1. GEOPOLITICS

2. “A Key Study in Geography”
Politics: The practice of decision-making by society as a whole, usually formalized at the government level.
Political topics concerned with Geography:
Trade
military alliances
foreign aid
Immigration / emigration
territorial control
economic systems
areas of land suitable to support society and distribution of wealth

3. Geopolitics is the interplay of political, economic, and geographical factors (such as location and physical environment) at a national or international level. This interplay affects government decision making, especially in relationship to policies with other countries.
Geopolitics differs from politics in that geographic factors such as site and situation, topography, climate, resources, and population size come into play when politicians make decisions.

4. Political Borders
Borders can be based on physical features such as rivers, lakes, oceans , the use of a line of latitude, the use of a divide (height of land), religion, culture, linquistic groups
Most of the worlds nation states were created between 1900 – today , many forming due to the decolonization of Africa,

5. Sharing Spaces
Nile River Basin

6. Sharing Spaces
Antarctica

7. Sharing Spaces
The Arctic

8. Sharing Spaces
Grand Banks of Newfoundland

9. Sharing Spaces
Indian Ocean

10. Geopolitics and Conflict
During the cold war, geography played a major role in the relationships between the US and the USSR in several areas.
Containment used by the US to try and stop the expansion of communism to other countries. They did this by providing economic aid to Western Europe under the Marshal Plan, making military alliances with Western Europe (NATO) and Southeast Asia (SEATO) .Also support in countries like South Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.
Spheres of Influence – an area of special interest and is politically and economically active. The USSR saw Eastern Europe as such a sphere, which it set up a number of puppet communist governments in order to create a buffer zone between itself and Western Europe. The USA sees the Western Hemisphere as it’s sphere of influence.
Space – the competition between the USA and the Soviet Union during the cold war led to the race to the moon, and accomplishments in space represented the superiority of one ideology over another.