After Geopolitics? From the Geopolitical Social to Geoeconomics

Abstract:  This paper makes two central arguments. First, the popular language of geopolitics needs to be understood as historically emerging from and helping create a "geopolitical social", which both crosses and crafts traditional borders of internal and external to the national state. Second, we suggest that geoeconomic social forms are gradually supplanting this geopolitical social. After establishing the geopolitical social associated with traditional geopolitics, from Ratzel to Bismarck, we examine the erosion of geopolitical calculation and the rise of the geoeconomic. We trace emerging geoeconomic social forms in three domains: the reframing of territorial security to accommodate supranational flows; the recasting of social forms of security through the market; and the reframing of the state as geoeconomic agent. Neither an exercise in "critical geopolitics" nor an endorsement of Luttwakian style geoeconomics, this paper assumes no straightforward historical succession from geopolitical to geoeconomic logics, but argues that geoeconomics is nonetheless crucial to the spatial reconfiguration of contemporary political geography.     

The Emergence of Ethno-Geopolitics in Post-Soviet Russia

A prominent UK-based political and historical geographer analyzes ethnogeopolitics, a new trend in Russian political discourse that is distinguished by the primary role it assigns to ethnicity (rather than the nation-state) as a geopolitical factor—i.e., recognizing formal (often poly-ethnic) ethno-national groupings on their respective ethnic spaces as important "geopolitical subjects" in their own right with a certain autonomy in world politics. After defining and otherwise setting out the differences between ethno-geopolitics and the more mainstream school of Russian geopolitics emerging after the disintegration of the USSR, the author proceeds to assess the extent to which ethno-geopolitics is shaping current Russian geopolitical thought in two critically important arenas: (1) Russia's relations with other great powers at the global level and (2) the dynamics of ethnicity (and inter-ethnic relations) within its own boundaries as well as in neighboring states. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: Y900, Z190. 71 references.     

美国对华地缘战略与中国和平发展

美国对华地缘战略具有遏制加利用的两面性。在传统层面,美国主要把中国看作战略对手,进行地缘政治围堵,对中国发展构成显著的制约性。但是,从现实利益出发,美国又利用中国,在反恐、防扩散等方面谋求与中国的地缘战略合作,为中国和平发展提供契机。     

Imperialism and nationalism: The Home Rule struggle and border creation in Ireland, 1885–1925

This article explores relationships between imperialism and nationalism, illustrated by their interactions in the struggle over devolved Irish ‘Home Rule’ and partition between 1885 and 1925. Ireland's partition border was primarily an imperial creation shaped by the prolonged, complex and unequal interactions between Irish nationalism and British imperialism. But partition was by no means an inevitable outcome of a mutually constitutive and ambiguous relationship where British imperialism had long characterised Ireland as a frontier zone but one within the core of empire. The Irish case serves as a reminder of the role of imperial arbitration in modern state and nation-building, and also in sowing the seeds of contemporary conflicts. This argument draws on the recent ‘re-discovery of imperialism’ and is advanced as a corrective to reading history backwards through the lenses of contemporary national states. It challenges the tendency to draw overly sharp temporal and spatial distinctions between imperialism and nationalism as rival ideologies and practices.     

Where the violence happened matters. Geopolitical framing and assessments of collective responsibility for historical violence.

Mass violence always takes place in a particular geopolitical context, and how that context is understood influences perceptions of collective responsibility. As international borders shift, often in the wake of war, events that occurred within one geopolitical entity can be understood has having taken place in another. The influence of such geopolitical framing on judgments of collective responsibility remains understudied. Two studies examine how geopolitical frames lead to shifting assessments of collective responsibility for historical mass violence. By depicting historical violence within a particular geopolitical entity (e.g., a country), that entity was perceived as being more responsible for the violence. The studies are set within the contexts of German-occupied Poland and the British occupation of the Indian subcontinent. The ramifications of these findings are discussed for the teaching of history, the commemoration of historical victimhood, and for our understanding of assessments of collective responsibility and geopolitical framing more broadly.     

