Defence studies and geographic methodology: From the practical to the critical approach
Amaël Cattaruzza
This chapter discusses the methodology by presenting a genealogy of the links between geography and defence studies and show how intertwined geography and military issues have been for a long time. The geographical perspective on war, defence issues has nevertheless evolved with the development of a critical school in geography and geopolitics. Geostrategy would be both the study of how geographical data determine the “social bonds” that found the nation, but also, in a more military sense, the study of the influence of geography on the use of organized forces at the national level. While the critical approach invites the researcher to deconstruct the social and political dimensions of geographical space, geospatial intelligence, on the contrary, seems to lead military geography into a technological mutation that produces and processes data without ever questioning them. At the beginning of the 20th century, geopolitics emerged and aimed at discerning the geographical foundations of power on the international scene.
Introduction
The relationship between geography and defence issues may seem old and obvious. Maps have always been tools for soldiers on the battlefield and in staffs, from tactical to the strategic scale. Military geography also appeared as an autonomous discipline at the end of the 19th century. At the same time, the first geopolitical works were published in the United States and Europe. The link between defence studies and geo- graphy is complex. It concerns the study of the terrain as a place of confrontation, the study of the military organization and its geographical distribution, and also the study of the spatial distribution of power in its various dimensions (political, strategic, eco- nomic, and symbolic).
Geographers have thus been integrated into military staffs and have developed a technical approach of places in order to serve as a decision-making tool for military purposes both for strategists and politicians. This tradition still exists today through the use of geospatial intelligence. Relying on a set of digital technologies, military geography aims at informing the military staff about the battlefield, and it is now crucial in operational planning. However, geographers have also sought to guide the strategies and policies of their leaders and rulers with their discipline. Relying on geostrategy and geopolitics, they talk about the distribution of forces and power games worldwide. By studying geographical factors, they provide an interpretation that was once considered purely objective and scientific, and that could have served as a legitimization for imperialist claims (American imperialism, Third Reich con- quest strategy, among others). The place of the military issues in these studies has always been important. It would, therefore, be difficult to discuss the methodologi- cal questions raised by defence issues investigated by geography without considering both approaches.
The geographical perspective on war and defence issues has nevertheless evolved in the last decades with the development of a critical school in geography and geopolitics. The critical approach aims at revealing the balance of power at stake behind all terri- torial and political constructions. In this sense, the military field, and more generally, the question of war, was the subject of a revival within the geography field during the
1990s. The goal of critical geography is to reveal power relations and strategies hidden behind the spatial dimensions of the military domain.
In this chapter, we consider the question of methodology by first presenting a gen- ealogy of the links between geography and defence studies and show how intertwined geography and military issues have been for a long time. In the second part, we focus on the recent evolutions of geography in defence studies by examining more precisely the critical turn and the new methodologies developed. Finally, we analyse the crucial role of data and digitalization processes and stress on their consequences for methods in defence studies.
Geography, a science serving military action or an ideological tool dedicated to the legitimization of power?
Geography, as a discipline, has always had a dual dimension: both physical and human geography, natural and social science. Thus, it provides both an expert voice on the interactions between man and his physical and social environment, and develops a critical approach about how knowledge and control of places may strengthen and legitimize the expression of power in society. Therefore the knowledge of the field has early been considered as a strategic knowledge. From Sun Zi to Clausewitz, the great thinkers of military strategy have always stressed the importance of this field knowl- edge in the context of armed conflicts (Motte 2018).
From a tactical point of view, geographical knowledge enables military forces to adapt the intervention of troops to different environments in which they can evolve (land, sea, air, mountain, desert, etc.) and to reflect on the most relevant action needed to take the lead over the opponent. Geography is also primarily conceived as an objective tool to investigate theatres of operation. The emergence of military geography in the 19th century is part of this framework. But knowledge of the geographical con- text also makes it possible to formulate analyses on a broader scale. The gradual and parallel structuring of disciplines such as geostrategy and geopolitics also need to be taken seriously and indeed, officers or former officers have played a role in this devel- opment (such as Giacomo Durando, inventor of the term “geostrategy” in 1846, or in the early 20th century Karl Haushofer, thinker of German Geopolitik). Whether at the tactical or strategic level, the objective of this use of geography was to support political and military decision-making based on an scientific-analysis considered objective, since it was based on undeniable physical factors.
