Ever since the United States became the world's only superpower over twenty years ago, there has been a tendency to lose sight of the geopolitical conditions underlying American national security. We have been told that economic interdependence, multilateral institutions, technological change, global democratization, the rise of non-state actors, and Barack Obama's personality will have a transformational effect on world affairs, rendering irrelevant the traditional patterns of international power politics. Yet none of these nostrums have had the fully pacifying impact promised by their most enthusiastic advocates, and we are left drifting into an era where geopolitical competition between major world powers obviously continues, without a firm understanding of it on the part of Western opinion.

The word geopolitics is often taken to have a kind of reactionary, outmoded, or even sinister quality. In reality, geopolitics is simply the analysis of the relationship between geographical facts on the one hand, and international politics on the other. These geographical facts include essentially unchanging natural features, such as rivers, mountains, and oceans, along with elements of human and political geography such as national boundaries, trade networks, and concentrations of economic or military power. In other words, geopolitical conditions are the facts on the ground, prior to our policy decisions. As such, a refusal to recognize or understand geopolitical factors in world politics is not so much ethical, as foolish - like an insistence on playing chess without learning the rules.

Classical geopolitical analyses contain a number of enduring truths, as follows. The international system is a competitive arena in which great powers play a disproportionate role, struggling for security, resources, position and influence. Military force is a critical indicator and fundament of that influence. Given their essential autonomy, states fear their own encirclement by other powers, and try to break out of it through strategies of counter-encirclement. The realities of geography and material capability set very definite constraints on foreign policy decision-makers which they ignore at their peril. At the same time, there is considerable room for human agency and political leadership to respond to these constraints and defend worthwhile values with skill, courage, and success. Despite technological and institutional changes over the years, these underlying features of world politics have never really changed all that much. This is one reason the study of history is instructive for statesmen. What has changed, among other things, is the specific distribution of power within the international system. Today, it is China's economic and military power that is rising, not only on land, but at sea. Yet the basic patterns of its rise are not entirely without precedent. So it is appropriate that we go back to the classical geopolitical theorists, to deepen our understanding of current international trends and how to manage them. Three such classical theorists in particular stand out: Alfred Mahan, Halford Mackinder, and Nicholas Spykman.

U.S. admiral Alfred Mahan was the preeminent theorist of maritime power in world politics. Disturbed by the lack of governmental or popular attention to the state of the U.S. Navy, in 1890 he published his greatest work, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. In it, he argues that sea power is central to the rise and decline of great nations. Sea power is defined by Mahan as not simply a strong navy - although it certainly includes that - but also a national orientation toward the ocean, in terms of geographical position, commercial shipping, maritime production, and intelligent policies. The military essence of sea power, for Mahan, is the concentrated possession of numerous capital ships, with well-trained and aggressive crews, capable of defeating enemy navies in battle. The possession of such naval forces, when properly led, carries the immeasurable benefit of driving the enemy's fleet and commerce from the open seas. Mahan refers to this type of naval predominance as command of the sea. In wartime, command of the sea allows for maritime powers to intervene decisively on land, whether through naval blockade, or in direct support of allied armies. In peacetime, command of the sea allows for the operation of friendly maritime trade, which in turn gathers wealth to finance the maintenance of the navy. Maritime shipping, a strong navy, and the benefits of seaborne commerce thus operate in a kind of virtuous circle for the leading naval powers, giving them a great advantage over nations whose capabilities are bound mainly to the land.

Mahan argued that the self-reinforcing nature of sea power was best demonstrated in modern times by the rise of Great Britain, which defeated the navies of Spain, Holland, and France in turn, and rose to worldwide preeminence through command of the sea. But he worried that modern democracies were not sufficiently attuned to the necessity of maintaining sea power. His own United States, in particular, he viewed as preoccupied with internal matters, and neglectful of its navy. He therefore recommended not only the expansion of the U.S. battle fleet, but the careful development of naval bases, canals, and coaling stations overseas, so that the oceans would act as a strategic opportunity for America rather than as a liability in the face of more aggressive competitors. Effective control over vital maritime chokepoints, bases, and ocean lanes would allow the seagoing nations to project their influence inland while constraining the expansion of great land powers such as Russia - but that control would have to be exercised and maintained energetically.