Geopolitics of the United States

What is geopolitics ? Towards a definition of geopolitics.

Geopolitics is the study of the interactions between the different actors on a territory and trying to see how these actors participate in the shaping (formation) of this territory: the civil society, the state (through its policies), multi/transnational companies or supranational institutions such as the United Nations. Geopolitics encompasses (comprend) a lot of different spheres - political, economical, demographic, military or even cultural – and applies to different geographical scales – regional, national, and international. When talking about U.S geopolitics, one cannot but mention the notion of « hyperpower ». It is a fairly recent term that was first used by an American political commentator, Peregrine Worsthorne, in 1991 and popularized by the French Foreign Minister between 1997 and 2002 in the late 90s, Hubert Védrine. It was felt at the time that a new expression was needed to describe the new position of the US, that of the sole superpower, after the fall of the Soviet Union. The United States seems today to dominate the rest of the world, establishing some kind of unbalanced world dynamics between a core / center and the other territories being merely peripheries.

1/ The Formation of the National Territory

A/ Colonial Territories
It must be remembered that before being a national territory, the area we are looking at was the place of clashes between different European powers and Indigenous people (Native Americans) who had been living there for centuries. The different colonial powers considered the place as extensions of their own national spaces, territories where they could expand their influence: Europe was then the core; colonies were peripheries that worked for the benefits of the core. The present territory of the United States was mainly under the domination of the French and the British, but the Spanish and the Russians