A factor that might also have had some relevance was the mainstream print and TV media, which overwhelmingly supported the Bush administration. A large proportion of Americans rely on TV for their news and most of those viewers are neither well travelled nor do they access alternative media sources such as online newspapers in other parts of the English-speaking world. It is sometimes difficult to non-American observers to believe that over 80% of American citizens do not possess a passport, as many European and other global cities seem to have their fill of US visitors.
German writers were deeply interested in conceptualizing the state according to its territorial and resource needs. Informed by variants of social Darwinism, the struggle of states and their human creators was emphasized, as was the need to secure the “fittest” states and peoples. The state should be conceptualized as a super-organism, which existed in a world characterized by struggle and uncertainty. Ratzel believed that the state was a geopolitical force rooted in and shaped by the natural environment. In order to prosper let alone survive in these testing circumstances, states needed to acquire territory and resources.
Haushofer believed that German survival would depend upon a clear-headed appreciation of the geographical realities of world politics. If the state was to prosper rather than just survive, the acquisition of “living space,” particularly in the East, was vital and moreover achievable with the help of potential allies such as Italy and Japan. An accommodation with the Soviet Union was also, in the short to medium term, wise because it would enable both countries to consolidate their respective positions on the Euro-Asian landmass. In order for Germany to prosper, its leadership would need, he believed, to consider carefully 5 essential elements, which lay at the heart of a state’s design for world power: physical location, resources, territory, morphology, and population. If Germany were to be a “space-hopping” state rather than “space-bound,” it would need to understand and act upon its territorial and resource potential.
In his sweeping analysis of world history, Mackinder noted a recurring geographical pattern — successive imperial entities had fought for control of this region, which would not be equated with modern-day Siberia and Central Asia. Writing in 1904, Mackinder was only too well aware that the British had been locked into a so-called “Great Game” with the Russians for control over this “pivot” because it was proximate to British India.
In a world divided between a “functioning core” and a “non-integrating gap,” Barnett’s new map identifies those countries which share American values and those who do not. In effect, its simple bifurcation of the world contributes to a justification for projections of American power in particular territorial spaces such as Iraq and possibly Iran in the future.