Beyond Neoclassical and Critical Geopolitics

Federico Bordonaro

Beyond Neoclassical and Critical Geopolitics ? 2024 by Federico Bordonaro is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to succinctly demonstrate the shortcomings of conventional geopolitical theories and to highlight the need for a more all-encompassing strategy that goes beyond critical and classical viewpoints. Jeremy Black's approach shows promise; in addition to territorial and strategic conflicts, he suggests studying geopolitics as a politically influential intellectual tradition that aids in understanding the crystallization of national security traditions. Several historians in the last few decades proved that geopolitical concepts from the classical school are useful in explaining great powers' grand strategy, its successes and its failures. The paper also discusses the contributions of historical sociology to geopolitical theory, with a special focus on State power and predicting the outcome of international conflicts. The article acknowledges the predictive value of Collins's geopolitical theory in understanding the dynamics of the Cold War and subsequent political-strategic frameworks. A critique of critical geopolitics is also offered, centred on the shortcomings of a logo-centric, postmodernist, and subjectivist approach.

1. Introduction

Anglo-American geopolitical thought, which originated in the age of imperialism, was born with the dual intent of (a) analytically investigating the interactions between geography, strategy and historical constants, and (b) of providing support for the conduct of foreign policy. The second goal inevitably ended up casting a shadow over the discipline's claim to social science, and this all the more so as the classical German school made even more ideologically aligned use of it. For this reason, the revival of academic interest in geopolitics has been wedded, since the 1980s, to a certain predilection for critical approaches (1).?

The point is that the dichotomy between neoclassical geopolitics and critical geopolitics is severely limiting the future of the discipline. The opposition between the two schools fatally tends to reproduce the contrast between what Robert W. Cox [1981] identified as problem-solving theory in the service of power, on the one hand, and theory in the service of social change, on the other.

2. Critical geopolitics and its discontents

For ó Tuathail and those in the critical school, the main task of geopolitical analysis is to ask what the mechanisms of power are and how to combat them (2). To do this, the study of geographical representations by power is essential. Discourse analysis is of paramount importance in this methodology. The discourse of the powerful and that of intellectuals connected to power circles encapsulates geopolitical representations and their use for the attainment of power.?

Critical geopolitics, therefore, examines the rhetoric, metaphors, and symbolism related to geographical space used in political discourse. It elaborates a "counter-geopolitics," based on a critical approach to geography that rejects its supposed objectivity, opening up alternative schools (feminist geopolitics, for example, as an alternative to classical national security discourse and its symbolism). In this approach, geographic analysis of flows (of capital, of migrants, of socially relevant ideas) also plays a central role, in an attempt to unveil social power relations veiled by the dominant geopolitical discourse.

The centrality of discourse is thus the first fundamental characteristic of the critical geopolitical school. According to ó Tuathail [1999, pp. 108-110], critical geopolitics strives to examine the discourse of power to foster greater democratic participation of the popular masses and to disrupt existing power relations. It is therefore not interested in producing a theory that can predict the conditions of geopolitical success or failure of a state or political movement. Nor, obviously, does it want to provide solutions to the geopolitical problems faced by a government, as classical geopolitics does, since its fundamental goal is to foster social change in a progressive sense.

Added to this is a special emphasis on the need to overcome the implicit or explicit "Eurocentrism" of the classical school. According to ó Tuathail, the practical implications of a critical reorientation of geopolitics emerged as early as the 1970s, in the contrast between neoclassical geopolitics (Gray, Brzezinski) hinging on binary oppositions (free world/communism, sea/land power, us/them) and the ecologist and anti-militarist strategy of the European peace movements of the time.

The "contradictions" of late techno-scientific and capitalist modernity, for critical geopolitics, are the real reason for the emergence of strategic threats to democratic and Western society. It follows that the neoclassical portrayal of imperial-type "authoritarianism" in the continental sphere as a rival bloc to democracies or of the "rogue state" in shattering zones such as the Middle East, for ó Tuathail, Agnew, Dalby, and other critics, is based on an untenable us/them binary rigidity and an inadequate and outdated conceptual apparatus. Critical discourse analysis and problematization of traditions of thought are therefore necessary for the de-construction of these narratives and to defeat the politics based on them.

The critical investigation of the social and cultural origins of geopolitical thought (not only Anglo-American but also French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, etc.) is undoubtedly a necessary task for scholars of the discipline. Geopolitics is not only a set of theoretical assumptions or a geostrategic practice, but also and above all a subject born within the social sciences; as such, it is part of the history of ideas, as this paper seeks to explain.?

