Regionalism, Iran and Central Asia

A combination of revolutionary ideology, trouble with neighbours and location in the Middle East, where regionalism is moribund, make the Islamic Republic of Iran an unlikely enthusiast for regional coalition-building. The impetus towards regionalism derives first and foremost from geopolitical considerations–the need to counter the US government's efforts to isolate Iran–but also from domestic dynamics; the regionalist discourse has lent an acceptable ideological colouring to an increasingly pragmatic foreign policy.
Iran's neighbours, however, share neither its geopolitical predicament nor its ideological complexion, and the actual implementation of Tehran's regionalist agenda has been based on functional cooperation, rather than on geopolitics and ideology. Trade promotion and the development of transport infrastructure to link Central Asia and the Caspian to Turkey and the Persian Gulf have been the most appealing areas for northern neighbours, and dominate the agenda of the Economic Cooperation Organization, Iran's main vehicle for multilateral cooperaton with Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Tehran's 1992 proposal for a Caspian Sea Cooperation Organization has so far been stymied by the littoral states' well-publicized disagreements over the sea's legal status, though their numerous multilateral meetings and handful of agreements suggest that the idea has potential in the medium–term.
Notwithstanding the meagre tangible results to date, Iran's tilt towards regionalism has had a positive impact. It has helped to rehabilitate the Islamic Republic in the eyes of its neighbours, contributed to the evolution of policy debate at home and prepared the ground for future multilateral cooperation.     

‘One Belt,One Road’ and China’s emerging Afghanistan dilemma

This article argues that China’s approach to Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War has been shaped by the desire both for security in Xinjiang and for geopolitical advantage in Central Asia. While Beijing’s Xinjiang calculus was ascendant from 1991 to 2001, since 2001 a broader geopolitical calculus has emerged. This latter factor has been encapsulated in President Xi Jinping’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy, which, at its core, is an outgrowth of Beijing’s decades-long agenda to integrate Xinjiang and utilise this region’s unique geopolitical position to facilitate a China-centric Eurasian geo-economic system. While China’s Xinjiang calculus determines that it shares an interest with the USA in combating radical Islamism in Afghanistan (and Central Asia more broadly), the geopolitical calculus of the ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy points to a fundamental incompatibility between US and Chinese interests.     

Slum Wars of the 21st Century: Gangs,Mano Dura and the New Urban Geography of Conflict in Central America

The political economy of violence in Central America is widely perceived as having undergone a critical shift during the past two decades, often pithily summarized as a movement from ‘political’ to ‘social’ violence. Although such an analysis is plausible, it also offers a depoliticized vision of the contemporary Central American panorama of violence. Basing itself principally on the example of Nicaragua, the country in the region that is historically perhaps most paradigmatically associated with violence, this article offers an alternative interpretation of the changes that the regional landscape of violence has undergone. It suggests that these are better understood as a movement from ‘peasant wars of the twentieth century’ ( Wolf, 1969 ) to ‘urban wars of the twenty‐first century’ ( Beall, 2006 ), thereby highlighting how present‐day urban violence can in many ways be seen as representing a structural continuation of past political conflicts, albeit in new spatial contexts. At the same time, however, there are certain key differences between past and present violence, as a result of which contemporary conflict has intensified. This is most visible in relation to the changing forms of urban spatial organization in Central American cities, the heavy‐handed mano dura response to gangs by governments, and the dystopian evolutionary trajectory of gangs. Taken together, these processes point to a critical shift in the balance of power between rich and poor in the region, as the new ‘urban wars of the twenty‐first century’ are increasingly giving way to more circumscribed ‘slum wars’ that effectively signal the defeat of the poor.     

