Yves Lacoste (born 7 September 1929) is a French

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

and geopolitician. He was born in Fes,

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to A ...

Life

In 1976 he established the French geopolitical journal ''

Hérodote ''Hérodote'' is a French language peer-reviewed academic journal covering geography and geopolitics. It was established in 1976 by Yves Lacoste. "Hérodote" is the French version of the name of the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus Herodo ...

'' and published a work that shook the French academy, ''La Géographie ça sert d'abord à faire la guerre''. Its central thesis was that "geography was a form of strategic and political knowledge, central to the military strategy and the exercise of political power". Lacoste had earlier earned international renown in 1972 during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

by publishing a spatial forensics analysis of the US bombing campaign of the

Red River Delta The Red River Delta or Hong River Delta ( vi, Châu thổ sông Hồng) is the flat low-lying plain formed by the Red River and its distributaries merging with the Thái Bình River in northern Vietnam. ''Hồng'' (紅) is a Sino-Vietnamese word ...

. He agreed with claims from the North Vietnamese government that the US was deliberately targeting the hydrological infrastructure of the river in an attempt to trigger flooding and cause mass civilian casualties, which it called a war crime. He is currently co-editor of ''Hérodote'' with ''Beatrice Giblin'' and the head of the French Institute of Geopolitics ( Institut Français de Géopolitique) at the University of Paris VIII.

Understanding of geopolitics

Lacoste played a key role in reviving the word ''

geopolitics Geopolitics (from Greek γῆ ''gê'' "earth, land" and πολιτική ''politikḗ'' "politics") is the study of the effects of Earth's geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to ...

'' in the French and English languages. The word had been tarnished by its association with the Nazi régime because of German geopolitician

Karl Haushofer Karl Ernst Haushofer (27 August 1869 – 10 March 1946) was a German general, professor, geographer, and politician. Through his student Rudolf Hess, Haushofer's conception of Geopolitik influenced the development of Adolf Hitler's expansi ...

. Focussing on spatial dimensions of political affairs Lacoste defines geopolitics as the study of power rivalries over territory carried out on different levels of analysis: global, continental, national, regional or even local.Yves Lacoste on geopolitics
Retrieved 2021-10-19. In an earlier work, ''La Géographie du sous-développement'', Lacoste had suggested a spatial explanation of underdevelopment.

Writings

*''Les Pays sous-développés'' (1959) *''Géographie du sous-développement'' (1965) *''

Ibn Khaldoun Ibn Khaldun (; ar, أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي, ; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732-808 AH) was an Arab The Historical Muhammad', Irving M. Zeitlin, (Polity Press, 2007), p. 21; "It is, of ...

- Naissance de l'histoire du Tiers-Monde'' (1965) *''La Géographie ça sert d'abord à faire la guerre'' (1976) *''Contre les anti-tiersmondistes et contre certains tiersmondistes'' (1985) *''Géopolitique des régions françaises'' (1986) **''vol 1: La France septentrionale'' **''vol 2: La Façade atlantique'' **''vol 3: La France du sud-est'' *''Dictionnaire de Géopolitique'' (1993) *''Dictionnaire géopolitique des États'' (1994) *''La Légende de la terre'' (1996) *''Vive la Nation - Destin d'une idée géopolitique'' (1998) *''L'Eau des hommes'' (2002) *''De la Géopolitique aux Paysages. Dictionnaire de la Géographie'' (2003) *''Maghreb, peuple et civilisation'' (2004) *''Géopolitique. La longue histoire d'aujourd'hui'' (2006) *''L'Eau dans le monde : les batailles pour la vie'' (2006) *''Géopolitique de la Méditerranée'' (2006)

References

French geographers Geopoliticians People from Fez, Morocco 1929 births Living people Recipients of the Vautrin Lud International Geography Prize People of the Algerian War Winners of the Prix Broquette-Gonin (literature) {{Geographer-stub