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Geography and Foreign Policy, II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Nicholas J. Spykman
Nicholas J. Spykman
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

In the first part of this article, we analyzed the effect of size and world location on the international relations of states and the problems of foreign policy. But more immediate in its conditioning effect is regional location—location viewed with reference to the immediate vicinity.

Like world location, regional location is a question of facts plus the significance of those facts at any given historical period. Just as it was found necessary to consider world location in relation to two systems of reference, the geographic and the historical, so the full meaning of regional location becomes apparent only after considering both the geography and the historical and political significance of a state's immediate surroundings.

Regional location determines whether neighbors will be many or few, strong or weak, and the topography of the region conditions the direction and nature of contact with those neighbors. The man who once formulated the foreign policy of Manchuria had to do so with one eye on Japan and the other on Russia; every international gesture of Belgium is conditioned by the fact that she lies between France and Germany and across the Channel from Great Britain; and the states of Central America can never for a moment forget that the territory north of them is occupied by one large power and not by several whom they might play off one against the other as their European counterparts, the Balkan states, have been able to do from time to time with their northern neighbors.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , April 1938 , pp. 213 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1938

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References

1 Coastal Valley Type: Argos, Colchis, Valencia, Naples, etc.

River Delta Type: Pegu, Cochinchina, Siam, Tonkin, Florence, etc.

Coastal Border Type: Cilicia, Etruria, Latium, Mauretania and Numidia; later, the territories of the Suevi and Cantabrians on the Iberian peninsula and the Vandals in northern Africa; at the time of the Crusades, Lesser Armenia, the principality of Antioch, the county of Tripoli, the kingdom of Jerusalem, and Trebizond in the Near East, and Normandy, Brittany and Frisia in Europe; still later, Dalmatia, Granada, Aragon, Portugal, and Genoa on the Mediterranean. Cf. Maull, Otto, Politische Geographie (Berlin, 1925), pp. 213–214Google Scholar, and März, Josef, Die Ozeane (Breslau, 1931), pp. 15–16Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf (München, 1933), Vol. I, pp. 152–153Google Scholar, and Vol. II, pp. 689 ff.

3 Hennig, Richard, Geopolitik (Leiprig, 1931), p. 97Google Scholar.

4 Cf. März, Josef, Landmächte und Seemächte (Berlin, 1928), pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

4a Hennig, op. cit., p. 204.

4b Mackinder, H. J., Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York, 1919), pp. 74–75Google Scholar.

5 Cited in Maull, op. cit., p. 150.

6 Brunhes and Vallaux dismiss the question of natural frontiers with the following statement: “En définitive, les fleuves et les montagnes ne sont point des frontières naturelles. Les vraies frontières de ce genre sont, avec les côtes, les déserts d'altitude, les déserts proprement dits, les forêts primitives et les marais. Les déserts d'altitude n'existent que du Kouen-Lun à l'Himalaya; les déserts proprement dits et les forêts primitives sont en dehors des châines de grands États; les marais n'ont qu'une faible étendue, et ils diminuent sans cesse. Pratiquement, en dehors de l'Océan, il n'existe dans les régions actives aucune frontière naturelle entre les États. Partout les pressions de contiguité s'exercent librement; ni les fleuves, ni les montagnes ne les arrêtent.” Brunhes, Jean and Vallaux, Camille, La Géographie de l'Histoire (Paris, 1921), p. 361Google Scholar.

7 Cole, D. H., Imperial Military Geography (London, 1926), pp. 23–24Google Scholar.

8 Brunhes and Vallaux consistently refuse to admit the Alps and Pyrenees as contributing factors in the stability of the southern French frontier: “Il est à remarquer que, sur le long développement des frontièrs françaises, celles qui montrent le plus de tendances à s'immobiliser sont les frontières montagneuses des Alpes et des Pyrénées. Ce ne sont point ces chaînes de montagnes qui contraignent la frontière à la fixité. Dans les Pyrénées, la fixation date de deux siècles; dans les Alpes, elle date de cinquante ans; mais dans l'un et dans l'autre cas, la montagne n'a été qu'un élément passif. L'équilibre instable des forces produit par la densité variable du peuplement et par les variations de valeur des territoires donne ici, comme pour beaucoup d'autres faits de la géographie politique, l'explication du mouvement et du repos. C'est là une première donnée qui nous servira à ramener à sa juste valeur la notion des frontières naturelles.” Op. cit., p. 354.

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