When asked to review two books on different subjects, the first imperative is to search for a common denominator. One is not too hard to find. Both of these books are about pleas for revivals. Phil Kelly wishes to see classical geopolitics back in vogue. Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris want to see more U.S. geoeconomic policy efforts (using economic instruments to attain national interests). The asserted needs for revivals are pegged to a world in which a number of states are moving up and down the relative power scale. The greater the underlying structural instability, the greater is the search for analytical and policy tools to get ahead. Beyond that, the two books do not have all that much in common other than the employment of the “geo” modifier. For geopolitics, the “geo” implies that geographical variables will be used to explain international political behavior. For geoeconomics, it seems to mean that economic policy will be used for geopolitical purposes. Yet this second usage of geopolitics is not exactly the same as the one linked to geographical predictors. Sometimes it does not pay to look too closely at the terminology bandied about in international relations discourse. Common denominators begin to slip away.
Kelly would like to see classical geopolitics receive more attention. Its heyday, arguably, was the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Halford Mackinder disputed the relative value of maritime and continental paths to world domination. But geopolitics suffered a major public relations blow when geopolitical schemes were seen as being embraced enthusiastically by German Nazis who went on to lose World War II. Still, it persisted in U.S. policymaking circles, as evidenced by arguments put forward by prominent national security advisers (for example, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski). The turn to critical postmodern geopolitics in geography, however, dealt still another major blow to the intellectual attractiveness of classical geopolitics.
Whatever the perceived appeal of geopolitical interpretations, Kelly’s revival strategy is puzzling. He assembles what he describes as 60 classical geopolitical theories. Not all of the 60 really seem to belong in the collection (Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis, for example, has a geographical component but is driven by cultural identity), but the real problem is that not much is done with them besides identifying them and their component parts. Kelly does provide some illustrations about how to apply them to contemporary and historical cases. Yet to relegitimize classical geopolitics, or at least some of the theories, what is needed, minimally, is a demonstration of how some of the classical arguments provide superior explanations to other, nongeopolitical arguments. Alternatively, it needs to be shown how classical geopolitical concepts address topics that are ignored by other approaches. None of that is provided in Classical Geopolitics. Perhaps it will be attempted in a future book.
Blackwill and Harris believe that a number of states are making better use of geoeconomic policy than the United States is and that U.S. policy needs to catch up. The United States, as the world’s largest economy, once was much better at this game, but since the early 1970s has specialized more in the use of military coercion than economic pressures. This propensity is attributed to traditional liberal separation of political and economic activities and the reluctance to allow politics to intervene in economic processes. It is hard to dispute the heavy U.S. reliance on military coercion since the Vietnam War. Combat in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and the Middle East—in the case of the last two seemingly never ending—is difficult to overlook. A case can certainly be made for military applications of force appearing to be more prominent in the U.S. policy menu than economic statecraft in the past few decades. The wars are clearly more visible than economic pressures. The precise mix of military and economic policies in play in any given period is an interesting idea that might lend itself to some form of operationalization. Big moves like the Marshall Plan are also hard to overlook. But the question is whether a state like the United States is more likely to utilize major “geoeconomic” policies early and fall back on military force later. If this is the case, Blackwill and Harris are missing a structural variable at work in War by Other Means.
Blackwill and Harris recognize that the economic clout of the United States is connected to the lead that the U.S. economy possesses over other economies in the world. They also recognize that the United States is the leading provider of public goods in the world economy. Add in the fact that a great deal of economic power in the U.S. economy is controlled by private decision makers, in contrast to states such as China and Russia in which the distinctions between public and private ownership are absent or hazy at best. Combine these ingredients and one could argue that the a state like the United States was most likely to wield economic pressures when its economic lead was greatest and when the world economy was in greatest post–global war disarray. Not surprisingly, then, U.S. foreign policy was highly active in reconstructing the world economy in the late 1940s and 1950s. The Bretton Woods institutions (United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the International Trade Organization that later became the World Trade Organization) were created in pursuit of the reconstruction goal. The United States could take the lead in these efforts because most other major states had seen their economies leveled in World War II. Yet by taking the reform lead, the United States made it more likely that its own economic lead would gradually diminish as other major states improved their own relative status. As a consequence, the U.S. share of world GDP may have declined from a postwar peak of 50% to something on the order of 25% in the past 70 or so years.
Thus, the U.S. economy remains the strongest economy, but its lead is much less overwhelming than it once was. The United States may be “leader of the free world,” but there have also been normative constraints on wielding economic pressure too openly. Russia can blackmail Ukraine with gas shutoffs in winter, but the United States cannot starve North Korea into submission. It can, however, attempt to prohibit the flow of high technology to parts of the world it prefers not to develop too quickly. It can attempt to apply sanctions against states and decision makers for behavior it does not appreciate. Both of these geoeconomic policies seem to work best when the United States can organize and coordinate cooperation from allies and neighboring states alike. This is a different kind of geoeconomic game than bilateral economic deals involving a rising power seeking to bully a weaker state.
Even so, the irony is that Blackwill and Harris are really arguing for more multilateral geoeconomic efforts, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) that was discredited, probably for the wrong reasons, in the 2016 election. It may prove to be one of those “be careful what you wish for” moments if the United States renounces its systemic leadership role and tries to use what economic clout it has left to flail about trying to “make America Great Again” at the rest of the world’s expense. A very crude form of geoeconomics could prevail, and we will wish we could return to the good old days of geoeconomic constraints on the part of the system’s most powerful state. No doubt there will then also be ample political space for the revival of classical geopolitics.
