Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower - Hardcover

by Colin Flint (Author)

Seapower has been a constant in world politics, a tool through which powerful countries have policed the seas for commercial advantage. Political geographer Colin Flint highlights the geography of seapower as a dynamic, continual struggle to gain control of near waters--those parts of the oceans close to a country's shoreline--and far waters--parts of the oceans beyond the horizon and that neighbor the shorelines of other countries. A forceful and clarifying challenge to conventional accounts of geopolitics, Near and Far Waters offers an accessible introduction to the combination of economic and political relations that are the reason behind, and the result of, the development of seapower to control near waters and project force into far waters.

Examining the histories of three naval powers (the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States), this book distills the past and present patterns of seapower and their tendency to trigger repercussive conflict and war. Readers will gain an appreciation for how geopolitics works, the importance of seapower in economic competition, the motivations behind China's desire to become a global naval force, and the risks of current and future wars. Drawing on decades of experience, Flint urges readers to take seriously the dilemma of near/far waters as a context for an alternative understanding of global politics.

Author Biography

Colin Flint, a geographer by training, is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at Utah State University. His research interests include geopolitics and peacebuilding. He is the author of Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower (Stanford University Press, 2024), Introduction to Geopolitics (Routledge, 4th ed. 2022), Geopolitical Constructs: The Mulberry Harbours, World War Two, and the Making of a Militarized Transatlantic (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), and co-author, with Peter Taylor of Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State and Locality (Routledge, 7th ed. 2018). He is editor emeritus of the journal Geopolitics. His books have been translated into Spanish, Polish, Korean, Mandarin, Japanese and Farsi.