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Ronald J. Granieri, Editor June, 2016

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Geopolitics Redux Jeremy Black

special Relationships: the eu, BRexit, and the atlantic community

Ronald J. Granieri

What Jason FRank and isaac kRamnick FoRGet aBout hamilton

Stephen F. Knott

The AmericAn review

leTTer from The ediTor

As summer descends upon Philadelphia, all of us at FPRI look forward to a season of relaxation, reading, and reflection. This month’s American Review hopes to inspire all three by offering contributions to ongoing intellectual discussion within the West—on the intersection of art and history, on contemporary international politics, and on the academic discipline of International Relations.

To start with a dispute at the crossroads of politics and the arts, Stephen Knott of the Naval War College offers his contribution to the suddenly current discussion of Alexander Ham-ilton’s historical reputation. Readers of the Review will remember that Hamilton’s historical reputation was a topic in our April issue, inspired by the runaway success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-Winning musical. The positive impression of Hamilton offered by that show has—inevitably, it seems—inspired a backlash from scholars who prefer the older narrative,

where Hamilton is the nefarious agent of a nascent American plutocracy whose march to establish a monarchy was only stopped by the Party of Virtue led by Thomas Jefferson. Two Cornell professors offered a restatement of that position in a recent New York Times op-ed. Professor Knott, co-author of a book on the partnership between Wash-ington and Hamilton, offers a response based on his own research. This debate has been raging ever since the Repub-lic was founded, and is unlikely to be settled to everyone’s satisfaction any time soon. Nevertheless, the discussion is useful as it encourages those on both sides (and those who have never felt terribly strongly one way or the other) to reflect upon our national origins, what the positions of the Founders can tell us about how the United States became what it is today, and how their debates can help inform discussions about our common national future. As ever, our goal at the Review is less to resolve these disputes than to provide a forum for ongoing debate; further responses are welcome.

The second essay this month wades into a very hot current political debate. Your Humble Editor has been busy of late participating in the conversations about the future of British membership in the European Union. In advance of the referendum scheduled for 23 June, I participated in an online debate on the subject with an advocate of British withdrawal (“Brexit”), and also traveled to the University of Stirling, Scotland, for a panel discussion. That latter event, organized by friend of FPRI Andrew Glencross (who is a Lecturer in International Politics at Stirling) took place on 8 June as part of Dr. Glencross’s Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) entitled “Remain or Leave?” Other participants in the panel included David Coburn, a Member of the European Parliament from the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and Ms. Vonnie Sandlan, a Scottish student leader and Member of the Advisory Board of Scotland Stronger in Europe. A full audio of the event is planned for release in the future, but this issue of the Review includes an essay version of my opening remarks to a very lively and informative evening. The question of Brexit crosses many traditional ideological and political lines, and the larger issue of Europe’s future is likely to stay with us no matter what British voters decide on 23 June.

Finally, one of FPRI’s most prolific scholars, Jeremy Black, offers reflections on one of FPRI’s central concepts, Geopolitics. Building on his own recent book on the subject, Geopolitical and the Quest for Dominance (Indiana University Press, 2015), Professor Black considers the history and contested meanings of the term, and its usefulness for both scholarly and political discourse. Geopolitics builds on geography, which has a strong basis in concrete reality, but Black reminds us that such realities can look different to observers at different removes from the events in question.

Ronald J. Granieri

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Awareness of the interplay between subjectivity and objectivity is important if we are to live up to FPRI’s injunction to understand “the realities of the mentalities of the localities.”1

All of us at The American Review wish you a relaxing summer to come. We’ll be back next month, and, as ever, hope you will contact us with your thoughts on what we have done, failed to do, or should plan to do in the future.

Onward!

RJGrgranieri@fpri.org@RonaldGranieri

1This phrase was coined by FPRI Senior Fellow James Kurth.

