This article presents the great connection which exists between the technological development which has reverberation in communication field and how a state can exercise its power on international stage, how can consolidate its will and power, and how cancommunication, geopolitics, state power, maritime states, land states

Benea Ciprian Beniamin

English

Research Papers in Economics

77 
 
COMMUNICATIONS AND GEOPOLITICS 
 
Benea Ciprian 
University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics Str. Universitatii No. 1 e-mail: c_benea@yahoo.com 
tel.: +40 751 24 99 75 
 
This article presents the great connection which exists between the technological development which has 
reverberation in communication field and how a state can exercise its power on international stage, how 
can consolidate its will and power, and how can it manipulate the environment with communicational 
tools. 
 
Keywords: communication, geopolitics, state power, maritime states, land states 
 
JEL code: F02 
 
Geopolitics is the “analysis of geographical influences upon power relationships in international 
politics.”
16 Geopolitics is constructed on two concepts which made its core nucleus: territory and 
power.
17 One of them, territory – or geography – is the most stable factor upon which the power 
of  the  nation  depends.
18  But  power  of  one  state  and  the  projection  of  its  power  depend  on 
technical means developed by that state and which can promote that power. And the state that can 
adapt  the  technical  means  to  its  geographical  position  and  its  geographical  peculiarities  can 
promote better its power on regional and/or global stage. Put shortly, the state’s geographical 
position is sustained and valued in terms of power through technical means; here we must bring 
in debate the technical means as transportation and communications. 
Good  transport  facilities  permit  the  utilization  of  the  resources  of  a  wider  area.  Good 
communication facilities permit better and opportune information for the government. Both of 
them permit and sustain the centralization of political decision in a state. With mobile armies the 
rebellions  can  be  swiftly  suppressed.  The  rapidity  of  communications  enables  the  central 
government to supervise the local officials effectively, thus preventing the disintegration of the 
state.  The  radius  of  efficient  military  action  depends  on  the  state  of  transport  and 
communication.
19 
As the means of communication were used more and more by states with great geographical size, 
there could be identified the advantage derived from their size; they become much stronger, and 
could subjugate their smaller neighbors more easily. Put in a few words, the fate of the nations 
and of civilizations has often been determined by a differential in the technology;
20 and here if we 
mention the importance of communication means, there could be seen easily their importance for 
state’s power. 
If we look for example to the relation between political unification and centralization and the 
road system, it would be easy to discover the importance of communication for the state.
21 Each 
empire built roads and maintained them in a good state. And as a consequence of these facts we 
should expect, that whenever an improvement in the technique of transport and communication 
occurs, which is not counterbalanced by an increase in the weight of equipment nor by a rise in 
                                                       
16 Enciclopaedia Britanica 
17  Mircea  Mali a,  Zece  mii  de  culturi,  o  singură  civiliza ie.  Spre  geomodernitatea  secolului  XXI, 
Bucure ti, Editura Nemira, 1998, p. 117 
18 Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations. The Struggle for Power and Peace, New York, Alfred A. 
Knopf, Fifth Edition, 1973, p. 112 
19  Stanislav  Andrevski,  Military  Organization  and  Society,  Berkeley  and  Los  Angeles,  University  of 
California Press, 1971, p. 79 
20 Hans J. Morgenthau, op. cit., p. 121 
21 Stanislav Andrevski, op. cit., p. 80 78 
 
