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Primitive man was physically at the mercy of the physical geographical environment, & the menacing forces of nature imprinted, like a totalitarian dictator, various images on his mind. Modern man, on the contrary, is neither directly in contact with, nor does he feel threatened by, the surrounding nature. He lives in a man-made environment and his primary relations are with other men; the soc environment replaces in importance the natural environment. Thus while the primitive man could be called nature directed, modern man is man directed. But technology cannot end human dependence on the earth. Though we may manipulate nature we remain nature limited. It is this distinction between the nature directed & the nature limited man which is at the root of the diff between the old & the new geopol'al writings: while the former (those of, eg, Aristotle, Bodin & Montesquieu) see in nature a force which not only limits our capacity to do certain things but also determines our will, the latter study nature not for what it compels us to do but for what it advises us to do given our preferences. Even if certain modern Sch's of geopolitics have been deterministic, their determinism has not been genuinely geographical; it has been cultural, that is, rooted in various pol'al, econ'al, racial or other ideologies. Geopolitics requires a thorough knowledge of relevant pol'al facts & ideas as well as geographical factors. But geographical factors, whether environmental or spatial, are of changing relevance according to man's changing goals & the means at his disposal. Pol'al geography & geopolitics alike study the objective & subjective elements of the interaction between thought & geographical environment as expressed in pol'al decisions & actions. The only diff is in emphasis, in the focus of attention which is on the particular field of study, geography & pol'al sci respectively. Pol'al geographers study pol'al aspects of geographical phenomena; geopoliticians study geographical aspects of pol'al phenomena. Briefly, geopolitics is pol'al geographically interpreted &/or analyzed for its geographical content. The operational definition of geopolitics can be stated as follows: When studying the geopolitics of, say, Ruritania, we must pursue 2 themes: (1) the investigation of the objective impact of Ruritania's `natural' environment on Ruritania's politics - of the actual physical limitations & opportunities with which the `natural' environment & spatial relationships confront any Ruritanian gov; (2) the investigation of the subjective impact of Ruritania's geography on Ruritanian politics - of the prism through which the Ruritanians view their `natural' environment & setting &, conversely, of the 'geographical prism' through which the Ruritanians view the world at large & form their Weltanschauung. In the US we do not have a Sch of geopolitics, but the fund of geopol'al thought & knowledge has been continuously enriched by 3 categories of writings: strategical, environmental-historical & pol'al geographical. Geopolitics is sometimes mistakenly identified with geostrategy, hence thought to be applicable only to foreign policy & not to internat'l pol'al developments. AA.