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In a recent New York Times Op-ed (“What ‘Hamilton’ Forgets About Hamilton,” June 10, 2016) Jason Frank and Isaac Kramnick, both professors of government at Cornell University, attempt to push back against the recent wave of enthusiasm for Alexander Hamilton inspired by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster musical. Appalled by what they consider an inappropriately charitable presentation of the historical Hamilton and his political views, they offer a stern rebuttal, and an indirect defense of Hamilton’s rival, Thomas Jefferson.

Unfortunately, their revision is itself largely a repeat of tropes that have been part of the anti-Hamilton literature since the 1790s, which calls for a response of its own.

Frank and Kramnick’s central claim is that Alexander Hamilton “insisted on deference to elites” and thus wanted to “restore non-titled aristocracy to America.” To make matters worse, Hamilton had nothing but “contempt” and “disdain” for the common man. Frank and Kramnick also appear to endorse the centuries old slur first promulgated by the “populist” Thomas Jefferson (a “populist” who was one of the largest slave owners in Virginia) that Hamilton’s economic scheme “supported the rule of commercial oligarchs.” The identity of these 1790s “oligarchs” goes unmentioned, and their assertions rely on many such unsupported allegations. The notion that Hamilton sought to “restore” (restore from when and where?) an American aristocracy is complete fiction. Hamilton addressed this accusation during the New York Ratifying Convention of 1788, where he observed that “I hardly know the meaning of this word [aristocracy] as it is applied . . . Who are the aristocracy among us? Where do we find men elevated to a perpetual rank above their fellow citizens; and possessing powers entirely independent of them . . . There are men who are rich, men who are poor, some who are wise, and others who are not . . . indeed every distinguished man is an aristocrat.” To the extent that Hamilton favored the creation of an “elite,” it was one composed of men of intellect and accomplishment, not one of birth. Hamilton was the personification of these qualities, for he had emerged from one of the most dysfunctional childhoods imaginable to improve his lot in life, ultimately rising to serve at the side of General, and later President, George Washington. To label Hamilton an “elitist” twists the meaning of the term beyond all recognition. Interestingly, Hamilton, unlike the “populist” Jefferson, had a wide circle of friends, mostly fellow war veterans, while the Sage of Monticello isolated himself on his hilltop plantation far removed from the madding crowd. Hamilton, this “elitist,” this minion of the “oligarchs,” died without wealth and left his widow and his seven children reliant on the charity of friends. The accusation that Hamilton was a toady of the rich and well-born was first leveled against Hamilton by the Antifederalists and then later parroted by Jefferson and his lieutenants, including James Madison. Madison, as Mary Sarah Bilder recently revealed, went back and doctored some of his notes from the Constitutional Convention to bolster the image of Hamilton as a monarchy-loving Anglophile. Of course, being called a monarchist in the 1790s was the equivalent

whaT Jason frank and isaac kramnick forgeT aBouT hamilTon

By Stephen F. Knott

Dr. Stephen F. Knott is a professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College, and the co-author, with Tony Williams, of Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance That Forged America.

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whaT Jason frank and isaac kramnick forgeT aBouT hamilTon

of being called a communist in the 1950s – it was a tactic designed to curtail debate and destroy one’s opponent, and the accusation alone had political impact even if could not be proven. Hamilton was the nation’s first victim of the politics of personal destruction. Jefferson, and generations of Jeffersonian historians, considered him a power-hungry, people-hating plutocrat or an immigrant of questionable loyalty, who despite having fought with honor for his country’s independence, would be repeatedly accused of being a British sympathizer, or worse. Sadly, nativist elitists like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson could never accept a “bastard” immigrant from an obscure speck of an island in the Caribbean as their equal. Both men outlived Hamilton by twenty-two years, and spent part of that time spinning the historical record to portray Hamilton in the worst possible light. Hamilton’s views on “who should govern” were far more complex than Frank and Kramnick contend. His skeptical view of human nature was not confined simply to “the lower classes.” Like many enlightenment thinkers, Hamilton sought a balanced government, one where the various interests in society were pitted against one another, in hopes that the national interest, not the interest of any particular group, would prevail. Hamilton believed that all individuals, regardless of wealth, were slaves to the passions of “avarice, ambition, and interest” and government must be designed in such a way as to mitigate the dangers inherent throughout the populace. Additionally, Hamilton understood that the nascent American government would collapse without the support of merchants, bankers, and shippers, and sought to enlist their support. But all of this was done to make the abstract provisions of the Constitution a reality – in other words, to create a nation. It was not done to stick it to the little man. Frank and Kramnick also “forget” that while Hamilton proposed lifetime terms for United States Senators, his proposal for a House of Representatives elected by universal male suffrage was far more democratic than that which ultimately emerged from the Constitutional Convention.

