We are living through a civilizational transformation that is changing the very conditions under which power is exercised. This transformation directly challenges geopolitics as a discipline.
A Discipline Confronted with the Transformation of Its Object
A Science of Territorial Power
Modern geopolitics thus emerged in the late nineteenth century, in a world dominated by empires, industrial expansion and competition for control of territories and resources.
Friedrich Ratzel developed a political geography attentive to the relationships between societies and the spaces they inhabit. Alfred Thayer Mahan, for his part, emphasized the decisive role of naval power. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Halford Mackinder placed the relationship between continental power and control of the vast Eurasian landmass at the heart of his analysis.
Their approaches differ, but they share a fundamental concern: to understand how geographical configurations condition the possibilities for exercising power. Territories, natural resources, lines of communication, borders and strategic positions form the principal elements of this perspective. The territorial state occupies a central position. Its power depends on its ability to control a given space, mobilize its resources, protect its access routes and, when circumstances demand, extend its influence.
The two world wars confirmed the importance of these dimensions while revealing the growing weight of industrial capacities, infrastructure and economic mobilization. Geography never acts alone. It provides the material framework within which power relations are organized.
From Bipolarity to Globalization
After 1945, the Cold War imposed a new configuration. The world was organized primarily around two strategic blocs dominated by the Soviet Union and the United States. Nuclear deterrence, military alliances and ideological competition structured international relations. Local confrontations were frequently drawn into this global rivalry. A regional conflict could become a major issue because of its place in the overall balance between the two blocs.
The disappearance of the Soviet Union in 1991 ushered in a period of American preponderance. Economic globalization accelerated, driven by trade liberalization, advances in transportation, computing and telecommunications. The priority given to global economic integration was accompanied by a tendency towards the standardization of norms, practices and organizational models, at times coming into tension with distinctive historical and civilizational traditions.
This profound globalization did not abolish states, but it transformed the framework within which they exercise their sovereignty. Large transnational corporations organized their production chains across several continents. Capital moves at great speed. Global logistics infrastructure weaves a network linking economies that were once relatively autonomous. Modern digital communications considerably reduce the constraints of distance that shape human exchanges. The production of an everyday object may involve African raw materials, Asian components, locally developed technologies and consumers on the other side of the planet.
Political geography continues to distinguish between territories. The economy brings them together in interdependent processes. This apparent contradiction has become one of the defining features of the contemporary world.
The Return of Rivalries Does Not Mean a Return to the Past
Rivalries among major powers once again occupy a central place in international relations. They appear to herald a return to traditional patterns of competition. Yet the world in which these confrontations unfold is no longer that of the twentieth century. Political confrontation now unfolds within a deeply established system of interdependencies. Even a policy of “deglobalization” would unfold in a world already transformed by globalization. Sanctions illustrate this situation perfectly. They seek to exert pressure on an adversary by exploiting the economic, financial or technological ties connecting it to the rest of the world. Yet, their implementation also affects suppliers, customers and intermediaries, and may rebound upon those who impose them. These repercussions reveal the feedback mechanisms of a world whose actors have become closely interdependent.
Trade tensions between Washington and Beijing do not simply separate two economies. They prompt a reorganization of production networks and trade flows. This restructuring benefits certain intermediary countries, notably Vietnam, whose position in international value chains is strengthening.
The rivalry remains territorial and political. Its effects spread through a global economic system that continues to function. The fragmentation of political power thus coexists with the integration of economic activities. This reality makes it necessary to distinguish two phenomena that are often conflated: the redistribution of centres of power and the transformation of the relationships connecting them.
Beyond Borders: The Geography of Networks
Traditional geopolitics attaches particular importance to territories and borders. This approach remains indispensable: resources are geographically located, populations inhabit particular spaces, armies hold positions, and states exercise authority within defined jurisdictions. Yet another geography has progressively been superimposed upon this territorial order: the geography of networks. Energy networks, logistical infrastructure, financial circuits, submarine cables, satellites, digital platforms and data centres are all systems whose operations cross political borders, forming a fabric of interdependencies on a planetary scale.
