C4.

Main schools of geopolitical thought Geopolitics in France The tradition of geopolitical thought in France differed somewhat from that of Britain. French geopolitics can best be understood with reference to the French position within Mackinders scheme of recurring conflict between sea-based and land-based powers. Germany and Russia represented the major land-based powers of the world, whereas Britain and the United States were the worlds predominant maritime powers. France, on the other hand, was situated between the centers of land-based and sea-based power. Thus, France is the only European power that can be considered part of both the Heartland and the Rimland. Despite the victory of the Allies in WWI, the French were concerned about the possible expansion of German power within Europe. For the most part, France supported the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles that forces the Germans to abandon the colonies and the European territory to the Allies. Resting uneasily behind the Maginot Line (fortification system along the German frontier from Switzerland to Luxembourg built 1929-1936 under the direction of the war minister Andre Maginot. In 1940 German forces succeeded to outflank the Maginot Line, passing over the Belgian border), France maintained different positions in contrast to Germany. The French school of geopolitics was interested to establish the contrasts between West and East. The western tradition represented by France, Britain and the United States emphasized cooperation and flexibility. The east symbolized by Germany represented dictatorship and rigidity. In the extent of the colonial empire, France surpassed Germany, that is why it regarded German views of territorial expansion with suspicion and alarm. As a result, France strongly endorsed the League of Nations and advocated expanded international cooperation to settle disputes. The first French geopolitical study is considered to be La France de lEst published in 1917 by Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918). He examined the whole question of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany in 1871, pleading strongly for the return of the provinces to France. Rejecting the German arguments of nationality based on race and language, he invoked the idea of la geographie active based on the importance of historical development in the formulation of both national and regional character. He did not accepted but partially the Ratzels determinism and the organic view of a state, developing instead the idea of the state as a spatial unit in which the core and the political and psychological importance of the frontiers play the most considerable role.

During the interwar period, the French geopolitical thinkers (Jacques Ancel and Albert Dmangeon are two of the most outstanding representatives) were critical of the German doctrine, considering the science of geopolitics to be la science propagandiste allemande which aimed to rationalize une expansion infinie. They countered lespace vital (the French for Ratzels lebensraum) with the concepts of entente (friendly agreement of two or more countries on issues of common interest, such as la petite entente established by Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania after WWI directed mainly against Hungary, which having lost two thirds of its prewar territory at the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 was aggressively revisionist in regard to all three) and communaut europenne. Especially during the 1930s,4 the French geopolitics proved to be very different from that of the German one, the attention being placed on the pressing problems of Europe and less concern being given to the military and strategic questions. The study of geopolitics in France came to a sharp end with the defeat by Germany in 1940. For many years after the end of WWII, the subject was avoided, particularly because of its associations with Nazi policies. It was only during the 1970s that the subject has been revisited by Yves Lacoste who advocated the leading role of geographers in developing a better understanding of the geopolitical reality of the world. The French periodical Herodote (established in 1976) whose editor is Yves Lacoste, considers that the main objective in the filed of geopolitics is the critical examination of global issues from a geographical perspective, with a view to reaching an understanding which can lead to action. Another contribution of the French geopolitics lies in the replacement of the term geopolitics with la gographie politique du pouvoir, the study of the nature and distribution of power in the wider sense and its relationship to political power specifically (Claude Raffestin). Geopolitics in Germany Both British and French geopolitics evolved in accordance with their respective countries positions within the European world order of the late 19th and late 20th centuries. Similarly, geopolitics in Germany can best be understood with references to German history and geography. France and Britain along with the other nations of Western Europe, had achieved political unity, having emerged as nation-states by the Renaissance. In contrast, German-speaking areas of central Europe were characterized by deep political fragmentation until the middle of the 19th century. Only under the dominance of Bismarcks Prussia in the mid-19th century did Germany achieve political unification.

