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After clicking with left mouse button on book cover, an Amazon page (or publisher's) with book info appears in a new browser window.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee
"Introduction à la Géopolitique", Points, 2009.
With Marc Chalvin, "Géopolitique pour les Nuls", Editions Générales First, 2008.
Philippe Moreau Defarges (1943) is Editor of the think-tank French Institute of International Relations (IFRI, Paris). Furthermore, he teaches at Sciences Po Paris.
Mr Moreau Defarges is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris and has studied at the French Ecole nationale d’administration (ENA). In the past, he worked for the French Foreign Office, mostly on European issues.
He has written many articles and books dealing with international relations, geopolitics, globalization and European unification. The last two new books by Mr Moreau Defarges are: "La géopolitique pour les nuls" (Geopolitics for Dummies) and "L’histoire du monde pour les nuls" (World History for Dummies).
In 2009, the third edition of the highly recommendable "Introduction à la Géopolitique" was published. A year later followed the annual strategic review "Ramses 2011: Un monde post-américain?", which was co-edited by Mr Moreau Defarges.
Please have a look at this page for more publications:
Publications by Philippe Moreau Defarges
The "Geopolitical Passport" series aims to humanise geopolitics by offering geopolitical specialists an opportunity to give their views on this discipline. The interviews address issues such as the rationale behind their decision to conduct geopolitical research, their favourite books and their expectations regarding the geopolitical future.
Quite late, in my 40s. Being a specialist and a teacher in international relations, I wanted to reach a broad understanding of their theoretical and historical roots.
It is always fascinating to explore a technical word and to discover what it could mean. I read a lot on great geopoliticians, their lives and their writings: the American Alfred T. Mahan; the British Halford J. Mackinder, the German Karl Haushofer.
There are actually two issues:
Popularization. My writings do not pretend and do not want to be seminal works founding new theories, they just want to provide tools or keys to understand history and the news.
Geopolitics analyses interactions between territories, history and politics.
First, it deals with the impact of environments (e.g. landscapes, climate, resources) on political conducts.
Second, it assesses the consequences of human thoughts and actions on environments. Geopolitics is not and must not be determinist. It is a 'human science' and that makes it a discipline, not a science.
Maybe Halford J. Mackinder (1861-1947). He was British and, more, versatile: professor, theoretician, member of Parliament, High Commissioner... A true imperial Victorian!
His concepts are simple and still efficient: World Ocean, World Island, Heartland.
For me, the best geopoliticians are the classical authors and their masterpieces:
None.
Two main directions should be and will be more and more explored:
Answer (maybe with the tongue in the cheek): women. Will a world in which women are becoming real political actors be geopolitically different?
The paramount geopolitical challenge is the eco-political issue: how will mankind survive? Can she promote a sustainable development, exploiting resources without creating irreversible damages?
The deepest geopolitical trends strongly favor world governance: a world economic system; industrialization; overpopulation but also the greying of this population; more and more demanding human beings...
Can men and women set up a governance respecting human freedom? Alternatively, global governance could give birth to the most tyrannical Big Brother.