the relative effectiveness of defence, the size of political units and their influence on regional or 
global scale will tend to grow.
22 
But the control upon geographical space is different, and it depends upon the type of economical 
and political organization of a specific nation.
23  
And now we would proceed to the analysis of this aspect. Looking upon France’s example, we 
could trace the following conclusion: a couple of centuries before French Revolution, there could 
be identified two Frances.  
One was the commercial state represented during Revolution by Girondins, whose leaders came 
from  the  department  of  Gironde  and  the  trading  city  of  Bordeaux.  Theirs  was  a  mercantile 
network of French coastal and riverine cities, notably Bordeaux, Toulon, Marseilles, Nantes, and 
Lyon, connected to other cities around the world by a fleet of trading ships and protected by 
naval  power.
24  Such  power  could  be  applied  even  at  the  global  level,  but  only  to  spatially 
concentrated targets (other trading cities).  
France two  was  the  territorial  nation-state  represented at  the time  of  the  Revolution  by  the 
Jacobins, with a national capital in Paris, national bureaucracies, national communications along 
a  road  network  with  Paris  as  its  center  (the  routes  nationales),  and  national  military  power 
concerned (partly) with controlling the unruly provinces. 
In the aftermath of the Revolution this pattern was exceptionally clear as the territorial France 
state had to take the port cities back from the trading interests, who sought a federal solution to 
France’s problems rather than the “enlightened despotism” that would emerge in the person of 
Bonaparte.
25 
In this way, these two Frances coexisted, but when Napoleon acted in order to take away the 
commercial port-cities, he pursued this action with the motivation regarding the extending the 
territorial power of the France state upon the whole Europe, including the European part of 
Russia. But this French struggle was a part of a greater struggle which took place in Europe, with 
implications  much  more  profound.  It  was  the  struggle  between  France  and  England.  While 
France worked to perfect its territorial state in order to achieve a hegemonic position, England 
worked in order to give a perfect commercial nature to its state. 
Looking from macro-technical (and geopolitical) point of view, there could be identified two 
types of states within European system:  
- trading states, which are mercantile in character and generate wealth through trade; 
- territorial states, which generate wealth through the occupation and exploitation of territory and 
are thus disposed to militarism. 
It is noteworthy to be mentioned that the geographical disposition of one state can push it to be a 
trading state or a territorial one; but to the geographical disposition there must be added the 
national character. 
A country which has long seashores, or has great openness to the sea, could become a very 
important trading state, which will generate its wealth through trade, and which will protect its 
maritime communication lines with its naval power.  It needs fewer bureaucrats concentrated 
especially in its ports. Countries such as England, The Netherlands, and USA are good examples 
in this regard. It must be mentioned that USA became sea power after there was identified an 
“aggressive impulse”, as there had been identified the possibility regarding the creation of a route 
through the Central-American Isthmus.
26  
                                                       
22 ibidem, p. 79 
23 Edward W. Fox, The Emergence of the Modern World: From Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, 
Cambridge, MA., Blackwell, 1991, pp. 1-2 
24 ibidem,  p. 60 
25 ibidem, p. 61 
26  Alfred  T.  Mahan,  The  Influence  of  Sea  Power  upon  History.  1660  –  1783,  New  York,  Dover 
Publications, Inc, 1987, p. 26 79 
 
States as Russia and France generate wealth through exploitation of a territory and centralize 
almost all their decisions in their capital cities. For this reason they need a great bureaucratic 
apparatus, concentrated in big cities, and of course, in their capitals. This kind of states will tend 
to develop communication networks which will have the main hub in their capital cities, and 
which through these communication networks, would provide the exploitation of a contiguous 
territory. In this moment we could identify the importance of railway and road systems for this 
kind of states. 
As a commercial state, England pursued a different path regarding its communication policy: in 
order to provide the possibility for maximization of its capital accumulation, England was pushed 
to trade its knowledge and industrial capacities, for others agricultural products, which made the 
fleet an indispensable element for controlling a vast maritime network with global coverage; and 
the telecommunication networks became the technical means which helped the fleet and navy to 
rise their efficiency. It is simply to note that England pursued an insular geopolitics, concentrated 
on its fleet development. 
But if there is brought into debate the strategic and military factors which influence the way a 
state conceives its communication networks policy, we could identify that the blockade and the 
commercial fleet’s following up in the open sea works only against a commercial state, and fails 
when it is pursued against a territorial state. For example, during the American Revolutionary 
War, the blockade made by England’s fleet against American coasts was inefficient, and the 
following in the open seas, senseless. This was due to the fact that the American Republic was a 
commercial state, but in the same time, it was part of a self-sufficient territorial economy. 
The situation was different in France’s case: although France is the first territorial state, it has 
sufficient peculiarities of a commercial state, and the blockade directed against its coasts hit the 
target. This pushed Napoleon to focalize upon “continental system” in order to become self-
sufficient. 
Even with the England’s success against the first territorial state, at the beginning of the 19-th 
century, the insular geopolitics, which counted on the long fleet’s arm, would be contested from 
three directions: 
1) the nation-state (a version of the territorial state), governed by an efficient bureaucracy; 
2) the efficient terrestrial communications, due to the invention of railway system and telegraph, 
which combined, created the possibility for appearance of great size political entities, which 
covered greater geographical areas; 
3) the appearance, in the first part of 20-th century, of the possibility to use air power. For 
England this was of utmost importance because it mean that England wasn’t anymore an island; 
it couldn’t protect with its fleet its seashores, protection which was efficient only against the 
maritime power. 
We can say that the appearance of territorial-state and its bureaucratic apparatus depended in the 
greatest measure upon the technical advance and the evolution in the land transportation – the 
appearance  of  railway  transport  which  provided  an  efficient  land  transport  –  and  in  the 
instantaneous communications – electric telegraph. To the end of 19-th century it was possible 
from technical point of view, the creation of national territorial states, with a reduced maritime 
component. The railways and electrical telegraph provided the maintenance of a more efficient 
centralized control than during the period when it was provided by technical means as postal 
services, channels, national roads, or mechanical telegraph.
27 
                                                       
