post-revolutionary administration, a kind of arbitrary rule in which safeguards will no longer be necessary because man will have reached a higher stage of society (Marx 1981, vol. 3).

Three main trends of thought are discernible in the discussion so far: absolutism, Utopia imposed from above, and Utopia inevitably achieved by ordinary individuals acting together in the collective interest. Three influential sets of philosophies lent support to the idea of rulers asserting power over the ruled. Machiavelli and Hegel in different ways placed this assertion in the context of the state; Machiavelli laid the ground rule that the state is the most effective sphere of operations for the assertive ruler; and Hegel lent the state a mystical supremacy over the individuals who live in it. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this idea of the state developed until it inevitably spilt over into the analogy of state for individual; thus, before, individuals were naturally suppressed by other assertive individuals but, now, states would be equally naturally suppressed by other states as well.

State power within the community of states

The state was transformed by nineteenth-century philosophers like Nietzsche and Treitschke from something that was primarily practical into a cultural world theory. The state was a superior entity for which sacrifice was right and proper. There was a contempt for concepts like compassion or pity which might inhibit the assertion of the state over individuals; the weak and inferior had to go to the wall for the sake of the state. Nietzsche’s superman had the power to keep the masses in order, to ensure a self-sufficient state with enough people and enough land, and a will to ensure that everyone fulfilled his obligation to the state. The state was above the struggles of society, a tangible power demanding service and sacrifice in return for protection and glory (Nietzsche 1961; Treitschke 1963).

It was the philosophers of Fascism, principally Gentile, d’Annunzio, Michels, and le Bon, who refined the philosophy of the twentieth-century assertive state. They built into their analyses three principal concepts: popular culture, natural law, and self-fulfilment through the state.

First, popular culture included the instincts that people were supposed to have in favour of national traditions, family bonds, and a sense of belonging to definite groups (particularly if the latter were associated with some idea of traditional morality). Popular culture was about positive action rather than dogma, preferring liturgical catch-phrase to discussion. The philosophers of Fascism built these crowd instincts into their political philosophy. In German philosophy, they added a kind of overawed but passive appreciation of past creativity; there was something of the tradition of Kant and Goethe in the idolization of past cultural works as if they were divine revelations. This approach was later developed more or less to absurdity in Spain by the Fascist philosopher Primo de Rivera. According to Fascist theory, popular culture is shared among all non-deviant citizens. They are a Volk with a common goal. They call for government with a leader who has activated their will through his own energy.

Second, Arendt (1967) identified the crux of Fascist philosophy as being the way it subsumed every individual interest to natural law. Fascism made a conscious break with positive law in favour of natural law. The discrepancy between legality and justice could thus be neatly overcome, not by divinity as in the past, but by nature and history. If man were subject to overwhelming natural or historical processes which made him subject to his state and his leader, then the whole field of human law-making would be reduced to a matter of convenient regulations for day-to-day life.

Third, perhaps the most effective point of Fascist philosophy was that man, alienated in bourgeois society, could only fulfil himself through the state. Man was robbed of his individuality in industrial society. Fascism could recapture the whole man, channelling the individual will to the service of the state which in turn expressed, through its leadership, what citizens were really feeling and gave its citizens what they really wanted. They could not express these things for themselves because they were suppressed, alienated, and atomized, but the state could express it for them and thus indirectly provide them with fulfilment (Fermi 1961; Gregor 1969; Michels 1915; Thomas 1972).

Conclusion

From medieval absolutism through Utopianism and the development of the Fascist state, a philosophy has developed which justifies the use of naked force by individuals over other individuals, by minorities over majorities, by one leader over all, by state over civil society, and by one state over others. It is a philosophy with a very simple view of people and society. It is a philosophy of aggression, force, and strength. It is a philosophy of assertion.

The psychology of power through might

Individual aggression

All the philosophy of assertion and aggression is as a grain of sand in the desert if man is not – or, at least, if some men are not – naturally assertive and aggressive. Is assertion natural? Is aggression natural? Is violence natural? If so, the psychology will combine with the philosophy to produce a violent world. Violence, aggression, and war may most commonly have their background in clear causes, and these are discussed in subsequent chapters. But there are also human traits, which are the concern of this section, which specifically develop the philosophy of aggression into acts of violence and war.

St Augustine, Luther, and Swift had no doubt about the natural evil of man – his violent aggression was symptomatic of the Fall. Their views, typical of their time, were firmly based on strong biblical belief rather than conventional argument (Augustine 1961; Ebeling 1970; Swift 1939).

It is probably more helpful to see man as a bizarre mixture of passion and reason, following Spinoza. Man is just a bundle of virtues and vices to be worked on and moulded by a variety of forces (Hampshire 1951). Marx, Morelly, Plato, Rousseau, and Saint-Simon would all happily go along with this idea. Man can be changed and perfected, and war can then be avoided for ever.

Great psychologists have gone down the same path as the Utopians. People just need treatment. Strachey in The Unconscious Motives of War (1957) said the hierarchical pattern of family social life frustrated children, who consequently learnt aggression at an early age, ripening them for war. Kluckhohn (1950) wrote about the central problem of peace as being a need ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• General introduction
• 1. Power through might
• 2. Power through right
• 3. Power through nationhood
• 4. Power through legality
• 5. Power through legitimacy
• General conclusion
• References
• Index