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The Cultural Landscape
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flowing into the Persian Gulf.
Forced to cede control of the waterway to Iran in 1975, Iraq
took advantage of Iran’s revolution to seize the waterway in
1980, but Iran was not defeated outright, so an 8-year war
began that neither side was able to win. An estimated 1.5 million died in the war, which ended when the two countries
accepted a UN peace plan.
When the United States launched its war on terrorism
after 9/11, Afghanistan was the immediate target, followed by
Iraq. But after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as
president in 2005, relations between the United States and
Iran deteriorated. The United States accused Iran of harboring al-Qaeda members and of trying to gain influence in Iraq,
where, as in Iran, the majority of the people were Shiites.
More troubling to the international community was Iran’s
aggressive development of a nuclear program. Iran claimed
that its nuclear program was for civilian purposes, but other
countries believed that it was intended to develop weapons.
Prolonged negotiations were undertaken to dismantle Iran’s
nuclear capabilities without resorting to yet another war in
the Middle East.
Pakistan
Pakistan along with India was created in 1947 when South Asia
was partitioned into predominantly Muslim and Hindu states.
The war on terrorism has spilled over from Pakistan’s western
neighbors Afghanistan and Iran. Although the overwhelming
majority of Pakistanis are Muslim, Pakistan is a multiethnic
state. Punjabis comprise around 45 percent of the population
and, combined, Pashtuns, Sindhis, and Seraikis around 40 percent; the remaining 15 percent are other ethnicities. Around
70 percent of Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims and 30 percent are
Shiite. Western Pakistan, along the border with Afghanistan, is a
rugged, mountainous region inhabited by several ethnic minorities where the Taliban have been largely in control. Osama bin
Laden is thought to have hidden in Pakistan after escaping from
Tora Bora (see Contemporary Geographic Tools box).
SUMMARY
The political geography of the second half of the twentieth century
was dominated by the Cold War between two superpowers—the
United States and the former Soviet Union. In the twenty-first century,
military alliances among states have become less important than patterns of global and regional economic cooperation and competition
among states.
At the same time, with the end of the Cold War, the world has
entered a period characterized by an unprecedented increase in
the number of new states created to satisfy the desire of nationalities for self-determination as an expression of cultural distinctiveness. Turmoil has resulted in many places where the boundaries of
the new states do not match the territories occupied by distinct
nationalities. Terrorism led by ethnic groups has replaced direct
military confrontation between states as a leading source of political
unrest.
Here is a review of issues raised at the beginning of the chapter:
2. Why Do Boundaries Between States Cause Problems?
Boundaries between states, where possible, are drawn to coincide
either with physical features, such as mountains, deserts, and bodies of water, or with such cultural characteristics as geometry, religion, and language. Boundaries affect the shape of countries and
affect the ability of a country to live peacefully with its neighbors.
Problems arise when the boundaries of states do not coincide with
the boundaries of ethnicities.
1. Where Are States Located? A state is a political unit, with an
organized government and sovereignty, whereas a nation is a group
of people with a strong sense of cultural unity. Most of Earth’s surface is allocated to states, and only a handful of colonies and tracts
of unorganized territory remain.
4. Why Has Terrorism Increased? Terrorism initiated by individuals, organizations, and states has increased, especially against
the United States. Terrorists consider all U.S. citizens justifiable
targets because they hold all U.S. citizens responsible for U.S. government policies and cultural practices.
CASE STUDY REVISITED
3. Why Do States Cooperate with Each Other? Following
World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, as the
world’s two superpowers, formed military alliances with other
countries. With the end of the Cold War, nationalities now are
cooperating with each other, especially in Western Europe, primarily to promote economic growth rather than to provide military
protection.
/ Future of the Nation-State in Europe
In the twenty-first century, the importance of the nation-state has
diminished in Western Europe, the world region most closely associated with development of the concept during the previous two centuries (Figure 8-30). Western Europeans carry European Union rather
than national passports, which they don’t need to show when traveling
within Western Europe.
More importantly, European nation-states have put aside their centuries-old rivalries to forge the world’s most powerful economic union.
France’s franc, Germany’s mark, and Italy’s lira—powerful symbols of sovereign nation-states—have disappeared, replaced by a single currency, the
euro. European leaders have bet that every country in the region will be
stronger economically by replacing national currencies with the euro.
