Colin Flint

My aim as an author and a teacher is to help people understand a much used but little understood word: Geopolitics. I believe this task is necessary because the term Geopolitics can be a dangerous one, a word that can take us to war. That may sound dramatic, but the origins of the word are intellectual and policy debates that helped fuel the build-up to World War One and World War Two. The word Geopolitics is used in the mainstream press and commentaries to depict a scary world in which “we” are right, “they” are wrong, and our use of military force is justified while theirs is not. If we are to avoid another global war, we need to re-think geopolitics and change our behavior.

Near and Far Waters, my new book, provides an accessible definition of geopolitics that stresses the importance of economic change, and competition for access to resources in the Global South. We have been here before. The Dutch in the 1600’s, the British in the 1800s, and the US in the 1900s have all used seapower to extend military, political, and economic beyond their horizon (near waters) to exert influence across the globe (far waters). We are in another period of such change.