What does geopolitics study?

Geopolitics, also known as "geopolitics" and "geopolitics", is a theory of political geography. It mainly analyzes and predicts the strategic situation of the world or region and the political behavior of the countries concerned according to the geographical elements and the regional form of the political pattern. It regards geographical factors as the basic factors that affect or even determine a country's political behavior.

What is geopolitics?

Geopolitics has produced some explanations about geopolitics in the development of geopolitics. In English, the word "geopolitics" can refer to both geopolitical theory and geopolitical reality, with multiple meanings. In China literature, there are two related words: geopolitics and geopolitics. The former is relatively simple in meaning, while the latter is a compound concept.

Rasuvayev, a former Soviet scholar, put forward three meanings of geopolitics: first, geopolitics highlights the relationship between geography and politics, focusing on the influence of geography on politics; Second, geopolitics extends to big countries competing for the advantages and power of the world or region. Most generally, people call the typical situation of competition between countries, especially global competition, geopolitics. Thirdly, it is believed that geopolitics first reflects the relationship between power struggle and geography on the international stage, and geopolitics is regarded as a tool of foreign policy, which stipulates the possibility and priority of foreign policy from the principle of geographical determinism.

Gear oid O. Artell, an American scholar, believes that geopolitics has multiple meanings, which can be summarized as follows: First, it is used to describe the general situation of a particular region or problem, so as to grasp the obvious characteristics recognized as external facts. In this usage, geopolitics is an analytical tool to investigate problems. For example, about the geopolitics of X, X can refer to oil, resources, energy, information, the Middle East, Central America, Europe and so on. Second, geopolitics is almost synonymous with real politics. According to accel, almost all this comes from Kissinger's legacy. Kissinger used geopolitics to describe his efforts to maintain "favorable balance" in world politics. Geopolitics is a Machiavelli method without any ideological (or emotional) color. Third, as a synonym for grand strategy. This view is about the central role of geography in international relations. This view regards permanent geographical factors as the driving force of state behavior.

The origin of geopolitics

Most people believe that geopolitics originated from political geography. The root of geopolitical theory can be traced back to German geographer Friedrich? The theory of "national organism" put forward by Ratze in 1897 and the concept of "living space" published later. But the word "geopolitics" comes from the Swedish scholar Rudolf? Cheren (Swedish: Rudolf Jay). Cheron further developed Latzel's theory and explained political phenomena with geography.

Significance of geopolitics

One is a research method or tool to analyze international relations, or its research results, that is, geopolitical theory.

By understanding the realistic elements of geopolitics, people form a perspective, ideological framework and research methods for observing and analyzing international relations, that is, geopolitical theory is formed. These ideas, viewpoints, analytical methods and theories are integrated to form geopolitics. Geopolitics contains both geographical and political factors, so geologists generally emphasize the relationship between geographical factors and political phenomena in the definition of geopolitics. Such as the French scholar Pierre? Galois believes that geopolitics is "to study the relationship between international power politics and its geographical scope." Raymond, a famous French politician? Aaron believes that the main content of geopolitics is to "systematize diplomatic-strategic relations, geo-economic analysis of resources and interpretation of diplomatic attitudes caused by lifestyle and environment from a geographical perspective." American geographer and author of System Political Geography, M? Glassner put forward in the early 1980s that "geopolitics is basically related to the application of geographical information and geographical views to formulate a country's foreign policy. In a sense, geopolitics can be called applied political geography. " Colin S. Gray and Si Sloan interpreted it as "a theory of spatial relations and historical reasons, from which they deduced that contemporary and future politics are closely related to various geographical concepts." It "combines history and mature theoretical ability, and its result has always been a powerful analytical framework." As for the relationship between geographical factors and political phenomena, some scholars emphasize the investigation of national or international politics on the basis of geographical factors. Karen, a Swedish political scientist who invented the term geopolitics, defined geopolitics as "the science of understanding a country as a geographical organism or a spatial phenomenon".

Geopolitics is the core theory of western political geography, which was founded earlier and has great influence. After several ups and downs, it is still popular in the western world and has become an important basis for countries to formulate national defense and foreign policies. The term "geopolitics" was first put forward by Swedish political geographer Karen (1864- 1922) in his book On the State (19 17). He defined geopolitics as "the science of understanding the country as a geographical organism or spatial phenomenon", focusing on the law of the formation, development and decline of the country.