Mohtar Mas’oedProgram Studi Ketahanan Nasional

Universitas Gadjah Mada

Geo-politics:Meaning and Perspectives

The way we perceive things determines our way of going about it:

Geographic Perspectives

The “North” and the “South”

The “Core” and the “Periphery”

Key Concepts:Core-Periphery

• Core– U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia– Wealthy– Powerful– Controls Media and Finance– Technologically advanced

• Periphery– Less Developed– Poor– Dependent upon Core countries for:

• Education• Technology• Media• Military Equipment

MacKinder’s Heartland Theory: (Whoever controls Pivot Area can control the world The “Great Game” between Britain and Russia, 1800s-1900s)

Pivot Area - MacKinder

Pan-Regions – Saul Cohen

The World according to Huntington

The “Cold War” World

• Geo-politics is the study of the influence of geographical factors on state behavior– How location, climate, natural resources,

population, and physical terrain determine a state’s foreign policy options and its position in the hierarchy of states (M.Griffith & T. O’Callaghan, International Relations: The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2002:120)

Geo-politics:Geographic Factor as the Context

Geopolitics as Possibilism

• Geography does not have a distinctive subject matter; it is a perspective on how context affects behavior.

• Mode of thinking: – micro-phenomena within macro-context

Environmental Possibilism• Human (or decision makers) is capable of making choices,

because:• “. . . the initiatives lie with man, not with the milieu which

encompasses him. Possibilism rejects the idea of controls, or influences, pressing man along a road set by Nature or any other environing conditions. The milieu, in the possibilist doctrine, does not compel or direct man to do anything. The milieu is simply there . . . In the possibilist doctrine, the milieu is conceived as a set of opportunities and limitations.” – (Sprout & Sprout, 1965:83)

Sprout: Ecological Perspective

• The triad: – An Entity– Its Environment– Entity-Environment Relationship

• Argument:– Whether the focus is on a single decision-maker, a

small group of decision-makers, a foreign policy organization, a government as a whole, or the state as an international actor,

– we need to look at the on-going policy/choice processes within that entity, its context or environment, and then the interaction between the entity and the environment

Environmental Probabilism• Environment limits human opportunities; constrains the

types of action that can be taken and the consequences of that action.

• Assumption: the limitations are discoverable.• Once these limitations are known → “environmental probabilism.” – As the decision-makers view their environment, the

characteristics of that environment provide cues to the probability of certain outcomes. The environment not only presents the entity with what is possible, but with what choices would be more or less likely under those particular circumstances

Cognitive Behaviorism• The principle is

– “that a person reacts to his milieu as he perceives and interprets it in light of past experience” (Sprout, 1969:45)

• Thus, perception of the entity is very important:– How humans see the environment is the central

matter of importance in choice. – The “real” world has an impact only after choices

are made and an implementation attempt is sent out into that real world

Entity-Environment:Opportunity-Willingness Framework

• Both opportunity (possibilism) and willingness (probabilism & cognitive behaviorism) are necessary for understanding behavior:– The environment must be permissive and the acting unit must

choose (according to some incentive structure or calculus)

• The geographical & geopolitical components of the environment of any international actor are essential to understanding choice in foreign policy and international relations.

The Structure ofOpportunities and Willingness

• Geopolitical factors provides a structure of opportunities and constraints.

• Geopolitical (geographical) structure is “enabling and constraining”.

• Structure is more than simply opportunity, or possibilism.• Opportunity consists both of

– The possibility that exist in the international system (e.g., technology, ideology, religion, social inventions such as new forms of government), AND

– How these possibilities are distributed in the system (e.g., distribution of resources, people or behavior)