A Critique of Critical Geopolitics

Abstract

Comparisons between classical and critical geopolitics are made with the suggestion that both versions, although different in most respects, are equally legitimate for study and perhaps may be brought closer together, at least in ways that may complement each other, after inspection of their comparative approaches. The classical version deserves consideration as a contribution to international relations theory and to foreign policy making. The critical approach provides a needed and necessary critique of the classical, exposing its weaknesses and suggesting an emancipatory alternative. Accordingly, the author has selected a variety of associated characteristics that show the primary variations between the classical and the critical, illustrated by appropriate quotations and examples, with again the conclusion that both versions of geopolitics, the classical and the critical, merit credibility, and that a possibility exists where certain connections may be located between the two that could mutually clarify and strengthen their unique contributions to geopolitics as a whole.

Notes

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2. H. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (New York: Henry Holt and Company 1919); H. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History,’ Geographical Review 23 (1904) pp. 421–444.

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4. N. Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company 1942).

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6. J. Richardson, ‘The End of Geopolitics?’ in R. Leaver and J. Richardson (eds), Charting the Post Cold War Order (Boulder: Westview Press 1993) p. 39.

7. D. Snow, National Security for a New Era: Globalization and Geopolitics (New York: Pearson Longman 2004) pp. 334–335, 365, 39.

8. R. Jones, Critical Theory and World Politics (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001) pp. 5–10.

9. K. Dodds and J. Sidaway, ‘Locating Critical Geopolitics,’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 12 (1994) p. 516.

10. G. Ó Tuathail, S. Dalby, and P. Routledge (eds), The Geopolitics Reader (London and New York: Routledge 1998).

11. S. Roberts (ed.), “Review Symposium Gearoid O'Tuathail, (1996) Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press),’ Political Geography 19/3 (2000), pp. 345–396.

12. See G. Ó Tuathail and J. Agnew, ‘Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in American Foreign Policy,’ Political Geography Quarterly 11 (1992) pp. 155–175.

13. J. Agnew and S. Corbridge, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy (London and New York: Routledge 1995) p. 19, Forward.

14. G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby, ‘Introduction: Rethinking Geopolitics: Towards a Critical Geopolitics,’ in G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby (eds), Rethinking Geopolitics (London and New York: Routledge 1998) p. 2.

15. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘The Bush Administration and the ‘End’ of the Cold War: A Critical Geopolitics of US Foreign Policy in 1989,’ Geoform 23 (1992) p. 439.

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17. H. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History,’ Geographical Journal 23 (1904) p. 432.

18. See, for example, Dodds and Sidaway (note 9) p. 516.

19. Quotation by S. Smith in R. Jackson and G. S⊘rensen, Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches, 2^nd ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2003) p. 251.

20. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘The Postmodern Geopolitical Condition: States, Statecraft, and Security at the Millennium,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers on-line version (2000) p. 1.

21. Ibid. pp. 3–4.

22. Ibid. p. 2.

23. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Postmodern Geopolitics? The Modern Geopolitical Imagination and Beyond,’ in G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby (eds), Rethinking Geopolitics (London and New York: Routledge 1998).

24. R. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,’ in R. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press 1986) pp. 207–210.

25. K. Dodds, Geopolitics in a Changing World (Harlow, England and New York: Prentice Hall 2000) p. 33.

26. S. Dalby, ‘Geopolitics, Knowledge and Power at the End of the Century,’ in G. Ó Tuathail, S. Dalby, and P. Routledge (eds), The Geopolitics Reader (London and New York: Routledge 1998), pp. 305–312; S. Dalby, ‘American Security Discourse: The Persistence of Geopolitics,’ Political Geography Quarterly 9/2 (1990) pp. 171–188.

27. Agnew and Corbridge (note 13).

28. L. Richardson, Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (Pittsburgh: Boxwood Press 1960).

29. Kelly, Checkerboards and Shatterbelts (note 1) pp. 135–138.

30. P. Kelly and T. Boardman, ‘Intervention in the Caribbean: Latin American Responses to United Nations Peacekeeping,’ Revista/Review Internamericana 6 (1976) pp. 403–411.

31. P. Kelly, ‘Escalation of Regional Conflict: Testing the Shatterbelt Concept,’ Political Geography Quarterly 5/2 (1986) pp. 161–180.

32. S. Dalby, ‘Gender and Critical Geopolitics: Reading Security Discourse in the New World Disorder,’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2 (1994) p. 595.

33. Dodds, Geopolitics in a Changing World (note 25) pp. 32–33.

34. K. Dodds, ‘Cold War Geopolitics,’ in J. Agnew, K. Mitchell, and G. Ó Tuathail (eds), A Companion to Political Geography (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers 2003) pp.206–207.

35. F. Teggart, ‘Geography as an Aid to Statecraft: An Appreciation of Mackinder's Democratic Ideals and Reality,’ Geographical Review 8 (1919) pp. 235–240.

36. Ó Tuathail and Dalby (note 14) p. 6.

37. L. Hepple, ‘Metaphor, Geopolitical Discourse and the Military in South America,’ in T. Barnes and S. Duncan (eds), Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representations of Language (London and New York: Routledge 1992) p. 139.

38. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Understanding Critical Geopolitics: Geopolitics and Risk Society,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 22 (1999) p. 108.