It is unfortunate that Frank and Kramnick continue to recycle clichés about Hamilton’s contempt for the common man – an accusation all the more regrettable if one considers Hamilton’s comparatively progressive views regarding the employment of African-Americans as soldiers in the American Revolution, his founding membership in the New York Society for the Manumission of Slaves and his proposal that all of its members free their slaves, his compassionate position on the status of native Americans, and his party’s support for Toussaint Louverture and his Haitian revolution (one that the “populist” Jefferson refused to assist out of fear of the “contagion” spreading into the American south and upending the Jeffersonian slavocracy). Hamilton also came to the conclusion during the Jay Treaty debate in the mid-1790s that slave owners who had lost their property to the British should not be compensated by having their slaves returned, as he noted that “the restoration of property is a favored thing yet the surrender of persons to slavery is an odious thing.” Hamilton’s objection was based on his interpretation of international law, but at times he seems to have been morally offended by the concept of slavery. “In the interpretation of Treaties things odious and immoral are not to be presumed,” and he added “Is not this, as it regards the rights of humanity, an odious sense?” This of course infuriated the populist Jefferson. Hamilton’s alleged disdain for the common man looked much different from the perspective of a slave, or a Native American, or a free black in the north, the latter of whom overwhelming supported Hamilton’s Federalist Party, thus earning the endearing nickname from the Jeffersonians as the “black Federalists.” While it is true that Alexander Hamilton was no abolitionist, in comparison to Thomas Jefferson, he was Frederick Douglass in a waistcoat and breeches.

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“Hamilton” the musical got it right – Alexander Hamilton envisioned a society that allowed those with talent and ambition to “rise up.” And, it should be noted, Hamilton created an economic system and political institutions that would put the most elitist institution of all, slavery, on the path to extinction. But the accusation, so crudely put by Frank and Kramnick, that Hamilton had a “disdain for the lower classes” and, in case you missed it the first time, a “contemptuous attitude toward the lower classes,” will no doubt live on. This slur is gospel among far too many progressive historians and political scientists, who still see Charles Beard as cutting-edge, and who are convinced that money, self-interest, and a contempt for the common man is what motivated Alexander Hamilton, if not all of the framers.

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In any political debate the two most unwelcome participants are:

• the outsider who parachutes in to announce which decision people need to make, the consequences of which will not effect him directly, and

• the historian who comes in with a great sigh and a “well, actually” as he condescendingly explains, “How much more complicated it all is than you seem to think…”

In this era of budgetary austerity, I’m pleased to report that the organizers of this event opted to sign up two for the price of one, and have thus invited a historian from across the pond to act as the focus for irritation.

All joking aside, this American historian does believe that we all have an interest in the vote on Britain’s continued presence in the European Union. And, I may add, although the twists and turns of transatlantic history are complicated, the main point I want to make is actually not complicated at all.

For despite what some may say on either side of the Atlantic, Britain’s role in the EU is but a crucial part of special relationship between Britain and the USA, and has been vital to the strength and endurance of the Atlantic Community. That role should not lightly be thrown aside.

