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The Geopolitics Reader
This book offers an interdisciplinary collection of the most important political, geographical, historical and sociological readings surrounding geopolitics.
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First published December 18, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 2, 2017
This book was so confusing that I had to find a short review/summary of it to understand at the beginning. It was a part of my literature for my geopolitics class so I had to read separate parts for different things that's why it took this long to finish it, even though it is easy to read through it. I did find it quite interesting and it certainly offered good insight in the empirical part of geopolitics
May 15, 2020
The book is a collection of papers and texts written during the XX Century, in which the authors tried to postulate their ideas, thesis and comments regarding the geo-political situation of their days or on geo-politics itself. The first edition covers the XX Century until the aftermath of the golf crisis in the 90s. It is divided into 5 Parts: 3 spanning chronologically through imperial Europe's ending years at the beginning of the XX Century and until the second world war (Imperial geo-politics); the cold war and the geo-politics of the post cold-war World (New world order geo-politics or contemporary geopolitics, albeit just covering until the end of the cetury); the 2 last parts focusing on different paths on the understanding of contemporary geo-politics: The Environmental geopolitics and the anti-geopolitics.
The first part presents the reader with the prospects of ideas coming from some politics and academics fro the first half of the XX Century. Their thoughts permeated into their political leaders, influencing their geographical view of the world and justifying the European expansionism well into the second world war. Academics like Mackinder (Britsh) and Haushofer (German) developed theories of power, that will finally be used by the politicians of their countries to justify their wars and their sovereignty over other less developed states and peoples. Here the position of the US towards the expansionism policies of the European empires and the insights of Hitler and his early Thoughts on eastern Europe are presented in order to help the reader understand the views of the world, that by 1940 the major powers of the world held and ultimately lead to the world wars.
The second part concentrates on the geo-politics of the cold war, both from the USA and from the USSR, the two main superpowers, that converted the world into a field of different chips, in which each had to chose a side, either willingly or how we saw for many unfortunate events, by means of force. The Truman doctrine and the long telegram of Kennan came in the aftermath of WW2 and made America the land that had to fought for the liberty, democracy and self-determination of the weaker states against the treacherous and despicable USSR totalitarianism and communism. The soviets in turn, written by the hand of Andrei Zhandov saw the capitalist big powers including US and GB as imperialist and anti-democratic, viewing the Truman doctrine as their attempt to impose their views on the world by any mean necessary. The next articles in this chapter focus on the different ideology developments made from the US or the USSR during the cold war against each other and some comments from each side on these views, culminating with Gorbachev and his decision of ending the military control over the other communist states, ushering the end of the cold war and allowing many oppressed states to political and economical independence from the USSR.
The third part compiles different views on the next set of ideas that authors took to describe the world and the new political currents on a world without the ideological war and the dichotomy of the US and the USSR. On one side there is a belief that the "US ideology" of "freedom and democracy" won this war and that this would be at last implemented everywhere, marking the "end of the history" or of geopolitics in the broader sense of the fight for the right "model". The US on the other hand had to find new threads from the other corners of the world in order to justify its military spending and structure, this lead finally to the new view of terrorist states and of "rogue nations", those that the US had to fight in order to achieve peace and tranquillity for its people, this new view of the world culminated, or better said initiated with the invasion of Iraq and the gulf crisis, this vision of course we know is how US operates today and was only reinforced by 9/11, tho the book does not come so far in time. Other authors believe there will be a rise in the power and theories of geo-economics, being this the new driving force to the world's international relations and conflicts as the use of military power and force would have lost its role.
The two final parts of the book concentrates on relative new writings, in which alternative views of geo-politics are presented, those in which the environment and the societies from below will determine the coming world's international relations and source of conflict. From the environmental point of view the nature and the environment is presented as an amalgamation of resources. This resources could be scare, prompting different communities or states into violence or migration, destabilising economies and igniting racial and political conflict. In this environmental thread some authors believe that the Environment has to be taken into the cannon of topics to deal with in order to preserve national security. From the "Anti-politics" point of view, these new politics could be conceived as an ethical, political and cultural force within civil society that challenges the notion that the interest of the state’s political class are identical to the community interest. Then on these ideas presenting different views of world politics, presented from different individuals in order to criticise or challenge, US and leading power's policies, as it was the anti-war movement in the US and new understandings of the "orient" as the opposing cultures of the "west".