The 19th century, a time for the emergence of strategic geographic knowledge
This desire to “technicize” the decision-making process tells us a lot about the intel- lectual context of the 19th and early 20th centuries, marked by the industrial revolution and the progress of social sciences on the one hand, and by colonial domination by the European powers on the other hand. These powers were seeking intellectual tools to strengthen and legitimize their leadership positions in the world.
On a scientific level, several developments contributed to making geography a first- rate science in the military and strategic fields. First of all, the progress in cartography made during the 17th and 18th centuries made the map a significant tool for the conduct of wars. The publication in 1793 of the first scientific map of a State, the Geometric Map of France, produced by the Cassini family, marked a turning point in cartographic science. As Luca Muscarà points out, this evolution of geography has quickly become a tool of political and military power and control: With Napoleon, the French army was reorganized and mapping was the key to military conquest and administration. The ingénieurs-géographes (engineers-geographers) of the renamed Dépôt général de la Guerre et de la Géographie accompanied and sometimes preceded the army in mapping operations designed to consolidate French control.(Muscarà 2018: 368).
This use of geography to support decision-making is in line with the perspectives established by the tenants of positivism. In the continuity of the Enlightenment, this school of thought intended to apply the scientific method to the social field in order to go beyond knowledge based on tradition (Kremer-Marietti 2017). In doing so, the foundation of social sciences building was based on the recognition of positive facts and systematic data collection. Thus, social scientists believed they could deduce universal laws and be able to anticipate social phenomena. First, this approach has led to enormous progress in the geographical and geological sciences. Viktor Mayer- Schönberger and Keneth Cukier refer in particular to the case of the US Navy naval officer, Matthew Fontaine Maury, who drew up the first maritime cartography for navigation (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier 2014: 95). In 1855, he published a Geo- graphy of the Sea based on more than 1.2 million data points. Significant progress has therefore been made insofar as intuitive assumptions, once taken for granted, could finally be confirmed or invalidated by a systematic empirical approach. These advances have been put to good use in the military field, and fostered the illusion of certainty that would be dictated by the intrinsic characteristics of the regions and the geographical terrain.
However, the development of military geography is also due to a particular political context. Indeed, the colonization carried out by the European powers required the various armies to adapt to environments that were very different from their traditional theatres of operations. The neutral and “apolitical” knowledge offered by physical geography allowed the military to learn about operations in desert environments, or in exotic climates, while limiting thinking to simple technical and operational arguments. Nevertheless, colonial anthropology and geography offered an often caricatured and essentialized vision of local societies. Thus, they strengthened the idea of the civilizing dimension of Western administration. As Rachel Woodward notes, “Military geo- graphy has a long history, its roots tangled up with the imperial ambitions and military requirements that late-nineteenth-century Geography emerged to serve” (Woodward 2004: 6). Thus, Anne Godlewska’s observation concerning the ingénieurs-géographes (engineers-geographers) of the Napoleonic administration still finds echoes in the practice of this kind of military geography. For her, military geographers believed in “a developing certainty that the inherent value of a region, terrain or people could be accurately measured through the use of French scientific methods… of which the non- European cultures appeared incapable” (Godlewska 1994: 41–42). In parallel, the rise of Geostrategy and Geopolitics has also been used as a legitimization discourse for colonization.
So, the 19th and early 20th centuries were key periods in the relationship between geography and defence studies, through three different approaches, military geography, geostrategy and geopolitics. If strategists have always taken into account the field in the art of warfare, advances in the geographical sciences made it possible to move from practical use to a rigorous and systematic study of operations theatres. Nevertheless, this period also brought a particular vision of geography within the military, tinged with determinism.
Military geography, or the application of geographic methodology to the conduct of military campaigns
The emergence of an autonomous military geography within geography dates back to the second half of the 19th century, with the first works by Théophile Lavallée, pro- fessor of geography at the Ecole spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr in France (Boulanger 2002). Strongly inspired by the German school, Lavallée sketched a discipline in which topographical and geological data were put in perspective with the strategic thinking of the time, and in particular with the works of Jomini. For the first time, he raised the idea that knowledge of the natural environment could be used for military purposes (Boulanger 2002: 26).