This bears repeating from the start, since one can find many conservatives in both the United States and Britain who portray Brexit as a service to the special relationship, and who dream of escaping from a socialist, pacifist Europe into some sort of Anglo-American economic and political union. The Heritage Foundation, for example, has been advocating for Brexit for some time, asserting that the EU stands in the way of better transatlantic relations. Even conservative columnists who pride themselves on their historical sense have lost that sense when it comes to the EU. George Will, for example, only mentions two founders of European integration in a recent column—Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet—both of them French, and drifts off into assertions about the French and socialist nature of the arrangement. Will claims that the EU’s goal is to “drain Europe of grandeur,” ignoring the role of another Frenchman, Charles de Gaulle, in linking European integration to grandeur, not to mention the role of such hard-nosed realists as the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in constructing a United Europe as part of a larger strategy to defend the West in the Cold War. What these critics provide in stories of current failure of the EU they lack in appreciation of what European integration has meant for the past six decades, and what it can mean in the future.

Now, one can certainly find many counter examples of thoughtful writers who argue for maintaining the European Union. Roger Cohen of the New York Times, for example, who has in the past called the European Union “the dullest miracle on earth,” recently warned that Europe was on the verge of an “unthinkable” tragedy if Brexit led to the collapse of the European project. “Realpolitik and idealism meet in the unity of Europe,” Cohen concluded. “The unthinkable, on both sides of the Atlantic, must be resisted before it is too late.” Meanwhile, economist and columnist Robert Samuelson has called Brexit “economic insanity,” and has more recently warned that a victory for the Leave

sPecial relaTionshiPs: The eu, BrexiT, and The aTlanTic communiTy

Ronald J. Granieri is Executive Director of FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West; Editor of FPRI’s new monthly e-publication The American Review, and host of Geopolitics with Granieri, a monthly discussion program at FPRI. A historian of modern Europe, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is currently Director of Research at the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.

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camp would result in years of uncertainty at best, long-term economic calamity at worst. It is very hard to say exactly what would happen if the British vote to leave on 23 June. Brexiteers come from across the political spectrum, from the nationalist Right to the anti-globalist Left, and thus do not offer a unified post-Brexit plan. Most claim that Brexit will lead to a lifting of shackles on Britain, but any advantages would only come after a significant shock, if they come at all. Remainers, for their part, also extend from Right to Left, including everyone from the Tory David Cameron to the throwback socialist Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the separatist leader of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon, and have broadly conflicting visions for the Britain and EU they would like to see emerge from this vote. Before taking such a leap in the dark, it would be well for both the British and their friends to reconsider the ideas, events, and individual who brought us to where we are today. The United States and Great Britain have always had ambivalent feelings about Europe, and have not always been on the same page in every detail. But Britain’s historical role as a transatlantic power is intimately bound up with its participation in Europe, just as the idea of an integrating Europe has been central to the American vision for transatlantic cooperation. A brief sketch of that history can be vital to the rest of our discussion.

It was after all Winston Churchill who in September 1946 offered his solution to the future of a continent shattered by war and genocide: “It is to re-create the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe.” Even if Churchill was more likely thinking of Europe as separate from the UK, he recognized that a more integrated Europe was desirable, and imagined that Britain would be a supporter if not a member of any such European organization.

American policy makers as well saw European cooperation as the key to postwar recovery. The Marshall Plan was built around the idea that American aid would help create a virtuous cycle of European cooperation and increased prosperity. This is not a secret, nor is it some kind of scurrilous secret CIA Plot, as some Brexiteers have recently argued, but rather the product of sober and sensible strategy, which recognized the need for European solidarity and transatlantic cooperation in the face of an emerging cold war. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower, who had plenty of experience with the problems of European nationalism, made clear that he believed “the uniting of Europe is a necessity for the peace and prosperity of Europeans and of the world.”

Britain was not a member of the original European organizations, from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) to the European Defense Community (EDC), or even of the EEC in its initial decade. But the Americans counted on the British to avoid damaging these institutions, even if they did not join. Indeed, Britain played its mediating role very well in the crisis after the collapse of the EDC in August 1954. When the French abandoned their own creation and threatened the delicate negotiations on German rearmament within the West, Prime Minister Churchill and his Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden rescued the project of European defense by negotiating, with American support, German membership in NATO and even the expansion of the Brussels Pact into the Western European Union. Britain helped keep Europe together, even if the British also expressed their preference for international cooperation.

