Introduction to Geopolitics

The War in Chechnya
, College Station, TX: Texas A&M
University Press.
Politkovskaya, A. (2003) 
A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya
, Chicago, IL:
The University of Chicago Press.
I N T R O D U C T I O N   T O   G E O P O L I T I C S
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In this chapter we will:
■
gain an understanding of the role boundaries play in geopolitics;
■
define boundaries, borders, borderlands, and frontiers;
■
discuss the role of boundaries in the construction of national identity;
■
identify the boundary conflicts that most commonly appear in
geopolitical codes;
■
discuss how peaceful boundaries may be constructed;
■
discuss the concept of the borderland and its implications for
boundaries, nations, and states;
■
provide case studies of the Israel–Palestine conflict and the Korean
peninsula.
The boundary remains a material and ideological geopolitical feature. Despite eye-
catching, or perhaps more accurately “book-selling,” cries of the end of the nation-state
and a borderless world, movement of goods and people (but less so ideas) is constrained
by physical controls imposed by governments. Much of the geographic work on the por-
osity of borders and boundaries has been by European geographers looking at the internal
boundaries of the EU. Alternatively, the War on Terrorism has promoted fears of “porous
borders,” especially the US’s own, plus its policing of the Afghanistan–Pakistan
boundary and that of Iraq. Similarly, as the boundaries of the EU are relocated east-
wards, the public pressure on European government to focus attention upon refugees
and other immigrants increases. In sum, the geopolitics of borders and boundaries
remains, but the geography is the product of strong imposition on the one hand, and
greater porosity on the other. See Donnan and Wilson (1999) for an excellent discus-
sion of boundaries and borders, as well as the collection of essays on specific boundary
conflicts in Schofield 
et al
. (2002). In this chapter we focus on boundaries, but must
note that their function is to control flow or movement. In the following chapter we
concentrate on the geography of networks and the flows they facilitate.
First, we will define our terms and examine the ways in which boundaries are created
and maintained, and the geopolitical role they play. To help understand contemporary
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BOUNDARY GEOPOLITICS: 
SHAKY FOUNDATIONS OF 
THE WORLD POLITICAL 
MAP?
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conflicts we will provide a brief catalog of potential border disputes by examining the
woes facing the fictional country of Hypothetica. We will then exemplify our discus-
sion with a case study of the Israel–Palestine conflict. Boundaries and borders are also
geographical features that may also reflect movements toward peace, the topic of the
following section of the chapter. Finally, we will relate the demarcation of a boundary
to global geopolitical conflict with a case study of the Korean peninsula.
Definitions
As with other topics, we will start by making sure we are using the same language, and
we will adopt Prescott’s (1987) terminology. The term 
boundary
will be used to refer
to the dividing line between political entities: the “line in the sand” if you wish that
means you are in, say, Mexico if you stand on one side and the US if you hop over 
and stand on the other. Later we will look at the geopolitics of defining the precise loca-
tion of the boundary and its effectiveness and role in controlling movement. The term
border is often used synonymously with the term boundary, but for our discussion it is
useful to distinguish the two. 
Border
refers to that region contiguous with the boundary, 
a region within which society and the landscape are altered by the presence of the
boundary. When considering neighboring states, the two borders either side of the
boundary can be viewed as one