On Geopolitics

Space, Place, and International Relations

Harvey Starr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138678941
• eBook ISBN: 9781317255178
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

On Geopolitics shows how the 'new geopolitics' combines the fields of geography and international relations to create a comprehensive overview of current political developments. Using recent developments in geographical technology as well as traditional theories and methods, Harvey Starr explores themes of spatiality and territoriality as they connect to international affairs. He also examines geopolitical dynamics beyond borders in a world now buffeted by non state actors and subject to intergovernmental institutions and norms. On Geopolitics is a brilliant synthesis of Starr's ongoing work on conflict and co-operation, alliances, opportunity, and willingness, within a geographic framework. At the same time, Starr points the way toward new tools and techniques for the study of globalisation and world politics.

CHAPTER 1

GEOGRAPHY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Basic Assumptions and Interests

The study of international relations (or international politics, or world politics) sits at the convergence of human inquiry that crosses both time and space. In terms of time, analysts fall back on the seeming simplicity of locating events and explanations in the past, the present, or the future. Without such apparently simple categories, spatial or geographic elements have not been as frequently used to locate analysis. Yet, as geographers are always willing to tell us, no matter where you go, there you are.

Geography is inextricably intertwined with the study of international relations as one of the two primary components to the context within which events and explanations occur (and let’s be sure to throw in description, understanding, and prediction as well!): time and space. For example, Anthony Giddens (1984, 132) argues that contextuality involves the notion that, “All social life occurs in, and is constituted by, intersections of presence and absence in the ‘fading away’ of time and the ‘shading off of space.’” And theory, which drives our questions, our research designs, and the nature of our inquiry, must take context into account—with the utility and applicability of all theory being conditional.¹ Geography is also inextricably intertwined with the multi-disciplinarity required to study international relations, as well as with scholars’ need to cross boundaries in order to do so. These are the key themes upon which this book rests.

I think it is important to begin with two (hopefully non-controversial) considerations. The first is that the substance and study of international relations are concerned with the basic questions of politics in the sense of Harold Lasswell’s famous definition: “who gets what, when and how.” That is, we are concerned with authority and power, in both their institutionalized and informal structures and processes, and their variety of outcomes and consequences for states and non-state international actors alike. To deal with this definition without the geographic or spatial context would be grossly incomplete. This book will address a number of the ways in which international relations may be joined to geography, both theoretically and empirically.

The second observation is that the study of international relations is, by nature, a multidisciplinary enterprise. As students of international relations range across levels of analysis (from the global system to the idiosyncrasies of individuals) and a complex of issue areas and problems, they encounter the phenomena and foci of many academic disciplines. Indeed, many current approaches to the analysis of international politics, in the words of Bear Braumoeller, reflect “theories that posit complex causation, or multiple causal paths” (2003, 209). Our concern with multi-disciplinarity and geography may be approached using Davis Bobrow’s (1972, 4) two imaginary visits to the international relations (IR) section of a library. Even in a 1946 visit, the IR collection would cover several disciplines, composed of materials from political science, history, and law. Although the same disciplines are also represented in Bobrow’s 1972 trip, he finds a number of fields have been added: economics, psychology, sociology, organizational behavior, cybernetics, operations research, systems analysis, and general systems theory. Note that a striking omission from both libraries is geography. In a pioneering piece on the relevance of the behavioral sciences to the study of international relations, J. David Singer (1961) discussed the need to give attention to the potential impact on international relations theory of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. Although students of international relations were to benefit from the findings, concepts, and methods of these disciplines, once again geography was not included.

What might account for these omissions? The contributions of geography and the role of geopolitics in the study of international relations were thrown into disrepute as a consequence of some of the nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century geopolitical approaches having “promoted a very explicit ideological message, with a rather heavy load of pseudo-scientific dross,” as well as having been reductionist and determinist (Østerud 1988, 198). The content of German “Geopolitik,” based primarily on the Haushofer school, was perceived as a central component of Nazi ideology and contributed to a general questioning of geopolitical theory. The ideological component was related, in part, to the strongly deterministic nature of many geopolitical approaches. However, a “new geography,” which developed in the last decades of the twentieth century, set out to be strictly anti-determinist, instead treating geography as one essential part of the context of possibilities and constraints that face foreign policy decision makers. Pioneers in this approach were the international relations scholars, Harold and Margaret Sprout, who characterized environmental determinism as follows:

In practice, strict environmental determinism has generally referred to the thesis that some set of environmental factors, less than the total milieu, is sufficient to account for … both the psychological behavior of human beings and the empirical outcomes of their undertakings. Applied rigorously, this philosophical posture envisages man as a sort of chip in the stream of history. He is borne along by a current which he is incapable of resisting, within a channel from which he cannot escape. (1965, 48)

From many examples provided in the Sprouts’ various writings, two provide the flavor of determinist thinking. Richard von Kuhlmann, a German diplomat, is quoted as follows:

geographical position and historical development are so largely determining factors of foreign policy that, regardless of the kaleidoscopic change of contemporary events, and no matter what form of government has been instituted or what political party may be in power, the foreign policy of a country has a natural tendency to return again and again to the same general and fundamental alignment. (Sprout and Sprout 1969, 41)

More starkly, the French historian-geographer Edmond Demolins, was cited (Sprout and Sprout 1971, 268) as observing that “if the history of mankind began again and the present surface of the earth were unchanged, that history would be repeated in its essential design.”