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British reluctance to join the EEC did not please Washington, and the Americans watched from a distance as the British tried but failed to win the Six to their idea of a Free Trade Area as an alternative to the Common Market. Even the British, however, quickly realized that their true economic and political interest lay within and not outside of the European community. As the Americans worried that the Six under de Gaulle’s French leadership were flirting with anti-Americanism, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan found strong support from President John F. Kennedy when he decided to file an application for Britain to join the EEC. Both Washington and London realized that the best way to help shape the European future was not to construct alternatives to the EEC, but for Britain to embrace membership.

In a 4 July 1962 speech in Philadelphia, Kennedy linked the project of European integration within the Atlantic Community to the American Revolution by calling for a “Declaration of Interdependence.” Kennedy praised efforts at European integration, concluding: “We see in such a Europe a partner with whom we can deal on a basis of full equality in all the great and burdensome tasks of building and defending a community of free nations.” Although it would be “premature at this time to do more than indicate the high regard with which we view the formation of this partnership” Kennedy asserted, “The first order of business is for our European friends to go forward in forming the more perfect union which will someday make this partnership possible.”

By this point, the Americans were counting on the British to join the EEC, and Washington was as disappointed as London when de Gaulle issued the first of his two vetoes in 1963. De Gaulle claimed that Britain was not a European power, and was something of an American Trojan Horse. He wasn’t quite wrong on either count, and both the Americans and the British spent the rest of the decade lobbying the other Eurpean states (especially the West Germans) to resist Gaullist blandishments. But those disagreements took place within the existing structures of the EEC, with an aim toward increasing British participation, not simply British sabotage.

The 1970s were a decade of gloom and confusion, and there was a great deal of transatlantic malaise—Henry Kissinger’s frustrated question, “Which number do I call to speak to Europe?” was both a challenge to Europeans and an expression of American irritation at European claims of a world role they appeared unwilling to bear the burdens to play. But here again, the British, once they were in, worked to shape Europe according to their vision, and the United States continued to look for ways to make the European-American relationship work.

President Reagan’ conservative friendship with Margaret Thatcher marked the 1980s, and led to a more nuanced connection between the Anglo-Americans and Europe. As Sir Michael Howard and others have noted, the Reagan administration may have been more “ritualistic” in its support for Europe, and was certainly interested in avoiding a “fortress Europe,” the Americans preferred to work with the British to modify European policy—not to destroy the project. It’s also worth noting that Reagan’s most intense dispute with Europe—over the building of the soviet gas pipeline in Siberia—did not pit Reagan and Thatcher against the rest, but saw the British standing with French and other European partners in defense of their economic interests.

The end of the Cold War opened up a series of complicated questions about Europe’s boundaries and global role that haunt us to this day. But when George H. W. Bush praised the creation of a “Europe whole and free,” he was praising greater cooperation, not deepening divisions along national borders.

The relationship between Britain and the EU has never been simple or easy. And the EU is itself very far from perfect. Even the most die-hard Remainer has to be willing to admit that, even as sensible Brexiteers have recognize how much Britain has been able to advance its agenda and serve its interests within the EU.

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The gulf between aspiration and accomplishment is not new, nor is the failure of European leaders to get out in front of their populations on Europe. It has been far too tempting to hope integration could happen automatically, through the accumulation of regulations and economic impulses, as many technocrats in Brussels going back to Jean Monnet have hoped. Too often, European integration has been a secretive, elite project, with few prominent leaders willing to articulate a larger vision. Europe as it exists today is neither an efficient superstate nor a laissez-faire free trade area, but something in between. In that sense, even if it is far from a United States of Europe, the EU is rather like its sibling on this side of the Atlantic—a sometimes-clumsy political agglomeration that makes decisions with great difficulty, and that attracts passionate criticism from people who underestimate its virtues.

