Grand Strategy, Geopolitics and Territoriality

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MONASH
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
MGF5911
Geopolitics and
Business Globalization
Seminar Topic:
Grand Strategy, Geopolitics and Territoriality
Dr. Paul Kalfadellis
March 6, 2023
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Seminar Learning Objectives
At the end of this seminar students should have an understanding of
the following:
How grand strategy among States impacts and influences
geopolitics and the claim to territory.
The geopolitical theories that have influenced state action
The US policy of containment in furthering its hegemonic agenda
The collapse of the Soviet Union and what it meant for US
containment policy
What is happening today - a new grand strategy a new
containment agenda by the US and how states like China and
Russia are countering it.
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What is Grand Strategy, Geo-politics and Territoriality?
• “Grand strategy - is the highest level of national statecraft that
establishes how states, or other political units, prioritize and mobilize
military, diplomatic, political, economic, and other sources of power to
ensure what they perceive as their interests” (van Hooft, 2017)
• Geopolitics is the study of the effects of geography on politics and
relations among states. It is very much related to trade, resource
management, and the environment on a global scale
• Territoriality is the willingness by one person or a group of people (but
generally a State to defend the space they claim. You can influence
others or shape events by asserting control over a space
• This seminar is about how all three combine to determine outcomes for
States and their relationships with others.
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Grand Strategy
• International Relations and Global Business scholars use the term
“grand strategy” to refer to the purposeful and planned use of military,
economic, and diplomatic means used by states and corporations to
achieve desired policy ends.
• Interests
– can be minimal - state survival
– more expansive - establishing a specific regional or global order.
• “Grand” in the concept is not about ambition or expansion but how a
state manages all of its resources to achieve the state’s desired end
goal
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Grand Strategy - Long Term
• Grand Strategy asks simple questions and integrates answers:
– What are our interests?
– What threatens those interests?
– How do we use our power to advance and protect our interests?
– What is really important, and what is merely desirable?
– What is our role in the world?
– What are the limits on our power and domain?
– What is our power for?
• Grand strategy is the orchestration of ends, ways and means in
pursuit of core political and business long term interests
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Grand Strategy and Geopolitics
• Geopolitics - emphasizes the importance of location, topography, natural resources,
climate and the character of the peoples who populate specific geographical spaces.
• Underpinned by how territory is used by States to further their interests in becoming
hegemonic or looking to contain those seeking hegemony.
Over 100 years, geo-political scholarship has been greatly informed by a number of
pioneers:
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Organic State Theory – Friedrich Ratzel
Sea Power theory - Alfred Thayer Mahan - US
Eurasia theory - Sergei Witte - Russia
Heartland theory - Halford John Mackinder - UK
Rimland theory - Nicholas Spykman - US
Containment Policy – George Kennan - US
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Why do some states grow powerful while others are weak?
Organic State Theory – German School
Friedrich Ratzel (1844 – 1904)
• Why are some states powerful?
• How do states become more powerful?
Main Idea: States need to grow, are similar to organisms
and applied the idea of natural selection to relationships
among them
• they can only thrive when they attain more territory
• Need nourishment and space to grow (lebensraum)
• Gain such space through annexing territory from
weaker states i.e. borders are temporary
• Colonialism / imperialism drive this theory
• E.g. : US expanded westward and European
colonization
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Alfred Thayer Mahan - Sea Power (1840-1914)
US naval officer, strategist who argued
the USA must look to colonize other
territories in order to achieve greatness
This required commercial and military
domination of the sea.
Economic competition at the heart of
national rivalry
You control the seas and you control
commerce
Advocated a bigger navy and more bases
in the Western Pacific. Colonization of
Hawaii, Midway, the Philippines and
Samoa.
Do not rely on international institutions
safeguarding security – better left to
national power and international
alignments.
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Sergei Witte 1849-1915
Russian Minister for industrialization - Russian
geographic expansion and integration
Wanted Russia to become a regional hegemon
and for Russia this meant land power and
Eurasian integration.
How ? A railway would allow Russia to settle Siberia,
harvest its natural resources, expand trade with East Asia.
One key purpose of the Trans Siberian was to further
Russia’s ability to participate in the carve-up of China
and gain access to Pacific Ocean.