There is no doubt that the study of geopolitical representations by policymakers, intellectuals, and the popular masses enriches our knowledge of the social use of geography and space. It is quite evident, to take an example referring to the 21st century, how the construction of certain geostrategic regions such as " the Greater Middle East" or "the Wider Mediterranean" is affected by both the power interests of the ruling classes and popular representations of space, often to an equal or greater extent than geographical analysis. That said, the claim of critical geopolitics to have surpassed classical and neoclassical geopolitics is problematic and does not stand up to an analysis that is itself critical.

First, the meritorious attention by critical geopolitics to the question of geographic-political representations is not an absolute novelty, as already in Mackinder an awareness of the author's subjective point of view, coupled with an awareness of the existence of a point of view opposed to it, was detectable [Mackinder 1919]. The world seen from the maritime perspective is not the one that appears from the continental one, and both are present in the analysis.?

Second, yielding to the intellectual conformity of the 1980s and 1990s, ó Tuathail and his colleagues argued for the obsolescence of the constants of strategic history. They conspicuously underestimated the permanence of such key-factors as sea-orientation, continentality, territorial and positional advantage, and zones of shattering, considering instead financial flows, the new character of real-time information, and the globalization of the economy as geopolitically decisive. These factors, however, have not erased territorial rivalry, as the history of the post-Cold War decades has sadly confirmed (from the war in the former Yugoslavia to the war in Ukraine).

Third, critical geopolitics is a repurposing in geography of historiographic constructivism, of which significant examples are Hayden White and Hans Kellner [White 1978; Kellner 1987]. For these scholars, historical narratives must be treated as "verbal fictions." Between history and myth there would be no substantial difference, since the basic concepts normally used to distinguish between the two, such as "truth" and "reality," are themselves problematic and undefinable, in the best agnostic and relativistic tradition.

The secret of the theory, according to Jean Baudrillard, is that truth "does not exist." For his part, Michel Foucault [1980], "reality does not exist; only language exists." For American philosopher Richard Rorty [1991], terms such as "truth" and "knowledge" are simply "matters of social practice," mere tributes paid to beliefs held by the public to be so well justified that, for the moment, they need no further justification.?

These ideas, however, prove unconvincing, going far beyond the contextualization of the historian's and the geographer's perspective.? As historian Marc Trachtenberg [2006] has pointed out, intellectual work is based on the assumption that we cannot be systematically misled: as theorists, the assumption is that our basic beliefs about reality, i.e., about the existence of an external world knowable through the mind and through the senses, are indeed correct. As these basic conclusions apply to knowledge in general, they also apply to historical – and geopolitical – knowledge in particular.

As effectively highlighted by prominent neoclassical authors like Colin S. Gray, Geoffrey Sloan, and Phil Kelly, critical geopolitics, while meritorious in deepening the study of strategic decisions by state apparatuses, discredits the theory itself, by considering it "suspect" as the discourse of power, given the impossibility of objectively defining the world.

Although critics hit the mark by identifying in classical geopolitics a discourse functional to solving problems encountered by political elites – as openly intended by Mackinder, Mahan, and Spykman – they fail to acknowledge the presence of heuristic analytical elements in the classical school.

For instance, Kelly recalls how Frederick Teggart, praising Mackinder, stated that the migration from the Heartland to the "marginal lands" of the Eurasian continent is not a theoretical hypothesis but a concrete fact. His reconstruction allowed for a succession of empires (Greece, Rome, Europe) based on maritime power, each eventually overthrown by an attack from a continental rival. The success of land power in all these cases derived from an expansion of the strategic operations field and the attackers' conquest of the maritime power's supply base. Mackinder drew generalizations from this observation about the influence of geography on history, constructing his own geostrategic hypotheses.

Legitimate criticism of the pro-state orientation of classical geopolitics does not imply that, epistemologically, the classics are less capable of interpreting reality than the critics. The former indeed have an agenda, but this is also true – as admitted by the latter – for the critics, whose goals align with radical and anti-system thinking. Kelly rightly notes that the hypothesis that the nation-state is disappearing, supported by critical geopoliticians, appears at least risky. In reality, the post-Cold War world has seen a proliferation of nation-states, although some of them are objectively weak.

