ပထဝီႏိုင္ငံေရး သီအိုရီႏွင့္ လက္ေတြ႕ေလ့လာဆန္းစစ္ခ်က္အျဖစ္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေပၚ သံုးသပ္ထား ပါသည္။

1. Geopolitics Theories and
Myanmar’s Strategic Location
Presented by
Ko Toe Gyi
ယံုၾကည္ရာ စာဖတ္အသင္ု
12th October 2013 (12:00) PM

2. The Term “Geopolitics”
 Relation between Politics and Territory.
 Comprises the art and practice of
analyzing , prescribing, forecasting
and the using of political power over a
given territory.

3. Geopolitics
 Geopolitics is the study of the effects of
geography (both human and physical) on
international politics and international
relation.
 Geopolitics = Geography + Politics
 Geopolitics is Macro-politics as widely
and broadly.
 Political Geography is Micro-politics that
have study as detail of Geographical
Ingredients.

4. Geopolitics traditionally studies the links
between political power and geographic
space, and examines strategic prescriptions
based on the relative importance of land
power and sea power in world history.

5. The Most Famous Geopolitics
Theorist.
 Alfred Thayar Mahan - Sea Power Nation
 Sir Halford Mackinder – Heartland Theory
 Nicholas Spyman – Rimland Theory
 Friedrich Ratzel – Political Geography
 Samuel Huntington – Clash of Civilization

6. Karl Haushofer
Rudolf Kjellen
Halford Mackinder
Friedich Ratzal
Alfred Thayer
Mahan

9.  Typical Characteristics of Geopolitics are -
- Location, (Esp; Strategic Location)
- Size,
- Climate,
- Topography (Study of the surface
shape and feature of the Earth.)
- Demography (Study of Human
Population) and
- Natural Resources.

10.  There is the Two Types of Boundaries.
1. Natural Boundary
2. Artificial Boundary

11. Natural Boundary

12. Artificial Boundary

13. • Major Region
North America
Latin America
Asia Pacific
Western, Central and Eastern
Europe
Middle East
Africa

14.  Determination of International
Boundaries.
 3 Stages of Boundary Determination.
1. Definition of the Boundary
2. Delimitation of the Boundary and
3. Demarcation of the Boundary.

15.  Definition of the Boundary
အၾကမ္ု ဖ်င္ု နယနိမိတ္သ တ္မွတ္္ု ခင္ု
 Delimination of the Boundary
ေုု မပံုု ုင္ု စာခ် ်ဳပစာတ္မ္ု ေုပၚတတ္င္
နယနိမိတ္သ တ္မွတ္္ု ခင္ု
 Demarcation of the Boundary
ေုု မ ပင္ေုပၚတတ္င္ နယနိမိတ္သ တ္မွတ္္ု ခင္ု

16.  ပိငနကပငလယ ု္ (၁၂) မိင္
 ဆကစပဇံု (၂၄ မိင္)
 ကမ္ု ဥ ပငလယ္ေုလ်ာေုစာက္
(၂၀၀ မိင္ ေမက်ာု္ရ)
 အထ သ သန္႔ စ ပပာ ေုရ ဇံု
(၂၀၀ မိင္)

17. Continuous Zone - "infringement of its customs,
fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations
within its territory or territorial sea".
exclusive economic zone, including fishing, mining,
oil exploration, and any pollution of those
resources.

19.  Three Concepts of Power
1. Land Power
2. Sea Power
3. Air Power

20. Land Power
Sea Power
Air Power
Heartland
Theory
Rimland
Theory
Mackinder
Spyman
Mahan
Technological Advantage

21. Heartland
Rimland
Sea Power
Land Power

22. Nature of State Power
• Ingredients of State Power Potential
 Natural Sources of Power
 Tangible Sources of Power
 Intangible Sources of Power

23. Natural Sources
of Power
Intangible Sources
of Power
Tangible Sources
of Power
Nature of State Power
 Geography
 Natural
Resources
 Population

24. 1. Geography
2. Natural
Resources
3. Population
Natural
Sources of
Power

25. 1. Industrial
Development
2. Level of
Infrastructure
3. Characteristics of
Military
Tangible
Sources of
Power

26. 1. National Image
2. Public Support
3. Leadership
Intangible
Sources of
Power

27.  There important Natural sources of
Power are
1. geographical size and position
2. natural resources
3. population

28. Geography
Size
Strategic
Location
Heartland Rimland

29.  Wide
 Middle
 Small
Size
1. Pro-rupted Shape
2. Fragmented Shape
3. Perforated Shape
4. Compacted Shape
5. Elongated Shape
Shape
I. Open
II. Close
III. Island

30.  Geographical size and location are the
natural sources of power recognized
first by international relation theorists.
 A large geographic expanse gives a state
automatic power.
 For Example,
1. Russia 5. India
2. China 6. Canada
3. USA 7. Brazil
4. Australia

31.  Long Borders
 May be weakness
 Must be defended
 An expensive
 Often problem task

32. Natural Resources
- 2nd Source of Natural Power
 Controlling a large geographic
expanse is not a positive ingredient
of power unless that expanse
contains natural resources.
 Petroleum-exporting states
- Kuwait, Qatar, UAE
which are geographically small.