For all its weaknesses, however, until now, no one has wanted to leave (not even the British under Margaret Thatcher); and no one has ever been kicked out. Yet.

The EU is the way that it is in no small part because of British reluctance to embrace deeper federalism, and because of how the British have used their influence within Europe to hinder moves in that direction. Britain has acted as a stalking horse (and in some cases, a convenient smokescreen and scapegoat) for other EU members who want to preserve national privileges, for better or worse.

Britain has also acted as an important check on European impulses to drift away from Atlantic solidarity. That has led tart-tongued Continentals to attack London as Washington’s Trojan horse, or Poodle, or other unappealing animal metaphors. Such aspersions do no justice either to the value of transatlantic relations or to the sincere differences of interest and opinion within the West. They are, however, natural and not unwelcome evidence of disagreement within a raucous alliance of democracies, which after all should be built around healthy debate and constructive disagreement.

For that reason, no one should expect that a simple vote to Remain will resolve every question or concern that exists about the European Union’s future, and Britain’s role in it. I expect there will still be plenty of things to argue about no matter what happens on 23 June.

But the history of Britain’s role in the Atlantic world and the Europe Union shows us that even when Britain was advocating alternatives, or stepping firmly on the brakes, at no time has Britain actively sought to undermine an organization within which it was already a member. Staying out, or offering alternatives, as Britain did in the 1950s or 1960s, is one thing—encouraging the dismantling of the EU is another matter entirely. Brexit would be a fateful step. Leaving aside the question of what specific negatives would result (a debate that is too often lost in vague fear mongering on one side and even vaguer wishful thinking on the other), Brexit would unleash a period of uncertainty; it would certainly weaken the EU, and would likely weaken Britain and the Atlantic alliance as well. As Anne Applebaum has warned, considering the possibility of disputes between England and Scotland over Europe, the UK leaving the EU “could mean the end of both of them.” There are plenty of folks who agree with Applebaum and who embrace Brexit for that very reason. They imagine that in the long run both Britain and Europe would be somehow rejuvenated by a jolt of nationalism, and could perhaps join with other escapees from the EU to build new relationships. Such wishful thinking can go so far as to imagine Britain speedily renegotiating its status with the EU in a way that secures all the advantages of the current situation and none of the disadvantages.

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There’s nothing wrong with hope and ambition, of course, but these hopes fly in the face of current realities. Not to mention the fact that such hopefulness is coming from people who resolutely refuse to place their hopefulness and creativity at the disposal of a project that has already accomplished so much.

The European project is one of the greatest accomplishments of modern politics, an effort to knit together a Continent that has been riven by war and dictatorship, and which has found its way to peace and prosperity such as has never been known before. With all its manifest flaws, it is a project worthy of the effort and the affection of any lover of European history, traditions, and society. Britain, Europe, and the West will not profit from becoming smaller and more fragmented. Nor will Europe be saved by those who hate its open society, or who cheer on its destruction to validate their prejudices, or who embrace the strongmen and dream of high walls and lily-white futures. It should tell us something about what a bad idea Brexit is that the two international figures outside of Britain most clearly in favor of it are Donald Trump, who knows little about international affairs and less about the European Union, and has no sense of the historical value of the EU and NATO, and Vladimir Putin, who knows all too well the value of the European Union to transatlantic relations and wants to undermine them both. Any disputes one may have with this or that element of current European politics should not obscure the titanic importance of Europe’s survival and self-assertion, not only for the Europeans themselves, but for us on this side of the Atlantic as well. The United States needs more than a scattered band of sidekicks. The United States needs a strong and united partner that shares its history, shares its western values and ideas, a partners with whom it has already forged a successful relationship. The EU has been that partner, and can be that partner into the future.

Which brings us back to the historical role that Britain has played and which it can play today. No matter how suspicious Britain has been of the continentals, Britain has never placed its critique of Europe before its commitment to the stability and future of the West. There is no reason why you should start now.

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This essay is drawn from his book, Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance (Indiana University Press, November 2015).