German unification proved to be a powerful stimulus for the growth of German economic and political power. By 1900, Germany was the third leading industrial country in the world, behind Britain and the United States. Located at the center of the great European Plain, northern Germany had always been at crossroads, vulnerable to attack. Germany lacked the natural insularity of the British isles, and was faced with traditionally hostile neighbors on both sides France on the west, and the Eastern European powers along with Russia on the east. During the late 19th century, German foreign policy emphasized rapid territorial expansion in order to counter the possibility of attacks on both fronts. A strong, united Germany or Mitteleuropa including all of the German speaking people of Central Europe would be the most effective means of preserving the integrity of German culture. The idea was that Central Europe was united by a common German heritage as a result of centuries of German expansion to the east, sizable German minorities in the states bordering Germany, an affinity for German culture and traditions in the Low Countries, the Alps and Scandinavia and German economic dominance of the region. The German defeat in WWI confirmed these views in the minds of many Germans. The Treaty of Versailles obliged Germany to recognize an independent Poland on its eastern frontier and to cede a substantial portion of East Prussia to the new Polish state. Poland, Czechoslovakia and other newly independent nations of Eastern Europe were established as a buffer between Germany and Russia. On its western border, Germany ceded Alsace-Lorraine back to France. The territorial and military losses suffered by the Germans in the WWI, rendered the German state even weaker than it had been prior to unification. In response to this perception of vulnerability, German geopolitical thought reemphasized the value of territorial expansion in conjunction with the unification of German speaking people throughout Central Europe. Only through territorial expansion could the German state secure itself from external attack on both the western and the eastern fronts. From the beginning of the 1920s, the German expression Drang nach Osten (Push to the East) became the priority for the German political actions. Hither himself supported the orientation to the East in the view to conquest new lebensraum in Eastern Europe, which began with the German attack on Poland in September 1939. German geopolitics was influenced by the ideas of Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904). Ratzel, who is often regarded as the founder of the modern, systematic political geography, was influenced by Darwins theory of evolution. Ratzel argued that states like organisms, obey laws of evolution, and the survival is the most important principle underlying the

competition between states. Strong states prosper and expand, while weak states decline and die. In this work, he described the expansion of a state, through war, as a natural progressive tendency. Similarly, Rudolf Kjellen who invented the term of geopolitik, described it as the science which conceives the state as a geographical organism or as a phenomenon in space. The organic analogy underlies several of the key concepts of German geopolitics. Central is the idea of Lebensraum (living space). Expansion of territory could help to ensure the long-run survival and competitive position of a state, and expansion was seen as a critical key to a states growth and development. Ratzel developed a theory of expansionism in which the need for constant physical growth of the state was explained by his environmental determinist concept of Lebensraum. By that means, Ratzel supplied a scientific justification for imperialism and, ideologically, he was involved in the development of National Socialism. A recent use of the term occurred during the Gulf crisis of 1990-91, when many American commentators referred to Kuwait as Saddam Husseins lebensraum. The fundamental principles of German geopolitics were expanded and refined following WWI by theorists at the Institut fur Geopolitik in Munich, which was headed by Karl Haushofer (1869-1946). Haushofer argued that a dynamic state required lebensraum to achieve autarcky, or economic and political self-sufficiency. Autarky implies that a state requires adequate territory to ensure domestic access to raw material and markets in order to prosper and develop. But at the end of the WWI, Germany was obliged to cede its colonies under the administration of the League of Nations, and so the only way to expand the territory was to conquer the eastern and southeastern Europe. This view of large scale German expansion contributed to a third fundamental concept of German geopolitics: that of pan-regions. For Haushofer, a logical consequence of competitive expansion would be the development of a small number of pan-regions, each consisting of a large area of the world under the domination of one country. During the 1930s a number of potential pan regions were identified: one of these conceptions divided the world into three major spheres of influence: Europe and Africa (Eurafrica) under the influence of Germany, Asia and Australasia (Pan-Asia) under the domination of Japan, and the Americas (Pan-America) under the domination of the United States. During and after the WWII Haushofer was condemned as providing intellectual inspiration to Hitler and the rulers of Germany during the war. However, this inspiration is not certain, as Germany had always had the will to expand its territories. After the defeat suffered at the WWII, Germany once the center of the world economy and of the geopolitical debate, was moved to a peripheral

position in the world economy which brought major changes in the geopolitical thinking. After the WWII the notion of pan-regions remained alive. The three possible scenarios envisaged at the end of the war reminded the division of the world into great spheres of influence. More recently, the discussion of competing blocs has turned around the competition between the European Community, Japan and the United States and there seems to be increasing evidence that a world of trade blocs will resemble the panregional world map of the German geopolitics (the expansion of the European Community, the growth of the NAFTA into South America, the so-called yen block indicate that the world of autarkic spheres of influence is still possible).