The resurgence of interest in geography and spatial approaches to international relations over the past several decades has been based on a conception of geography that has replaced determinism with “possibilism,” as clearly represented in the work of the Sprouts and in my own agent-structure framework of “opportunity and willingness” (Starr 1978). The possibilism of the Sprouts has been the basis for my development of the opportunity-willingness framework. I join with geographers in arguing that geography does not necessarily have a distinctive subject matter, but rather is a perspective on how context affects behavior. Based on my past work, I will argue that the context-behavior mode of thinking—linking micro-phenomena to macro-contexts—best joins political and geographic perspectives (see also Flint 2012).

A Personal Journey across Time and Space

Much of my own work has addressed questions that fit within this broad geopolitical perspective. Beginning with the development of the opportunity and willingness framework, I have engaged in collaborative research that has sought both to refine agency (willingness) and structure (opportunity) as well as to specify the relationships between them. Opportunity and willingness have also been clarified through efforts to operationalize them in the study of international relations. These investigations include the study of the diffusion of international phenomena, especially violent conflict, but also the spread of democracy and spatial aspects of cooperation. Undoubtedly, the central feature of my work has been a focus on the nature and effects of spatial proximity as operationalized by international borders.

Thus, I have a long-standing interest in combining opportunity and willingness, context, spatiality, and geopolitics. It would be useful, then, to provide a brief account of my own journey across time to get to where I am today (this place). Taking the title of the well-known book by geographers John Agnew and James Duncan (1989) The Power of Place literally, we need to start in New Haven from 1967 to 1971 where I went to graduate school. At one point Bruce Russett exhorted Yale graduate students to attend a presentation by Walter Isard, the founder of what is now the Peace Science Society (International), and whose articles we had read, and meet him afterward. Isard was trained as an economist and became the founder of the field of “regional science,” incorporating geography and location theory with economics and economic development (see Boyce and Miller 2011). I had come to graduate school with a strong background in history (and thus a proper respect for the temporal context). As part of my graduate course work I had taken an international relations theory course from Russett, where I was introduced to the work of Harold and Margaret Sprout. Through their concept of the “ecological triad” (entity, environment, and the entity-environment relationship) their work sensitized me to the need to contextualize behavior and to be concerned with how the context or “milieu” (to use the Sproutian term) was linked to the environed entity.

Within this background (or context!), Walter Isard’s discussion of regional science, with its geoeconomics focus, resonated even more sharply with me. Whereas my dissertation research on war coalitions stressed the temporal context, one of the key dependent variables was the loss or gain of territory. In a follow-up study of how war coalition partners chose future allies and enemies, again the temporal dimension was dominant, but contiguity was now considered as a major factor in dyadic behavior. A concern with conflict led naturally to questions about how conflicts grew and the diffusion of conflict; and this led—naturally—to an investigation of spatial factors and geopolitics broadly defined. These questions became a career-long interest, evidenced by the study of diffusion of international phenomena. In the past two decades, my geopolitical research was some of the first by international relations scholars to use GIS (geographical information systems). I used GIS in order to reconceptualize borders and apply data generated from that reconceptualization to questions of international conflict and cooperation.²

In distinction from a number of scholars of geopolitics (usually “realists” studying national security policy in some form) who see the geopolitical context at least as enduring—if not immutable or deterministic—I have been concerned with the dynamism of that context. Foucault once commented that scholars saw space as “the dead, fixed … immobile” (Agnew and Duncan 1989, 1). I have, however, argued that space or the spatial dimension is dynamic and changing. The realist Colin Gray (1977, 1) once asserted that “Geography is the most fundamental factor in the foreign policy of states because it is the most permanent.” I argue that Gray’s assertion tells only part of the story. Geography is important not just because of its relative stability, but also because of its role in shaping the dynamics of opportunities and risks. Geography affects the changing perceptions of the possibilities and probabilities provided by the environment. Although geography—in terms of topography or the absolute distance between two points, for example—is relatively stable, technological change or political change (such as that brought about by the creation or dissolution of alliances) alters the meaning and impact of geography on interaction opportunity and the structure of incentives and risks.

Crossing Boundaries

In my view, scholars—not only in international relations but across the subfields of political science—have pursued research more fruitfully when their theory and research designs “cross boundaries” of various kinds (see Starr 2006). Boundaries can indicate the limits of some set of phenomena; such simplification and specification can be valuable in the development of theory, concepts, and research design. However, boundaries too often loom as barriers, which can hinder how we think and theorize about phenomena and how we study the world about us. As analysts, we must be conscious of artificial boundaries or barriers that constrain our thinking and be just as conscious of finding ways to promote fertile theory and effective research design. In this sense, we should think of crossing boundaries as a synthesizing device that helps us in organizing theory and research.