39. Z. Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books 1997) pp. xiii–xiv.

40. Ó Tuathail, ‘Understanding Critical Geopolitics’ (note 38) p. 108.

41. Ó Tuathail and Agnew (note 12) p. 79; Agnew and Corbridge (note 13) p. 48.

42. Ó Tuathail, ‘A Strategic Sign: The Geopolitical Significance of Bosnia in US Foreign Policy,’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 7 (1997) p. 42. See as well his ‘Cartesian perspectivalism’ description of the classical in this regard: Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996) pp. 23–24.

43. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Understanding Critical Geopolitics’ (note 38) p. 107.

44. G. Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996) p. 60. Also, Ó Tuathail and Agnew (note 12) p. 80.

45. Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics (note44) p. 2.

46. Ibid. p. 15.

47. Ó Tuathail, ‘Postmodern Geopolitics?’ (note 23) p. 23.

48. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘The Critical Reading/Writing of Geopolitics: Re-Reading/Writing Wittfogel, Bowman and Lacoste,’ Progress in Human Geography (1994, on-line version) p. 1.

49. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘The Language and Nature of the ‘New Geopolitics’ – The Case of US-El Salvador Relations,’ Political Geography Quarterly 5/1 (1986) p. 73.

50. K. Dodds, Geopolitics in a Changing World (note 25) p. 33.

51. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘A Strategic Sign’ (note 42) pp. 1–21.

52. Ó Tuathail and Agnew (note 12) pp. 87–88.

53. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Foreign Policy and the Hyperreal: The Reagan Administration and the Scripting of ‘South Africa,’ in T. Barnes and J. Duncan (eds), Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape (London and New York: Routledge 1992) pp. 155–156.

54. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘The Effacement of Place? US Foreign Policy and the Spatiality of the Gulf Crisis,’ Antipode (1993, on-line version) p. 2.

55. H. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1902) pp. 1–2.

56. Ó Tuathail, ‘Postmodern Geopolitics?’ (note 23) p. 33.

57. Ó Tuathail and Dalby (note 14) p. 1.

58. Dodds (note 25) p. 25.

59. G. Ó Tuathail, ‘De-Territorialized Threats and Global Dangers: Geopolitics, Risk Society and Reflexive Modernization,’ Geopolitics 3 (1998, on-line version) pp. 5–9.

60. T. Luke and G. Ó Tuathail, ‘Global Flowmations, Local Fundamentalisms and Fast Geopolitics:’America’ in an Accelerating World Order,’ in A. Herod, G. Ó Tuathail, and S. Roberts (eds), Unruly World? Globalization, Governance and Geography (London and New York: Routledge 1998) p. 91.

61. N. Spykman, ‘Geography and Foreign Policy, I,’ American Political Science Review 21, (1938) pp. 29–30.

62. Sprout and Sprout (note 1) pp. 44–45.

63. S. Dalby, ‘Green Geopolitics,’ in J. Agnew, K. Mitchell, and G. Ó Tuathail (eds), A Companion to Political Geography (Malden, MA.: Blackwell Publishers 2003) p. 443.

64. J. Agnew, Re-Visioning the World (London and New York: Routledge 1998) p. 2.

65. P. Routledge, ‘Anti-Geopolitics,’ in J. Agnew, K. Mitchell, and G. Ó Tuathail, eds, A Companion to Political Geography (Malden, MA.: Blackwell Publishers 2003) pp. 236–237; see also, G. Ó Tuathail, ‘An Anti-Geopolitical Eye: Maggie O'Kane in Bosnia, 1992–1993,’ Gender, Place and Culture 3/2 (1996) pp. 171–185.

66. Ó Tuathail and Dalby (note 14) p. 2.

67. Y. Ferguson and R. Mansbach, The Elusive Quest Continues: Theory and Global Politics (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall 2003) pp. 118,139.

68. Y. Lapid, ‘Where Should We Begin? Political Geography and International Relations,’ Political Geography 18/8 (1999) p. 898.

69. D. Newman, ‘Comments on Daniel Elazar, Political Geography and Political Science,’ Political Geography 18/8 (1999) pp. 905–911.

70. Agnew and Corbridge (note 13).

71. J. Glassman, “State Power Beyond the ‘Territorial Trap’: The Internationalization of the State,” Political Geography 18/6 (1999) pp. 669–696.

72. P. Taylor, Britain and the Cold War: 1945 as Geopolitical Transition (London: Pinter Publishers; New York: Guilford Publications, Inc. 1990) pp. 13–21.

73. G. Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics ‘(note 44); J. Sidaway, ‘The (Re)making of the Western ‘Geographical Tradition’: Some Missing Links,’ Area 29/1 (1997) pp. 72–80.

74. N. Spykman, ‘Geography and Foreign Policy I,’ (note 61) p. 28.

75. See various articles in the leading Uruguayan geopolitics journal, Geosur, and particularly those of its editor, Bernardo Quagliotti de Bellis.

76. P. Kelly and T. Whigham, ‘Geopolítica del Paraguay: Vulnerabilidades Regionales y Propuestas Nacionales,’ Perspectiva Internacional Paraguaya 3 (1990) pp. 41–78.

77. P. Kelly, ‘Geopolitics of Paraguay: Pivotal Position within a Model of Geopolitics,’ Historical Text Archive (Mississippi State University 2002) pp. 1–45.