Subsequently, new specialists emerged in Europe (Coutau-Bégarie 2006). Never- theless, the discipline remained very academic and developed at the beginning of the 20th century “very systematic geological inspirations theories, increasingly dis- connected from the operational needs of the armies” (Coutau-Bégarie 2006). As Rachel Woodward notes, military geography is primarily concerned with how military activities and armed conflict are shaped by terrain and environment. (…) Yet, as an academic discipline, Military Geo- graphy has failed to evolve. The application of topographical and environmental knowledge to the conduct of military campaigns, and the strategic and tactical considerations to be taken into account, were set out by T. Miller Maguire in 1899. Over the 20th century and in the 21st century, this understanding of Military Geo- graphy held fast.(Woodward 2004: 6)
In fact, the discipline suffered in the United States and Europe from the anti-war opi- nions of the 1960s and 1970s caused by the movements surrounding the decolonization wars and the Vietnam War. Military geography had practically disappeared in France after World War II, supplanted by geostrategic thinking (Boulanger 2002). While Military Geography in the United States has a specialty group within the Association of American Geographers, its definition in the early 2000s remained traditional: “Military Geography is (…) the application of geographic information, tools, and techniques to military problems” (Woodward 2004: 6). In France, Philippe Boulanger’s work shed light on the history of this discipline between 1871 and 1945 (Boulanger 2002) and helped to update its practice, by taking into account new environments and issues (Boulanger 2006, 2011). Nevertheless, the work of Military Geography remains attached to a utilitarian vision of geography, often considered in a descriptive and essentialized way.
Geostrategy, a strategy for large areas
General Giacomo Durando first used the term geostrategy in 1846. He gave two defi- nitions to this word. Geostrategy would be both the study of how geographical data determine the “social bonds” that found the nation, but also, in a more military sense, the study of the influence of geography on the use of organized forces at the national level (Motte 2006). Unlike military geography, geostrategy is not about tactical and operational dimensions, but about the “strategy of large areas” (Motte 2018). This discipline has had a strong resonance in diplomatic circles and quickly led to the defi- nition of strategies dedicated to each environment (land and naval strategies, and soon air, space, and cybernetics strategies). This way of thinking based on the geographical constraints of each environment leads to broader analysis about the nature of power, involving classical oppositions like land/sea, land power/sea power, upon which geopolitics is subsequently based. It is sometimes difficult to classify thinkers and to distinguish what in their thinking is geostrategic or geopolitical. The case of Admiral Mahan (1840–1914) is exemplary in this respect.
Mahan’s researches are mainly focused on Sea Power. Mahan was first and foremost a sailor marked by his experience in the US Navy, from 1856 to 1896. He took part in the American secession wars and analysed the innovations they brought. At the time, the southerners’ maritime blockade had been decisive in winning the victory. This strategy had only been possible thanks to the technical progress of the navy and the switch from steam sailing to sailing. One of his major contributions has been to per- ceive the consequences of the industrial revolution in world geopolitics. From 1885 onwards, he became a teacher and devoted himself to historical research, which led him to formulate a theory based on maritime power or Sea Power.
With Mahan, strategic thinking is combined with a detailed knowledge of geo- graphical environments and the physical constraints imposed by geographical factors. This geostrategic approach later spread within military thinking, particularly with the French Admiral Raoul Castex. Without calling into question the notion of Sea Power, Castex considers that it must be nuanced, taking into account the economic, political, diplomatic, and above all technological contexts. The invention of new weapons can reverse Sea Power. In this sense, Castex’s thinking is less deterministic than Mahan’s. Geostrategy, therefore, proposes a militarized vision of the earth’s space, in which geography is thought of as the basis for the deployment of armed forces. This discipline was very successful during the Cold War when these concepts (shutter zone, contain- ment, etc.) were put forward in East/West rivalry.
Geopolitics, “science” or ideology?
At the beginning of the 20th century, geopolitics emerged and aimed at discerning the geographical foundations of power on the international scene. Its thinkers, geographers or soldiers, have made these analyses ideological tools to serve an imperialist idea of power. Until World War II, two major trends emerged within geopolitics: a naturalistic approach, centred on social Darwinism, and a broader approach, focusing on a study of the “great game” at work between the major powers in international relations. In both cases, the State, as a political structure, remains the central unit of measurement for this first discipline. On the one hand, the German school developed around the work of the geographer Friedrich Ratzel and Officer Karl Haushofer; on the other hand, the English-speaking approach drew from the work of the British academic Halford Mackinder.
Considered as the father of political geography, Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) is a leading scientific figure of the second half of the 19th century. In his book Anthro- pogeographie published in 1882, he laid the foundations of human geography by focusing on the relationship between societies and their environment. In Political Geo- graphy published in 1897, the State is referred to as an organism (i.e. an organized structure in Ratzel vocabulary). The borders would be the peripheral organs, while power would be the centre. Through these theories, the concerns for a German unified state in the making with expansionist views were backed up.