The multiple, complex causal paths noted above have been generated by the realization that many, if not most, important questions in international relations have blurred the distinction between international relations and comparative politics. Both the external and internal contexts of states and other actors must be taken into account. Analysts have come to recognize and deal with the two-level nature of international phenomena and the network of internal-external linkages. To do so successfully we must cross boundaries. Included in this enterprise is the need to cross levels of analysis, to cross sub-disciplines, and, indeed, to cross disciplinary boundaries. Both external and internal contexts demand that we take advantage of other social science disciplines. In this volume, we will focus on the spatial context and the geographic factors that are important for understanding the choices of decision makers and the consequences of those choices—decision makers who sit within the internal environments of their states or other organizations, as well as within the international or global environment.

The Ecological Triad, Opportunity and Willingness, and Interaction Opportunity

A boundary-crossing approach is inherent in the opportunity and willingness framework. This framework, in turn, owes much to the ideas of the Sprouts. It would not be unfair to characterize a major thrust of the work of Harold and Margaret Sprout as an attempt to counter previous deterministic views and uses of geography. Although not the only perspective on geopolitics nor the only scholars to present that perspective, the Sprouts’ version of possibilism has held a central place in the study of international relations.³ Indeed, a group of “new geographers” concerned with the impact of geographic context has formed around the basic framework of Sproutian possibilism.

The Sproutian “ecological triad” is the mechanism by which we join politics and geography. This triad is composed of an entity, its environment, and the entity-environment relationship. The advantages of this framework derive from its applicability to any number of levels of analysis, and, thus, it crosses analysis boundaries. That is, whether the focus is on a single decision maker, a small group of decision makers, a foreign policy organization, a government as a whole, or the state as an international actor, the concept of the ecological triad argues that we need to look at the ongoing policy/choice processes within that entity, its context or environment, and then the interaction between the entity and the environment (see Friedman and Starr 1997). Determinism is only one form of the entity-environment relationship that could be hypothesized. However, it is a form in which the full causal force flows from the geographical environment to the human or institutional environed entities. In response to this model of the entity-environment relationship, the Sprouts argued the existence of alternatives where decision makers would be capable of making choices. One alternative was their construct of environmental possibilism, the central tenet of which

is that the initiative lies with man, not with the milieu which encompasses him. Possibilism rejects the idea of controls, or influences, pressing man along a road set by Nature or any other environing conditions. The milieu, in the possibilist doctrine, does not compel or direct man to do anything. The milieu is simply there…. In the possibilist doctrine, the milieu is conceived as a set of opportunities and limitations. (Sprout and Sprout 1965, 83)

In this view, the environment is seen as a number of factors that limit human opportunities and that constrain the types of action that can be taken as well as the consequences of that action. Although the limits set by the environment may be wide or narrow, it is assumed that the limitations are discoverable. Once these limitations are known to some degree, another form of entity-environment relationship comes into play: environmental probabilism. As the humans in the decision units of any entity view their environment, the characteristics of that environment provide cues as to the probability of certain outcomes. The environment presents the entity not only with what is possible, but with what choices would be more or less likely under those particular circumstances.

If possibilism rests on the most basic notions of choice, elaborated by probabilism, in that some choices will be made more or less likely, then there is one more component that is essential to the Sproutian alternative to determinism: cognitive behaviorism. This is “the simple and familiar principle that a person reacts to his milieu as he apperceives it—that is as he perceives and interprets it in light of past experience” (Sprout and Sprout 1969, 45). This “psychological milieu” is about how humans see the environment and their images of the environmental context. Thus, the entity-environment relationship depends on the perceptions of the entity—a conception of the entity-environment relationship as far removed from determinism as possible (and quite congenial with more recent “constructivist” approaches). The “real” world has an impact only after choices are made and an implementation attempt is sent out into that real world. Note, however, that even the “feedback” from the real world somehow must be perceived in order to be learned and to affect future choices.

It should now be clear how the set of entity-environment relationships proposed by the Sprouts provided the basis of the opportunity and willingness framework. I have argued that both opportunity (possibilism) and willingness (probabilism and cognitive behaviorism) are necessary for understanding behavior: the environment must be permissive, and the acting unit must choose. As a pre-theory, the opportunity-willingness framework forces an analyst to take all three component...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• 1 Geography and International Relations
• 2 Spaces and Places: The Power of Place and Spatial Analysis
• 3 Territory, Proximity, and the Geography of International Conflict
• 4 International Borders in an Age of Globalization
• 5 Alliances and Geopolitics
• 6 Geographic Tools: Geographic Information Systems Applied to International Politics
• 7 The Nature of Borders and Conflict
• 8 The Nature of Borders and Cooperation: Integration in the European Union
• 9 The Dynamism of Geography and Global Politics
• Notes
• References
• Credits
• Index
• About the Author