Trump, Greenland and America's Waters
- What Geopolitics Tells Us
This article represents an updated
version of the Georgian-language variant.
Trump's discourse regarding Panama, Greenland, and Canada just before his inauguration, may have appeared unexpected, yet from a purely geopolitical perspective, it can be argued that these statements represent the manifestation of traditional American strategic thinking. Let us examine this development more thoroughly through the lens of geopolitical theory.
As you may
recall, etymologically, the term "geopolitics" is composed of two
Greek words: Geo (earth) and Politikos (everything related to the
city-state: the state, the citizen, etc.). Accordingly, geographical
determinism and its associated doctrines have played a paramount role in the
development of this discipline.
Trump's
articulated positions are precisely imbued with classical geopolitical
thinking. Why is this the case? What constitutes a geopolitical approach? What
does it entail?
The most general answer to these questions is that the geopolitical approach encompasses those aspects of global political reality analysis that are oriented toward spatial indicators. Geopolitics does not examine the state in stasis, as an unchanging entity, but rather in dynamics—as a living organism. Geopolitics studies the state in its relationship with the environment, primarily with space, and aims to resolve problems arising from the state's spatial relationships.
