Introduction to Geopolitics

This clear and concise introductory textbook guides students through their first engagement with geopolitics. It offers a clear framework for understanding contemporary conflicts by showing how geography provides opportunities and limits upon the actions of countries, national groups, and terrorist organizations.

This second edition is fundamentally restructured to emphasize geopolitical agency, and non-state actors. The text is fully revised, containing a brand new chapter on environmental geopolitics, which includes discussion of climate change and resource conflicts. The text contains updated case studies, such as the Korean conflict, Israel-Palestine and Chechnya and Kashmir, to emphasize the multi-faceted nature of conflict. These, along with guided exercises, help explain contemporary global power struggles, environmental geopolitics, the global military actions of the United States, the persistence of nationalist conflicts, the changing role of borders, and the new geopolitics of terrorism, and peace movements. Throughout, the readers are introduced to different theoretical perspectives, including feminist contributions, as both the practice and representation of geopolitics are discussed.

Introduction to Geopolitics is an ideal introductory text which provides a deeper and critical understanding of current affairs, geopolitical structures and agents. The text is extensively illustrated with diagrams, maps, photographs and end of chapter further reading. Both students and general readers alike will find this book an essential stepping-stone to understanding contemporary conflicts.

Colin Flint is a Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.