Welcome

The purpose of this blog is to comment on world events from the perspective of strategic geography. Although my focus will be on things that are necessarily political, my desire is to be as non-political as possible. That being said, I subscribe to the school of thought that believes that, although one should try to strike a balanced tone, one can never fully drop one's biases. It is better to open about those biases than to try and hide them. So, in the interests of full dislosure: I am a registered independent voter who tends to vote Republican in national elections and for the more conservative of the viable candidates in state and local elections. I am not a religious person, although I am not an atheist, and I don't consider myself to be a "right-winger," but rather somewhere on the center-right side of the mainstream. I tend towards personal conservatism and "small l" libertarianism. I am not an ideological conservative: I know the names Kirk, Strauss and Oakeshott, but I have never read them. I voted for George Bush twice, not because of any great affinity for the man, but only because I thought he was a clearly better choice than his opponents. Before that, I voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 and for Ross Perot in 1992.

In addition to being the title of this blog, strategic geography is a specialized niche within the broad field of geography. As I gear up to begin regular posting on this blog, I'll use the first few posts to give a general description of the field of geography, then narrow it down to specialty of strategic geography, so everyone will have a background to refer as we move forward.