Distance and Foreign Policy: a Political Geography Approach

Abstract

Global politics and local politics, though interlinked today by processes of globalization, remain separated by the phenomenon of distance. Sheer physical distance, with its associated geography, assumes mainly a causal importance. It determines the way a policy is implemented practically, and can affect the outcome of policy. Planning and strategizing, especially in the sphere of foreign policy, are shaped by three other “distances” as well, each with a distinctive logic. The first is gravitational distance, according to which political and other power is thought to “decay” with increasing distance, although the “mass,” or size, of countries can modify this assumed attenuation of influence. The second is topological distance, according to which any two countries may seem more remote from one another if there are other countries located in between them, the number and arrangement of these intervening country-spaces—the configuration of the political map—being the key variable. The third is attributional distance, according to which countries seem more distant from or, conversely, nearer to one another owing to their political or cultural characteristics. For example, democracies feel closer to each other than they do to non-democratic states. When all of these three schemes of non-physical “distance” coincide, the resulting pattern of international relationships, whatever the actual distances between nations, is thereby strengthened.