Jeremy Black [2015] has observed, not without reason, that all major proponents of the critical school consider it a form of cultural resistance to geography as an imperial, militaristic, and capitalist tool. Its adherents' stated purpose is to "decolonize geographical imagination" to make other geographies possible for other worlds. It follows, continues Black, that critical geopolitics is an aspect of the politicization of the debate rather than the product of an academic culture. By a priori excluding the possibility of objectivity, the critical school, however, excludes itself from truth-seeking research in academic comparison with rival schools. However, it is precisely by engaging in specific case studies related to territorial rivalries that the utility and theoretical fertility of a given school of thought can be judged.

3. Which way forward?

The basic problem, then, remains: the epistemological status of geopolitics is fragile because of the various agendas that inform the different schools. Is there a possibility of overcoming the alternative between geopolitics as "doctrine" on the one hand and as "narrative" on the other?

The most promising avenue seems to be the one identified by British historian Jeremy Black (2015): geopolitics should be considered as a field of investigation for historical studies in several respects.?

• First, as a study of a politically influential tradition of thought, as evidenced by the vitality of classical geopolitical thought among researchers and scholars close to the military-industrial complex.?
• Second, concretely, geopolitics is made up of territorial rivalries that the theorist must reconstruct and explain. Consider, for example, the problem of control of straits and maritime routes (Straits of Hormuz, Malacca), competition for sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracels Islands, NATO expansion in the area between the Baltic and Black Seas, and other issues that are immediately perceived as exquisitely "geopolitical." Black correctly points out how the Russian push into the warm seas and Chinese ambitions to have undisturbed access to the oceans are geopolitical goals objectively detectable by historical analysis-regardless of the subjective perceptions of actors and intellectuals.?
• Third, the study of history over the medium-to long-term allows geopolitical theory to be refined as a tool to understand the conditions underlying the stability of states. In this sense, geopolitics is an aspect of the historical sociology of the state [Collins 1999].

In this sense, the material and objective aspects of geography and the intangible ones (i.e., cultural and subjective spatial and strategic "representations") should not be treated as mutually exclusive elements, but equally serve the historian to understand the role of geographical conditioning on both collective mentalities and policy choices.

The gravest danger for geopolitics appears to be that of flattening itself on a-historical analyses, either in the sense of a trivial geographical determinism or, in the opposite sense, of a post-modernist discourse analysis, grossly negligent of geographical-strategic realities. On the contrary, I contend that historical analysis is precisely the field where geopolitical concepts show their usefulness.

4. Geopolitics and historiography

A shining example of the potential of classical geopolitics and its concepts for the study of international history is John P. LeDonne's [1996] volume on the Russian Empire and its relations with the rest of the world. LeDonne applied to the analysis of the history of the Tsarist Empire a classic problem of Anglo-Saxon geopolitics: the expansionism of the central power of the Heartland. The American historian resorted to the conceptual apparatus of Mackinder, Mahan, Parker and Owen Lattimore to frame the geographical and strategic context of tsarist foreign policy between the 18th century and World War I.?

Eurasian heartland, core-areas, and frontiers are the three geopolitical concepts that enabled LeDonne to reason about the relationship between geography and Russian grand strategy, keeping in mind the geographic constraints of the Tsarist Empire's rivals over the medium to long term. LeDonne's was a strong restatement of the decisive character of geography as a conditioning that greatly reduces the states' room for maneuver, regardless of the personalities and preferences of the decision-makers.?

Moreover, for LeDonne, the geostrategic goals of the Soviet Union largely traced the lines of the "grand strategy" of the Tsarist Empire. Consequently, the author considers it legitimate to wonder whether "today's Russia, reduced to its 1650 borders [...] will not once again seek to restore in the Heartland a hegemony to which it had become accustomed in the heyday of imperial and Soviet Russia". This consideration, which LeDonne expressed in 1996, seems surprisingly relevant when considering the debate on the relationship between Russia and its so-called "Near Abroad" in our century.

American political scientist A. Wess-Mitchell [2018] has also reconsidered the history of Habsburg diplomacy from a geopolitical perspective, with extensive recourse to the terminology and theorizing of classical Anglo-Saxon geopolitical thought. Here, historical analysis has proved essential for accurately assessing the extent of geographical conditioning in the lives of great powers, while geopolitics’ theoretical concepts perform the useful task of refining the author’s understanding of evolving power relations among rival states.

