Abstract

The article offers an epistemological critique of Italian geopolitical discourse, specifically regarding the representation of one of its main elements, grand strategy. It draws on critical geopolitics to address the paradox of a discourse that proclaims itself to be realistic and pragmatic, and yet captures state behavior within impressionistic and often illusory portraits. The study shows that geopolitical public writing makes reductionist depictions of strategy as a process over-driven by a geographical, cultural, or historical factor, or by one strategic imperative (what I call “strategic determinismµ). These representations empty the concept of strategy of its cognitive and pedagogical raison d’être and are divorced from its codification in military science and historiographical depictions