On the other hand, the British academic Sir Halford Mackinder developed at the beginning of the 20th century another kind of discourse based on the analysis of the geographical factors of power. His most famous work, The Geographical Pivot of His- tory published in 1904, ambitiously aimed at formulating “certain aspects of geo- graphical causality in Universal History” (1992). He defined the notion of Heartland, a Central Asian space that extends beyond the borders of the Russian Empire, to which he conferred the role of “geographical pivot of History”. This area would have a stra- tegic role due to its geography: a low-lying area favouring rapid traffic and contact between Asia and Europe, with significant resources. Thus, it effectively reversed Mahan’s reasoning, which saw Sea Power as the alpha and omega of global power. On the contrary, Mackinder emphasized continental power. He based this argument on the invention of the railway, which considerably transformed mobility and favoured land travel.1 For Mackinder, this gave Russia a significant strategic advantage, as location can serve as a promontory to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, regions where more than two-thirds of the world’s population where concentrated at this period. The strength of its reasoning was to introduce a global approach in the analysis of the international scene.
Ratzel and Mackinder’s approaches have influenced the birth of the haushoferian Geopolitik. In the 1920s, Karl Haushofer (1869–1946) proposed an autonomous struc- turing of this discipline and made it grow on the intellectual scene of the interwar period. A former officer of the Bavarian army, he was deeply affected by the German humiliation inflicted by the Treaty of Versailles.2 Under his impetus, the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik (Journal of Geopolitics) was created in 1924. For Haushofer, Geopolitik had to differ from political geography: he wanted it to be a science that would serve poli- tical action and enable Germany to regain its status as a Great power. In this sense, he revisited Ratzel’s concepts, in particular that of Lebensraum, which allowed him to claim for Germany a “natural” sphere of expansion in Central and Eastern Europe, which would give him access to economic self-sufficiency. Geopolitik was the subject of numerous criticisms from that time on, because it seemed to justify a conquering and belligerent policy through “natural laws”. Nevertheless, the most virulent criticisms have been levelled at the Nazi regime’s use of these ideas, by reinterpreting the work of geopoliticians.
Military geography, geostrategy and geopolitics therefore appear as three traditional uses of geography in defence studies. The involvement in each of its specialties of military personnel as thinkers undoubtedly explains the importance given to the mili- tary dimensions of power. At that time, these three disciplinary fields shared a very static vision of geography, considered as the physical foundation on which military force was deployed.
The critical turn of geography and its methodological consequences on defence studies
In the 1970s, international relations were characterized by decolonization and the conflicts of the Cold War. The interventions of the Great powers have never been so debated and criticized within civil society. The problems under discussion were indeed geopolitical. At the same time, the perspectives and methodologies in social sciences have utterly changed, with the works of thinkers such as Fernand Braudel, Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre. The influence of Marxism led some young geographers (David Harvey, Edward Soja, and Kevin Cox) to develop political analyses that were increasingly critical of the governments and detached from the state level, taking into account issues related to other actors and local and regional levels. According to their radical approach, the geographical location of a phenomenon must be interpreted as the product of a balance of power that produces socio-spatial inequalities.
Critical approaches in Geography: discovering power behind the spatiality of military issues and war
In France, while regional geography and its economical approach were mostly dominant, Yves Lacoste developed an analysis on colonialism and the strategies at work in the Vietnam War, and proposed to rebuild the analytical frameworks of the discipline. In his book La Géographie, ça sert d’abord à faire la guerre (Lacoste 1982), he asserts that geography is not neutral. On the contrary, it informs strate- gists and justifies domination. Maps are not only representations of places and areas, they are instruments of battle and propaganda tools. By showing borders, they seem to give “scientific” legitimacy to artificial territories and their govern- ments. Lacoste’s approach is a critical one. He aims at building analytical and methodological tools to reveal the strategies of domination at work through geo- graphy and spatial organization.
In the English-speaking academia, the main evolution of the discipline is based on a change of perspective. Indeed, since the 1990s, Critical Geopolitics has integrated a more reflective dimension into the geopolitical analysis under the impetus of geo- graphers such as John Agnew, Simon Dalby, or Gearoid O’Tuathail (or Gerard Toal). The latter defines this discipline as opposed to Geopolitics: “Geopolitics can be described as a problem-solving theory for the conceptualization and practice of state- craft. (…) In contrast, Critical Geopolitics is a problematizing theoretical enterprise that places the existing structures of power and knowledge in question” (O’Tuathail, 1999: 107). Thus Critical Geopolitics implies a rigorous reflexive approach, which questions all its research objects as material forms of power, and which also questions political or scientific discourses aiming at legitimizing them.
