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Johan Rudolf Kjellén (Swedish:[ˈrʉːdɔlfɕɛˈleːn], 13 June 1864, inTorsö – 14 November 1922, inUppsala) was a Swedishpolitical scientist,geographer and politician who first coined the term "geopolitics". His work was influenced byFriedrich Ratzel. Along withAlexander von Humboldt,Carl Ritter, and Ratzel, Kjellén would lay the foundations for theGermanGeopolitik that would later be espoused prominently byGeneral Karl Haushofer.
Kjellén completedgymnasium inSkara in 1880 and matriculated atUppsala University the same year. He completed hisPhD in Uppsala in 1891 and was adocent there from 1890 to 1893. He also taught atUniversity of Gothenburg from 1891 and was professor of political sciences and statistics there from 1901 until he received the prestigious Skyttean professorship of Eloquence and Government in Uppsala in 1916.
A conservative politician, he was a member of the Second Chamber of theParliament of Sweden from 1905 to 1908 and of its First Chamber from 1911 to 1917.
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Kjellén was Ratzel's student and would further elaborate on organic state theory, coining the term "geopolitics" in the process. Geopolitics for Kjellén was theory and war its "experimental field."[1] He was also influenced byJohn Robert Seeley andHeinrich von Treitschke, who were advocates ofimperialism.
The basics of his ideas were presented in 1900 in the bookIntroduction to Sweden's Geography (based on lectures at University of Gothenburg). Kjellén'sStaten som lifsform (1916) is often regarded as his most significant work. According to the political scientist Peter Davidsen, Kjellén theorized that states consist of five elements that should be studied by five political-scientific disciplines: geopolitics, demopolitics, eco-politics, sociopolitics and cratopolitics.[2]
Kjellén disputed the solelylegalistic characterization of states and asserted that state andsociety are not opposites but a synthesis of the two elements. The state has a responsibility forlaw and order but also forsocial welfare/progress, andeconomic welfare/progress. Besides legalistic, states have organic characterization. State territories are linked together in "organic connection as bodies with hearts and lungs and less noble parts." As any living form, states must expand or die. This is due not to pure pull for conquest but to natural necessary growth for the sake of self-preservation.[3]
Echoing Ratzel's law of expanding spaces, Kjellén states that large states expand at the expense of the small. This law has many aberrations but these aberrations only mean that it takes more time for great spaces to become organized. It is therefore merely a question of time before the great realms will have grown into their space, and in the long range the indicated tendency is valid without reservation. Nevertheless, Kjellén leaves a chance for Sweden. He stresses a factor which later would be termed asimperial overstretch. The unconstrained, endless "stretching of the borders" increases friction and external vulnerability. Cohesion is hard even in the age of communication. Hence the future is not so dark for the smaller states.[4]
Autarky for Kjellén was a solution to a political problem, not an economic policy in itself. Dependence on imports meant that a country was not economically self-sufficient.
GeneralKarl Haushofer, who would adopt many of Kjellén's ideas, was not interested in economic policy but would advocateautarky as well; a nation constantly in struggle would demand self-sufficiency.
Kjellén also (but afterMaurice Barrès and numerous "national socialist" parties such as theCzech National Social Party) was an early user of the term "national socialism" in 1910. His terminology took form in the Swedish postwar welfare state,Folkhemmet, a term that he coined, which was largely inspired by the social reform-mindedconservatism ofOtto von Bismarck'sGermany.[citation needed]
Geopolitics was revived in the United States by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and Robert Kaplan.[citation needed]
