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Module - III Geo-Strategy

Security and Geo-Strategy
Geography: description of earth in terms of physical features, population
distribution, land use and resource availability
Strategy: Calculated plan of action to achieve goals of the state.

This means that geographical factors are essential determinants of strategy. In this
section you will learn how the combination of both geography and strategy has played
Note
a role in the development of defence strategies for India.
To understand, answering the question, what geographical factors are responsible in
determining strategy is important. But before doing so it is important that you should
know that there are many sub-fields of geography such as human geography, which
deals with people and their community, economic geography dealing with location and
distribution of economic activities and others. However, what we are concerned here
is the strategic aspect of geography which is called geo-strategy.

This sub-field of geography deals with controlling and accessing geographical areas or
territories that affect security and well-being of a state. There are several geographical
factors that impact strategy such as Land, Demography and Natural Resources. Let
us discuss some of them below.

7.1.1 Land
Land is defined in terms of physical geography or physiography. Possession of vast
land or territory determines the power of a country. Every country has different land
size, which are not uniformly distributed. Each country may have various land features
such as hills, mountains, plains, deserts, rivers and forests. As far as India is concerned
its physiography is divided into at least four aspects as follows:

a) Mountains in the North particularly the Great Himalayan range and other lesser
mountains such as Aravalli mountains in Rajasthan, the Vindhya mountains,
Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats, the Nilgiris or Blue mountains and others.

b) Plains in the Northern India often called Indo-Gangetic plains.
c) The Plateau region of the South spreading from the Indo-Gangetic plain and
covered by the Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats on both sides. The Deccan
plateau is the largest plateau in the whole country; and finally,

d) The islands of India - the total coastline of India comprises of 7516 km. The
coast of Gujarat in the Western part of India is the longest and the second
longest is the coast line of Andhra Pradesh in the East. The Indian territorial
limits include more than 200 islands including that of Andaman and Nicobar
islands in the East of India and Lakshwadeep islands to the West of the country.

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