In this perspective, geography is no more conceived as a fixed background, but as a social construct uncovering power relations. As Flint states in his book, Geography of War and Peace:
In the current academic jargon, war/peace and geography are mutually constituted and socially constructed. In other words, geography and war are the products of human activity; war creates geographies of borders, states, empires, and so on, and in turn, these geographic entities are the terrain over which peace is maintained or new wars are justified. Rather than being as permanent and sedate as a mountain range, the geography of war is as fluid and volatile as a lava flow.(Flint 2005: 4).
In this perspective, geography does not determine the strategy of the actors. On the contrary, the actors, through their strategies, produce new geographies. The study of war geography has thus been wholly renewed.
Nevertheless, military geography has been little affected by this evolution of the dis- cipline, except for the work of Rachel Woodward (Woodward 2004). Together with her colleagues, she laid the foundations for a critical approach to military geography (Rech et al. 2015). According to them:
A geographical approach (…) has much to offer critical military studies, not just by emphasizing that key foci – war, militarism, militarization, and military orga- nizations, institutions, capabilities, and activities – take place in places, but also by insisting on the multiplicity of ways in which these phenomena are geographically constituted and expressed. At the heart of the critical military studies project is an understanding of these phenomena as the outcome of social practices, rather than as given categories beyond interrogation, in direct contrast to the normative approaches prevalent in much traditional military geography (and, indeed, tradi- tional military and war studies).(Rech et al. 2015: 55–56)
Such an approach would allow military geography to take its full place in a global strategic reflection, integrating the social, cultural, and political dimensions specific to each military intervention.
The methodologies of human geography and their implementation in defence studies
The turning point in human geography in the 1970s de facto changed its meth- odologies and discourses, which are now more analytical than descriptive. The purpose of the discipline is not only to accumulate geographic data collections (maps, name of countries and capitals, characteristics of regional climate, moun- tain’s altitudes, etc.), but to analyse spatial processes, to understand and explain the location of human activities, and to formulate a critical point of view on spatial environment (Cattaruzza and Limonier 2019). It is a method of thinking, which could be summed up in a few simple questions. What? The researcher needs to define his object. Where? He needs to locate this object in space and time. Why here and not somewhere else? He needs to understand the singularity of this object based on geographic analysis and comparisons. Why and how? He needs to explain the spatiality of the phenomena he studies.
To do this, the geographer observes and analyses each phenomenon at different scales (local, regional, national, continental, and global) and over different time peri- ods. One of the main specificities of geographical reasoning is to highlight the multiple interactions between different scales of analysis. For example, a local event, such as the Battle of Aleppo in Syria (2012–2016), may be interpreted differently depending on the scale of observation. While a local analysis would focus on battles within the city, a national perspective would reveal other processes (ethnic and political distribution of populations, movements of displaced persons and refugees, etc.), as well as an inter- national perspective. However, all these observation scales influence each other. The specificity of geography is also to combine different fields of analysis, such as geology, biology, climatology, demography, anthropology, urban and rural studies, history, or political science. The discipline is integrative, with many sub-domains such as geo- morphology, biogeography, political or cultural geography, population geography, etc.
The common perspective of all these different approaches is to analyse phenomena in terms of spaces, places, territories, and landscapes. Today, human geography focuses the actors influencing the construction of territories.
As said above, geography has always played an important role in defence studies because of the strategic dimension of space and places in wartime. The use of concepts such as battlefield, area of operations (local level), theatre of operations (local level), and theatre of war (regional level) illustrates the contributions of geography at the operational level. Yet, from a military point of view, the study of space phenomena is not an end in itself and remains a means to obtain strategic advantages in the field or to reveal power relations at different scales. Therefore the methodology must take into account the strategic dimension of research.