Green,red, yellow and purple: gendering the Kurdish Question in south-east Turkey

This article discusses the role of women in the contemporary ethno-territorial struggle of Kurdish Question in Turkey. I argue that gendered development has become the primary terrain where Turkish and pro-Kurdish political groups articulate their nationalist interests. The Kürt Sorunu (Kurdish Question) – the enduring debate over the political status and rights of Turkey's Kurdish population – is Turkey's largest geopolitical challenge to date. In the last decade, Turkish government policy towards the predominantly Kurdish south-east region has shifted from military intervention to gendered and socio-economic development. Simultaneously, the popularity and growth of a formal pro-Kurdish political movement has given the campaign for Kurdish rights an institutionalized voice and stronger role in regional affairs. The primary work of both the Turkish national government and local pro-Kurdish municipality of late has focused on women. Drawing on historical analysis and participant observation of development activities, I describe the symbolic and physical role women play in the contemporary Kurdish Question. Geographically, this pointed focus on women marks a territorialization of political power upon gendered spaces of the home and neighbourhood. I describe this process of territorialization through an examination of education curriculum, neighbourhood mapping and nationalist landscapes.     

The last outpost of Empire: Rockall and the Cold War

This paper is about what can be seen at sea. It considers the historical geography of a site at the geopolitical axis of the British Empire and the Cold War. It focuses on a hitherto unacknowledged historical reference point: the last territorial expansion of the UK, which laid claim to the tiny islet of Rockall, lying some 300 miles west of the Scottish mainland. Rockall was annexed in September 1955 because it was situated within radio-electrical range of a test site for Britain's first nuclear missile, the American-made ‘Corporal’. As a ‘tactical’ nuclear missile designed for potential deployment in Eastern Europe, the Corporal was a central part of NATO defence policy in the 1950s. Crucial to its development was a testing station in the Outer Hebrides, from which the guided missile could be fired and its ballistic trajectory tracked over the North Atlantic. Occupying an area only 83 feet across and 100 feet wide, Rockall represented a strategic vantage point for the rival gaze of Soviet intelligence. Following Paul Virilio's argument that the logic of war is less about scoring territorial or material victories than about securing ‘the “immateriality” of perceptual fields’, this paper details the ceremonial annexation of Rockall and the subsequent transformation of the Hebridean seascape into a vast topography for military surveillance. This final expansive moment of British imperialism was legitimated by symbolic and rhetorical strategies tying Rockall to both earlier geographical exploration and the science of natural history.     

Turkey's Emergence as a Geopolitical Power Broker

In a framing essay commenting on a symposium devoted to Turkey's role in a dynamic geopolitical world system, a prominent American political geographer presents the case for Turkey's evolution from regional power within that system to a key geopolitical balancing agent, reflecting its pivotal location within Eurasia. After first exploring the implications of the collapse of the USSR for U.S.-Turkey relations, he critically assesses the ruling Turkish political party's (AKP) recent foreign policy formulation of Turkey as a leader/role model of its own "civilizational basin" (Middle Eastern and Central Eurasian countries). Citing a range of linguistic, cultural, ethnic, and religious differences between Turkey and the Arab lands, he argues that Turkey's true civilizational basin is limited to Central Asia, where Russia holds geopolitical primacy, and advocates a broader framing of Turkey's geopolitical orientation as reflecting location, economics, oil, water, and natural interests. Such a conceptualization suggests that Turkey's pivotal role as balancing power may not be broadly defined as a bridge between Europe and Eurasia, but rather as a bridge between the EU and Russia. Also, the country's status as a role model may be more applicable for regional powers sandwiched between great powers than for emerging Islamic democracies per se.     

Social conflict and the global Cold War

This article offers a critical assessment of Fred Halliday's theorization of the Cold War and, in particular, his attempt to offer a more global perspective on it through a greater focus on the role of developments emanating from the Third World as constitutive of the Cold War. The author argues that although Halliday's theorization of the Cold War as ‘inter‐systemic conflict’ is a major advance in our understanding of the Cold War—through the attention it pays to the causal linkages between capitalist development and imperialism, revolutionary transformations and superpower geopolitical confrontations—it fails, ultimately, to fulfil its potential as a theory of global Cold War. Halliday's temporalization of the Cold War and his insistence on the autonomy of the superpower arms race and strategic competition end up detaching developments in the Third World from the axis of superpower conflict and, consequently, suggests a residual Eurocentrism within his theory. The article begins by contextualizing the wider theorization of the Cold War and the (absence) place of the Third World in it. It then proceeds to assess critically Halliday's conceptualization of the Third World in the Cold War. The final section outlines an alternative theoretical framework for a theory of global Cold War that builds on elements of inter‐systemic conflict focused on how geopolitical confrontations involving the superpowers derived from the revolutionary consequences of uneven capitalist development.     

