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Copyright of Geopolitica(s): Revista de Estudios Sobre Espacio y Poder is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Geopolitica(s): Revista de Estudios Sobre Espacio y Poder is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The origins of the importance of territory to war are traced, followed by the Foucaltian revision of Clausewitz to suggest how politics is the continuation of war by other means. It is shown how the new postmodern 'virtuous wars', fought outside Western Europe and North America, reconfigure the Western politics, territory and sovereignty, particularly in United States.

The geography of peace has been the leitmotiv of political geography from its inception. Ratzel and Mackinder saw peace as the suppression of all possibilities of conflict, even if it meant that some states had to exercise their power over others. During the Cold War, the so-called "geopacifics" of Griffith Taylor, was an example of a geography of peace that tried to counteract the German Geopolitik; however, t also relied on the same logic of war and imperialist domination. Instead, the work of William Bunge can be classified as pacifist geography, because he tried to alert humankind of the dangers of war. In fact, Bunge considered geography as "the Queen of the sciences of peace", because of its potential to show the risks of "specicide" born out the threat of nuclear war. From Kropotkin and Reclus, pacifist geographers have resisted the association of the discipline with imperialism and war. Examining the geographies of peace and the pacifist geographies through the lens of the philosophy of liberation of Enrique Dussel throws light on these concepts and ideas, showing that geographies of peace and pacifist geographies are not only theoretically different, but also carry distinct ethical and political implications. Thinking about these differences is vital now that wars have become permanent conflicts that undermine nation-states, causing death and exile among civilian populations under the ever-lasting threat of a nuclear war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]