Many texts presented in this book are very interesting, but generally there is a lack of cohesion uniting these texts, specially in the last 3 parts. The introductions to each section and the conclusion attempts to create this logical cohesion between the texts and to comment on the personal opinion of the author regarding each topic; but at the end, the different articles could be read in parts, in different orders or not at all, and many ideas from the editor of the book would still reach the reader.
Something very frustrating is the clear subjectivity that appears to be endemic of geo-political thinking and of its proponents, as many have said, these "science" is more an empirical science, being performed and changed with the pace of time by politics and statesman(and women), and in their views it is clear how the protection of power of the "first" world is clearly defined by the European and american self-image of civilised, advanced and correct. One proof of these being the separation of the world politic currents in two headed by the US or the USSR, without deepening in the thousand ethical, economical and historical paths that so many nations take besides their interest in communism or capitalism. Most of these theories and postulates where proposed and implemented by the very same white and European race, erasing the validity and importance on many more other cultures, ways and motives perusing different political agendas.
"The geopolitical imagination has been frequently coupled to assertions of cultural superiority and ideological rectitude in the form of various articulations of moral certainty. The dangers of ethnocentrism, when coupled with geopolitical reasoning, are greatest precisely where they assert strategic certainty in ways that prevent analysis of social, political ad economical interactions that would lead sometimes to place the problem on the “us”. -Simon Dalby 1996 in his "Reading of Robert Kaplans "coming anarchy".
The first part presents the reader with the prospects of ideas coming from some politics and academics fro the first half of the XX Century. Their thoughts permeated into their political leaders, influencing their geographical view of the world and justifying the European expansionism well into the second world war. Academics like Mackinder (Britsh) and Haushofer (German) developed theories of power, that will finally be used by the politicians of their countries to justify their wars and their sovereignty over other less developed states and peoples. Here the position of the US towards the expansionism policies of the European empires and the insights of Hitler and his early Thoughts on eastern Europe are presented in order to help the reader understand the views of the world, that by 1940 the major powers of the world held and ultimately lead to the world wars.
The second part concentrates on the geo-politics of the cold war, both from the USA and from the USSR, the two main superpowers, that converted the world into a field of different chips, in which each had to chose a side, either willingly or how we saw for many unfortunate events, by means of force. The Truman doctrine and the long telegram of Kennan came in the aftermath of WW2 and made America the land that had to fought for the liberty, democracy and self-determination of the weaker states against the treacherous and despicable USSR totalitarianism and communism. The soviets in turn, written by the hand of Andrei Zhandov saw the capitalist big powers including US and GB as imperialist and anti-democratic, viewing the Truman doctrine as their attempt to impose their views on the world by any mean necessary. The next articles in this chapter focus on the different ideology developments made from the US or the USSR during the cold war against each other and some comments from each side on these views, culminating with Gorbachev and his decision of ending the military control over the other communist states, ushering the end of the cold war and allowing many oppressed states to political and economical independence from the USSR.
The third part compiles different views on the next set of ideas that authors took to describe the world and the new political currents on a world without the ideological war and the dichotomy of the US and the USSR. On one side there is a belief that the "US ideology" of "freedom and democracy" won this war and that this would be at last implemented everywhere, marking the "end of the history" or of geopolitics in the broader sense of the fight for the right "model". The US on the other hand had to find new threads from the other corners of the world in order to justify its military spending and structure, this lead finally to the new view of terrorist states and of "rogue nations", those that the US had to fight in order to achieve peace and tranquillity for its people, this new view of the world culminated, or better said initiated with the invasion of Iraq and the gulf crisis, this vision of course we know is how US operates today and was only reinforced by 9/11, tho the book does not come so far in time. Other authors believe there will be a rise in the power and theories of geo-economics, being this the new driving force to the world's international relations and conflicts as the use of military power and force would have lost its role.
The two final parts of the book concentrates on relative new writings, in which alternative views of geo-politics are presented, those in which the environment and the societies from below will determine the coming world's international relations and source of conflict. From the environmental point of view the nature and the environment is presented as an amalgamation of resources. This resources could be scare, prompting different communities or states into violence or migration, destabilising economies and igniting racial and political conflict. In this environmental thread some authors believe that the Environment has to be taken into the cannon of topics to deal with in order to preserve national security. From the "Anti-politics" point of view, these new politics could be conceived as an ethical, political and cultural force within civil society that challenges the notion that the interest of the state’s political class are identical to the community interest. Then on these ideas presenting different views of world politics, presented from different individuals in order to criticise or challenge, US and leading power's policies, as it was the anti-war movement in the US and new understandings of the "orient" as the opposing cultures of the "west".