(Continued)
Chapter 8: Political Geography
269
CASE STUDY REVISITED ( Continued )
Cultural differences persist at borders. For example, highways in
the Netherlands are more likely than those in neighboring Belgium to
be flanked by well-manicured vegetation and paths reserved for bicycles. But boundaries where hundreds of thousands of soldiers once
stood guard now have little more economic significance in Europe
than boundaries between states inside the United States.
Rather than national boundaries, the most fundamental obstacle
to Western European integration is the multiplicity of languages.
Although English has rapidly become the principal language of business in the European Union, much of the European Union’s budget
is spent translating documents into other languages. Businesses
must figure out how to effectively advertise their products in several
languages.
At the same time that residents of Western European countries are
displaying increased tolerance for the cultural values of their immediate
neighbors, opposition has increased to the immigration of people
from the south and east, especially those who have darker skin and
adhere to Islam. Immigrants from poorer regions of Europe, Africa,
and Asia fill low-paying jobs (such as cleaning streets and operating
buses) that Western Europeans are not willing to perform. Nonetheless, many Western Europeans fear that large-scale immigration will
transform their nation-states into multiethnic societies.
Underlying this fear of immigration is recognition that natural
increase rates are higher in most African and Asian countries than in
Western Europe as a result of higher crude birth rates. Many Western
Europeans believe that Africans and Asians who immigrate to their
countries will continue to maintain relatively high crude birth rates
and consequently will constitute even higher percentages of the population in Western Europe in the future. ■
FIGURE 8-30 Rhine River. The Rhine River is the boundary between France
and Germany. The Passarelle Mimram Pedestrian Bridge (known informally as
the Two Banks Bridge) connects Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany. To mark
the sixtieth anniversary of NATO in 2009, world leaders including U.S. President
Barack Obama (front right) and Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski (front left)
walked across the bridge.
KEY TERMS
Balance of power (p. 257) Condition
of roughly equal strength between
opposing countries or alliances of
countries.
Boundary (p. 247) Invisible line that marks
the extent of a state’s territory.
City-state (p. 243) A sovereign state comprising a city and its immediate hinterland.
Colonialism (p. 244) Attempt by one country
to establish settlements and to impose its
political, economic, and cultural principles
in another territory.
Colony (p. 243) A territory that is legally tied
to a sovereign state rather than completely
independent.
Compact state (p. 247) A state in which the
distance from the center to any boundary
does not vary significantly.
Elongated state (p. 247) A state with a long,
narrow shape.
Federal state (p. 254) An internal organization of a state that allocates most powers to
units of local government.
Fragmented state (p. 248) A state that includes
several discontinuous pieces of territory.
Frontier (p. 253) A zone separating two states
in which neither state exercises political
control.
Gerrymandering (p. 255) Process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose
of benefiting the party in power.
Imperialism (p. 245) Control of territory
already occupied and organized by an
indigenous group.
Landlocked state (p. 249) A state that does
not have a direct outlet to the sea.
Microstate (p. 242) A state that encompasses
a very small land area.
Perforated state (p. 248) A state that completely surrounds another one.
Prorupted state (p. 247) An otherwise
compact state with a large projecting
extension.
Sovereignty (p. 241) Ability of a state to
govern its territory free from control of its
internal affairs by other states.
State (p. 241) An area organized into a political unit and ruled by an established government with control over its internal and
foreign affairs.
Unitary state (p. 254) An internal organization of a state that places most power
in the hands of central government
officials.
270
The Cultural Landscape
THINKING GEOGRAPHICALLY
1. In his book 1984, George Orwell envisioned the division of the
world into three large unified states, held together through technological controls. To what extent has Orwell’s vision of a global
political arrangement been realized?
2. Gerald Helman and Steven Ratner have identified countries that they
call “failed nation-states,” including Cambodia, Liberia, Somalia, and
Sudan. Helman and Ratner argue that the governments of these
countries were maintained in power during the Cold War era
through massive military and economic aid from the United States or
the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War, these failed nationstates have sunk into civil wars, fought among groups who share language, religion, and other cultural characteristics. What obligations
do other countries have to restore order in failed nation-states?
3. Given the movement toward increased local government autonomy on the one hand and increased authority for international
organizations on the other, what is the future of the nation-state?
Have political and economic trends since the 1990s strengthened
the concept of nation-state or weakened it?
4. The world has been divided into a collection of countries on the
basis of the principle that ethnicities have the right of self-determination. National identity, however, derives from economic interests
as well as from such cultural characteristics as language and religion. To what extent should a country’s ability to provide its citizens
with food, jobs, economic security, and material wealth, rather than
the principle of self-determination, become the basis for dividing the
world into independent countries?
