His response to my comment was more cogent and reasoned than his initial introductory essay! I chose not to tell him this in the blog so as not to embarrass him publicly, but please feel free to pass it on to him.

I am a (retired) professional geographer myself, although my career emphasis was more in the remote sensing/cartography/earth resource management and geomatics disciplines. Although geopolitics was not my specialty, I do have an intense interest in the field, as you have no doubt noticed in my posts here.

It is unfortunate that academic geography has tended to de-emphasize geopolitical thought; perhaps because it has been so often used to justify crime and coercion on an international scale. But the fact remains, the field must be advanced, if for no other reason, the bad guys are always keen students of it. Even when they misapply and pervert its insights, they still substantially rely on them.

My hero was Reclus, not Mahan or Mackinder.