Strategic Reassertion in Russia's Central Asia Policy

President Putin has presided over a proactive, hard-headed and relatively effective Russian policy in Central Asia and the Caspian region since at least the summer of 2002, which aims both to support Russia's revival as an economic and military power and to help tackle at source new security challenges from the volatile south. In line with rising domestic nationalist thinking and the growing influence of officials with a security service or military background, Moscow has been searching for a rationale to support a more assertive policy in the region. Meanwhile, Russian and American views on the scope and conduct of the war on terrorism have diverged in important respects. Russia lacks an overall regional strategy for Central Asia, but is seeking to mesh together geopolitical, security and energy policy goals. It is seeking to reinvigorate its military–security influence in Central Asia under the banner of counterterrorism and at the same time has achieved long-term agreements for energy transit and purchases that make Central Asian states increasingly dependent on Russia in energy policy. Overall, a dynamic of competition is displacing the potential for cooperation between Russia and western states, especially the United States, in Central Asia. The prospects for a fully-fledged strategic partnership in the region are fading but the reality of security threats from Afghanistan and within Central Asia might eventually reconcile Moscow to a lower profile but long-term western strategic presence in the region.     

Negotiating and queering US hegemony in TV drama: popular geopolitics and cultural studies

This article argues that popular geopolitics should pay closer attention to entertainment television and to the negotiations, complexities, and contradictions associated with contemporary televisual texts. This move requires a closer engagement with media and cultural studies than that initiated to date. In the second half of the article, we discuss the ABC TV drama Commander in Chief, which follows the first female president of the USA, and is set in a post-9/11 world wherein the struggle for US geopolitical domination has become a much more complex endeavor. We end by wondering whether entertainment television might provide us with imaginative resources for queering US hegemony.     

The United States and Regionalism in Central Asia

This article examines the record of American policy towards regional cooperation in Central Asia. It begins with the determinants of regionalism and the role of external states therein. It then considers the nature of American interests in Central Asia. This is followed by a historical account of the three stages of American policy towards the region. The article argues that regional cooperation has not been a significant aspect of US policy. Instead US policy-makers have preferred bilateral relations or multilateral structures (e.g. the Partnership for Peace, the GUUAM [Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova] group) which draw the region's states beyond its boundaries. US policy tends to reduce incentives for regional actors to develop multilateral cooperation. It may also encourage competitive regionalist agendas on the part of other interested major powers (Russia and China).     

‘Lost in Thailand’: the popular geopolitics of film-induced tourism in northern Thailand

The recent blockbuster hit ‘Lost in Thailand’ had more than USD $200 million in ticket sales in China in 2012, and quickly became the nation’s highest-grossing homegrown film ever. Set in northern Thailand, the film has since contributed to the prodigious growth of Chinese tourism in the region. Among other experiences, film-induced tourism in northern Thailand includes the re-enactment of scenes from the film on university campuses, in temples and around the city of Chiang Mai. These intertextual performances have made headlines in national and international media for how they reflect various articulations of cultural dissonance. This paper draws on structured interviews among Thai residents and Chinese tourists, as well as a discourse analysis of English- and Thai-language media reports to argue that popular responses to the impact of film-induced tourism in the region are strongly embedded in historical and contemporary Sino-Thai political-economic relations and corollary geopolitical imaginaries of place. These imaginaries are frequently reconstituted through the ambivalent economies of tourism encounters. This paper contributes to emerging research on how geopolitical assemblages are co-constituted by a range of popular discourses, tourism practices, media engagements, and political-economic relations and how they inform popular geopolitical experience of and in place.     