In his seminal work Paix et guerre entre les nations (Aron 1962), the French philo- sopher Raymond Aron distinguished between the notions of “environment” and “theatre”. According to the author, the study of environment is part of a scientific process and requires the intervention of technicians and scientists. On the contrary, theatre is an abstract, simplified notion, a representation making sense in the context of a given operation. Thus, the study of theatre of operations or theatre of war depends on the goal to be achieved defined by strategists and politicians. This is not just a technical issue. It is also a political issue. De facto, the “theatre of operations”, for the strategist, is not an exhaustive description of the field, but a simplified vision that depends on the objectives to be achieved and the nature of the actors involved. Thus, in the context of defence studies, the geographer must adapt geographical concepts to the strategic and military objectives of the actors involved, and must, therefore, be introduced to strate- gic literature.
For example, the notion of scale has a particular meaning in strategic thinking (see Figure 1.1 below). As geographer Francis A. Galgano states (Galgano 2011: 46):
The scale of a place is, in a military sense, a function of the level of war. At the strategic level, a place or operating environment may be an entire continent. At the operational level, it may be a region or country. At the tactical level, it could be something as small as a city block.
Thus, the geographical study of defence issues must always correlate the different level of war with different geographic scales, and highlight the influence of each level with the others.
The same adaptation process must be carried out for concepts as simple and essential as site and location, distance, size, or regions. The site is used to describe the internal characteristics of the site (morphology, relief, climate, infrastructure, etc.). Battlefield site investigation can offer crucial strategic advantages during a battle. The notion of location, on the other hand, refers to the relative location of a place in a geographical context. A place is always more or less linked to other places, and the relationship between them can be interpreted functionally and hierarchically (as for a centre and peripheries, or for dominant and dominated places). Distance is also a fundamental concept in geography, whether considered in an absolute or relative sense.3 With the spread of the Internet and cyberspace, the notion of distance need to be reinterpreted in this new context. Cyberattacks, for example, can be launched regardless of the dis- tance between the attacker and the victim.
Last but not least, the notion of region is perhaps the most commonly used geo- graphical concept nowadays. However, its definition is difficult to define because it refers to different meanings and scales according to the authors. In most cases, the word region is used to refer to contiguous spaces sharing one or more common char- acteristics. But it can also be used in the case of areas polarized around an economic or political centre, or even in a more general sense, in the case of areas integrated into a spatial interaction system, such as border regions (Mareï and Richard 2018). In a military operation, regional analysis is fundamental at all levels (strategic, operational, and tactical) because it allows defining the spatial units in which military action must be carried out. These sets can refer to different parameters (geographical, political, cultural, economic, etc.) and make it possible to highlight different types of spatial relationships (domination, rivalries, cooperation, etc.) at different scales of analysis.
The geopolitical methods and the critical perspectives
Geopolitical methods introduce a more critical perspective. Unlike geography, the geopolitical approach focuses more particularly on actors, their rivalries, and spatial representations. The principles of geopolitical reasoning, as they have been practiced since the early 1970s, can be evoked in the form of a grid (see Table 1.1). Among the methods and factors used to formulate a geopolitical analysis, we can mention the identification of the actors involved, the study of the territories they draw or invoke, the analysis of the relations and rivalries of various kinds (political, economic, cultural, etc.) involved. From these elements power relations emerge on territories, at several spatial and temporal scales. But this geopolitical analysis grid also informs us about another specificity of this method, namely the attention given to rivalries and conflicts. Indeed, this practice does not imply studying the actors ex nihilo but describing them in their relational context (power relations, conflicts, cooperation, etc.).
In this context, the notion of power, which implies a subordinate relationship between two actors, and the study of the different representations of the actors involved, occupy a central place in the analysis. Indeed, each geopolitical actor devel- ops its representation of the world, which legitimizes in its eyes its way of acting and being part of it. Beyond strategies of domination, rivalries of power are also conflicts of representation (representations of the world, territorial representations, representations of authority and justice, cultural, and political representations, etc.). The geopolitical analysis, therefore, requires the ability to account for the different representations at stake or even to question its own analysis, however complex it may be. This reflexive approach makes it possible to introduce critical methodologies when researching defence issues using geographical and geopolitical methods and to avoid formulating expert opinions based on positivist and normative approaches to spatial phenomena, without explanations and analytical perspectives.
Geodata and Geospatial Intelligence and their methodological implications:
evolution or revolution?
Today, technological advances in the field of geographical sciences seem to make these methodologies partly obsolete. Indeed, with new technical and commercial data capture and acquisition capabilities, geographic intelligence can be based on an increasingly important set of information and data (satellite images, geospatial data, etc.). Faced with these new sources of information, it is, therefore, necessary to question the relevance of qualitative and critical methods derived from contemporary human geography.