This alarmed Japan ended up with Russian-Japanese War
The Trans-Siberian Railway reshaped world history
– http://www.vox.com/world/2016/10/5/13167966/100th-anniversary-trans-siberianrailway-google-doodle
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Halford John Mackinder 1861 –1947
• English geographer, academic, and politician.
• Geographical Pivot of History
• European colonial acquisitions suggested power from
controlling sea lanes routes in the ocean
• Mackinder dissented (disagreed) and stated that landbased power was essential for global domination
Main Idea:
Whichever state controls the Heartland could
eventually dominate the world
Land-based power, will ultimately rule the world
Heartland is mostly landlocked and therefore wellprotected, only way of invasion is through Eastern
Europe
“World Island” includes the majority of Earth’s land,
resources and population
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Mackinder’s Heartland Theory:
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Nicholas Spykman (1892 –1943)
At the end of WW2 - Nicholas Spykman - US Prof. of IR
at Yale, developed a modified version of the work of
Mackinder.
• Rimland Theory - Rimland - an intermediate region,
lying between the Heartland and the periphery
(Mackinder's "outer or insular crescent").
• "Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia. Who rules
Eurasia controls the destinies of the world.”
Main Idea:
• The Eurasian Rimland (Western Europe, North Africa,
Asia) is the key to global power not the Heartland
• Power is derived from controlling strategic maritime areas
of the world
• Comprises densely populated coastal areas outside the
heartland.
• Spykman - this area provided more resources including
people and access to the sea
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Rimland Theory (Spykman)
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Heartland and Rimland Theories
Q. Where would conflict arise?
A. Spykman - in the Rimland…includes areas called the Shatterbelt.
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Shatterbelt Regions
A region caught between stronger colliding external cultural-political
forces, under persistent stress, and often fragmented by aggressive
rivals.
May have been ‘exploited’ by competing global powers through proxy
conflicts and wars
Geographically they tended to be isolated, sometimes mountainous
regions difficult to bring under governmental control.
Examples
– Middle East
– Caucasus Region
– Kashmir
– Korea War
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Heartland and Rimland Theories
• Must control the Heartland…but how? - through Eastern Europe
• Prior to his death - Mackinder warned about the rise of the Soviets.
• Spykman’s writing influenced western policymakers throughout the Cold War and
were reflected in the creation of NATO and Truman’s containment policy
• Warsaw Pact formation was response to NATO.
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Containment Theory
• Spykman – Father of Containment
• George Kennan - American Diplomat - Policy of containment (1947) - Need to contain
Soviet global power and communism - geographically, ideologically, academically,
technologically, economically, until it collapsed because of internal weaknesses
• How ? US needs to provide economic and other types of assistance to countries – stop
the Soviet influence - e.g. NATO.
• Need to confront the Soviets with a counter-force at every point (Deibel and Gaddis ,1986)
e.g. Vietnam War (need to fight because Domino Theory – if one country falls to
communism, many more will
• Paul Nitze (fmr. US –Sec. of
Navy) - Soviets trying to
achieve strategic prowess via
nuclear arms. Need to contain
them through superior nuclear
weapons, even if it means
an arms race.
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Containment Policy in Practice
Containment Policy evolved over time (Deibel and Gaddis, 1986).
• US moved away from direct military conflict e.g. South Korea and
Vietnam
• More to economic aid to influence nations into the Western sphere of
influence.
• Funding of West European (Marshall Plan) and Japanese/Korean
prosperity by provision of investment and access to US markets
• Military Bases and military alliances surrounding USSR and China
• Restricted access by the USSR to international trade and Western
technology
• 1972 – Nixon meets Mao Zedong – ‘unite’ to fight common enemy
• Help bring about the collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union
from within
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Containment in Practice (2020)
• For a full list of military bases by country see the following link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_overseas_military_bases
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Containment Worked
The Soviet Union Collapsed in 1991
Containment remained the dominant assumption in American foreign
policy from the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991 - it worked!
• Designed to offset Soviet hegemonic ambitions in terms of the
Eurasian heartland and countries within the periphery or the Rimland.
• In the end achieved without a need to resort to war
• An excellent example of great power politics being played out in a
bipolar world where two determined superpowers are willing to
compete almost indefinitely for dominance
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The End of History and the Last Man (Fukuyama 1992)
• The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - asserted the values and rules of
liberal democratic capitalism had become the only viable option left available
to humanity.
