Haushofer defined geopolitik in 1935 as "the duty to safeguard the right to the soil, to the land in the widest sense, not only the land within the frontiers of the Reich, but the right to the more extensive Volk and cultural lands." Culture itself was seen as the most conducive element to dynamic expansion. Culture provided a guide as to the best areas for expansion, and could make expansion safe, whereas solely military or commercial power could not.

To Haushofer, the existence of a state depended on living space, the pursuit of which must serve as the basis for all policies. Germany had a high population density, whereas the old colonial powers had a much lower density: a virtual mandate for German expansion into resource-rich areas. A buffer zone of territories or insignificant states on one's borders would serve to protect Germany. Closely linked to this need was Haushofer's assertion that the existence of small states was evidence of political regression and disorder in the international system. The small states surrounding Germany ought to be brought into the vital German order. These states were seen as being too small to maintain practical autonomy (even if they maintained large colonial possessions) and would be better served by protection and organization within Germany. In Europe, he saw Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark, Switzerland, Greece and the "mutilated alliance" of Austro-Hungary as supporting his assertion.

Haushofer and the Munich school of geopolitik would eventually expand their conception of lebensraum and autarky well past a restoration of the German borders of 1914 and "a place in the sun." They set as goals a New European Order, then a New Afro-European Order, and eventually to a Eurasian Order. This concept became known as a pan-region, taken from the American Monroe Doctrine, and the idea of national and continental self-sufficiency. This was a forward-looking refashioning of the drive for colonies, something that geopoliticians did not see as an economic necessity, but more as a matter of prestige, and of putting pressure on older colonial powers. The fundamental motivating force was not be economic, but cultural and spiritual.

Beyond being an economic concept, pan-regions were a strategic concept as well. Haushofer acknowledged the strategic concept of the Heartland put forward by the Halford Mackinder. If Germany could control Eastern Europe and subsequently Russian territory, it could control a strategic area to which hostile sea power could be denied. Allying with Italy and Japan would further augment German strategic control of Eurasia, with those states becoming the naval arms protecting Germany's insular position.

Nicholas J. Spykman

N.J. Spykman based his geostrategic ideas on those of Sir Halford Mackinder's Heartland theory. Spykman's key contribution was to alter the strategic valuation of the Heartland vs. the "Rimland" (a geographic area analogous to Mackinder's "Inner or Marginal Crescent"). Spykman does not see the heartland as a region which will be unified by powerful transport or communication infrastructure in the near future. As such, it won't be in a position to compete with the United States' sea power, despite its uniquely defensive position. The rimland possessed all of the key resources and populations—its domination was key to the control of Eurasia. His strategy was for Offshore powers, and perhaps Russia as well, to resist the consolidation of control over the rimland by any one power. Balanced power would lead to peace.

George F. Kennan

Kennan advocated what was called "strongpoint containment." In his view, the United States and its allies needed to protect the productive industrial areas of the world from Soviet domination. He noted that of the five centers of industrial strength in the world—the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, and Russia—the only contested area was that of Germany. Kennan was concerned about maintaining the balance of power between the U.S. and the USSR, and in his view, only these few industrialized areas mattered.

Here Kennan differed from Paul Nitze, whose seminal Cold War document, NSC-68, called for "undifferentiated or global containment," along with a massive military buildup. Kennan saw the Soviet Union as an ideological and political challenger rather than a true military threat. There was no reason to fight the Soviets throughout Eurasia, because those regions were not productive, and the Soviet Union was already exhausted from WWII, limiting its ability to project power abroad. Therefore, Kennan disapproved of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and later spoke out critically against Reagan's military buildup.

Henry Kissinger

Zbigniew Brzezinski

• Europe, the Democratic Bridgehead
• Russia, the Black Hole
• The Middle East, the Eurasian Balkans
• Asia, the Far Eastern Anchor

Criticisms of geostrategy

"Few modern ideologies are as whimsically all-encompassing, as romatically obscure, as intellectually sloppy, and as likely to start a third world war as the theory of 'geopolitics.'"

—Charles Clover, "Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland"

Geostrategy encounters a wide variety of criticisms. It has been called a crude form of geographic determinism. It is seen as a gloss used to justify international aggression and expansionism—it is linked to Nazi war plans, and to a perceived U.S. creation of Cold War divisions through its containment strategy. Marxists and critical theorists believe geostrategy is simply a justification for American imperialism.

Some political scientists argue that as the importance of non-state actors rises, the importance of geopolitics concomitantly falls. Similarly, those who see the rise of economic issues in priority over security issues argue that geoeconomics is more relevant to the modern era than geostrategy.

Most international relations theory that is critical of realism in international relations is likewise critical of geostrategy because of the assumptions it makes about the hierarchy of the international system based on power.

Further, the relevance of geography to international politics is questioned because advances in technology alter the importance of geographical features, and in some cases make those features irrelevant. Thus geography does not have the permanent importance that some geostrategists ascribe to it.

See also

• British geostrategy
• Chinese geostrategy
• French geostrategy
• German geostrategy
• Russian geostrategy
• United States geostrategy

• Geostrategy in Central Asia
• Geostrategy in East Asia
• Geostrategy in Europe

• Oil geostrategy
• Naval geostrategy
• Space geostrategy

• Geoeconomics

References