[MUSIC] Since geopolitics is about global world view and involves global political planning, its theoretical foundations were grounded by scholars who lived in the world's most powerful states. Historically, it took place in Germany. On the one hand, by the end of the 19th century, Germany had become one of the most powerful European states. On the other hand, to compare with Great Britain and France, Germany lacked colonies so important for its further development. Before the term geopolitics was widely used in academic and political spheres of the European Empires, another term was introduced by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel in 1897. It was politische geographie or political geography, the main difference between political geography and geopolitics is the following. Political geography deals mainly with domestic processes in a state, deals with how geographic factors influence political development over certain political entity. Geopolitics, as we discussed previously, involves global planning, global worldview. It looks more outside the state, it discusses international competition, global competition and what's these should do, how state should act within this competition. So it was logical that geographers first look at factors that determined political development of a certain state. For Friedrich Ratzel, there were two such factors or variables that mattered. First, raum or space or the area occupied by state, and second lage or position of a country. He combined these two factors to constituent the fundamental law according to which, as Friedrich Ratzel believed, all states act, the search for Lebensraum or the search for living space. As we see, Friedrich Ratzel, who is considered to be a founding father of political geography, also made a big contribution to geopolitics. From all his laws we can conclude that it is not enough for the state to use only its domestic resources. If state wants to grow, if it wants to be successful in the international arena, it should inevitably look outside in search for better conditions. The main influence from all Ratzel's laws was that the territory of a state is no definite area fixed for all times. Ratzel believed that state was a living organism that always changed. And when the growth of the population occurred, the state could outgrow its own boundaries and therefore require more territory and more resources. That could cause competition and conflicts for resources and territories with the other countries. Though Friederich Ratzel came extremely close to the invention of the term geopolitics, it was first used by a Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellen in 1899. Rudolf Kjellen considered geopolitics or how he called it, geopolitik, one of the five dimensions of political science. According to Kjellen, geopolitics was the objective universal law of a spatial nature that determined the states foreign policy and security. To compare with Ratzel, Kjellen's natural laws were with less emphasis upon the organic features of territorial expansion and colonization and more upon the position or location of the state. To sum up, geopolitics as an academic approach to study international relations emerged in the end of the 19th century together with political geography. And the two scientists that contributed to the emergence were Friedrich Ratzel and Rudolf Kjellen. On the one hand, geopolitics tried to explain the disparity in natural conditions among states and to tell which of these conditions can contribute to the state's strength. On the other hand, due to high value of geopolitical studies, the whole field of geopolitics was becoming more and more essential for foreign policy decision-making. To prove that, let's remember the famous phrase of Lord Palmerston that nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. Geopolitics was ready to help statesmen to determine their country's national interests and to become a complex scientific background for global political planning. [MUSIC]
