Geopolitics with and Without Geography

Geopolitics ought to be inseparable from geography, maps, and visual arguments. The classics of geopolitics were well illustrated and made visual arguments, primarily through printed maps. Maps, however, have become rare or forgotten as core elements of twenty-first century geopolitical arguments. Very few contemporary strategists and scholars draw on the assistance of maps or visuals to illustrate their work on international relations. Indeed, visual complements to the written text were more common in the last part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century than they are today. Geopolitics emerged as an academic discipline at a time when sophisticated maps were easier to produce and consume, and the heyday of geopolitics in the middle of the twentieth century coincided with a cartographic golden age. During the Cold War and in the period that followed, the spatial frame of geopolitics disappeared: the “geo” in “geopolitics” got lost. Geopolitics is newly prominent in recent years: the present volume is a good example of rigorous study of geographic patterns of international relations and the structure of the international system. New geopolitical arguments deserve new visuals to illustrate them. To that end, this chapter concludes with ten original maps that highlight select dimensions of the international order at the close of the first quarter of the twenty-first century.