Introduction 
Brief History

John Agnew &  Stuart Corbridge  
Samuel Huntington 
Francis Fukuyama

Confucius and Politics 

Introduction
Asian policies and the crisis
Europe and SE Asia

   

 

The rise of the Newly Industrialising Countries (NIES or NICS) in East Asia was one of the most profound changes in geopolitics in the past thirty years.

Mainstream theories have been challenged by the sustained economic growth of many of these states. In order to be able to link geopolitical factors to the Asian crisis it is necessary to have a better understanding of geopolitics in practice. There are several theories related to the term geopolitics. Geopolitical matters are hardly definable because of the many different meanings the subject has. In its most common usage geopolitics refers to a fixed and objective geography constraining and directing the activities of states.

Brief history     

The term geopolitics was first used by the Swede Rudolf Kjellen in 1899, but became widely known in the 1920s in association with the formal model of geographical influences on global conflict by the British geographer Halford Mackinder. After the Second World War the term suffered from guilt by association, as the Germans had been using it to justify expansionist designs on Eastern Europe.      

A revival of the term geopolitics came in recent years, but also came disagreement as to its precise meaning and influence. The term is being used for classical concepts of seapower versus landpower in the distribution of power among states as well as for ways in which political leaders name places as more or less important strategically, organize foreign policy accordingly and operate militarily.     
    

Further reading:   Agnew, J. & Corbridge S., 1995, Mastering Space, London: Routledge