JEOPOLİTİK STRATEJİ

Mackinder, a geographer in the United Kingdom, is considered to be the first important geopolitical thinker. His heartland theory assumes that the particular power that controls the Eurasian landmass would eventually control the global politics and master the universe. In his characterization, land powers are more likely to lay claim to regional and global hegemony than maritime powers.

Geopolitics in its early stages was closely associated with Germany’s foreign policy practices, a latecomer in the struggle for building colonial empires across the globe (Dodds, 2007). Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer are the most notable German geopolitical thinkers and their thoughts on geopolitics profoundly shaped foreign policies of Nazi Germany during the interwar years and Second World War. The impact of their thought on Nazi Germany’s policies was so decisive and pernicious that geopolitics had been for a long time associated with Hitler’s Germany and considered to be an intellectual exercise serving Hitler’s goals to institute German hegemony across the globe. Rather than geopolitics being recognized as a respectable field of academic study, even the word of geopolitics was avoided in writings on international relations. Hitler’s policies gave a bad reputation to geopolitics. It took some time to recognize geopolitics as a distinct academic discipline.

To Ratzel and Houshofer, states are like living organisms that require lebensraum, viz. living spaces, to survive in the anarchical international environment.

To Ratzel and Houshofer, states are like living organisms that require lebensraum, viz. living spaces, to survive in the anarchical international environment. Just as individuals require a healthy body and mental condition, states are also in need. In the first stage of geopolitical thinking, geopolitics was understood as an objective scientific exercise whose primary reason was to offer ironclad statements on the impact of geographical location and physical terrain on the ability of states to maximize their power in international politics. To this view, states like living organisms that require living spaces to survive in the anarchical international environment. Just as individuals require a healthy body and mental condition, states are also in need of fertile and defensible physical terrain as well as robust and uncontaminated people to survive in international politics. The second generation of geopolitical studies came to the fore following the end of the Second World War. It was mainly an ideological competition between liberal capitalist countries of the western bloc and the communist countries of the eastern bloc. Third generation geopolitics began with the end of the Cold War rivalry between two opposing power blocks adopting diverging political ideologies. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the unification of Germany in 1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 epitomized the end of ideological geopolitics.

The second generation of geopolitical studies came to the fore following the end of the Second World War. Throughout the long Cold war years, the US-led Western camp was in bitter ideological competition with the Soviet Union-led eastern camp. The major faultiness between the two opposing power blocks was ideological. The parties competed with each other as to whose political economic model would triumph across the globe. Ideology and identity were the main signifiers of their geopolitical competition. This era in geopolitical studies is also called ideological geopolitics (Gray and Sloan, 2013).

Until 2008, the rise of China was not central to American strategic considerations and the European Union was at the apex of its power. The security concepts of Americans and Europeans alike demonstrated optimism and self-confidence in western capitals. Neither the national security strategies adopted by the George W. Bush and Obama administrations in the US nor the firstever security strategy document of the EU adopted in 2003 mentioned great power competition and ideological polarization as potential threats to liberal international world order. Many circles in the West took comfort in Fukuyama’s thesis that the history came to an end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and with the growing appeal of liberal-capitalist democracy as the only game in town. Fukuyama was basically saying that from the dissolution of the Soviet Union onwards the erstwhile non-capitalist societies would gradually become part of the US-led liberal capitalist world order because the end of the Cold War left them only with this option. The Cold War was decisively won by the liberal capitalist camp and the years ahead would not witness any ideology-driven geopolitical competition among great powers.

Even though the 9/11 attacks on the US homeland dented the image of the United States as the omnipotent global hegemon and criticisms of the American approach to the global war on terror intensified following the US occupation of Iraq, it was primarily following the financial crisis of the late 2000s that a sense of decline began to percolate down to the western elites in the United States and EU members.

The gradual shift from uni-polarity to multi-polarity has set the scene for fourth generation of geopolitical competitions among great powers. Since 2008, there have been disputes all over the world over the values of multiculturalism, openness, tolerance, and universal human rights. The morality of universal cosmopolitanism has gradually given way to the morality of relative communitarianism as rising nonwestern powers, primarily China and Russia, have increasingly offered non-western conceptualizations of international political order.

Geopolitical understandings of different time periods tend to demonstrate diverging conceptualizations of power. Power is closely related to geopolitics. For example, while first and fourth generation of geopolitical competitions underline the primacy of hard power calculations and behaviors in relational relations, second and third generation of geopolitics tend to put more emphasis on soft power. Critical geopolitics would on the other hand say that it is not easy to separate hard power from soft power and states employ a mix of all power capabilities and relations in their efforts to justify their geopolitical view and claims. That said, a brief discussion on the concept of power would be meaningful in this context.

This dimension of power prioritizes capabilities of actors in a non-relational fashion. In this sense, some states are defined as hard powers, meaning that the tangible power capabilities at their disposal would enable them to influence the behaviors, interests and values of other states. Hard power capabilities can be of both military and non-military in nature. Therefore, a more apt categorization would be how these military and non-military capabilities would be employed to have an impact on others. Which particular logic would shape the actions of power-holder?