Many texts presented in this book are very interesting, but generally there is a lack of cohesion uniting these texts, specially in the last 3 parts. The introductions to each section and the conclusion attempts to create this logical cohesion between the texts and to comment on the personal opinion of the author regarding each topic; but at the end, the different articles could be read in parts, in different orders or not at all, and many ideas from the editor of the book would still reach the reader.
Something very frustrating is the clear subjectivity that appears to be endemic of geo-political thinking and of its proponents, as many have said, these "science" is more an empirical science, being performed and changed with the pace of time by politics and statesman(and women), and in their views it is clear how the protection of power of the "first" world is clearly defined by the European and american self-image of civilised, advanced and correct. One proof of these being the separation of the world politic currents in two headed by the US or the USSR, without deepening in the thousand ethical, economical and historical paths that so many nations take besides their interest in communism or capitalism. Most of these theories and postulates where proposed and implemented by the very same white and European race, erasing the validity and importance on many more other cultures, ways and motives perusing different political agendas.
"The geopolitical imagination has been frequently coupled to assertions of cultural superiority and ideological rectitude in the form of various articulations of moral certainty. The dangers of ethnocentrism, when coupled with geopolitical reasoning, are greatest precisely where they assert strategic certainty in ways that prevent analysis of social, political ad economical interactions that would lead sometimes to place the problem on the “us”. -Simon Dalby 1996 in his "Reading of Robert Kaplans "coming anarchy".
July 7, 2010
pretty cool. not a place to start whatsoever, but it's good to look at original sources like these
to be read in seperate bits
to be read in seperate bits
January 10, 2023
I found this book while reading the footnotes in someone’s research paper.
The book I reviewed is the 2nd Edition, 2006.
This book consists of five parts, 36 sections. I call them sections because they are not complete chapters per se. The authors stated goal of The Geopolitics Reader is to foster critical thinking about the history and contemporary forms of geopolitical discourse. The key to this sentence is the last word – discourse.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes discourse as: a formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject; interchange of ideas; a mode of organizing knowledge, ideas or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts (such as history or institutions. The authors define it as: the representational practices by which cultures creatively constitute meaningful worlds. The authors also call this “worlding” since geopolitics is a discourse with a distinctive “world” view – ambitions. They note that the reader must be attentive to how global space is labeled, metaphors are deployed and visual images are used in this process of making stories and images of world politics – geopolitics.
The Reader is organized into five parts, two that address geopolitics historically, two that address geopolitics in the present – that is as of 2008 and one that looks at resistance to geopolitics.
Part one of the Reader is the shortest and the authors admittedly state that they were selective in what essays, interpretations and theories they chose to retain or exclude. Each Part has an introduction to the readings in that Part. The introductions place the readings in their historical and geographical contexts and discuss the significance. The authors state that in an effort to promote critical thinking, they have organized the Reader around a set of intellectual arguments.
The authors state that some may charge that the reader is biased and unbalanced. They also state that charges of bias are relative. They then go on to use Fox news and Rupert Murdochs News Corp as examples of chauvinism. I read nor saw, any references to the same bias in CNN, CBS, ABC or MSNBC.
The authors appear to take the charges of bias personal and declare that charges of bias are anti-intellectualism – a reference to Richard Hofstadter. I wish to state that my personal opinion is that at best, the authors are less than objective in how they treat each Part, Section and interpretation; at worst, with the examples and references they use are extremely biased and are hard left-wing leaning.
My personal caution is that this reader is meant for a very mature and discerning audience. A professional and subject matter expert audience that can be intentional about author implicit and underlying interpretations and analysis. I would recommend this book as a reference in order to understand how academia has and is using its position to promote real anti-intellectualism by disguising and promoting it’s the Reader as objective promotion of critical analysis.
By way of example, in the introduction to the Chapter, the authors use two statements made by Mackinder (Pivot/Heartland Theory) as the basis for a 5 page introduction and analysis. The author infers Mackinder’s world view using a secondary source (Kearnes 1985, 2003). This is all rather astonishing as they also include Mackinder’s complete essay The Geographical Pivot of History.
All in all this book has the primary source documents from the original authors – Mackinder, T.R. Roosevelt, Haushofer, Adolf Hitler, Truman, Kennan, Brezhnev, Zhadanov. Contemporary sources include Osama Bin Laden, Fukuyama, Said, Thomas P.M Barnett, Robert D. Kaplan, et. al..
This Reader is a great reference source of original thought and essays by original authors. I caution readers to pay very intentional attention to the analytical narratives and introductions the authors of the Reader present.