The promises of battlefield digitalization
The Geoint (for Geospatial Intelligence), a concept invented in the 1990s, became the main focus of the new National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in 2003. This agency, dedicated to the production and dissemination of geodata for the US military, aim at meeting the strategic needs for information superiority (Boulanger 2016). However, while the critical approach invites the researcher to deconstruct the social and political dimensions of geographical space, geospatial intelligence, on the contrary, seems to lead military geography into a technological mutation that produces and processes data without ever questioning them. In recent years, the emergence of new tools such as Big Data and Intelligence have maximized expectations. The hypothesis is that massive real-time data processing would significantly improve our knowledge of the environ- ment, and could even allow to predict events and behaviours.
Therefore in the last decades, the military sector has dedicated a lot of researches and investments to this field. The most enthusiastic speeches in strategic circles see it as a major opportunity to predict and anticipate future threats of all types (social, economic, political or natural) and thus to build a tool to prevent potential wars. One of the main consequences of these programmes and investments is the increasing datafication of the battlefield. In France, the so-called FELIN programme4 (FELIN for Integrated Infantryman Equipment and Communications), which integrates several sensors directly into military equipment, or the SCORPION program5 illustrates this phenomenon within the French army. Other recent technical progress has also enabled the development of new tools, including autonomous land vehicles (robotic vehicles) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These autonomous machines capture, store and analyse different types of data. The aim is to collect as much data as possible and to increase the volume of information flows between all components of the military eco- system. This process leads to the progressive transcription of the entire battle environ- ment into digital data and its networking. As far as data is concerned, their networking makes it possible to exchange, centralize, and enhance them. De facto, the value of data mainly depends on its processing. Indeed, via data mining, even the most common digital data can acquire strategic value by being correlated with other data. The role of the Geoint engineer is, therefore, crucial in this valorization process. It is undeniable that geospatial intelligence makes it possible to produce relevant, accurate, and loca- lized information, both at the tactical and strategic levels.
Finally, another dimension of digitalization concerns the potentially predictive nature of data and the ability of geospatial intelligence to anticipate events in the field. Indeed, because of the structural changes that these techniques bring to the way knowledge is built by promoting correlation on causality, it would be possible to make statistical predictions using models applied to a corpus of data. These algorithmic techniques are now used in the field of security and defence to anticipate crises and conflicts. Many programmes have been launched in recent years by the US Department of Defense and the CIA (Himelfarb 2014). For example, the CIA’s Open Source Indi- cators programme seeks to predict political crises, epidemics, economic crises, shorta- ges, and natural disasters in specific regions. This kind of initiative has multiplied over the past decade, bringing together new private actors specialized in this activity. This appeals to more pluridisciplinary competences (and precisely computing competences) from the researcher investigating defence issues with geographical methods.
War and geodata, consequences and limits in terms of methodology
Nevertheless, the widespread use of Geoint techniques as a decision-making tool in the field may have its limitations. Indeed, the various sensors on the battlefield and the multiple sources of accessible data can have significant consequences in terms of intelligence and on the conduct of operations. One possible consequence could be the hyper-personalization of war (Dunlap 2014). Based on the model of the realization of consumer profiles in trade, similar processes have been applied in the military field in the United States to identify real or potential enemies. With this in mind, the National Security Agency (NSA) collects millions of facial images every day and maintains a database that can be used by sophisticated facial recognition pro- grammes. Combined with the increasing use of drones, alone or in swarms, it would become possible to identify each combatant on the battlefield and to perform targeted strikes. The consequences are important. With regard to the conduct of operations, Dunlap referred to three possible developments. These technologies would enable the defence institutions to focus on key targets, allowing them to destabilize enemy armies profoundly, either by “decapitating” the leaders or by targeting tech- nicians and individuals who are difficult to replace because of their specific skills. Then, the mere fact of being able to select the targeted individuals according to their own identity would have an effect on the psychology of force as a whole (Dunlap
2014). Finally, the identification of the combatants also makes it possible to contact them individually to weaken their determination.