Central Asian and Russian perspectives on China's strategic emergence

This article employs fieldwork research and literature analysis to examine contemporary perceptions of China's emergence in popular and elite opinion in Russia and the Central Asian states, particularly Kazakhstan. It initially establishes a framework for understanding China's emergence, emphasizing a trilateral dynamic between the hegemonic position of the US in Asia, the evolution of the strategic choices of China's neighbours and the development of strategic regionalism as a mechanism for managing regional spaces. Choosing to take the Commonwealth of Independent States as a particular case of this framework, it argues that the interaction between Russia, China and the US remains highly fluid, particularly under the conditions ‘of re‐setting’ the US‐Russian relationship. This means that regional contexts are highly significant; and it establishes Central Asia as an important new strategic region for working out relations between Russia, China, and the US through their interactions with regional states. The second part of the article examines Russian and Central Asian responses to China's emergence. It looks at three categories of motivation in China's regionalism: its system for accumulative growth; its problems with weak constitutionality and transnational security in its western regions; and its concern with US/NATO encroachment on its western frontier and the US attempt to turn Central Asian elites away from their traditional alignments. The third part looks at China's promotion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as its mechanism for strategic regionalism in Central Asia. The article questions the SCO's significance in terms of its capacity for governance and functionalism, and points to the problem of institutional competition, notably with Moscow's preferred structure of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The article concludes that China will be an unconventional superpower that presents different facets of itself in different regional contexts. There will not be a single model of China's emergence and it will continue to develop its international role through a mix of adaptation and experimentation. However, China's strategy will pose a problem for Russia and Central Asia since it seeks to create a strategic space that does not challenge the West, but exists substantially outside the West. Russia, in particular, has to decide whether it will be able to maintain its current stance of independence between Europe and Asia as China's rise shifts the frontiers between East and West.     

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.”     

The role of US defense exports in Asia Pacific regionalism

Despite the emergence of a regional economic space, political integration in the form of institutional building has yet to take shape in the Asia Pacific. On the one hand, the area is constructed as part of a localized space articulated in terms of relatively self-contained regional economic networks. On the other hand, Asia Pacific remains fractured in geopolitical structures, relying heavily on the US to organize the region, particularly in the post-war period. This paper focuses on the nature of lagging regional political integration and examines the role that US defense trade (1989–2004), and to a lesser extent military presence, plays in this. Specifically, it shows that US geopolitical strategy, influenced heavily by a realist framework, displays a pattern of bilateral courtship where its defense trade is positively related to allies in Asia. This relationship results in stronger trans-Pacific than regional linkages, inserting an otherwise localized Asian economic space into the more diffused global US-centered geopolitical space.     

Europe,the rise of Asia and the future of the transatlantic relationship

This article examines how, in a global strategic context presided by the rise of Asia and the US rebalance towards that region, Europeans are contributing to transatlantic burden‐sharing—whether individually or through the EU/NATO. As Asian powers reach westward and the US shifts its strategic priorities eastward, classical geostrategic delimitations become gradually tenuous. Particularly important are the ‘middle spaces’ of the Indian Ocean, central Asia and the Arctic, in that they constitute the main avenues of communication between the Asia–Pacific and the European neighbourhood. The article seeks to understand how evolving geostrategic dynamics in Europe, the ‘middle spaces’ and the Asia–Pacific relate to each other, and how they might impinge on discussions on transatlantic burden‐sharing. It is argued that the ability of Europeans to contribute to a more equitable transatlantic burden‐sharing revolves around two main tenets. First, by engaging in the ‘middle spaces’, Europe's key powers and institutions are helping to underpin a balance of power in these regions. Second, by stepping up their diplomatic and economic role in the Asia–Pacific, strengthening their security ties to (US) regional allies and maintaining an EU‐wide arms embargo on China, Europeans are broadly complementing US efforts in that key region. There are a number of factors that stand in the way of a meaningful European engagement in the ‘middle spaces’ and the Asia–Pacific, including divergent security priorities among Europeans, the impact of budgetary austerity on European defence capabilities and a tendency to confine foreign policy to the immediate neighbourhood. The article discusses the implications of those obstacles and outlines some ways in which they might be overcome.     

Recontextualising violence,power and nature: The next twenty years of critical geopolitics?