The book I reviewed is the 2nd Edition, 2006.
This book consists of five parts, 36 sections. I call them sections because they are not complete chapters per se. The authors stated goal of The Geopolitics Reader is to foster critical thinking about the history and contemporary forms of geopolitical discourse. The key to this sentence is the last word – discourse.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes discourse as: a formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject; interchange of ideas; a mode of organizing knowledge, ideas or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts (such as history or institutions. The authors define it as: the representational practices by which cultures creatively constitute meaningful worlds. The authors also call this “worlding” since geopolitics is a discourse with a distinctive “world” view – ambitions. They note that the reader must be attentive to how global space is labeled, metaphors are deployed and visual images are used in this process of making stories and images of world politics – geopolitics.
The Reader is organized into five parts, two that address geopolitics historically, two that address geopolitics in the present – that is as of 2008 and one that looks at resistance to geopolitics.
Part one of the Reader is the shortest and the authors admittedly state that they were selective in what essays, interpretations and theories they chose to retain or exclude. Each Part has an introduction to the readings in that Part. The introductions place the readings in their historical and geographical contexts and discuss the significance. The authors state that in an effort to promote critical thinking, they have organized the Reader around a set of intellectual arguments.
The authors state that some may charge that the reader is biased and unbalanced. They also state that charges of bias are relative. They then go on to use Fox news and Rupert Murdochs News Corp as examples of chauvinism. I read nor saw, any references to the same bias in CNN, CBS, ABC or MSNBC.
The authors appear to take the charges of bias personal and declare that charges of bias are anti-intellectualism – a reference to Richard Hofstadter. I wish to state that my personal opinion is that at best, the authors are less than objective in how they treat each Part, Section and interpretation; at worst, with the examples and references they use are extremely biased and are hard left-wing leaning.
My personal caution is that this reader is meant for a very mature and discerning audience. A professional and subject matter expert audience that can be intentional about author implicit and underlying interpretations and analysis. I would recommend this book as a reference in order to understand how academia has and is using its position to promote real anti-intellectualism by disguising and promoting it’s the Reader as objective promotion of critical analysis.
By way of example, in the introduction to the Chapter, the authors use two statements made by Mackinder (Pivot/Heartland Theory) as the basis for a 5 page introduction and analysis. The author infers Mackinder’s world view using a secondary source (Kearnes 1985, 2003). This is all rather astonishing as they also include Mackinder’s complete essay The Geographical Pivot of History.
All in all this book has the primary source documents from the original authors – Mackinder, T.R. Roosevelt, Haushofer, Adolf Hitler, Truman, Kennan, Brezhnev, Zhadanov. Contemporary sources include Osama Bin Laden, Fukuyama, Said, Thomas P.M Barnett, Robert D. Kaplan, et. al..
This Reader is a great reference source of original thought and essays by original authors. I caution readers to pay very intentional attention to the analytical narratives and introductions the authors of the Reader present.
March 11, 2019
A decent collection of readings as a geopolitical primer, but the interjections by the editors were very opinionated, even on the understandably left-leaning liberal arts spectrum
September 11, 2013
Geroid O Tuathail’s “The Geopolitics Reader” is a grating attack against conventional geopolitical theory, a time-tested method of foreign policy analysis that studies the relationship between geography and political power. This collection of monotonous academic essays and other irate rants, including the 2002 Osama bin Laden love letter to America, is frequently fueled by unsupportable statements and loosely developed theories. However, getting past the author’s hatefully anti-conservative tone and agenda, the book’s shrill disagreements offer few, if any, clear and coherently spelled out alternatives to modern geopolitics and our current leadership. Outside of our university system, no free market on earth would consider charging the ridiculously over-the-top $56.71 for this flimsy paperback crammed full of previously published marginal writings.
January 12, 2014
'The Geopolitics Reader' is basically a textbook. Before each chapter the author provides excellent summaries of the time period being discussed. He also gives cogent context to the primary documents and primary sources discussed. The books beings with readings from the first German geopolitical thinkers and ends with the post-cold war leaders and thinkers. I found the first several readings especially good because those of us in the geopolitics and international relations field rarely have the inclination to go back and read the works of those who founded the geopolitics discipline. Instead, we are always caught up with our Kennans and Kissingers and Gorbachevs, in short, we have a myopic fascination with Cold War geopolitics that rarely looks back on the foundations of the field. This book offers a very readable remedy for that shortcoming.
December 14, 2015
Reluctantly giving this high marks. The kind of thing that, given the right kind of partnered discussion, begets a better understanding of the way the world works.
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