More recently, the case of the Strava application illustrates the digitalization of the battlefield as a bottom-up process, showing that a lot of geospatial data can be entirely out of control of the leadership holder. Strava is a sports application, enabling the user to track his activity in both time and space, using geospatial data. Soldiers have widely used it in their private lives. In January 2019, an Australian student found out that the map listing the routes was fully available as open-source data on the Internet. However, the only concern of the defence institutions at the time was the risk of unveiling mili- tary bases. But a French journalist uncovered that, besides this threat, the use of cross- referenced data available on the Internet could allow the identification of the people behind the map. To prove this, he was able to associate geospatial data from the application with the identities of five members of the French intelligence services. This case shows that the digitalization of the battlefield has raised vulnerabilities generated by geodata that are beyond control. There again, this appeals for more awareness of researchers in social sciences towards technical competences to be found in computer and statistical sciences.
Finally, the promise of predictive information can be seriously nuanced. Indeed, similar attempts have already been developed in the case of “predictive policing”. These techniques intended to produce predictive analysis of the most likely areas where future crimes will occur, have had mixed results. Two types of predictive policing practices can be distinguished: predictive mapping, which formulates predictive ana- lyses on when and where crimes could take place based on aggregate data, and pre- dictive identification, which attempts to define, at the collective or individual level, profiles of potential criminals or victims. The most widely used technique to date is predictive mapping, which has led to the implementation of various programmes around the world, such as PredPol in the United States and Great Britain, Criminality Awareness System in the Netherlands, Precobs in Germany and Switzerland, and KEYCRIME in Italy. It is still too early to assess the results of such devices, although many biases have already been reported. Thus, in the case of PredPol, initial feedback highlighted the lack of transparency of the algorithms used by the company to carry out its processing, and errors in data collection that lead to causal prediction errors6. If these digital tools are likely to continue to develop for economic reasons, their rele- vance can yet be questioned. In any case, the same reservations can be made about the notion of Anticipatory Intelligence implemented under Geoint.
Therefore it seems necessary to articulate Geoint’s development with a critical approach that puts the information produced and data generated in perspective with the potential biases created by this type of analysis and the vulnerabilities that can result from this use. In other words, this means that these digital tools must be com- bined with critical and qualitative methodologies in the social sciences, and that the generalization of geodata technology does not make human geography approaches any less relevant.
Conclusion
The scientific use of geography by military organizations in their operations spread in the 19th century at all levels (tactical, operational, and strategic). However, at that time, the geography used in defence studies was mostly deterministic, with an emphasis on physical geography, geology or climatology supposed to condition human actions. Nevertheless, the use of German Geopolitik by the Nazi regime has revealed the dangers of such an approach. However, the same deterministic and technicist approach seems to be promoted, in a more or less conscious way, with the development of the Geoint. Even if the accuracy of the information given by digital tools is not called into question here, there is a risk of hiding the political dimension of human action behind technical expertise. Geographer Louise Amoore has clearly shown the reasons why governments and decision-makers base their security and defence policies on statistical expertise (Amoore 2013). Indeed, how can such a decision be challenged when the political choices seem to be hidden behind numbers?
Also, the question of the future of geography in defence studies, and more particu- larly human geography, is now more important than ever. Several calls have already been made for critical reflection on geodata and its uses (Amoore 2013; Kitchin 2014; Davadie et al. 2016). Geography must, therefore, take its rightful place in this evolving strategic reflection. Geographers must be able to combine technical approaches, based on the processing of geodata, with qualitative and critical approaches from human geography and the social sciences. Indeed, data analysis should not be limited to tech- nical criteria. It should integrate a more global approach, combining political, social, economic, cultural, or ethical dimensions. In this sense, the methodologies of human geography and social sciences remain more relevant than ever in the interpretation of spatial phenomena in the study of defence issues.
Notes
1 Transcontinental lines in America and Europe were created at the same time.
2 Having converted to geography for health reasons, he obtained his doctorate in 1913 and became a professor at the University of Munich in 1919.
3 Galgano explains: “Distance links locations and may be viewed in both an absolute and a relative sense. The spatial separation between points, usually measured by some known standard (e.g. miles or kilometres), defines absolute distance. In contrast, relative distance translates linear measurements into other, more meaningful, spatial relationships” (Galgano 2011: 45).
4 This combat system aims at improving five functions of the warrior: communication, obser- vation, lethality, protection, mobility and human support. The soldier on the battlefield receives and produces data.
5 Scorpion is a large modernization program aiming at replacing a variety of aging infantry vehicles. All the new vehicles employ the modern Scorpion Information and Communications System (SIC-S), which creates an integrated network of data sharing.
6 For instance, the “prediction of banalities”, meaning that neighbourhoods already known as “sensitive” are systematically pointed out by the software. Therefore, it increases the prob- ability that these neighbourhoods will reappear in future analyses.
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