Twenty years ago the intellectual projects that have become known as critical geopolitics emerged at the end of the cold war as a series of critiques of geopolitical reasoning. Drawing heavily on Edward Said's formulations of Orientalism the critical analyses probed the dense cultural productions of danger, the rationalisations for intervention and the logics of “Western” foreign policies. The geographical specifications of the world in the political discourses used to justify numerous imperial actions, and the rationales for the provision of security came under sustained scrutiny. Now two decades later despite the supposed end of history and endless invocations of globalization, the themes of empire and Orientalism remain at the heart of the Western geopolitical imaginary, explicitly structuring how the security intellectuals of our time plan for war and justify the construction of their military machines. Given the continuing dangers of warfare in a biosphere that is being radically destabilized by the modes of economy and violence these geopolitical texts legitimize, the necessity for critique remains compelling. But given the proliferation of uses of the term critical geopolitics, and the numerous disciplinary concerns encompassed by it, perhaps the time has come to narrow its focus once again to its core themes which involve confronting and challenging the geographical reasoning used in the legitimizations of contemporary warfare.     

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.     

海湾风云的地缘政治分析

本文全面回顾分析了海湾风云中,伊科冲突和美国出兵海湾的地缘政治背景,以及苏联和阿拉伯世界基于地缘政治的考虑和选择。     

Conflict in Pre‐Hispanic Northwest Argentina: Implications Arising From Human Bone Trauma Patterns

The time span ranging from ca. 900 to 1450 A.D. in the South‐Central Andes has been traditionally posited as a period of social unrest, political disintegration and large‐scale conflict due to, primarily, environmental causes. However, the osteological record of traumatic injuries in a sample of 223 adult and subadult crania from different areas of Northwest Argentina does not clearly correspond to the expected scenario of pervasive and formalized armed attacks. Cranial trauma prevalence in the sample is low (17.48%), and no statistically significant differences were met between the sexes. No differences were found when comparing trauma prevalence between settlements or regions, suggesting that location or function of the sites may not have influenced in trauma frequencies. This information more comfortably agrees with a scenario of conflict where several sources of violence may have caused the record of traumatic injuries (i.e. raids, ambushes, etc). These results serve to problematize how conflict is expected to be expressed in the archaeological record, especially in osseous human remains, what sources of violence may have generated the traumatic patterns observed and the intensity of conflict in this region in particular and in the pre‐Hispanic Andes in general. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Death-squads contemplating queers as citizens: what Colombian paramilitaries are saying

Colombian right-wing paramilitary forces aligned with the state and leftist guerrilla groups are associated with homophobic and transphobic attacks. However, the most extreme accounts of violence are attributed to the former group. Sexual and gender minorities are victimized in the ongoing internal conflict in which armed actors use attacks as a form of communicative violence meant to discipline the civilian population. At the same time, Colombian lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities are making significant advances in gaining recognition of their human rights. This article explores the space where the advance of LGBT rights confounds reactionary homophobic beliefs of illegal right-wing armed groups. I consider how concepts such as ‘nation’ and ‘citizen’ shape the discourse of paramilitary forces in their account of their group's homophobic violence. Special attention is paid to the logic provided by two informants, former paramilitary members themselves, regarding the conditions under which right-wing paramilitary groups would be obliged to recognize the rights of sexual and gender minorities as citizens. The article concludes with a discussion of how the development of a sexual citizenship discourse, in place, may serve to disrupt extreme violence against sexual and gender minorities in the context of militarization and armed conflict.     

