Word: spykman
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Long before Pearl Harbor, Professor Nicholas John Spykman glanced up one day from his studies of German Geopoliticians Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer to observe that, if he looked at the globe one way, the New World encircled the Old. But if he looked at the globe another way-if, for example, Germany had upset the balance of power in Europe, or Japan upset the balance of power in Asia, and these two powers joined forces-the Old World encircled the New. In this geopolitical embrace, the New World might suffer a "caress of death." So he wrote this provocative...
...geopolitician, Professor Spykman wrote with the colossal calm of the new fatalism in which geography is destiny. A Dutchman (he was naturalized in 1928), he viewed destiny with the phlegm common to a people that has lived for generations below sea level. A professor of international relations at Yale, he thought with the cold-bloodedness of a historian who knows that nations come & go, but that the human race goes...
Survival. Whatever else the U.S. may be fighting for in World War II it is fighting first & foremost, Author Spykman insists, for its political life. He thinks Americans ought to be a little clearer about the meaning of power. "In this kind of a world states can only survive by constant devotion to power politics. . . . The struggle for power is identical with the struggle for survival. . . . All else is secondary, because in the last instance only power can achieve the objectives of foreign policy...
...lines Spykman condenses the viewpoint about which German geopoliticians have written volumes: "Geography is the most fundamental factor in the foreign policy of states because it is the most permanent. Ministers come and ministers go, even dictators die, but mountain ranges stand unperturbed." Out of this idea the Germans have made their fashionable theory of geopolitics, and the Nazis have made history...
Professor Spykman's contribution to the debate on intervention versus isolation is contained in such brilliant chapters of his book as America and the Transatlantic Zone ("The position of the United States in regard to Europe as a whole is ... identical to the position of Great Britain in regard to the European continent. . . .") America and the Transpacific Zone ("Participation in a war to preserve the balance of power in Europe against Germany means war in cooperation with the dominant naval power. Participation in a war to preserve the balance of power in Asia . . . means war against Japan, against...