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Geopolitics
Geopolitics (from Greek γη ge "earth/land" and πολιτική politikē "politics") is the study of the effects of geography (human and physical) on international politics and international relations. The term Geopolitics was coined by Swedish Scientist, Rudolf Kjellen, in 1899. Geopolitics is a method of studying foreign policy to understand, explain and predict international political behaviour through geographical variables. These include area studies, climate, topography, demography, natural resources, and applied science of the region being evaluated. Geopolitics focuses on political power in relation to geographic space. In particular, territorial waters and land territory in correlation with diplomatic history. Academically, geopolitics analyzes history and social science with reference to geography in relation to politics. Also, geopolitics includes the study of the ensemble of relations between the interests of international political actors; interests focused to an area, space, geographical element or ways, relations which create a geopolitical system. Thus it studies global politicians and their impact on the societies they lead. Moreover, as Painter and Jeffrey maintain, geopolitics is a term indicating ideas about the ordering, arrangement and division of the surface of the earth. Specifically, these geopolitical ideas are sets of representations we use to essentialize the world around us, (particular ideas about how the world is / should be organized), that involve the process of classification within Western forms of knowledge. This perspective is arguably disseminated from distinct vantage points (usually that of state elites), based on a system of power/knowledge; a term deriving from social theorist, Michel Foucault, who argued that knowledge and power are inextricably linked
