What do we talk about when we talk about the ‘return’ of geopolitics?

Abstract

Abstract Western public and academic debates stipulate a ‘return’ of geopolitics, but confusion reigns over its substantial meaning. Recent scholarship has increasingly equated the term with the imperialist context in which ‘classical’ geopolitics first emerged, unmasking its spatial determinism but also losing sight of its geographic dimension. Today, geopolitics vaguely combines notions of systemic power competition in a neo-realist sense with constructivist ideas about spatially expansive authoritarianism. To address the resulting confusion, the article conducts interpretive process tracing and analyses how, throughout the twentieth century, classical geopolitics spatially substantiated systemic dynamics of shifting international power balances and broader political programmes such as imperialism, especially via competition on and over the Eurasian landmass. The article examines how, amid renewed competition with Russia and China over Eurasia—as well as doubts over the leanings of European and Asian middle powers in this contest—these traditional concerns reverberate even in contemporary western geopolitical debates characterized by vaguer definitions. This approach helps differentiate geopolitics from standard theories of International Relations and highlights how our unease with spatial arguments under liberal universalism drives today's largely metaphorical use of the term. American Cold War geopolitics, leveraged in defence of domestic democracy, emerges as a thought-provoking contrast.