27  Mark  W.  Zacher  and  Brent  A.  Sutton,  Governing  Global  Networks.  International  Regimes  for 
Transportation and Communications, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 181 80 
 
Furthermore,  once  there  appeared  the  railway  and  telegraph  networks,  there  were  identified 
changes in four directions, with impact upon states’ policy and administration:
28 
1) the geographical area occupied by the state increased; 
2) the scope of state’s functions multiplied and diversified; 
3) there highly manifested the administration’s bureaucratization; 
4) the state’s role and political representation in international affairs changed and diversified. 
In this way, the rise of communication efficiency and the bureaucratization changed in a great 
measure the geopolitical balance in the favor of territorial nation-states,
29 providing means for the 
great size states’ administration (such as Canada, USSR/Russia, SUA, Brazil). 
Taking account of the importance of transportations and communications for administration, all 
empires  and  states  paid  a  special  attention  to  the  development  and  smooth  functioning  of 
communications, to the point that “the subject of communications … occupies a crucial position 
in the organization and administration of government, and as a consequence, in the Western 
empires and civilization.”
30   
And  the  great  jump  registered  in  the  field  of  spatial  technologies  –  the  appearance  of 
communication  satellites  –  brought  great  changes  regarding  the  way  in  which  classical 
geopolitics presented by Mackinder was to be regarded. If he presented a rule which contained 
valid realities for 19-th and 20-th centuries, 21-st century opens a new era: that which regards the 
using of satellite communications in a possible space war.
31  
Now the Mackinder’s rule regarding the control of Eastern Europe and Heartland takes another 
shape: 
- Who rules the circum terrestrial space commands the Earth; 
- Who rules the Moon commands the circum terrestrial space; 
- Who rules L4 and L5 commands the Earth-Moon system.
32 
 
But what could be written as a conclusion of those mentioned above is the following fact: the 
nation  who  chooses  to  develop  the  best  set  of  technologies  and  geo-strategies  in  order  to 
manipulate the environment, to create wealth, and to project and protect the state’s power, tends 
to become a hegemonic power. Each change in technology of communication and transportation 
fields has greatest geopolitical implications, because they change the state’s capacity regarding 
the control upon territory, the projection of that state’s power, and the protection of its citizens. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
1.  Andrevski,  Stanislav,  Military  Organization  and  Society,  Berkeley  and  Los  Angeles, 
University of California Press, 1971; 
2. Fox, Edward W., The Emergence of the Modern World: From Seventeenth to the Twentieth 
Century, Cambridge, MA., Blackwell, 1991; 
3. Hugill, Peter, Global Communications since 1844. Geopolitics and Technology, Baltimore and 
London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999; 
4. Innis, Harold Adam, Empire and Communications, Oxford, Clarendon, 1950; 
5. Mahan, Alfred T., The Influence of Sea Power upon History. 1660 – 1783, New York, Dover 
Publications, Inc, 1987; 
6. Mali a,Mircea, Zece mii de culturi, o singură civiliza ie. Spre geomodernitatea secolului XXI, 
Bucure ti, Editura Nemira, 1998; 
                                                       
28 Peter Hugill, Global Communications since 1844. Geopolitics and Technology, Baltimore and London, 
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, p. 11  
29 ibidem, p. 12 
30 Harold Adam Innis, Empire and Communications, Oxford, Clarendon, 1950, p. 3 
31 Revista “Cadran Politic”, Anul I, Nr. 5-6, Iulie-August, 2003, pp. 16-17 
32 Mircea Mali a, op. cit., p. 267 81 
 
7. Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics among Nations. The Struggle for Power and Peace, New York, 
Alfred A. Knopf, Fifth Edition, 1973; 
8. Zacher, Mark W. and Sutton, Brent A., Governing Global Networks. International Regimes for 
Transportation and Communications, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996; 
9. *** Revista ͆Cadran Politic͇, Anul I, Nr. 5-6, Iulie-August, 2003; 
10. *** Enciclopaedia Britanica. 
   

Empire and Communications,

Global Communications since 1844. Geopolitics and Technology, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins

Governing Global Networks. International Regimes for Transportation and Communications, Cambridge,

Military Organization and Society,

Politics among Nations. The Struggle for Power and Peace,

The Emergence of the Modern World: From Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century,

The Influence of Sea Power upon History.

Zece mii de culturi, o singură civiliza ie. Spre geomodernitatea secolului XXI, Bucure ti, Editura Nemira,

COMMUNICATIONS AND GEOPOLITICS

http://steconomice.uoradea.ro/anale/volume/2009/v1-international-relations-and-european-integration/09.pdf

COMMUNICATIONS AND GEOPOLITICS

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