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"Less than a year after the United States entered the Second World War, Nicholas Spykman wrote a book that placed the war effort in the broader context of the 1940s global balance of power. In America's Strategy in World Politics, Spykman examined world politics from a realist geopolitical perspective. The United States, he explained, was fighting for its very survival as an independent country because the conquests of Germany and Japan raised the specter of our geopolitical encirclement by hostile forces controlling the power centers of Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. Spykman warned that the United States could not safely retreat to a defensive position in the Western Hemisphere. Spykman looked beyond the immediate strategic requirements of the Second World War, envisioning a postwar world in which the United States would help shape the global balance of power to meet its security needs. Even though Soviet Russia was our wartime ally, Spykman recognized that a geopolitically unbalanced Soviet Union could threaten to upset the postwar balance of power and thereby endanger U.S. security. Spykman also foresaw the rise of China in postwar Asia, and the likely need for the United States to ally itself with Japan to balance China's power. He also recognized that the Middle East would play a pivotal role in the postwar world. Spykman influenced American postwar statesmen and strategists. During the Cold War, the U.S. sought to deny the Soviet Union political control of Western Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. Spykman's geopolitical vision of U.S. security, supported by a balanced Eurasian land mass, coupled with his focus on power as the governing force in international relations, makes America's Strategy in World Politics relevant to the twenty-first century."--Provided by publisher.

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.

"La politique de toutes les puissances est dans leur géographie," conceded the man whose famous retort, "Circonstances? Moi, je fais les circonstances," indicates his contempt for any agency but the human will as the arbiter of human destiny. But since the Red Sea parted for Moses and the sun obligingly paused for Joshua, the human will has been unable to recapture the control over topography and climate exhibited by those forceful gentlemen, and it is probably safe to say that it was by Russian geography rather than by men that the diminutive Corsican was finally defeated. If he is still living, there is at Waterloo even today a loyal guide who asserts with unshakable conviction that neither genius nor skill but a swampy ditch gave that victory to Wellington.Unfortunately for the political scientist with a fondness for simplification, but fortunately for the statesman striving to overcome the geographic handicaps of his country, neither does the entire foreign policy of a country lie in geography, nor does any part of that policy lie entirely in geography. The factors that condition the policy of states are many; they are permanent and temporary, obvious and hidden; they include, apart from the geographic factor, population density, the economic structure of the country, the ethnic composition of the people, the form of government, and the complexes and pet prejudices of foreign ministers; and it is their simultaneous action and interaction that create the complex phenomenon known as "foreign policy."

In the first part of this study it was suggested that it is possible to distinguish certain forms or patterns of expansion which recur constantly. We have noted that rivers served as effective boundaries only during a very early stage of economic and technical development and soon became routes of communication instead of barriers. We have noted, too, that expansion tends to follow the line of least resistance. It is not surprising, then, to find, almost as soon as states secure access to a river, a strong tendency to expand up and down the river valley. Movement downstream is the natural flow to the sea, and movement upstream is necessary for purposes of defense, since whoever controls the upper valley has a distinct strategic advantage. Control of the upper valley is necessary also in order to control and regulate the water supply. The next step is to push the frontier to the watershed on the other side of the river, since there, if anywhere, is to be found the first natural geographic and economic limit to expansion. With this movement up and down stream and across the stream to the watershed, we have the evolution of the river valley as an economic unit. The unifying influence of the river is responsible for the fact that practically all early civilizations grew up in river basins–Mesopotamia on the Tigris and Euphrates, Egypt on the Nile, the Punjab on the Indus, and China along the Hoang-ho.

The attempt to give international society a minimum of government and order through the establishment of a League of Nations has proved only moderately successful. It is true that states have begun to play politics in Geneva, but they have not ceased the older and grimmer struggle for power in the world at large. The state is still today, as far as its international relations are concerned, primarily a military organization. Its specific aims in its struggle for power may be many, but among them the geographic objectives, the attainment of which will increase the state's relative military strength, are the oldest and the most persistent.There are several types of geographic objectives, but in this analysis we shall concern ourselves with the strategic geographic objectives of foreign policy. Before we attempt to analyze these specific objectives, however, it is essential to consider briefly the phenomenon of expansion as such, which may be defined as a mere advancement of frontier in contrast to the conquest of a particular bit of territory for strategic reasons.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Transaction Introduction -- List of Abbreviations -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- The Life of Georg Simmel -- General Introduction -- Book I: Social Philosophy: Methodology-Epistomology -- Introduction -- Chapter I: The Concept of Society -- Chapter II: Sociology -- Chapter III: Sociology as Distinct from the Social Sciences and Social Psychology -- Chapter IV: Sociology as Distinct from Social Philosophy -- Chapter V: Sociology as Distinct from the Philosophy of History and the Search for Historical Laws -- Chapter VI: The Method and Technique of Formal Sociology -- Chapter VII: The Prerequisities of Socialization -- Summary -- Book II: Social Science: Formal Sociology -- Introduction -- Chapter I: Submission -- Chapter II: Opposition -- Chapter III: The Numerical Relations of Social Forms -- Chapter IV: The Spatial Relations of Social Forms -- Chapter V: Social Conservation -- Chapter VI: Social Differentiation -- Chapter VII: The Individual and the Group -- Summary -- Book III: Social Philosophy: Metaphysics -- Introduction -- Chapter I: Money and Individual Liberty -- Chapter II: Money and the Style of Modern Life -- Summary -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index