33.  States need oil and are ready to pay
dearly for it, and will even go to war
when access to it is denied.
 Since 2006, Russia has used that power
potential , cutting off natural gas
supplies to Ukraine and hence slowing
supplies to Europe, which gets one-
quarter of its gas through Ukraine.

34.  The absence of natural resources does
not mean that a state has no power
potential .
 However, Japan is not rich in natural
resources, but it has parlayed other
elements of power so as to make itself
an economic powerhouse.

35.  Population is a third natural source of power.
- China (1.3 Billion)
- India (1.2 Billion)
- USA (307 million)
 Automatically give power potential and often great
power.
 States with small, highly educated, skilled
populations can fill large Economic Power.
 Such as
- Switzerland
- Norway
- Austria and Singapore.
States with large but relative poor population, such as
Ethiopia (with 79 million people but GNP of only $800
per capital), can exercise less power.

36.  Two Debate
 Mackinder and Spyman
 Mahan
Location
Base on Land
Base on Sea

37.  Two different views about the
importance of geography in
international relations emerged at the
turn of the century within the realist
tradition.
 In the late 1890, the naval officer and
historian Alfred Mahan (1840-1914)
wrote of the importance of controlling
the sea.
 The state that controls the ocean routes
controls the world.

38.  In 1904, the British geographer Sir
Halford Mackinder (1861-1947)
countered the Mahan’s View.
 To Mackinder,
 The State that had the most power was
the one that controlled the Eurasian
geographic “Heartland”.

39.  Russia’s lack of easy access to the sea
and its resultant inability to wield naval
power have been viewed as persistent
weaknesses in that country’s power
potential.

40.  Sir Halford John
Mackinder (15 February
1861 – 6 March 1947)
was an English
geographer and Director
of the London School of
Economics
 who is regarded as one
of the founding fathers
of both geopolitics and
geo-strategy.

41. Heartland Theory
 Who rules Eastern Europe commands
the Heartland of Eurasia.
 Who rules the Heartland commands the
World Island of Europe, Asia and Africa.
 Who rules the World Island commands
the World.

42. World Island or Core = Heartland = Eurasia + Africa
Periphery = Americas, the British & Oceania
Heartland (Pivot Area) – Central Europe, Ukraine, Western
Russian

43.  Mackinder’s Theory –
 Very influential during the two World
wars and the Cold War for Germany
and Russia.
 Weakness; But many geographers came
to see as it’s over-reliance on
Environmental and technological
Determination.

45.  Nicholas John Spykman (1893–
1943) was a Dutch-American
geo-strategist.
 A Sterling Professor of
International Relations, teaching
as part of the Institute for
International Studies at Yale
University, one of his prime
concerns was making his
students geographically
literate—geopolitics was
impossible without geographic
understanding.
 He was married to the children's
novelist E. C. Spykman.
 He died of cancer at the age of
49.

46. Rimland Theory
 Who controls the rimland rules Eurasia;
 Who rules Eurasia controls the destinies
of the world.

47.  Alfred Thayer Mahan (September
27, 1840 – December 1, 1914) was
a United States Navy flag officer,
geostrategist, and historian, who
has been called "the most
important American strategist of
the nineteenth century.“
 His concept of
 "sea power" was based on the idea
that countries with greater naval
power will have greater worldwide
impact; it was most famously
presented in The Influence of Sea
Power Upon History, 1660–1783
(1890).

48.  The concept had an enormous influence
in shaping the strategic thought of
navies across the world, especially in the
United States, Germany, Japan and
Britain, ultimately causing a European
naval arms race in the 1890s, which
included the United States.
 His ideas still permeate the U.S. Navy
Doctrine.

49. Sea Power Nation

50.  Mahan believed that
 national greatness was associated with the
sea, with its commercial usage in peace and its
control in war.
 His goal was to discover the laws of history
that determined who controlled the seas.
 His theoretical framework came from
 an emphasis on strategic locations (such as
chokepoints, canals), as well as quantifiable
levels of fighting power in a fleet

51.  The primary mission of
 a navy was to secure the command of the sea.
 This not only permitted the maintenance of sea
communications for one's own ships while denying
their use to the enemy but also, if necessary, provided
the means for close supervision of neutral trade.
 This control of the sea could not be achieved by
destruction of commerce but only by destroying or
neutralizing the enemy fleet.
 This called for concentration of naval forces
composed of capital ships, not unduly large but
numerous, well manned with crews thoroughly
trained, and operating under the principle that the
best defense is an aggressive offense.

