Geopolitics

Coined in the late 1890s, the term geopolitics has had a controversial scholarly history. The Swedish political geographer, Rudolf Kjellen and other early-20th-century writers such as Friedrich Ratzel considered the geographical foundations of the state and national power with reference to natural resources, population, and geographical location. Like other terms that gain academic and political popularity, a geopolitical way of thinking was judged to be timely in the sense that Europe in particular was undergoing a series of political, economic, and cultural transformations, including regional alliance formations, imperial change, and conflict over trade and resources. Later, geopolitics was implicated with Nazism and became deeply controversial as a consequence of such an association. Notwithstanding the opprobrium, the term proved to be resilient and has even enjoyed ...