British historian Brendan Simms [2013] provided another excellent example of the application of geopolitics to historiography. In his research, Simms conducted a long-term analysis of the struggle for European dominance over the past five hundred and fifty years. In the structure of the work, the use of classical geopolitical concepts is frequent and decisive for the logic of his argument. First of all, Simms uses the concept of the Heartland and that of rivalry between continental power and maritime power to investigate the importance of the European space occupied first by the Holy Roman Empire and then by the states born from its disintegration.?

The role of Germany in European history, from the pre-unification period to the present, is interpreted by Simms in a geopolitical framework, both considering its importance as a geographical area, the scene of the clash of powers, and as a unitary actor after 1870, expansionist and potentially hegemonic. Moreover, Simms reconstructs on the historical-international level the stages of statehood formation in Europe, showing how it resulted from geopolitical conflict itself, echoing the historical sociology of Charles Tilly [Tilly 1990], Michael Mann [Mann 1986, 1993] and Randall Collins [Collins 1999].

Simms also shows how policymakers had "geopolitical consciousness" of their state and the international context of their era even in the 15th and 16th centuries, thus well before the development of geopolitical theoretical concepts. His argument is reminiscent of John LeDonne's work on the presence of a conscious "grand strategy" of the Tsarist Empire in the pre-revolutionary era [LeDonne 2005] and of Wess Mitchell's take on the geopolitical awareness of Habsburg diplomacy.

It is also worth mentioning the Polish-American political scientist Jakub J. Grygiel [2006], who analyzed the geopolitical conditions that fostered the rise of some of the great medieval and modern powers, and then identified the geostrategic mistakes that the decision-makers of the time made by failing to grasp the significance of geopolitical change, thereby accelerating the decline of the state. For Grygiel, geopolitical reality is formed first and foremost by the configuration of power centers and strategic communication routes in a given era. The location of resources, the operation of large trade networks and the stability of state borders played a key role in the success and decline of great powers. Faced with the discovery of new continents, the rise of new centers of economic power, and the opening of new trade routes, some great powers made the mistake of not knowing how to adapt their strategy to geopolitical change. As a result, they went into rapid decline.?

For Grygiel, history shows how some key decisions were made against what a sound geographical approach to political context seemed to suggest. This means that geography does not determine human decision-making, which remains free, but that the constraints of the geopolitical context punish the choices of those politicians who misread it. Again, reality-based geopolitical thinking proves fruitful for understanding history, much more than engaging in ideological battles about discourse.

Finally, Geoffrey Sloan [2017] effectively applied classical geopolitical theory to several historical examples from the nineteenth century to the present, selected from various geographical areas. He demonstrated the vitality of the Mackinderian and Mahanian tradition by enriching it with insights from diplomatic history, political and historical geography, and historical sociology. Such a synthesis is particularly effective in showing the possible coexistence of the two main goals of geopolitical analysis understood in the "traditional" sense: at the analytical level, the understanding of the spatial dynamics of power and conflict between powers (as also shown by Phil Kelly, 2016) and, policy-wise, the ability to provide a "canvas" for strategists in the state and military sectors.

5. The historical sociology of State power

In the field of historical sociology, geopolitical theory has found fertile ground.? The analysis of the territorial power of the State and its implications represents a convincing overcoming of the limits of the classical and neoclassical 'grand narrative'. In 1978, Randall Collins developed a theory on the territorial power of states to predict the outcome of the American-Soviet competition, the central problem of international politics at the time [see also Hochberg 2002].

Collins's contribution is one of the few valid predictive theories in geopolitics and international relations. However, it is poorly understood beyond the confines of historical sociology. Collins's analytical method not only allowed for a correct understanding of the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War but also predicted the subsequent era's political-strategic framework. This was achieved through an analysis of the essential geopolitical factors that govern the expansion of state power. Furthermore, the method is also applicable to the study of large supranational organizations, alliances, and sub-state political groups [Collins 1981, 1986, 1999].

Collins investigates the relationships between great powers within a Weberian theoretical framework. He hypothesizes that the elites of these powers invariably seek to expand their international power-prestige. In other words, according to Weber [1992], the engine of imperialism and expansionism is the search for Machtsprestige. This search serves as the basis for the internal legitimation of key policymakers and constitutes the fundamental political objective of those who control the State. According to Collins, politics operates from the outside in. The geopolitical path of a state, in terms of external power and prestige, heavily impacts the legitimation and internal cohesion of the ruling class. It also affects their ability to maintain unity in multi-ethnic spaces and ensure the fiscal health of the state. Collins explores geopolitical power relations based on two key factors.

