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Multidimensional Aspects of Geography ISBN: 978-93-93166-30-2 For verification of this chapter, please visit on http://www.socialresearchfoundation.com/books.php#8 |
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Military Geography: The Strategical Dimension of Geography |
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Etender Singh
Assistant Professor
Geography
Guru Nanak Khalsa College
Yamunanagar Haryana, India
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DOI: Chapter ID: 16134 |
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This is an open-access book section/chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. | ||||||||||||||||
Abstract Geography as a multi-dimensional
subject plays a crucial role in strategy making. These strategies could be in
the form of development planning, like – Urban planning, Transport planning and
Rural planning; as well as the strategies in the form of defense, like – War
strategies and Combat planning. Domains like Economic Geography, Physical
Geography or Bio-Geography are in public spaces and in general curriculum of
the educational institutions. On the other hand, the defense strategical
dimension usually gets out of focus from the public prospectus. This chapter is
trying to introduce the Military geography as a strategical dimension of
geography and try to give brief explanation of its nature and scope.
Keywords – Strategy,
Urban Planning, Transport Planning, Rural Planning, War Strategies, Combat
Planning, Bio-Geography, Military Geography. Introduction Military forces are the part of
national defense and nation building. Military practices are endless because of
never-ending reasons which usually happened throughout the time. In early ages
of expansion, militaries were used to expend the areas of states by the process
of invasion. It was the part of incursion, like invasion of Indian states by
the invaders from Central Asia and colonization of India by the Britishers. The
scenario of expending statehood always militarized the landscape of Indian
states. Especially, the western side of the India, as it was the gateway of
India for the invaders form the central Asia. These invasions made possible by
the help of geographical plannings and it militarized the socio-economic and
political life of India throughout the time. This is a brief overview about
military geography and what it focusses about. Military geography tries to
connect the relation of military issues with the description of the world Nature of Military
Geography The political dimension in geographical
space creates need of critical analysis of defense or war strategies and
further the need of military forces. The political predominance not only
emphasize the holding of power but create the urge of resource control. It is
the geographical space over which the political power exercises according to
the need Table 1, Physical
and Cultural Geographical Environment
Military geography tries to study the
strategical planning and response in different type of physical and cultural
environment. Its whole process can be separated into 3 basic parts – Physical and Cultural
Landscape in The Real-Life Scenario Physical and cultural landscape plays
an important role in the military operations. Every physical and cultural
feature act differently in strategical situations Military Strategies
According To The Real-Life Scenario Military strategies prepare according
to the real-life scenario. Real life scenario is the combination of physical
and cultural landscape and give a 360° view for the strategy formation. Real
life scenario provides the regional approach to the military strategies for
either attack or defense according to the prior situation. Military geography
helps to provide a convenient framework for area analysis as well as strategy
making. COCOA is one of the frameworks, which uses by different forces to
tackle the on-ground situation. COCOA stands for – C – Critical
Terrain O – Obstacles C – Cover
and Concealment O – Observation
and Field of Fire A – Avenues
of Approaches (Collins , 1998) It also abbreviated as OCOKA, where the first letter of COCOA replaced by letter K, i.e., Key Terrain. Attack and defense response system Search, Rescue and Peacekeeping Military geography generally gets stereotyped by public as a domain related to conflict studies but it has other side as well, which is Search and rescue during disasters. Defence forces play crucial role during disasters. Most of the forces use to trained for the search and rescue in disastrous situations. NDRF (National Disaster Rescue Force) is one of the important forces in India which trained especially for the search and rescue operations. Peacekeeping is also an important part of the military operations. It use to be done in the fragile situations. UN Peacekeeping forces plays an important role in handling the fragile situations in the world, especially in politically unstable African countries. Geographical factors
become fully significant during any type of conflict or war like situations.
Usually, the strategies prepare on the bases of different frameworks and molded
according to the response system in any situation on the bases of observation
of field approaches. So,
military geography as a domain focuses on the landscape of conflicts and
strategical impairment to deal with it. Scope of
Military geography The scope of
military geography is based on the applications and the temporal perspective.
So, military geography constitutes of Two perspectives (Palka
E. J., 2004) – Applied – It basically focuses on the
real-life situations which need military operations during current time. Historical – It provides the historical
perspective of brittle state of affairs and military operations in the past. These
perspectives get studies with the help of three approaches (Palka
E. J., 2004) – Topical
approach – This approach
helps to look after the phenomenon by its separation according to the purpose
in military operations. Regional approach – Regional
approach emphasize the study of phenomenon with relation to the local
influencers/ factors. It goes with the particular to general understanding in
military geography. Dependance of
Military geography on Physical and Human Geography Military
geography is not an independent domain as itself. It needs physical and human
geography for its subject matter and topical analysis. Physical and human
geography provide the systematic and regional perspective to the military
geography. For example – 1. The
physical geography provides the view of location, size and shape of the spacial
entity, which further leads to formulate the regional strategy
formulation. 2. Military
geography takes help of the human geography to look into the world as well as
regional natural resource allocation. 3. Human
geography also informs the spacio-demographic perspectives to the military
geography in the form of human resource management and life load. 4. These
domains also help to analyze the socio-cultural overview of the target
population in the military geography. 5. Geopolitical
regime is the inseparable part of military geography, which help to provide the
political analysis for military operations. So, the
military geography is primarily depending upon the physical and human geography
for the applied and historical perspective and analysis. Conclusion Military geography is an important
domain of geography which revolves around physical and human outlooks. It is
not a popular subject in public sphere but provide the 360° view to the
strategic operations. It also helps to analyze the military operations in
different type of environments. Military geography came into highlight as a
separate subject after late 20th century
and developed properly afterward. It is mostly geo-political in nature and
impacted by the several physical and human factors like location, size,
vegetation, demography, ethnicity, resource allocation, political ideology etc.
It not only provides the military overview during the situation of conflicts
but also in situations other then war. It can be studied with the general as
well as regional perspective and helps to enlighten the need of military
strategic analysis. References 1.
Collins , J. M. (1998). Military
Grography for Professionals and Public. National Defense University
Press, Washington DC. 2.
Hamik, S., & Ashot, G. (2020). Military Geography in the Context of
Geographic Determinism. (H. H. Hasmik, Ed.) Wisdom,
3(16), 136-141. Retrieved from
https://www.wisdomperiodical.com/index.php/wisdom/article/view/384/386 3.
Palka, E. J. (2004). Military Geography.
In: Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century. (G. L.
Gaile, & C. J. Willmott, Eds.) Oxford University Press. 4.
Palka, E. J., & Galgano, F. A. (2000). The
Scope of Military Geography: Across the Spectrum from Peacetime to War. U.S.A.
: McGraw-HillPrimis Custom Publications . 5.
Rech, M., Bos, D., Jenkings, K. N., Williams, A., & Woodward, R. (2015).
Geography, Military Geography, and Critical Military Studies. Critical Military Studies, 1(1), 47-60. 6.
Sloan, G., & Gray, C. S. (1999). Why
Geopolitics?, In: Geography, Geopolitics and Strategy. (G. Sloany,
& G. S. Colin, Eds.) New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
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