With the Fall 2015 issue of Orbis: FPRI’s Journal of World Affairs devoted to a valuable collection of articles on the subject, Geopolitics continues its pronounced return to the center of scholarly debate, a return that has been noticeable in the literature over the last quarter-century. Indeed, “The Revival of Geopolitics,” a phrase former FPRI President

Harvey Sicherman used in 2002, has itself been a theme of a branch of the literature. Since Halford Mackinder and others first deployed it in 1899, geopolitics has been an amorphous concept—a malleable, as well as controversial, term. Different working definitions have been advanced, and there is no universally accepted definition in English. All focus on the relationship between politics and geography, although that relationship has been very differently considered and presented. In this context, politics is approached principally in terms of the composition and use of power. The geographical factors vary, but space, location, distance and resources are all important. Geopolitics is commonly understood as an alternative term for all or part of political geography and, more specifically, as the study of the spatial dynamics of power. In practice, there is a persistent lack of clarity about whether geopolitics, however defined, or the spatial dynamics should be understood in a descriptive or in a normative sense. Moreover, what Sicherman termed in 2002 “the facts of geopolitics – the resources and locations of various peoples and states,” involve subjective as well as objective considerations, and the significance of the former are commonly downplayed. This is true across the varied dimensions of geopolitics.

The end of the Cold War posed major conceptual problems, encouraging both a total recasting of geopolitics and also the question whether the subject itself had outlived its usefulness. In the event, reports of the death of geopolitics proved totally unfounded. Instead, the second surge of writing on geopolitics linked to the Cold War has been followed, from 1990, with a third surge. Moreover, this surge has been of considerable scale. From 1990 until 2014, over 400 academic books specifically devoted to geopolitical thought have appeared, a number that does not include more narrowly focused national studies. In addition, these books have appeared in a plethora of languages, including Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, English, Finnish, French, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Spanish. To write of a surge does not imply any necessary similarity in approach, content, or tone, but does capture the extent to which geopolitical issues and language still play a major role. This can be amplified if attention is devoted to references in periodical and newspaper articles, and in popular fiction.

Geopolitics has many benefits and offers many insights. Like many other subjects, it is a means for argument as well as analysis, for polemic as well as policy, and these categories are not rigidly differentiated. Geopolitics focuses on human society, but also on the contexts within which, and through which, it operates. Geopolitics thus highlights the basic (but often silent) structure and infrastructure of human interaction, as well as the issues involved in formulating and implementing policy. Structure and infrastructure are both man-made (whether frontiers or transport systems) and natural (notably place, distance, terrain, climate and resource-availability), interdependent in their influence.

geoPoliTics redux

By Jeremy Black

Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter, and is the author of many books, including most recently, The Holocaust: History and Memory (Indiana University Press, 2016).

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geoPoliTics redux

Many elements of geopolitics represent the interaction of structure and infrastructure, for example coast-hinterland relations. This very range of the subject poses problems for any attempt to offer a precise and concise definition and typology.

There is a distinction between an appreciation of the role of geography and geopolitics on the one hand, and, on the other, grand geopolitical theories. Nevertheless, whichever the focus, key issues can best be addressed in geopolitical terms, not least the availability of resources and the resulting significance of particular regions. Geopolitics is also definitely useful as a concept when discussing the influence of geography (for example distance and propinquity) on inter-state politics. Linked to this is the issue of communications, with geopolitical considerations providing an explanation of reasons for change and a key measure of the importance of such changes as do occur. Thus, just as the consequences of the opening of the Suez and Panama canals or the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway in previous centuries involved geopolitical and geostrategic elements, so also will it be with the likely opening of sea passages through the Arctic, to the north of both North America and Russia, as the ice melts under the impact of global warming in our day. The return to geopolitics is a valuable tendency, but, like all such tendencies, requires a degree of care in order to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of the genre, and to distinguish quality from faddishness. In particular, it is necessary to understand the dual, linked role of geopolitics as analysis and geopolitics as rhetoric. To pretend that geopolitical arguments are solely one or the other risks overlooking the major significance of perception in the assessment of spatial identities and interests and in the understanding of the norms of international relations.