A Theo-Politics of the (Im)proper: Jacques Derrida vis-à-vis Graham Ward

Abstract

The contemporary situation of the "war on terrorism" provides a particularly challenging environment in which to seek to interpret and apply Jesus' commandment to love our enemies. This commandment received major emphasis during the first few centuries of the church, but subsequent interpretation of it has become increasingly complex. Nevertheless, I argue for the broad applicability of the commandment and show that it provides a check against the polarizing and dehumanizing tendencies which accompany modern warfare, because an understanding of the love of enemies reveals that the real enemy is enmity itself. Finally, the article examines a group of sermons preached in the immediate aftermath of September 11 and concludes that while the majority neglect to speak of love for enemies, those preachers that do are able to bring it to bear in relevant and powerful ways.     

New Perspectives on the "Dao" of "Huidaomen": Redemptive Societies and Religion in Modern and Contemporary China

This essay uses research in Chinese religion,and specifically Chinese "redemptive societies," to challenge and enrich the received history of "sects and secret societies" in modern and contemporary Chinese history,and suggests that a future "history of cultivation movements" might be a helpful means to steer between competing narratives of state-building and personal religious experience.The discussion is illustrated with a brief biography of Li Yujie (1901-94),founder of the redemptive society Tiandijiao who devoted his life to cultivation and religion,but also to independent journalism and the Guomindang.     

A GREEK METROLOGICAL KOINE: A LEAD WEIGHT FROM THE WESTERN BLACK SEA REGION IN THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD

Summary. A unique commercial lead weight from the western Black Sea region is examined in its metrological and historical context. The style and combination of relief symbols on the object (Athenian owl and Kyzikene tunny) suggest a quarter mina in a market weight system used equivalently at Athens and Kyzikos by the last quarter of the fifth century BC, and developed within a long-term process of broad commercial integration of the Aegean and Black Seas in Classical times. The authors consider such a process to have been caused by the economic motivations of individual city-states, not the direct Athenian imperialism expressed in the so-called Standards Decree.     

Who identifies with the “Russian World”? Geopolitical attitudes in southeastern Ukraine,Crimea, Abkhazia,South Ossetia,and Transnistria

Abstract

The concept of the Russian world (Russkii mir) re-entered geopolitical discourse after the end of the Soviet Union. Though it has long historical roots, the practical definition and geopolitical framing of the term has been debated and refined in Russian political and cultural circles during the years of the Putin presidency. Having both linguistic-cultural and geopolitical meanings, the concept of the Russian world remains controversial, and outside Russia it is often associated with Russian foreign policy actions. Examination of official texts from Vladimir Putin and articles from three Russian newspapers indicate complicated and multifaceted views of the significance and usage of the Russkii mir concept. Surveys in December 2014 in five sites on the fringes of Russia – in southeastern Ukraine, Crimea, and three Russian-supported de facto states (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria) – show significant differences between the Ukrainian sample points and the other locations about whether respondents believe that they live in the Russian world. In Ukraine, nationality (Russian vs. Ukrainian) is aligned with the answers, while overall, attitudes toward Russian foreign policy, level of trust in the Russian president, trust of Vladimir Putin, and liking Russians are positively related to beliefs about living in the Russian world. In Ukraine, the negative reactions to geopolitical speech acts and suspicions about Russian government actions overlap with and confuse historical linguistic-cultural linkages with Russia, but in the other settings, close security and economic ties reinforce a sense of being in the Russian “world.”     

Unlock the Volume: Towards a Politics of Capacity

In recent years “volume” has become a key analytic idea, and tool, for re‐imagining and making sense of historical and contemporary socio‐cultural and geopolitical phenomena. This paper argues that this important work could be pushed in new directions by thinking seriously of how volume might otherwise be interpreted spatially, as capacity. Accordingly, in this paper, we address what we call a “politics of capacity”. To do so, we draw specifically on debates in carceral geography and, in particular, the pressures on the prison system to illustrate our argument. Drawing on notions of “operational capacities” and “capacity building” in the prison setting, we outline a manifesto for volumetric thinking that moves beyond expressions of power that cut through height, depth and angles, to an understanding of how power is conveyed through maximum and minimum capacities; density and mass; and capacity‐building techniques.     

