Geopolitics

Geopolitics is a slippery term. From great power politics and speculation about resource scrambles, to everyday encounters and objects such as smart phones, it affects citizens, corporations, international bodies, social movements, and governments. Geopolitics is far more than simply the impact of geographical features such as rivers, mountains, and climate on political developments. Geography matters but not necessarily in the way that pundits and presidents assume.

The transformation from traditional war between nation-states to conflict between nation-states and nonstate actors requires decision makers, policy analysts, military commanders, intelligence officials, and legislators to answer the question: is there a strategy for an unwinnable conflict? This question takes on particular urgency given the extraordinary number of conflict points that define the current state of international relations.

The Geopolitics Reader offers an interdisciplinary sourcebook of the most important political, geographical, historical and sociological readings of geopolitics in the late twentieth century. The Reader draws on the most illuminating examples of imperial, Cold War, contemporary geopolitics, new environmental themes and multiple resistances to the practices of geopolitics.