Nicholas John Spykman

Geography and Foreign Policy, I.

“La politique de toutes les puissances est dans leur geographie,” 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.”

Geographic Objectives in Foreign Policy, I.

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 tnovement 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. Upstream expansion often starts from a nucleus at the mouth of a river. This is particularly true of colonial settlements where the approach has been from overseas and a foothold has been secured on the coast and gradually extended inland. So Nigeria moved up the Niger, Senegal and the Congo State up the rivers from which they take their names, and the early American settlements up the Hudson and the St. Lawrence. British occupation of Egypt led to British occupation of the Sudan and to attempts to control as far as possible the source of the Blue Nile. The British sphere of influence in China has extended inland along the Yangtze. In continental Europe, the Rhine is responsible for the fact that Germany extends so far south on the western side, and the Silesian war of Frederick the Great was the inevitable geopolitical conse-