Geopolitics, Grand Strategy and the Bush Doctrine

Geopolitics is about the largest scale geographical specification of political matters. Geopolitical reasoning provides the spatial framings within which grand strategy is constructed. The Bush doctrine, elaborated in response to the events of September 11th 2001 and its formulation of a “Global War...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dalby, Simon
Other Authors: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/82324
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/39833
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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Summary:Geopolitics is about the largest scale geographical specification of political matters. Geopolitical reasoning provides the spatial framings within which grand strategy is constructed. The Bush doctrine, elaborated in response to the events of September 11th 2001 and its formulation of a “Global War on Terror” draws heavily on antecedent formulations from both the first Bush administration and the Project for a New American Century. But in doing so it both misconstrues the nature of the events of September 11th and attempts a grand strategy that is flawed. It is flawed both because of its failure to understand the geography of terror and, given the Bush administration’s flat denials that America is an empire, a reluctance to learn lessons from imperial history and adopt appropriate strategies and force structures to accomplish its ostensible goals.