Geopolitical Considerations

Principle 5

Geopolitical Considerations

Geopolitics is a concept more familiar to Europeans than to Americans. Geopolitics was developed by European geographers in the Nineteenth Century and was a primary foreign policy consideration for both Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Because of geopolitics' association with such nefarious leaders as Hitler and Stalin, many American academics avoid open discussion of geopolitics as a theory and as a principle for foreign policy, although geopolitical considerations are manifested in much of American foreign policy.

Geopolitics is based on an "organic analogy;" the nation-state is seen as a living organism. Like all living organisms, the nation-state must be able to grow and expand to its natural ideal size; it must have access to raw materials and nutrients necessary for growth; it must have living space in which it can maneuver and feel comfortable and safe; it must be able to develop self-sufficiency and national self-actualization (national autonomy).

Hitler talks constantly of expanding Germany to the nation's "natural", boundaries, of guaranteeing access to all the natural resources necessary to achieve national economic self-sufficiency ("autarchy"), and of surrounding Germany with buffer states to shield Germany from its enemies and provide Germany with secure "living space" ("lebensraum"). Stalin articulates similar goals for the Soviet Union, surrounding the Soviet Union with buffer states and attempting to secure a warm-water port so the Soviets would have access to the resources and markets of the world. Communist China, North Vietnam, Iraq, and a number of other nation-states also experience periods of geopolitical fervor, often leading to aggression against their neighboring states.

America's "living space" is literally from sea to shining sea, and America's buffer states are, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the nations of the Western Hemisphere. In the "Cold War," the European states and the Pacific rim states are added to America's buffer zone. Alexander Hamilton is an early advocate of aggressive expansion of United States' claims to territory across the continent. In 1799, he advocates military action to conquer land in Louisiana and Florida that is occupied by the French and the Spanish and "taking possession of these countries for ourselves, to obviate the mischief of their falling into the hands of an active foreign power, and at the same time to secure to the United States the advantage of keeping the key of the western country." (Hamilton, Annals, Vol. 4, 102) In a Federalist newspaper on March 4, 1779, John Ward Fenno publishes an editorial encouraging military action to expand American territory and an aggressive commercial policy to challenge Great Britain. Although Fenno's name is on the editorial, the ideas are attributed to Alexander Hamilton.

"The conquest of the remaining possessions of France, Spain, and Holland in the West Indies might be affected by this country, with very little expense or inconvenience. The naval force already extant is fully adequate, and the regular troops lately embodied through its intervention would have achieved the conquest without difficulty, This country possesses such advantages for carrying on expeditions against the West-India islands, as must render her cooperation in the cause very acceptable. In short, the contingent we could bring into the coalition would be such as to entitle us to assume the rank of first-rate power, and to make stipulations, he fulfillment of which could not fail to fix us in a state of prosperity and to extend our empire and renown.... A national character is thus at once founder, and the American name, ceasing to be an opprobrium, shall pass abroad over the earth as a race of men illustrious for their courage and the wisdom of their policy." (Fenno, Annals, Vol. 3, 110-111)

Rather than taking this southern and western territory by force of arms, President Thomas Jefferson is able to acquire much of it through treaty and purchase. In support of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson writes the following in 1803:

"Objections are raising to the eastward against the vast extent of our boundaries, and propositions are made to exchange Louisiana, or a part of it, for the Floridas. But, as I have said, we will get the Floridas without, and I would not give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi to any nations because I see, in a light very important to our peace, the exclusive right to its navigation, and the admission of no nation into it, but as into the Potomac or Delaware, with our consent and under our police." (Jefferson, Annals, Vol. 3, 171-172)

In December 1811, in a Congressional debate over a pending war with Great Britain, Felix Grundy of Tennessee advocates for war as a means to end British aggression against American shipping and to remove the British and Spanish influence from both the Floridas and Canada. He says "We shall drive the British from our continent" and is anxious to expand the Union "not only to add the Floridas to the South, but the Canadas to the North of this empire," (Grundy, Annals, Vol. 3, 292)

By 1844, the expansion debate shifts to the far West with America contesting territory in Oregon against British and Canadian claims ("54-40 or Fight" ), calls for the annexation of Texas, and calls for war with Mexico to secure the rights of American citizens settling in Mexican territory in the Southwest and California. By 1856, the Democratic Party political party platform calls for American "ascendancy in the Gulf of Mexico," and transcontinental communications to the Pacific Ocean to open America to "the rich commerce of Asia." America, France and England conspire in a memorandum, the Ostend Manifesto, to have the United States either buy Cuba from the Spanish or take it by force. Cuba remains a territorial objective for many American leaders until it is finally secured by America after the Spanish-American War. By the 1880s, Americans lay plans for a Nicaraguan or Panamanian Canal as a way to further unite the Union, expand influence in the Pacific, further the interests of the Monroe doctrine, and expand United States influence into Central and South America. By the 1890s, American attention is focused even further westward. The 1896 Republican Party platform declares, "the Hawaiian Islands should be controlled by the United States, and no foreign power should be permitted to interfere with them."

