Introduction to Geopolitics

Activity
Consider how your actions occur within a hierarchy of scales. 
• If you are a member of a political organization (a party or pressure group) or a
church, a member of the military services, or the employee of a business think
about how you are connected to a small group, which is part of a bigger organ-
ization.
• Think about the influences upon you and the smaller group that stem from
national and global events. 
• Also, think about how your actions work up this hierarchy of scales to construct
the organization, as well as the national and global scales.

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Box 1.2 Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech
This box contains excerpts of Winston Churchill’s (who had been Prime Minister
of Britain during World War II) famous Sinews of Peace speech, made in 1946,
in which he identified the “iron curtain” that would divide Europe throughout the
Cold War. Coming just after the allied victory in World War II, in which Britain,
the United States, and the Soviet Union fought on the same side, this was a rhetor-
ical watershed in the public’s awareness of the Cold War, and the identification
of the Soviets and Communism as a threat to peace. Read the excerpts and find
phrases that refer to (1) the control of territory by particular countries, and (2) the
rhetoric or language used to either justify such control or identify it as a threat.
A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory.
Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organ-
ization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any,
to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies. I have a strong admiration
and regard for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade,
Marshall Stalin. There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain—and I
doubt not here also—towards the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve
to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting
friendships. We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western
frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. We
welcome Russia to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world.
We welcome her flag upon the seas. Above all, we welcome, or should
welcome, constant, frequent and growing contacts between the Russian
people and our own people on both sides of the Atlantic. It is my duty
however, for I am sure you would wish me to state the facts as I see them
to you. It is my duty to place before you certain facts about the present posi-
tion in Europe.
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an 
iron curtain
has
descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the
ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague,
Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities
and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere,
and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but
to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from
Moscow. Athens alone—Greece with its immortal glories—is free to decide
its future at an election under British, American and French observation.
The Russian-dominated Polish government has been encouraged to make
enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of
millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking
place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern
States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond 

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Figure 1.3
The Iron Curtain.
their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control.
Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except
in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy. . . .
The safety of the world, ladies and gentleman, requires a new unity in
Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast. It is from the
quarrels of the strong parent races in Europe that the world wars we have
witnessed, or which occurred in former times, have sprung. Twice in our
own lifetime we have seen the United States, against their wishes and their
traditions, against arguments, the force of which it is impossible not to
comprehend, twice we have seen them drawn by irresistible forces, into
these wars in time to secure the victory of the good cause, but only after
frightful slaughter and devastation have occurred. Twice the United States
has had to send several millions of its young men across the Atlantic to find
the war; but now war can find any nation, wherever it may dwell between
dusk and dawn. Surely we should work with conscious purpose for a grand
pacification of Europe, within the structure of the United Nations and in
accordance with our Charter. That I feel opens a course of policy of very
great importance.

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As we will see soon, geopolitical theoreticians have made claims that they can view or
understand the whole globe. In other words, they operate under the belief that the whole
world is a “transparent space” that is “seeable” and “knowable” from the vantage point
of the white, male, and higher class viewpoint of the theoretician (Staeheli and Kofman,
2004, p. 4 referring to Haraway (1998) and Rose (1997)). Geopolitical theoreticians
classify the world into particular regions while also defining historical trends. The femi-
nist critique rests on the idea that all knowledge is “situated” and, hence, “partial.” The
very fact that the classical geopoliticians were from privileged class, race, and gender
backgrounds in Western countries meant that they had absorbed particular understand-
ings of the world; they were unable to know the 
whole
world. In stark contradiction,
their policy prescriptions rested upon the assumption and arrogance of being able to see
and know the whole world and the essence of its historical development.
A third understanding of geopolitics results from the identification of “situated know-
ledge”: geopolitics is not just a matter of countries competing against countries, there
are many “situations” or, in other words, the competition for territory is broader than
state practices. Geopolitics has come to be understood as much more than war and the
building of empire. It can also include racial conflicts within cities, the restrictions upon
the movement of women in certain neighborhoods and at certain times because of patri-
archal laws and/or fear of attack, and diplomacy over greenhouse gas emissions, as a
few examples. In other words, geopolitics is not the preserve of states; individuals,
protest movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace and
Amnesty International, terrorists, and private companies are all engaged (and always
have been) in the control of territory and so have struggled to represent it in certain
ways. Following Gilmartin and Kofman (2004), geopolitics is the multiple practices and
multiple representations of a wide variety of territories.
Following on from the third definition, we identify our fourth and final meaning of
the word. Geopolitics has come to include