Balance Of Power Under Empire Ambition

Mahan is a famous navy theorist and historian of America .He is known to the world for his invention of the phrase "sea power". However, once we have widely read his writings, we will find out that Mahan has done excellent and creative work in the field of geopolitics. He is one of the founders of modern geopolitics.Mahan's geopolitics ideology, in this text, is concluded to be "Balance of power under Empire concept". Because Mahan tried his best to persuade American leaders to realize American geography advantages and to develop it into a global empire with help of this kind of advantages. However, due to the international situation of that times and limits of its power, America has to recur to balance of power globally to turn its American dream out. Therefore his emphasis on "Sea power" is not just about this concept itself. The idea that sea power excelled land power is just his analytical result on global geography condition. Both sea power and balance of power are only the temporal means to assist America to be a great empire.In the process of studying, the thesis firstly introduces "geopolitics", which is one of the means studying international relations, and its origin, developing history, representatives, its nature and characteristics. This part is the base of the following content. Then, the thesis tells something about Mahan's life, his writings, and the conditions where his ideology formed.In the main part of the thesis, the author presents the studying aim, the starting point and the focal point of Mahan's geopolitics ideology; the following are his analyses on America, Europe, Asia, Russia and buffer areas between Europe and Asia. This part ends with a brief summary. Next part concludes Mahan's geopolitical legacy and his historical status in the field of geopolitics. At last, the thesis goes back to the characteristics of geopolitics and points out the limits of ideologies of these masters. Two different developing directions of geopolitics and their future are also be concluded.