"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.

This chapter offers some original maps to accompany the many

excellent themes of geopolitics covered in this handbook. These few maps are not

sufficient to illustrate all of the diverse perspectives, unique regions, and varied

arguments presented here. However, these maps do attempt to visualize some key

dimensions of the international order in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.

These maps are largely about the structural dimensions of contemporary international

relations and highlight the distribution of wealth and power in the world.