Persuasive soft powers are those that think they need to invest some capital in order to help create legitimacy and attraction in the eyes of others. They develop specific strategies not only to brandish their achievements but also persuade others that their behaviors and policies are legitimate and other-regarding. In this regard, persuasive soft powers take great pains in helping manufacture attraction in the eyes of targeted countries through the employment of diplomatic means of conflict resolution, public diplomacy efforts, development aids and multilateral and facilitative diplomacy at interstate and intrastate disputes.

Another close relationship exists between geopolitics and geo-economics. Differentiating between the use of geography for political goals and economic goals is not an easy exercise to do because political and economic motivations of states are very much intermingled with each other. The best example to offer in this regard is China’s One-Road-One-Belt Initiative.

What lies at the roots of geopolitical thinking is the never-ending process of attributing an overarching meaning to physical geography (O Tauthail and Dalby, 2002). The way how physical geography is defined requires at the outset a discursive effort. The impact of geography on politics cannot be solely studied in a positivist fashion because statesmen and people who are interested in geopolitics tend to interpret the impact of physical characteristics of geography on politics through their subjective understandings. This suggests that geopolitics as an academic field can best be analyzed through the techniques of critical epistemology and methodology. The meaning of geopolitics at times when geographical location and physical terrain were too important in the quest of states to maximize their political and economic power was quite different than the meaning of geopolitics at times when technological developments in

Since the second half of the nineteenth century till the onset of the Cold War era, geopolitics was mainly an imperial exercise undertaken by great powers. Mackinder, a geographer in the United Kingdom, is considered to be the first important geopolitical thinker.

Mackinder, a geographer in the United Kingdom, is considered to be the first important geopolitical thinker. His heartland theory assumes that the particular power that controls the Eurasian landmass would eventually control the global politics and master the universe. In his characterization, land powers are more likely to lay claim to regional and global hegemony than maritime powers. From this perspective all great powers of the time were in a geopolitical competition to ensure that their rivals do not possess full control of the Eurasian landmass. His thoughts seem to have had great impact on Anglo-Saxon geopolitical tradition in that both the British empire during the age of Pax-Britanica and the United States during the age of Pax-Americana spent a good deal of effort to prevent any particular European or Asian country from dominating the Eurasian heartland.

Unlike Mackinder, Alfred Mahan, a military historian in the United States, argued that the road to global primacy in international politics would go through mastering oceans and other sea lines. He recommended that the leaders of the United States follow in the footsteps of the British Empire to build up a massive naval force if they want to become the most powerful country on earth. Controlling international trade routes at sea would require huge investments in bluewater navy as well as the United States establishing military bases in vital choke points. In Mahan’s thinking, controlling sea traffic through a powerful navy would absolve the United States of taking direct control of other countries. To him, the United States should avoid transforming other nations in the image of American values and stay away from nation-building exercises in far distant places. The United States is already safe because of its territorial location.

Both the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Imitative and the so-called Quad Initiative aim at bringing into existence a counter-Chinese power block by pushing the traditional American allies in the region to gear up their military expenditures and improve security cooperation among them. Quad members are the United States, Japan, India and Australia. The United States strongly disputes China’s sovereignty claims in the East and South China Seas and it has noticeably increased the frequency of its naval operations there.

For example, the containment policy that was initially put into existence by the US-led western camp in order to prevent the Soviet Union from physically dominating particular geographical locations reflected ideational motivations in the background. At stake was not only containing the physicalSoviet penetration into some geographical locations but also ensuring that Soviet ideology did not enlarge to those locations.

New world order geopolitics suggested that there was only one super power all over the world and all other states would gain influence in international politics in relation to the status of their relationship with the global hegemon. That sole superpower happened to be the United States. There was a huge power gap between the United States and all other countries and it was nearly impossible for any country, acting alone or in cooperation with others, to counterbalance the American hegemony. Hence, bandwagoning appears to have replaced balancing in the age American primacy in global politics.

Third generation geopolitics began with the end of the Cold War rivalry between two opposing power blocks adopting diverging political ideologies. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the unification of Germany in 1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 epitomized the end of ideological geopolitics. (Page 32)

FOURTH GENERATION OF GEOPOLITICS

Even though the 9/11 attacks on the US homeland dented the image of the United States as the omnipotent global hegemon and criticisms of the American approach to the global war on terror intensified following the US occupation of Iraq, it was primarily following the financial crisis of the late 2000s that a sense of decline began to percolate down to the western elites in the United States and EU members.

The liberal world order, which has come into being following the end of World War II under American leadership, has been going through a radical transformation in recent years mostly owing to China’s spectacular rise. In parallel to its increasing material power capability, China is also posing fundamental challenges to the normative fabric of the liberal world order.

Persuasive soft powers are those that think they need to invest some capital in order to help create legitimacy and attraction in the eyes of others. They develop specific strategies not only to brandish their achievements but also persuade others that their behaviors and policies are legitimate and other-regarding. In this regard, persuasive soft powers take great pains in helping manufacture attraction in the eyes of targeted countries through the employment of diplomatic means of conflict resolution, public diplomacy efforts, development aids and multilateral and facilitative diplomacy at interstate and intrastate disputes.