INTELLECTUALS, INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGY - THE CASE OF STRAUSZHUPE,ROBERT AND AMERICAN GEOPOLITICS

Citation
A. Crampton et Go. Tuathail, INTELLECTUALS, INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGY - THE CASE OF STRAUSZHUPE,ROBERT AND AMERICAN GEOPOLITICS, Political geography, 15(6-7), 1996, pp. 533-555
Citations number
64
Categorie Soggetti
Geografhy,"Political Science
Journal title
ISSN journal
09626298
Volume
15
Issue
6-7
Year of publication
1996
Pages
533 - 555
Database
ISI
SICI code
0962-6298(1996)15:6-7<533:IIAI-T>2.0.ZU;2-T
Abstract
Robert Strausz-Hupe is a somewhat forgotten and unexamined figure in t he history of 'American geopolitics'. In the early 1940s Strausz-Hupe, an Austrian emigre to the United States, was one of a number of intel lectuals who introduced 'geopolitics' to the American public and champ ioned a 'geopolitical approach' to international politics in his work for the US government during the Second World War. With the help of fu nding from American conservatives in the 1950s, Strausz-Hupe establish ed the Foreign Policy Research Institute at the University of Pennsylv ania and its influential journal Orbis. Together with a number of othe rs, Strausz-Hupe produced a remarkable number of books and articles on the 'Soviet threat' to the USA and the western world. The influence o f Strausz-Hupe and the FPRI extended into the US military, where its f orm of anti-communist indoctrination was challenged by Senator William Fulbright in the 1960s. In the 1970s, Strausz-Hupe sen ed as US ambas sador for the Nixon and Ford administrations and as a member of the re vitalized Committee on the Present Danger. With Ronald Reagan's ascent to power, he once again became a US ambassador, this time to Turkey. From the early 1940s to the mid-1980s, Strausz-Hupe made a career in t he analysis but also production of geopolitics as propaganda. The circ umstances of his biography are a fascinating window into the intellect uals, institutions and ideology of a dominant strain of 'American geop olitics'. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd