Introduction to Geopolitics

geopolitical vision
: “any idea concerning the relation between one’s
own and other places, involving feelings of (in)security or (dis)advantage (and/or)
invoking ideas about a collective mission or foreign policy strategy” (Dijkink, 1996, 
p. 11). National histories are replete with the memories of both the pain of historical
suffering and humiliation and the pride of past glories.
It is the tension between how these “maps of pride and pain,” as Dijkink calls them,
are remembered and used to initiate and justify foreign policy that make geopolitical
visions the way national sentiments are translated into geopolitical codes. “[N]ational
identity is continuously rewritten on the basis of external events: and foreign politics
does not mechanically respond to real threats but to constructed dangers” (Dijkink, 1996,
p. 5). Strategic concerns about resources and economics, and ideological referents to
national values combine in geopolitical visions, a framing of the world that connects the
individual’s sense of identity to global geopolitics through the geopolitical code of their
country. The content of national myths and the content of geopolitical codes are made
within dynamic contexts of conflict. The connections between national myths and geo-
political codes identified by Murphy and Dijkink show that geopolitical conflicts must
be understood by connecting the actions of one set of geopolitical agents (those who
control the state) with another group of geopolitical agents, the population of those states.
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Summary and segue
Nationalism is an ideology that defines an overarching national identity that transcends
ethnic differences. Simply put, the claim is that people within the boundaries of a 
state hold a common identity. In other words, the emphasis is upon homogeneity.
Increasingly, however, emphasis is being placed upon hybridity. Individuals possess
multiple collective identities, and, furthermore, these collective groups are themselves
the product of mixture. The identity Arab-Americans, for example, is complicated by
the complexity of both Arab and American, the way in which both reflect diverse experi-
ences and identities. The same can be said for the term black-British. Current discussion
of the movement of people (legally and illegally, voluntary and forced) across the globe
has, on the one hand, increased the hybridity of people’s collective identity. On the other
hand, some people have reacted to such movement by reinforcing a belief in maintaining
the “purity” of national identity.
It is false to separate the “domestic” and the “foreign” in an understanding of geo-
politics. The geopolitical actions of states, the way they interact with agents external to
their boundaries, require the support, tacit or overt, of their populations. The ideology
of nationalism provides a sense of loyalty to the state and the belief that security rests
upon sovereignty and integrity of the territory to which a national group lays claim. 
A component of nationalist ideology is the promotion of gender roles that facilitate a
militarized foreign policy. In this chapter we have seen the ideological “glue” that main-
tains states and their geopolitical codes. In the next chapter, we explore a geographic
feature that is also essential in maintaining the integrity of states and their national
identities: boundaries.
Having read this chapter you will be able to:
■
understand the connection between national identity and the state;
■
identify the manifestations of nationalism in current affairs;
■
identify the way gender roles are defined by the practice of nationalism;
■
identify the important role of “combat” in the creation of national
identities;
■
understand how geopolitical codes are rooted in national histories.
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