A revolution in military geopolitics?

This paper looks into the recent discussions within the US military community of a coming or current ‘revolution in military affairs’ (RMA) which is said to imply fundamental changes in military geopolitical imaginations and practices (military geopolitics). In a first step, an account of the rhetorical and the conceptual part of the discourse of the RMA is conducted. In a second step, the proclaimed RMA is situated within a wider cumulative technological and organizational development in warfare after the Second World War. In a third step, special attention is given to geopolitical incongruities or contradictions apparent within the discourse of the RMA, and between the rhetorical part of the RMA and more conventional geopolitical practices and imaginations. In a conclusion, the promise of an actor–network approach in further investigations of contemporary techno-geopolitical discourses and practices is spoken for.     

The Geopolitics of Terrorism: A Commentary on Flint and Radil's Approach

An American political geographer and prominent specialist in electoral geography presents a measured and informative critique of the preceding paper by Colin Flint and Steven M. Radil (2009) on "Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Situating al-Qaeda and the Global War on Terror within Geopolitical Trends and Structures." Among the issues explored are the extent to which the observed patterns of terrorism might differ depending on whether "international" or "domestic" incidents are the focus of attention, and whether fatalities associated with incidents might prove a better metric of terrorism's psychological impact than per capita incident frequency alone. A deeper issue debated in the critique involves the thorny question of whether a singular focus on relative economic deprivation (and on its variations between countries rather than also within countries) offers an adequate explanation for the incidence of terrorism given the complexity of cultural (including ethnicity and religion), social, economic, and political factors that motivate terrorist acts in diverse settings across the world. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: I390, O100, Y900. 32 references.     

The production of diaspora: Algerian emigration from colonialism to neo-colonialism (1840-1970)

The extensive literature on migration within a Marxist framework tends to focus on the difficulties migrants face in labor markets of "receiving countries." This paper adopts a different approach, arguing that more attention should be paid to the historical production of diaspora, rather than the continued analysis of the problems of "integration." It suggests that articulation of modes of production theory set within the transition from colonialism to neo-colonialism offers an appropriate means to reverse this analytical lens; further, that to understand contemporary "post-colonial" concerns such as hybridity or migrancy, we need an economic approach which is itself hybrid. An historical narrative exploring the processes of emigration and immigration between Algeria and France shows the emergence of an industrial, and more particularly an automobile diaspora.     

A climate terrorism assemblage? Exploring the politics of climate change-terrorism-radicalisation relations

Despite a series of claims from Bernie Sanders (2015), Barack Obama (2015), and others arguing that climate change, radicalisation, and terrorism are connected by complex causal relationships, there is very little academic examination of the politics of these claims. Building on DeLanda’s (2006) account of assemblages and social complexity, this paper conceptualises climate change-terrorism-radicalisation relationships as a ‘climate terrorism assemblage’. A ‘climate terrorism assemblage’ is a complex, emergent ‘whole’ formed from a heterogeneous range of interacting geopolitical components (e.g. climatic factors, migration, think tanks and academic publications, and a discourse of ‘climate security’). Specifically, a climate terrorism assemblage is characterised by ‘strategic territorialisations’: context-specific, multi-scalar points at which political claims of causal links between climate change, terrorism, and radicalisation are crystallised. Strategic territorialisations are produced in two, interrelated contexts. First, using the case study of the Syrian Conflict, a climate terrorism assemblage reveals an intricate, contested politics of ‘drawing lines’ which link climate change, terrorism, and radicalisation. Secondly, the paper argues that, at the points at which causal links are constructed between climate change, terrorism and radicalisation, a climate terrorism assemblage territorialises around intersectional subject formations, in particular a young masculine subject vulnerable to potential radicalisation and terrorism. Overall, the paper concludes that a climate terrorism assemblage provides a productive analytic frame to investigate the contested power relations of climate change-radicalisation-terrorism connections.     

关于日俄战争历史地位的再认知

1904-1905年的日俄战争是当代东北亚地区国际格局形成的一个起点。从政治思想史的若干范畴来探讨日俄战争在国际关系史上的历史地位,诸如帝国和帝国主义、东方和西方、民族主义和宪政革命、亚洲区域主义、战争中的超国家和非国家行为体等等,有助于对这一问题的理解,并取得对于当代国际关系发展和中国对东北亚地区的战略和政策的若干启示。