List of questions for the 1st Midterm Exam: Short questions: choose 12 questions 1) What is the main tenet of traditional geopolitics? Geography explains the conduct in foreign policy of a country 2) Mention an explain Ratzel’s third law of spatial growth of states. 3) By looking at a long series of battles in history what does Mahan ‘discover’? (the supremacy of maritime powers over land powers) 4) List Mahan’s four policy prescriptions for the US 1. Develop maritime power 2. Expansionism in the Caribbean and Pacific 3. Build a canal between the two Oceans 4. Check Russian power 5) Why did Mackinder switch from the Liberal to the Conservative party? 6) If, at the end of 19th century, the world has become a ‘closed’ one, what is then the role of geography according to Mackinder? 7) What are the three types of mobility of power discussed by Mackinder? associate them also to the right historical epochs 8) What are Mackinder’s limits in terms of policy prescriptions? 9) In which sense Haushofer learned from Mackinder? Reading Mackinder, who theorized about the overwhelming power arising out of an alliance between the Inner Crescent and the Pivot (Heartland), Haushofer learned that it would have been advantageous for Germany to ally with Russia 10) Mention two of the mis-information about German geopolitics which were popularized in the US during the 1940s (age of barbershop geopolitics) 11) What is the ‘frontage theory’ (=>Antarctica)? 12) What is the international context which explains the revival of geopolitics in the 1970s-1980s? 13) How does Kaplan define the ‘threat’ today? 14) What is the major shortcoming of critical geopolitics? 15) What were the two major goals of the document NSC-68? 16) What are the three major international facts which explain the geopolitical context of the Second Cold War? 17) According to Peter Taylor (T&F, p. 95-97), how could we have labeled an alliance between USA and USSR in 1945 and why? 18) What are the states that George W. Bush defined as ‘rogue states’ in 2002? 19) What countries joined NATO in 2004? 20) What are the two major ways through which the US is containing Russia? Medium questions: choose 4 questions 1) Describe what Social Darwinism and Positivism are and how they fit into Ratzel’s theory Social Darwinism is the introduction, in the social domain, of Darwin’s theory about the struggle for existence among species and the survival of the fittest.Positivism is a scientific paradigm which believes in discovering scientific truths (=> scientific laws). Ratzel was influenced by Social Darwinism in the sense that his theory maintains the perpetual struggle among states (as if they were natural species) and the survival of the fittest (strongest) among the states. Espousing a positivist approach, Ratzel ‘discovered’ the 7 laws of growth of the state, i.e. he thoughtthat scientific laws could explain a state’s behavior. 2) Mention and explain 3 of Ratzel’s seven laws of spatial growth of states 3) List and explain Mahan’s 7 sea power factors 4) Mention and discuss what are the three factors that explain the success of geopolitics in the US in the 1940s 5) Mention and discuss the three forms the revival of geopolitics has taken in the 1970s-1980s 6) When seen form a general perspective, what are the 4 elements which characterize the US geopolitical code during the Cold War? 7) What is the geopolitical code of De Gaulle’s France (three scales) 8) Mention three of the four characteristics associated with Bush’s New World Order? 9) What is the threefold recurrent scheme associated with the notion of ‘expanding zones of democracy’? Long questions: choose 3 questions 1) Discuss Mackinder’s theory. Be sure to include: a) what is the new role of geography in Mackinder’s eyes; b) a discussion of the different historical epochs in world history; c) the way Mackinder’s theory works and d) its theoretical limits 2) How influential had Haushofer been on the Nazis? 3) Mention and discuss the points that Ratzel, Kjellen, Mahan, Mackinder, and Haushofer had in common 4) Discuss 2 of the 6 variations in containment of the US during the Cold War. Be as much detailed as possible Selective Containment: S.C. is a form of regionalist containment => not all parts of the world are similarly important for containing USSR. This form of containment was introduced by George Kennan in 1946-7 and lasted till 1949. Kennan, who was also the person who coined the term ‘containment’, wrote that the aggressive foreign policy of Russia/USSR was not driven by communist imperialism, but by a sense of insecurity (having Russia being invaded two times from the West in the course of its history ) and internal necessities (Stalin’s necessity of reinforcing his power). Kennan suggested that the US should adopt a balance of power policy among UK, Japan, and Germany, and UUSR as the best way to deal with security after World War II. Perimeter containment: this form of containment emerged in 1949 and lasted till 1953. It was a globalist form of containment because instead of containing USSR was concerned with containing communism wherever it could have emerged. In this sense it moved away from the notion of balance of power supported by Kennan’s selected containment. Perimeter containment means that all pointsalong the perimeter of USSR were considered of equal importance for US security. This form of containment was first introduced by the Truman Doctrine (1947), which gave economic and military support to Greece and Turkey to prevent their falling into the Soviet orbit. The globalist and ideological character of Perimeter containment was reinforced by the document NSC-68 (1950), which called for a massive rearmament, justified by deliberately exaggerating the Soviet threat. NSC-68 had two goals: military (=>to contain USSR) and economic (=> to create an open world economy, where the US can sell their production surplus – the same goal was carried out by the Marshall Plan). As a consequence of this militarist form of containment we would experience what Kennan had called the “militarization of foreign policy” (international relations are dictated more by the force of arms than by diplomacy) and what Eisenhower had called the ‘military-industrial complex’ (the risk that American democracy is dictated by the interests of the military-industrial complex more than by the
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