54.  Friedrich Ratzel’s Political
Geography
 Analysis on the importance of
mobility and the move from sea
to rail transport.
 But he failed to predict the
revolutionary impact of air
power.

56. Control of Key Oceanic Choke
Points
 The Straits of Malacca
 Gibraltar
 Hormuz
 Dardanelles
 The Persian Gulf
 Suez
 Panama Canals
- is viewed as a positive indicator of
Power potential.

57. Strait of
Malacca
Strait of
Gibraltar

58. Panama
Suez

59. Dardanelles
Hormuz
Persian Gulf

60. Cuba Missiles
Crisis

61. Falkland Crisis

63. Summary
Size
Strategic
Location
Important of
Resources
Rim Area
Pivot Area
Related with
Sea Power
Natural
Resources
Human
Resources
Population

64. Myanmar’s
Strategic
Location

65. Myanmar China India Bangladesh
Area (sq.km) total: 678,500 s
land: 657,740
water: 20,760
9,561,000 3,287,263 148,393
Population 52.8 Million 1351 Million 1237 Million 154.7 Million
Religion Buddhism Buddhism,
Taoism
Hindu,80.5% Islam, 83%
Government
Types
Communist
State
Federal
Republic
Parliamentary
Democracy

66. Land
boundaries:
total: 5,876 km
border countries: Bangladesh 193 km, China
2,185 km, India 1,463 km, Laos 235 km,
Thailand 1,800 km
Coastline: 1,930 km
Population: 42,909,464 (2005 est.)
Age
structure:
0-14 years: 27.2% (male 5,967,487/female 5,717,795)
15-64 years: 67.8% (male 14,448,887/female 14,641,419)
65 years and over: 5% (male 939,092/female 1,194,784)
(2005 est.)

67. Case Study
 Sino-Burma Pipeline
 Dewei deep Sea port

70.  Sino-Burma pipelines refers to planned oil and
natural gas pipelines linking Burma's deep-water port
of Kyaukphyu (Sittwe) in the Bay of Bengal with
Kunming in Yunnan province of China.
 In December 2005, Petro China signed a deal with
Burma's Government to purchase natural gas over a
30 year period.
 The oil pipeline will have a capacity of 12 million tons
of crude oil per year. It would diversify China's crude
oil imports routes from the Middle East and Africa,
and avoid traffic through the Strait of Malacca

71.  The second problem
is that 80 % of China’s
imported oil goes
through the Straits of
Malacca
 They fear that the
USA or India in the
future could use that
as a chock point and
cut of China’s import
of Oil

74. Geopolitical Role of Dewei deep Sea port
 Dawei, located in Southern Myanmar, on the
Andaman coast facing the Indian Ocean – long been a
strategic prize
 In Nov 2010, Myanmar Port Authority signed a USD
$8.6 billion deal with Italian-Thai Development
 Myanmar’s First Special Economic Zone
 A deep sea port stretching 250 sq km (97 sq mile)
industrial estate including a steel mill, fertilizer plant
and a coal fired power station and oil refinery
 Japanese Nippon Steel – said to be a potential
investor in the Dawei port project including a coal
fired power plant, an industrial center, oil and gas
pipelines and an eight-lane highway.

76. Geopolitical Role of Dewei deep Sea port
 Gateway to Indo-China and potentially the world
biggest industrial estate
 Sea and land (railway and road) infrastructure links to
Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam
 Myanmar & Thailand – Construction of a 130 km road
from the Dawei port to Thailand – almost complete
 10 year project involving Thailand and Myanmar
totaling US$ 8 billion
 Thailand’s hope to create a more efficient, less
congested route for its exports to Europe and the
Middle East
 Dawei port – 10 times the size of Laem Chabang,
Thailand’s largest port on the Gulf of Thailand

77. Geopolitical Role of Dewei deep Sea port
 Dawei Development Project – invigorate the country’s
impoverished economy and revolutionize regional
trade
 Pipelines will transport gas from the coast of western
Rakhine state and oil from the Middle East and Africa
across the country to China
 Dawei – a “short cut” for crude oil coming into
Southeast Asia from the Middle East
 The port project – could create up to 100,000 jobs

79.  Myanmar’s Coastline – 1300 Miles
 Have the Close position from North to India Ocean
 Best the get of Natural Sunlight on this Ocean where
Growth water organism
 Sufficient for Food Security at Military and Economic

80. Summary
 China Centric
 Sino-Burma Pipeline
 Dawei Deep Sea port
 What taken to National Interest for Myanmar to
use Geopolitics Advantage Between China and
India?

81. ကဲ… ဒေုတ္ာ
က် ်ဳပပ္ိို႔ ဘာလပၾကမလဲ….?
Ko Toe Gyi