America's successful war with Spain brings many Caribbean and Pacific Islands under American control; the United States now has an overseas empire and the debate over empire begins in earnest, as reflected in the political party platforms of the period.

America’s continuing demand for free access to raw materials and commercial markets around the world first begins during the mercantilist colonial era. The American colonies quickly recognize that mercantilist economic policies of Great Britain serve only to enrich Britain and impoverish the colonies. Great Britain demands exclusive access to America's natural resources and raw materials and demands exclusive access to American markets, relegating America to the role of a commercial appendage of Great Britain. Great Britain demands America trade only with Great Britain and refrain from any effort to attain self-sufficiency by entering the world markets as either a seller or buyer. If they were permitted to continue, these mercantilist policies would prevent the colonies from growing and developing to their natural potential. America's historic demand that Europeans and the Soviet Union stay out of the Western Hemisphere (as manifested, for example, in the "Monroe Doctrine"), and America's fear of dependency on any foreign nation for raw materials, manufactured goods or technical/scientific knowledge are both further examples of geopolitical considerations influencing American foreign policy. The United States' concern over the Soviet Union's involvement in Cuba and Nicaragua in the last half of the Twentieth Century is partly based on the principle of "protecting the nations of the Western Hemisphere," and partly on the geopolitical principle of "lebensraum," A Soviet presence so proximate to United States' borders limits America's ability to move freely and unchallenged in its Caribbean back yard. The United States' concern with Iraq's aggression in the Middle East is partly based on the geopolitical principle of "autarchy." Iraq's aggression threatens America's control of access to the oil fields of the Middle East, upon which American economic activity and national survival depends

Classic geopolitical theory predicts the decline of unsuccessful or unhealthy nations and their absorption into the remaining growing and successful nations. Eventually, the world will be populated with only a few large, self-sufficient states, surrounded by their buffer states. The most powerful of these super-nations, according to theory, will be the nation that controls the heartland of the globe-- that great land mass west of the Ural Mountains and east of the Western European peninsula. The United States has, therefore, a continuing geopolitical interest in all future events within that area historically known as Russia.

Americans are becoming preoccupied with "decline-and-fall-of-the-Empire” theories. Books claiming to explain the decline and fall of Rome, the British Empire, the Dutch Republic and the Third Reich are popular reading; they are often read in an effort to help avoid the decline and fall of the United States. American foreign policy is influenced by a need to help postpone or avoid the coming fall. That eventual decline and fall is a real possibility. The process of decline is described in terms that are frightenly familiar to anyone informed on current affairs.

"Once a society reaches the limits of its expansion, it has great difficulty in maintaining its position and arresting its eventual decline. Further, it begins to encounter marginal returns in agriculture or industrial production. Both internal and external changes increase consumption and the costs of protection and production; it begins to experience a severe fiscal crisis. The diffusion of its economic, technological, or organizational skills undercuts its comparative advantage over other societies, especially those on the periphery of the system. These rising states, on the other hand, enjoy lower costs, rising rates of return on their resources, and the advantages of backwardness. In time, the differential rates of growth of declining and rising states in the system produce a decisive redistribution of power and result in disequalibrium in the system." (Gilpin, in Ikenberry, 128)

Geopolitics sees the nation-state as a living organism apart from the biological citizens who populate the state. The nation-state is more than the sum of its constituent citizens and has a life apart from the collective lives of its citizens. Nation-state survival is, therefore, something more than the survival of the citizens of the state. Taken to the near absurd, the nation-state may survive even with the death of all its citizens. "National survival" is possible even if all citizens are destroyed in a "mutual assured destruction" nuclear weapons exchange in which America's doomsday machine destroys the enemy's doomsday machine in an Armageddon fought by pre-programmed machines after all human citizens of the state had been killed. The organic state may survive and be victorious even if all its human citizens are dead. Because the nation-state is seen as an organism apart from, and superior to, its constituent citizens, individual citizens are expendable in the effort to insure the nation-state's survival, or to insure national autarchy, or to acquire national lebensraum. War, and citizen sacrifice for the greater good of the nation-state, becomes a viable and legitimate option in foreign policy intent on achieving geopolitical objectives.

Principle 5

Geopolitical Considerations

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