The Importance Of Geography

Adam Elkus excerpts somewhat approvingly from this post:

Geography is important. It is one of those “brute” facts that the constructivists are always going on about. Humans are social beings, and politics a social endeavour, but we do operate in three dimensional space. However, states do not covet territory for territory’s sake. They do so for reasons that ultimately reside in the realm of “social” facts, such as political power. Territory is sought for access to resources, or trade routes, or yes even for defensive purposes. This is evident even in the simplistic game of Risk, where captured territories result in gaining more military resources in the next round.

FLG should probably take some time and respond more fully. But whenever something like this comes up FLG always posits the idea, stolen from somebody else whom he can't remember, that the emergence of liberal political and economic ideas in England is due in no small part to its status as an island.

If one assumes that the state, whose primary job is to protect its population and territory, is directly proportional to the number size of external threats to it, then England was bound to have a smaller and less intrusive state. The Channel, acting as a moat protecting England, meant that the state didn't have to be as large. The borders were well-defined and difficult to cross.

On the contrary, the strained relations between France and Prussia/Germany over the centuries with conquest and reconquest of areas like Alsace demanded larger and more involved states.

This is FLG's way of saying that geography influences political/social factors in ways that are difficult to separate, and he has very little time for constructivists. Even if he references Wendt's three cultures of anarchy all the time.