Introduction to Geopolitics

al-Quds al-Arabi
published a statement signed by Shaikh Usama Bin-Laden, and four other men promi-
nent in radical Islamic politics. The statement opened with two quotes from the Koran
before setting the geopolitical scene for its readers:
The Arabian peninsula has never—since God made it flat, created its desert,
and encircled it with seas—been stormed by ant forces like the Crusader armies
spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All
this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people
fighting over a plate of food. In light of the grave situation and the lack of
support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all
agree on how to settle the matter.
(Quoted in Ranstorp, 1998, p. 328)
The “current events” were portrayed as “three facts that are known to everyone”
(Ranstorp, 1998, p. 328). The overarching theme was the “self defense of Muslims
against aggressive forces,” manifest in the US military presence in Saudi Arabia since
the first Gulf War in 1991, and the cooperation of the Saudi regime with the United
States (Ranstorp, 1998, p. 328). The 
fatwa
was a call to arms, and such a “fact” was
portrayed in vitriolic language:
[F] or over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam
in the holiest places, the Arabian peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to
its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases
in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim
peoples.
(Ranstorp, 1998, p. 328)
This first “fact” was supported by two others; “the Americans are once again trying
to repeat the horrific massacres” (Ranstorp, 1998, p. 329), in other words conflict with
Iraq and other Muslim countries was about to intensify, and “the American’s aims behind
these wars are religious and economic, [but] the aim is also to serve the Jew’s petty
state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslim’s
there” (Ranstorp, 1998, p. 329). Part of bin Laden’s success has rested on the second
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“fact,” continuing through the 2003 war on Iraq, giving the 
fatwa
a prescient nature.
The third “fact” cites an established geopolitical issue, the Israel-Arab conflict and the
plight of the Palestinians: however, it introduces new geopolitical actors into this situ-
ation. The sub-text is a claim that the leaders of Arab states have been unable to stop
the Zionist policies of Israel, and so it is now up al-Qaeda to make a stand rather than
politics as usual.
Following the components of a geopolitical code, the enemy identified by bin Laden’s
fatwa
is clear; it is the United States and its “crusade” against Muslims, plus its regional
ally Israel. Though the Saudi regime is strongly criticized, bin Laden “focuses on
presenting the Saudi regime as a ‘victim’ whose dependent military and security relation-
ship with the ‘crusader forces’ has led King Fahd to act subserviently to US interests
and designs” (Ranstorp, 1998, p. 326). Rather than blaming particular groups or leaders,
bin Laden was trying to identify a broad range of allies by emphasizing “unity.” 
But these allies are nebulous, and certainly not a list of countries. Rather, the “we and
you” that are called to arms suggests that it is interconnected individuals and groups
who will enact the geopolitics of the 
fatwa
.
The means of the geopolitical code were as simple as they were brutal. “We—with
God’s help—call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to
comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and
whenever they find it” (Ranstorp, 1998, p. 329). The means of maintaining allies rested
in the interpretation of anti-US violence being the divine will of God; unity would come
through “every Muslim” following God’s will. The justification of such geopolitics was,
for bin Laden, found within the Koran. The reference to divine will is the ultimate justi-
fication for action.
Bin Laden’s 
fatwa
was, of course, translated into horrific acts of terrorism that
provoked the US invasion of Afghanistan, and the overthrow of the Taliban regime.
More controversially, links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, partially retracted
by President George W. Bush’s administration, were used in the justification for the
2003 war on Iraq. The 
fatwa
was a geopolitical code, still in operation, that challenges
the world leadership of the United States. The “order” and “benevolent supremacy” of
the United States is interpreted by bin Laden and his followers as a “crusade” for
economic and religious reasons. For bin Laden, there is no leadership and common good
within the United States’ actions. Instead, the US’s presence in the Middle East is seen
as evidence of
their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their
endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weak-
ness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal Crusade
occupation of the peninsula.
(Ranstorp, 1998, p. 329)
The allegation was that the United States was acting as an imperial power, dividing in
order to conquer.
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The War on Terrorism as a geopolitical code
How did the world leader respond? Similar to NSC-68, the United States focused on
two separate but related geopolitical agendas: protection of its sovereign territory and
the construction of a global order. The defining document was the NSS of 2002, the
foundation of what became known as the “Bush Doctrine.” Within the framework of
Modelski’s model, it is the geopolitical code of the current world leader facing a chal-
lenge symptomatic of the beginning of the period of deconcentration.
The NSS is an annual exercise that updates the United States’ geopolitical code. After
the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the understandable focus was upon anti-American terrorism.
By making the claim that the “struggle against global terrorism is different from any
other war in history” (
NSS
, 5), the document was able to make the case that the estab-
lished means to counter allies was ripe for change. The geopolitical threat identified by
the NSS contained an apparent vagueness, but was able to become fixed on particular
countries quite easily. The Strategy formalized the geopolitical code of the War on
Terrorism, a war against “terrorists of a global reach” (
NSS
, 5). Simultaneously, this
threat justified the global role of the world leader while also laying the foundation for
action against specific countries: the “enemy is not a single political regime or person
or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism” (
NSS
, 15). The clever use of “not a
single” allows the code to be nebulously global and also, at times, geographically
specific.
The vague and the specific were combined in the identification of the threat posed
by “rogue states”: countries that “brutalize their own people and squander national
resources” (
NSS
, 9). Such acts are deemed a violation of the “basic principles” and goals
of US world leadership. But rogue states are identified as a more specific threat too,
being linked with the sponsorship of terrorism and the procurement of weapons of mass
destruction. In this way, the notion of “rogue states” is able to give specific geographic
definition, or targeting, to the general aims of world leadership (Klare, 1996).
With terrorism defined as the geopolitical threat facing the US, the “pre-emptive
attack” was introduced as the legitimate means of countering the threat. The NSS evoked
the United States’ “right to self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists”
(