ABSTRACT
With its long and distinguished line of adherents and proponents, geopolitics ranks among the oldest and most recognizable bodies of written political theory. Yet it has atrophied in the modern era to such an extent that while almost everyone is acquainted with the term, scarcely anyone uses it correctly and fewer can precisely define it. In the United States, for example, geopolitical events are popularly understood to be issues and actions that take place overseas. 1 The term ‘geopolitical’ is so broadly construed as to be meaningless. This lamentable conceptual degeneration is due almost entirely to the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II. Nazi misuse of geopolitical theory through the German school of Geopolitik (to be more fully described later in this chapter), as a purposeful guide and moral justification for their particular brand of racist militarism, made post-war geopolitical studies-whatever perceived merits it may have once hadan academic taboo subject.
