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
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