research interests include geopolitics and peacebuilding. He is the author of Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower (2024), Introduction to Geopolitics (4th ed. 2022), Geopolitical Constructs: The Mulberry Harbours, World War Two, and the Making of a Militarized Transatlantic (2016), and co-author, with Peter Taylor of Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State and Locality (7th ed. 2018). He is editor emeritus of the journal Geopolitics.
Flint applied the "Page 99 Test" to Near and Far Waters and reported the following:
The Page 99 Test works with qualified success for my book. The page falls about halfway through my book. By that stage of the game the book has moved beyond a discussion of the overarching framework of the book and into the comparative history that informs, and is informed by, the framework. Page 99 is at the beginning of a section on the U.S. and its role in the internal governance of subsidiary countries (more commonly known as the Global South). The page details U.S. presence in Latin America with special reference to the US-Spanish War of 1898 and the 1901 Platt Amendment that made Cuba compliant to U.S. interests. The page then goes on to begin the discussion of the beginning of U.S. influence in the Philippines. Hence, I see the partial success of the Page 99 Test. Such actions of the U.S. in Latin America and the Philippines are a clear example of the argument of the book, but they are just an example. A reader would uncover a crucial example of the geopolitics of seapower but would need to refer back to earlier chapters to understand the fullness of my identification of the interrelated processes that comprise the geopolitics of seapower, and especially the geography of near and far waters.Learn more about Near and Far Waters at the Stanford University Press website.
What are the processes of the geopolitics of seapower and what is the relevant geography? The book defines geopolitics as a combination of economic and political processes in which the wealthier and more technically advanced countries in the world fuel innovation and economic growth by building unequal relations with poorer countries. These relations allow for the flow of commodities and other inputs into the wealthier countries. This process is competitive and violent. The countries most successful in building these relations to their advantage have been seapowers. The geopolitics of seapower requires first establishing control of near waters (those relatively close to one’s shoreline) and then projecting power into far waters, areas of the ocean across the globe that are the near waters of other countries. The process is violent in two ways: 1) control or subjugation of people in the subsidiary countries, and 2) conflict between seapowers competing for domination in far waters. The geopolitics of seapower is a process of near water control and far water power projection. The book describes the rise and fall of Dutch seapower in the 1600s, British seapower in the 1800s through the Second World War, and U.S. seapower through the twentieth century to the present. These historic cases are used to inform current tensions between the U.S. and China (a rising seapower). In the past, competition between seapowers has led to major war. I hope we can use history to learn from past geopolitics that either provoked war or found peaceful solutions.
It is unlikely that one page of a book could allow a reader to comprehend the complexity of geopolitical relations and geopolitics as a historic process. The discussion on page 99 is a prime example of the geopolitics of seapower, but just a snapshot of a process that has been going on for centuries.
--Marshal Zeringue
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