Book reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. International Relations theory The global commonwealth of citizens: toward cosmopolitan democracy. By Daniele Archibugi. Order, conflict, and violence. Edited by Stathis N. Kalyvas, Ian Shapiro and Tarek Masoud. Human rights and ethics Torture and democracy. By Darius Rejali. Sexual enslavement of girls and women worldwide. By Andrea Parrot and Nina Cummings. International law and organization International justice in Rwanda and the Balkans: virtual trials and the struggle for state cooperation. By Victor A. Peskin. Humanitarian intervention after Kosovo: Iraq, Darfur and the record of global civil society. By Aidan Hehir. Foreign policy America and the world: conversations on the future of American foreign policy. By Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and David Ignatius. Conflict, security and armed forces Does peacekeeping work? Shaping belligerents’ choices after civil war. By Virginia Page Fortna. Fighting terror: ethical dilemmas. By Alex J. Bellamy. Twilight war: the folly of US space dominance. By Mike Moore. Global non‐proliferation and counter‐terrorism: the impact of UNSCR 1540. Edited by Olivia Bosch and Peter van Ham. National missile defense and the politics of US identity: a postcultural critique. By Natalie Bormann. The way of the world: a story of truth and hope in an age of extremism. By Ron Suskind. Political economy, economics and development The shape of the world to come: charting the geopolitics of a new century. By Laurent Cohen‐Tanugi. Globalization, regionalization and business: conflict, convergence and influence. By Marc Schelhase. Energy and environment The end of food. By Paul Roberts. History Great Britain and the creation of Yugoslavia: negotiating Balkan nationality and identity. By James Evans. The voices of the dead: Stalin's great terror in the 1930s. By Hiroaki Kuromiya. Europe Explaining institutional change in Europe. By Adrienne Héritier. European defence policy: beyond the nation state. By Frédéric Mérand. Turkish accession to the EU: satisfying the Copenhagen criteria. By Eric Faucompret and Jozef Konings. Serbia in the shadow of Milo?evi?: the legacy of conflict in the Balkans. By Janine N. Clark. Spanish politics: democracy after dictatorship. By Omar G. Encarnación. Russia and Eurasia Oilopoly: Putin, power and the new Russia. By Marshall Goldman. Russian civil–military relations: Putin's legacy. By Thomas Gomart. Axis of convenience: Moscow, Beijing, and the new geopolitics. By Bobo Lo. Middle East and North Africa Harmonizing foreign policy: Turkey, the EU and the Middle East. By Mesut Özcan. Sub‐Saharan Africa Africa: altered states, ordinary miracles. By Richard Dowden. Crouching tiger, hidden dragon?: Africa and China. Edited by Kweku Ampiah and Sanusha Naidu. China returns to Africa: a rising power and a continent embrace. Edited by Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira. China into Africa: trade, aid and influence. Edited by Robert I. Rotberg. Gulliver's troubles: Nigeria's foreign policy after the Cold War. Edited by Adekeye Adebajo and Abdul Raufu Mustapha. Becoming Somaliland. By Mark Bradbury. Crude continent: the struggle for Africa's oil prize. By Duncan Clarke. Asia and Pacific Descent into chaos: how the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. By Ahmed Rashid. Korea. By Christoph Bluth. Butcher and bolt. By David Loyn. North America The American civilizing process. By Stephen Mennell. Latin America and Caribbean US presidents and Latin American interventions: pursuing regime change in the Cold War. By Michael Grow.     

Dangerous Holes in Global Environmental Governance: The Roles of Neoliberal Discourse,Science, and California Agriculture in the Montreal Protocol

Abstract: This paper explores how a relatively successful global environmental treaty, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, is currently undermined by US protectionism. At the “global scale” of environmental governance, powerful nation‐states like the US prolong their domination of certain economic sectors with the assistance of neoliberal discourse. Using empirical data gathered while attending Montreal Protocol meetings from 2003 to 2006, I show how US policy undermines the Montreal Protocol's mandate to phase out methyl bromide (MeBr). At the global scale of environmental governance the US uses a discourse of technical and economic infeasibility because, in the current neoliberal milieu, it cannot make a simply protectionist argument. The discourse, in other words, is protectionism by another name. While much of the literature in critical geography on neoliberalism has focused on de‐regulation versus re‐regulation, this paper illustrates how science, protectionism, and neoliberalism can become articulated uneasily and in sometimes unexpected ways.