By Francis P. Sempa
A WWII-era geographical pattern points the way to a successful U.S. strategy for the Asia-Pacific.
In 1957, Hans W. Weigert, then a professor at Georgetown University, and five colleagues wrote Principles of Political Geography, which attempted to show “the interrelationship and the blending of political and geographic factors in power relations” across the globe. Although it was written at a time when the United States and the West faced the Sino-Soviet bloc based in the geographical “heartland” of the Eurasian land mass, Weigert’s analysis of the geographical features of the East Asian coast and its marginal seas continues to have relevance to current international relations, especially the ongoing struggles for power in the South China Sea and U.S. efforts to either contain China or act as an offshore balancer of the Asia-Pacific region.
Weigert was born in 1902 in Berlin, Germany. Originally a lawyer, in 1938 he fled Germany for the United States as war clouds gathered over Europe. He went on to teach at Trinity College, Carleton College, and the University of Chicago. During the Second World War, Weigert wrote a book on German geopolitics, Generals and Geographers: The Twilight of Geopolitics (1942), which analyzed the writings of Karl Haushofer and other German geopoliticians, and edited a symposium on geopolitics entitled Compass of the World (1944). He also wrote articles and reviewed books on geopolitics and international relations in The Saturday Review, Foreign Affairs, and Harper’s Monthly. After the war, Weigert served with the U.S. military government and High Commission in Germany.
Weigert’s geographical pattern of the East Asian coast in Principles of Political Geography focused on the location of marginal seas and narrow waterways that, he wrote, “rank high among the geographical foundations of political and military power.” These marginal seas and narrow straits, he explained, “control vital sea communications of the world and are likely to be pivotal areas in any conflict” between East Asian land powers and Western sea powers. So long as the sea powers maintain “intermediate bases” along the East Asian coast, “they function as a cordon sanitaire” of Asian mainland powers. If, however, the sea line of communications is breached by Asian coastal land powers, “the entire peripheral strategy” of the United States “would be endangered.” “The development of air power,” Weigert explained, “has not reduced the importance of these sea and communications focal points, but it has made them more difficult to defend.”
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