The first factor, i.e. the base of military resources, includes three constitutive elements for Collins:

• The production of weapons and the military structure, more or less rationalized;
• The economy;
• Administrative resources, composed of the technology available for the administration of the State and cultural resources, i.e. religious and ethnic identity.

The second factor however, i.e., the territorial configurations of the State, can be broken down into:

• The Heartlands, or core-areas;
• Natural barriers;
• The relationships between different core-areas and therefore between the states that arise on them.

The political-organizational and territorial variables interact. Both must enter into geopolitical analysis in order to explain and predict which states will be more or less large and more or less strong [Collins 1981].

Regarding the relationship with classical geopolitics, Collins disagrees with those who judge maritime power to be absolutely superior to land power based on British dominance in the 19th century and American dominance in the 20th century.

He also rejects the argument that air power, as a natural extension of naval power, is a necessary and sufficient condition for winning modern wars.

Collins draws on the historical-geographical studies of Colin McEvedy and consolidated historiography on empires to identify the constants and variables in the rise and fall of states.? According to Collins, geopolitical analysis must be conducted with a long-term perspective, as significant changes often take 30-50 years or even several hundred years to become visible. This creates a discrepancy in the perception of the territorial stability of states between the student of geopolitical history and the individual living in a given era.?

The territorial configurations within which the competition for power takes place and the international prestige of the various actors are inevitably dynamic although they may appear relatively stable within shorter periods of time; thus, also the question of the pre-eminence of maritime power over land power must be investigated through the centuries and in all regions of the world, in order to be able to make reasonable progress hypotheses containing a generalization.

5.1 Collins and the classical geopoliticians

Collins disagrees with Mackinder's classical school of thought, arguing that the fate of world power is not determined by the control of a central area in the World-Island, but rather by the outcome of competition among the strongest and most prosperous states that have enjoyed territorial and positional advantages over long periods of time. Collins rejects Mackinder's hypothesis of a single, stable heartland, as many heartlands have emerged throughout history. He defined a heartland as a territory with a certain degree of geographical unity, making it more easily and uniformly accessible to military control from within than from any external point, accepting the definition given by Arthur Stinchcombe [1968].

For instance, in Central and Eastern Europe, Hungary is situated in a well-defined core area, which is a fertile plain surrounded by mountains, acting as natural barriers. Egypt is another example of a closed core area, naturally unified by the Nile, a natural transport system, and separated from other regions by the desert to the east, west, and south, and the Mediterranean to the north.

Collins's theory posits that a State's geopolitical rise is achieved through the union of a comparative territorial advantage, such as greater natural and human resources, vastness of territory, and strategic depth, and a positional advantage, which involves having fewer strong rivals on its borders compared to competitors. Conversely, the loss of positional advantage and the trap of imperial hyper-extension, which generates unsustainable logistical and political costs, are the fundamental dynamics that explain the rapid decline and fragmentation of great powers.

Due to the impossibility of prevailing against multiple rivals, states that lack a positional advantage periodically experience military defeats. This fact favours a process of political-territorial fragmentation. In some historical phases, simplified geopolitical configurations emerge, characterized by a few large imperial states and many relatively small states in more central locations. During the Cold War period, the geopolitical system was simplified with two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, in the northern hemisphere and fragmentation in Europe and the Middle East.

In a 1980 speech, Collins [Collins 1986] emphasized that the United States and the Soviet Union's military power was primarily due to their territorial and resource advantages. Both superpowers were located on vast heartlands and had the necessary technologies and organization to extract resources. The Soviet Union no longer held the exclusive positional advantage in Eurasia after the formation of a stable China and Beijing's disengagement from the Soviet orbit between 1962 and 1971.

The author also contends that the bipolar structure of the system had already reached its peak with the end of the Second World War. In summary, the world had entered a counter-trend, an era of gradual fragmentation that could have lasted for centuries and increased the number of poles of power. This was a prefiguration of the present-day multipolar era, well in advance of current considerations regarding the world order.