• Social evolution had allegedly ceased because the collapse of the USSR
supposedly proved socialism does not work
• Liberal democratic capitalism is the best type of society that nations and firms
should try to institutionalize and that there is nothing better.
• Humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history”
• No need for further ideological evolution because of the universalization of
Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
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Grand Strategy – The US “Wins” - Hubris
• Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992) – Paul Wolfowitz Under
Secretary of Defense - doctrine establishes the U.S.'s
leadership role within the new world order.
• “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a
new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union
or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that
posed formerly by the Soviet Union … we endeavor to
prevent any hostile power from dominating a region
whose resources would, under consolidated control, be
sufficient to generate global power”.
• Interest in grand strategy came to be deemed of marginal
interest by Western governments and scholars –after all
the US had ‘won’
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Grand Strategy - Roll Back and Assimilation
• Both Russia and China remained weak after the collapse of the USSR
Strategy for Russia
• Former Soviet dominated areas into the Western camp through “Roll Back”
• Economic shock therapy – introduction of market capitalism.
• Expand NATO to Russian borders via ‘democracy promotion’ and ‘colour revolutions’
Strategy for China
• ‘Assimilate/ Absorb’ into the global liberal capitalist order by supporting engagement.
• Promote democracy -proved unsuccessful. E.g. Tiananmen Square protest in 1989
• 1990s China starts to assert itself economically - abandons central economic planning
• Growing global economic engagement with China – e.g. trade/investment, accession
into WTO
• In 1997, the Grand Strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote:
– “Eurasia is the axial supercontinent … It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger
emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of challenging America.”
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Containment Strategy – ‘Take Two’
• Assimilation/Absorption strategy was promoted but reality is it did not really
work - strategy is once again containment
• Intellectual US voices John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that
absorption strategy not really effective and attention needs to turn to
containment.
– Crouching Tiger: Mearsheimer On Strangling China And The Inevitability of War
– https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/03/10/crouching_tiger_john_mear
sheimer_on_strangling_china_and_the_inevitability_of_war_109127.html
• For US and many other Western analysts the debate is now centred on
what form the containment strategy should engage
• The world needs America to chart a new containment-driven foreign
policy that draws on its successes of the past and anticipates the
course these peer competitors will take in the near future (Mandelbaum
2019).
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Russia dealing with US containment
• Halt NATO’s (USA) eastward expansion
George Kennan on NATO Expansion
“Bluntly stated…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in
the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the
nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an
adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of
the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions
decidedly not to our liking … ” George F. Kennan, “A Fateful Error,” New York Times, 05 Feb 1997
Article: Many predicted Nato expansion would lead to war. Those warnings were ignored – Ted
Galen Carpenter https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-expansion-war-russia-ukraine
• Impose control in its sphere of influence
• Restore MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction - the threat of using nuclear weapons
against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons
• Attempt to divide the West politically and economically
• Promote a Eurasian ‘partnership’ at the centre of which are China, Russia and Iran
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China dealing with US containment (Cheng Gao,2011)
Power Transition Theory – an emerging power (hegemon) will use force against the
existing hegemon depending upon the relative power balance between the two in order to
become the hegemon.
Characteristics
• Challenger not happy with the status quo as the hegemon gets the benefits.
• Challenger grows and the relative power gap between hegemon and challenge narrows
• Competition and conflict may rise. Risk of war is highest during the period when
hegemon and the rising state reach economic and military parity.
Practical Application
• prioritize growth policies that serve domestic economic needs
• expand investment/trade into regions outside the core interests of the dominant power
where the hegemon has limited power to contain expansion – e.g. BRI
• minimize concerns in other states by enfolding them in China’s development strategy in
ways that benefit these other countries.
• build military defenses
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Strengthen, secure borders and bolster coastal defenses
The Island Chain Strategy is a
strategy first mooted as a part of
US foreign policy in 1951 during
the Korean War.
Idea surround USSR and China
by natural and human made
islands.
Concept did not take hold in US
policy as the US chose to rely on
aircraft carriers.
However today has become a
idea among Chinese analysts,
consequently China is building
island fortresses to keep US
navy away from its coast.
Shoring up of defenses – nothing
to do with trade lanes
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Geopolitics and Eurasian Integration in the 21st Century
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