5. A century ago the British geographer Halford J. Mackinder identified a heartland in the interior of Eurasia (Europe and Asia)
that was isolated by mountain ranges and the Arctic Ocean. Surrounding the heartland was a series of fringe areas, which the
geographer Nicholas Spykman later called the rimland, oriented
toward the oceans. Mackinder argued that whoever controlled
the heartland would control Eurasia and hence the entire world.
To what extent has Mackinder’s theory been validated during the
twentieth century by the creation and then the dismantling of the
Soviet Union?
RESOURCES
Some recent and classic books and articles on
political geography:
Agnew, John. Making Political Geography. London: Arnold, 2002.
———. “Sovereignty Regimes: Territoriality and State Authority in
Contemporary World Politics.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (2005): 437–61.
Allen, John. Lost Geographies of Power. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Cohen, Saul B. “Geopolitical Realities and United States Foreign Policy.” Political Geography 22 (2003): 1–33.
Cox, Kevin R., Murray Low, and Jennifer Robinson, eds. The SAGE
Handbook of Political Geography. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2008.
Cutter, Susan L., Douglas B. Richardson, and Thomas J. Wilbanks, eds.
The Geographical Dimensions of Terrorism. New York: Routledge,
2003.
Dale, E. H. “Some Geographical Aspects of African Land-Locked
States.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 58
(1968): 485–505.
Demko, George J., and William B. Wood, eds. Reordering the World:
Geopolitical Perspectives on the Twenty-First Century. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1999.
Falah, Gazi-Walid, Colin Flint, and Virginie Mamadouh. “Just War
and Extraterritoriality: The Popular Geopolitics of the United
States’ War on Iraq as Reflected in Newspapers of the Arab World.”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96 (2006):
142–64.
Gillespie, Thomas W., John A. Agnew, Erika Mariano, Scott Mossler,
Nolan Jones, Matt Braughton, and Jorge Gonzalez. “Finding
Osama bin Laden: An Application of Biogeographic Theories and
Satellite Imagery.” MIT International Review. Web-published February 17, 2009. Accessed June 10, 2009 at http://web.mit.edu/mitir/.
Helman, Gerald B., and Steven R. Ratner. “Saving Failed States.”
Foreign Policy 89 (1992): 3–20.
Johnston, R. J., Peter J. Taylor, and Michael J. Watts. Geographies of
Global Change, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2002.
Kliot, N., and Y. Mansfield. “The Political Landscape of Partition: The
Case of Cyprus.” Political Geography 16 (1997): 495–521.
MacLaughlin, Jim. Reimaging the Nation-State: The Contested Terrains
of Nation-Building. London: Pluto Press, 2001.
Murphy, Alexander B. “Historical Justifications for Territorial Claims.”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80 (1990):
531–48.
Chapter 8: Political Geography
Nijman, Jan. “The Limits of Superpower: The United States and the
Soviet Union Since World War II.” Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 82 (1992): 681–95.
Ó Tuathail, Gearóid. “The Postmodern Geopolitical Condition: States,
Statecraft, and Security at the Millennium.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90 (2000): 166–78.
Painter, Joe, and Alex Jeffrey. Political Geography: An Introduction To
Space and Power, 2nd ed. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2009.
Parker, W. H. Mackinder: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1982.
Prescott, J. R. V. Political Frontiers and Boundaries. London: Unwin
Hyman, 1990.
Smith, Dan. The Penguin Atlas of War and Peace, 4th ed. London and
New York: Penguin, 2003.
———. Penguin State of the World Atlas, 7th ed. New York: Penguin,
2003.
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Taylor, Peter J., and Colin Flint. Political Geography: World Economy,
Nation-State and Locality, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 2007.
Journals featuring political geography:
American Journal of Political Science; American Political Science Review;
Foreign Affairs; Foreign Policy; International Affairs; International Journal of Middle East Studies; Political Geography; Post-Soviet Geography.
Key Internet site:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ The U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency publishes a World Factbook. Select a
country from the drop-down list to find background information, as
well as facts and figures about the country’s demography, economy,
physical geography, government, and military. Maps are also available.
Log in to www.mygeoscienceplace.com for videos, interactive maps, RSS feeds, case studies, and self-study quizzes to enhance your
study of Political Geography.