Collins and his student David Waller, in 1992-93, further refined the geopolitical theory, giving greater emphasis to the ethno-political data. The power-prestige of the State allows the latter to hold back the devolutionary and centrifugal forces. Once the Soviet Empire was lost, post-communist Russia, no longer burdened by the logistical burdens of hyper-extension, would regain strength against smaller states located in fragmented regions. Furthermore, once its military and economic power had been reconstituted, the Russian state would have recovered prestige and legitimacy towards its internal minority ethnic groups (especially after defeating the Chechen guerrillas). Collins and Waller (1994) were therefore able to predict a new geopolitical cycle in the former Soviet area, using the same theory that made it possible to correctly predict the collapse of the USSR.

Collins's theory, however, also surpassed Mahan's classical hypotheses on maritime power supremacy. In a seminal article on technology and geopolitics, Collins [1981] demonstrated the permanence of traditional geopolitical factors, including positional advantage, even in the era of highly technologically sophisticated modern military fleets. History has shown that the success of past empires founded on the sea was often due to the political, military, and administrative disorganization of the conquered states as much as to the naval might of the conquerors.

Stable conquests through maritime power were only possible in the presence of a relative military vacuum. However, these empires were relatively short-lived, with the exception of Venice, which lasted for about 500 years.

It is worth noting that Venice had also conquered some territories on the continent. History has confirmed that advanced maritime powers cannot expand if they are geographically close to strong continental powers. For example, the British Empire could not expand in continental Europe due to the presence of the French and Habsburg monarchies. However, they were able to expand in distant territories. Similarly, Japan could not become a great power until the Chinese Empire experienced a serious crisis.

The crucial importance of land power in winning major wars is evident, as is the challenge of projecting power overseas in a consistent and stable manner. John Mearsheimer's renowned essay on the 'logic of power' later arrived at comparable conclusions [Mearsheimer 2001].

While maritime power retains significant geopolitical significance in Collins's theory, it primarily serves a defensive role, naturally complementing the sea's function as a natural barrier. On a global strategic level, the world's destiny is always influenced by the territorial advantages and positions held by different powers in different eras, as well as their tragic mistakes, such as hyper-extension and self-destructive hegemonic wars.

Significantly, a student of Collins, the scholar Jieli Li of Ohio University, used geopolitical theory by applying it to dozens of case studies, with interesting results on an interpretative and forecasting level, in reference to the geopolitical trajectories of Yugoslavia, of China and Ukraine [Li 1993, 2002, 2015].

The main limit of Collins's geopolitical theory lies, paradoxically, precisely in the characteristics that make it effective for the research for which it was conceived. In fact, it is an investigation aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying the expansion and contraction of territorial power, and then, at a later stage, analyzing the implications of this trajectory. It follows that Collins does not deal, except secondarily, with human action, with the dynamics of strategic foreign and defense policy decisions and with the role of diplomacy in exploiting or containing the influence of physical and human geography. In this sense, the study of classical geopolitical traditions and representations, and the "micro-level" analysis of the political elites' ambitions for power and prestige, on a sociological level, act as a necessary corrective, integrating Collins’s macro-historical theory.

6. Outlook

Drawing on what has been written, the geopolitical discipline seems mired in the contrast between the two most prolific schools, the neoclassical one (which is given up for dead every decade but promptly resurrects) and the critical one. In this article, we have tried to introduce the prospect of overcoming both schools. On the one hand, illustrating the fruitful use of the geopolitical conceptual arsenal for historical studies, on the other recalling the predictive success of the theory of the territorial power of states in historical sociology.?

While neoclassical geopolitics, despite managing to produce a heuristic apparatus, will inevitably remain a grand narrative at the service of power, critical geopolitics proves incapable of analyzing crises and territorial conflicts beyond the deconstruction of the discourse of political leaders. Nonetheless, the intellectual tradition originating from classical geopolitics and the critical school is capable of illuminating strategic history like no other. The developments summarized in this text are intended to open an academic discussion capable of producing further theoretical advances in the geopolitical discipline this century (3).

Notes

(1) There exists a rich literature on classical geopolitical thought. The best accounts in English remain the contributions by Parker (1985, 1998), Cohen (1973, 2015), Black (2016), Gray and Sloan (1999). This Author has offered a contribution on the matter for the Italian public [Bordonaro 2023].

(2) See O’ Tuathail (1998), Dalby (1991), Routledge (1996), Dittmer and Sharp (2014) and Dodds (2005), for an in-depth presentation of critical geopolitics.

(3) Researcher Nuno Morgado is also working on enriching geopolitical reasoning, starting from a revision of classical geopolitical concepts. See Morgado (2023).

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