among Rimland countries to restrict the influence of the heartland have also been
echoed in the international strategy of the United States since 1945, and continue
to inform American foreign policy.
The end of the Cold War has not meant a reduction in the relevance of geopoli-
tics; if anything, the collapse of Soviet communism and the rise of radical Islam
has magnified the importance of the field.Influential geopolitical commentators
include Jakub Grygiel, the late Samuel Huntington, Robert Kaplan, Fareed Zakaria,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, and many others. Within the discipline of geography,
some scholars have promoted the rise ofa “critical geopolitics” that challenges
the foundations of what its proponents designate as “classical geopolitics.” Critical
geopolitics is rooted in post-structuralist and postmodern theory, and claims to offer
a perspective on geopolitics that avoids the “binary” and “post-colonial” distortions
toward interstate relationships that characterize the “classical” approach. The leading
advocates of the “critical” school are John Agnew and Gerald Toal.Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering is the deliberate setting of politicalboundariesto provide unfair
electoral advantage. The resulting political district is said to be a “gerrymander,”
or to be “gerrymandered.” The term originated in the United States in the early
1800s, and is formed partially from the surname of the governor of Massachusetts,
Elbridge Gerry. In 1812, Gerry presided over a session of the state legislature that
was charged with re-drawing the state’s congressional districts. In one specific in-
stance, the borders of the resulting district were so convoluted that a political car-
toonist for theBoston Weekly Messenger, a local newspaper, represented the
region as an animal. According to legend, he described it as a salamander, but
his boss remarked that it was more appropriately called a “gerrymander.” The
newspaper used the term in an editorial, and it soon entered the political vocabu-
lary of the United States. The United States employs a system of proportional rep-
resentation for seats in the House of Representatives, and individual states are
given the authority to redistrict after every census is conducted. The party in con-
trol of the legislature therefore has the ability to shape districts in a way that gives
candidates from its side an advantage. Gerrymandering is a technique that can cre-
ate “secure” seats for a party for the subsequent decade, thus greatly affecting the
political landscape at the national level, especially if the state in question has a
large population and therefore many seats in the House of Representatives. In
many cases, gerrymandered districts have been legally challenged, and a 1985
Supreme Court ruling held that such districts were unconstitutional and unfair.150 Gerrymandering