Statesmen respond to the world as they perceive and imagine it-which may not be the way the world really is. In the conduct of affairs over vast geographical spaces, such as those appropriate to present-day American foreign policy, the environmental "mental maps," or cognitive frameworks, relied upon may be of critical importance. This article analyzes the mental geography of U.S. officials, in terms of both their "geographical mind," or articulated geographical concepts, and their "geographical field," or intuitively sensed spheres of activity. More specifically, it examines what are called image-plans, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski's notion of an "Arc of Crisis" around the Indian Ocean, and behavior-spaces, such as the spatial milieu as experienced by Secretary of State Vance in the course of his diplomatic travel. By bringing to the surface the patterns inherent in both, the article is intended to heighten our understanding of geographical considerations in foreign policy.
Global politics and local politics, though interlinked today by processes of globalization, remain separated by the phenomenon of distance. Sheer physical distance, with its associated geography, assumes mainly a causal importance. It determines the way a policy is implemented practically, and can affect the outcome of policy. Planning and strategizing, especially in the sphere of foreign policy, are shaped by three other “distances” as well, each with a distinctive logic. The first is gravitational distance, according to which political and other power is thought to “decay” with increasing distance, although the “mass,” or size, of countries can modify this assumed attenuation of influence. The second is topological distance, according to which any two countries may seem more remote from one another if there are other countries located in between them, the number and arrangement of these intervening country-spaces—the configuration of the political map—being the key variable. The third is attributional distance, according to which countries seem more distant from or, conversely, nearer to one another owing to their political or cultural characteristics. For example, democracies feel closer to each other than they do to non-democratic states. When all of these three schemes of non-physical “distance” coincide, the resulting pattern of international relationships, whatever the actual distances between nations, is thereby strengthened.
This article proposes that transfrontier diplomacy, based on what is termed a consociative model of peacemaking, can ameliorate relations not only between border communities but also between central governments and even entire societies—if several conditions are met. The first is that the nations in question must “face,” or consciously confront, one another, and thus have one another’s full diplomatic attention. The second is that their domestic political systems must be so structured as efficiently to transmit border-community perspectives to national decisionmaking centers, which in turn must keep in touch with peripheral communities. The third is that international agreements, including “good neighborhood” or bon voisinage treaties, should be concluded to bind countries legally to a regime of border cooperation. Such bilateral border agreements can be elicited and also reinforced by multilateral “frame-work” cooperation pacts that cover larger regions.
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