Control of a territory no longer guarantees control of the flows passing through it. A disruption at a strategic maritime chokepoint can affect supply chains across several continents. A decision taken by a major digital technology company can alter the operating conditions of businesses and public administrations around the world.
Power can therefore no longer be measured solely by the extent of a territory, the resources it contains or the military forces defending it. It also depends on positions occupied within networks, access to infrastructure, command of technology and the ability to influence flows. The political world is moving towards what is termed a “multipolar” order. Its material and informational infrastructure, however, displays a multinodal structure.
These two geographies are not opposed. They overlap, intersect and transform one another. A phenomenon once largely confined to a particular territory now extends simultaneously into several material and immaterial fields: economic, financial, informational, technological, social and regulatory.
Learning to Think in Terms of Interactions
This new configuration presents a challenge to analysis. Analytical thought proceeds by breaking complexity down into sets of simpler elements. To understand a situation, we distinguish economic, military, political and social factors. We examine their causes and consequences, then seek to reconstruct their relationships. Yet real-world processes do not unfold sequentially in the order prescribed by rational analysis. They interact simultaneously.
A war mobilizes armed forces, but at the same time it engages industry, energy supplies, financial systems, communications, public opinion and collective representations. Each dimension acts upon the others through a continuous interplay of reactions and feedback loops. The visible event is therefore only the momentary expression of a far broader configuration. This does not mean that every event carries equal global significance. It means that interpreting an event requires identifying the different structures to which it belongs and the interactions it sets in motion.
The intensification of interdependencies also multiplies nonlinear phenomena. Through a succession of reactions and feedback loops, a localized disturbance can produce consequences wholly disproportionate to its initial significance. The complexity of these interactions makes their effects difficult to anticipate.
Geopolitics must therefore complement the analysis of territories and power relations with an analysis of networks, interdependencies and cross-cutting dynamics. The task is not to abandon the discipline’s historical achievements, but to integrate them into a multidimensional geopolitics capable of apprehending several fields of interaction simultaneously.
Power Confronted with the Movement of History
The political consequence of this global transformation is profound. An increasingly fluid environment demands an ability to discern the deep-seated dynamics running through it. States continue to govern, legislate, negotiate and wage war. Yet major technological, economic and social transformations do not arise from the will of a single political authority. They emerge from countless human activities that interact, reverberate through one another and generate transformations extending beyond those who initiated them. Chains of causation branch out, producing effects whose scale and direction become difficult to foresee.
Governance can therefore no longer be reduced to imposing one’s will upon an environment regarded as passive, as mere material to be shaped. History cannot be administered into obedience. Political decisions can accelerate, redirect, slow or distort a movement. They cannot durably abolish the conditions that produce it through a mere assertion of authority.
The cohesion of peoples thus becomes a decisive component of political effectiveness and the durability of power. Power cannot be reduced to military or economic means. It also depends closely on the demographic, social and collective conditions that make their mobilization possible.
Great historical transitions resemble waves. Their driving force asserts itself upon political actors, who must learn to discern the dynamics at work. Governance here approaches the art of navigation. The sailor commands neither the wind nor the swell. He learns to recognize their forces, trim his sails and choose his course. Even when sailing upwind, he works with the laws of the environment through which he moves. Political power thus retains its freedom of manoeuvre. But its effectiveness depends on its understanding of the historical dynamics in which it participates.
A Discipline for a New World
Geopolitics arose from the need to understand power in spatial terms. It must now understand power in a profoundly transformed space: territorial and networked, politically fragmented and materially interdependent, traversed by fluid dynamics whose consequences exceed the intentions of their actors. This change does not herald the disappearance of geography. On the contrary, it reveals the multiplication of the geographies that organize our world.
The transformations under way concern not only the distribution of power. They are altering the very conditions under which power is exercised. Humanity is entering a new age in its collective organization.
Geopolitics is entering a new world. It must learn to understand it.
Olivier Roynard, French essayist and independent researcher on the relationship between geopolitics and the transformation of political and intellectual forms in the modern world
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