William Mallinson Threat of Geopolitics to International Relations

Annotation

Geopolitics, both in name, and in its application via geostrategy, is a controversial area of international relations. Although the practice of obtaining resources is as old as Mankind, the word came into its own with the imperial policies of the great powers in the nineteenth century, was used to justify world wars, went into decline, but was 'taken to America' and then re-exported to Europe after the last war by the likes of Henry Kissinger. Nowadays, the term is used unconsciously by politicians obsessed with power, often to justify war. This book tears apart the simplistic thinking of geopolitics, and proposes its replacement with the authors' own method of 'geohistory', a method based on recognising that at the base of any analysis and evaluation of the international situation lie human characteristics.