There is of course an underlying reality that is part of the analysis: Argentina is an Atlantic power and Chile a Pacific one. There are plentiful oil supplies in Venezuela, but not in Spain. Proximity remains a key issue: ask any Ukrainian.

The consequences, however, that flow from such points are far less clear, and notably so once assessing how individuals consider their response. The famous New Yorker cartoon of a Manhattanite’s view of America brilliantly captures this point, with its observation that mental geography plays a fundamental role creating realities of great political weight. More generally, an increasing percentage of the growing world population is living in cities, and the human-created world weighs more heavily on realities and perceptions of space and its meaning. For example, maps may neglect or underplay the ethnic, economic and social weave of cities, preferring an account that puts an emphasis on the balder details of distance and the surface of roads, but, to those who live in the city, the latter has much meaning in terms of the former.

To say that the character of geopolitics changes, however, does not mean that geopolitical factors cease to be relevant. The level of decision-maker and commentator under consideration provides one level of complexity. Issues of geography can be more vital to regional and local participants than to great powers. The West Bank provides a good example, not least with differences between Israeli and American sensitivity to Israeli security. This factor of scale will continue to be significant, but scale is also transformed by technology, as shown for example by the deployment of longer-range missiles by Hezbollah, Hamas, North Korea and Iran since 2000.

One of the key challenges in geopolitical analysis will continue to be the fluctuating influence of geography at both the local and global levels. Writing about the latter occupies much of the geopolitical literature, and this may continue

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to be the case given current emphasis on globalization and global environmental change, as well as the academic, popular, and publishing pressures to offer global coverage. Yet the local—understood as state and sub-state levels—is a prime area for understanding of geographical and spatial impact on politics. The very widespread nature of this impact makes it difficult to reduce to the seductive clarity offered by the use of binary opposites to evaluate international challenges. Geopolitical discussion in the future may reflect a tension between the preference of some commentators for engaging with the complexities of the particular and, on the other hand, the seductive simplicities of broad-brush approaches. The latter will continue to engage the most attention, but they not only offer less than the full map, but also a scale and projection that are frequently misleading.

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foreign Policy research insTiTuTe

James H. AverillJ. Michael BarronEdward T. Bishop

Raza BokhariGwen BorowskyRuth S. Bramson

Richard P. Brown, Jr.Robert E. CarrAhmed Charai

Winston J. ChurchillWilliam L. Conrad

Devon CrossPeter Dachowski

Robert A. FoxGary A. Frank

James H. Gately

Susan H. GoldbergCharles B. Grace, Jr.

John R. HainesS.A. Ibrahim

Donald R. KardonMarina Kats

Jeffrey B. KohlerHon. John F. Lehman

David C. M. LucterhandDavid MarshallRonald J. Naples

Michael NovakovicEdward W. O’Connor

Robert O’DonnellMarshall W. Pagon

James M. Papada III

John W. PiaseckiAlan L. Reed

Eileen RosenauLionel Savadove

Adele K. SchaefferEdward L. Snitzer

Hillard R. Torgerson

TRUSTEE EMERITIJohn H. BallElise W. CarrGerard CuddyJack GreenbergGraham HumesWistar Morris IIIJ. G. Rubenstein

Alan H. Luxenberg, President

officers and Board of TrusTees

Robert L. Freedman, ChairSamuel J. Savitz, Vice Chair

Hon. Dov S. Zakheim, Vice ChairHon. John Hillen, Treasurer

Eli S. Gilman, Secretary

Walter A. McDougall, ChairBoard of advisors

Paul BrackenMichael S. Doran

Thomas V. DraudeCharles J. Dunlap, Jr.David EisenhowerAdam M. Garfinkle

Paul H. Herbert

Frank G. HoffmanRobert D. Kaplan

Bernard LewisRobert C. McFarlane

John A. NaglNimrod Novik

Kori Schake

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