Conventional understandings of geography may be inadequate for navigating the digital age. While borders and terrain still matter, power increasingly flows through chips, cables, clouds, code, and cognition. Today, a nation can lose sovereignty without losing territory, while those with the right tools can seize power without armies crossing borders. As this redefined geography reshapes sovereignty and strategy, how should states rethink power and security?
Geography has long been a determinant of national power—shaping how states secure sovereignty, deter threats, generate prosperity, and project influence beyond their borders. Nicholas J. Spykman, in his book America’s Strategy in World Politics (1942), wrote, “Geography is the most fundamental factor in the foreign policy of states because it is the most permanent.” Mackinder and Mahan are studied extensively because they framed the influence of geography on grand strategy from the perspectives of land and maritime power.
The United States, with its two-ocean separation, faced little external threat, while its continental scale and access to both Atlantic and Pacific trading systems supported its economic rise. By contrast, states such as Poland have faced chronic insecurity because they sit on open approaches between major power centres. Landlocked states tend to be poorer because their trade flows are mediated by neighbours.