What do you think?
Rate this book
Geopolitics: The Geography of International Relations
Now in a thoroughly revised and updated edition, this textbook examines the dramatic changes wrought by ideological and economic forces unleashed by the end of the Cold War. Saul Bernard Cohen, one of the world's leading political geographers, considers these forces in the context of their human and physical settings and explores their geographical influence on foreign policy and international relations.
Beginning with a survey of geopolitics and its practitioners, Saul Bernard Cohen explains geopolitical terms, structure, and theory. He traces the geopolitical restructuring of the world's different regions, its major powers, and the global networks that link them, thus creating a map of dynamic equilibrium. Cohen illustrates why those regions—the convergence of what he terms the Maritime, Heartlandic Russian, and East Asian realms —have become "Gateways," while the Middle East remains a "Shatterbelt" and much of South America and Sub-Saharan Africa have grown marginalized.
The author argues that whether certain areas become Gateways or Shatterbelts is the key question influencing global stability. For example, the future of peripheral parts of the Eurasian Heartland-Eastern Europe, the Trans-Caucasus, and Central Asia depends on whether the major powers adopt policies of accommodation or competition. Cohen analyzes especially the current forces favoring accommodation, including the economic benefits of globalization and the common battle against terrorism.
Presenting a global spatial scope, the book considers the entire hierarchy of geopolitical units—subnational, national states, and quasi-states; geopolitical regions; and geostrategic realms. By emphasizing the interaction between geographical settings and changing ideological and economic forces, Cohen has succeeded in creating a new global geopolitical map.
Beginning with a survey of geopolitics and its practitioners, Saul Bernard Cohen explains geopolitical terms, structure, and theory. He traces the geopolitical restructuring of the world's different regions, its major powers, and the global networks that link them, thus creating a map of dynamic equilibrium. Cohen illustrates why those regions—the convergence of what he terms the Maritime, Heartlandic Russian, and East Asian realms —have become "Gateways," while the Middle East remains a "Shatterbelt" and much of South America and Sub-Saharan Africa have grown marginalized.
The author argues that whether certain areas become Gateways or Shatterbelts is the key question influencing global stability. For example, the future of peripheral parts of the Eurasian Heartland-Eastern Europe, the Trans-Caucasus, and Central Asia depends on whether the major powers adopt policies of accommodation or competition. Cohen analyzes especially the current forces favoring accommodation, including the economic benefits of globalization and the common battle against terrorism.
Presenting a global spatial scope, the book considers the entire hierarchy of geopolitical units—subnational, national states, and quasi-states; geopolitical regions; and geostrategic realms. By emphasizing the interaction between geographical settings and changing ideological and economic forces, Cohen has succeeded in creating a new global geopolitical map.
470 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
15 people are currently reading
247 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 22, 2017
Magnificent and impressive work that introduced me to the basics of Geopolitical viewpoints and ongoing games amongst the major, regional and moderate powers all over the globe. interestingly, the author developed his own geopolitical model in which he listed the geopolitical features of each of these power and followed it by his prediction of the potential geo-economic and geopolitical policies that a country may steer in order to achieve its geostrategy, from his point of view. Additionally, the author did so in a clear-cut and eloquent language and well-constructed arguments.
However, it is better for any student or researcher to read it with a critical mindset so that any taken-for-granted geographical 'reality' be recognized and taken into consideration.
However, it is better for any student or researcher to read it with a critical mindset so that any taken-for-granted geographical 'reality' be recognized and taken into consideration.
April 30, 2025
I unfortunately couldn't pass through 5% of it. Just filled with western ideology. The author lays every chapter on the premise that USA is about to maintain the world peace, and, when he recognizes that the United States actually manage to control in an authoritarian way South America in the XX century, in the next page he comes back again with the American dream. I want to piss on my face.
