In 1955, forced to return to France by the principal of Lycée Bugeaud, Lacoste left the PCF in disagreement with its policy in Algeria.

[2] Lacoste had earlier earned international renown in 1972 during the Vietnam War by publishing a spatial forensics analysis of the US bombing campaign of the Red River Delta.

He agreed with claims from the North Vietnamese government that the US was deliberately targeting the hydrological infrastructure of the river in an attempt to trigger flooding and cause mass civilian casualties, which it called a war crime.

[3] Focussing on spatial dimensions of political affairs Lacoste defines geopolitics as the study of power rivalries over territory carried out on different levels of analysis: global, continental, national, regional or even local.

[6] In an earlier work, La Géographie du sous-développement, Lacoste had suggested a spatial explanation of underdevelopment.