January 26, 2021
Thid book is a thorough, extensive and exhaustive journey through the world (at least that of 2014) from the lenses of geography and geopolitics, in which economical, political, religious and ethnical differences define certain characteristics that pull nations and regions towards and against each other. The author makes an outstanding job in condensing such an amount of information as could a description of the global situation lead to into something readable and very well organized; giving any reader, with or without previous knowledge in the topic or in the current situation of the world all the bases to understand global and regional geopolitics.
The author describe the world in terms of geopolitics and how many actors are arising as the XX Century superpower US losses influence. It describes the many state of the art in technology, politics, economics and alliances of the 2014 world and give some of the challenges that this new actors face towards a multipolar driven world, which the author sees with the US, China, Japan and the EU as its main poles, with the likely rise of India and Brazil to come to wield more power and influence.
The first three chapters define the methodology of the author and provides an extensive background into academical geopolitics. Since the coining of the term by the end of the XIX Century to the different stages of development both in academia and in real geo(politics). Cohen summarize the main currents of geopolitics throughout history and across different authors (Describing an academia and school of tough completetly western, ignoring any other contributiion from non-western authors or literature). He then divides the world into separate geostrategic units divided into 5 stages of geopolitical structures and uses the rest of the book to describe each of them from the lenses of its physical geoograhy, history, actual and modern politics; demographics, including ehtnic and religious differences; as well as economics and intraregional or international alliances.
The rest of the book is a very interesting amalgametion of information that could either be read only for a specific part of each geostrategic region as a whole or a charactersitic about it; or as a bulk, providing exhaustiv information from the world, the succession of events that lead each region to be in its actual state and much speculation about the future, either in positive or in negative ways according to the personal views and studies of the author.
The book contains many errors that probably escaped the edition in many parts, which makes it a bit annoying sometimes; the biased of a westernen author is clear in its description of regions outside of the "Maritime realm" as he call both the North American and the European Realms. Nonetheless he also critices many of the politics of the US and other western powers and emphasize in many instances along the book his believe in a multipolar power, where the US must act with the other superpowers as equal, in order to mantain global peace and prosperity, as well as its own one.
This was one of the more gratifiying readings I have done, not only to understand the world better but to understand different geographic narrations and backgrounds, that lead to the better understanding of diferent peoples and their woes. Totally Recommended
The author describe the world in terms of geopolitics and how many actors are arising as the XX Century superpower US losses influence. It describes the many state of the art in technology, politics, economics and alliances of the 2014 world and give some of the challenges that this new actors face towards a multipolar driven world, which the author sees with the US, China, Japan and the EU as its main poles, with the likely rise of India and Brazil to come to wield more power and influence.
The first three chapters define the methodology of the author and provides an extensive background into academical geopolitics. Since the coining of the term by the end of the XIX Century to the different stages of development both in academia and in real geo(politics). Cohen summarize the main currents of geopolitics throughout history and across different authors (Describing an academia and school of tough completetly western, ignoring any other contributiion from non-western authors or literature). He then divides the world into separate geostrategic units divided into 5 stages of geopolitical structures and uses the rest of the book to describe each of them from the lenses of its physical geoograhy, history, actual and modern politics; demographics, including ehtnic and religious differences; as well as economics and intraregional or international alliances.
The rest of the book is a very interesting amalgametion of information that could either be read only for a specific part of each geostrategic region as a whole or a charactersitic about it; or as a bulk, providing exhaustiv information from the world, the succession of events that lead each region to be in its actual state and much speculation about the future, either in positive or in negative ways according to the personal views and studies of the author.
The book contains many errors that probably escaped the edition in many parts, which makes it a bit annoying sometimes; the biased of a westernen author is clear in its description of regions outside of the "Maritime realm" as he call both the North American and the European Realms. Nonetheless he also critices many of the politics of the US and other western powers and emphasize in many instances along the book his believe in a multipolar power, where the US must act with the other superpowers as equal, in order to mantain global peace and prosperity, as well as its own one.
This was one of the more gratifiying readings I have done, not only to understand the world better but to understand different geographic narrations and backgrounds, that lead to the better understanding of diferent peoples and their woes. Totally Recommended
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews