Beyond the Legacy of Mackinder

For the Geopolitics Lecture at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 2010, the paper examines the core features of Mackinder's geopolitical imaginary, reviews contemporary challenges to those elements and develops an alternative conception of space for a Progressive Geopolitics.     

Indian Geopolitics,the United States and Evolving Correlates of Power in Asia

India has been poorly understood and often neglected by the United States. Its emerging role and geopolitical importance in the evolving correlates of power in Asia has been underestimated and overlooked by America until recently. The following article traces the changing dynamics of India's geopolitical posture to better inform our understanding of where India is headed as an international actor before assessing India's current place in the evolving strategic environment in Asia. It also asserts that the key to India's future geopolitical disposition is to be found in how the idea of India evolves as a concept. The outcome of the competition between Indian secular and Hindu fundamentalist ideologies will play a key role in how India's internal dynamics and international posture evolve.     

The Use of Intangible Benefits for Promoting Contested Policies: The Case of Geopolitical Benefits and the Israeli Gas Policy

ABSTRACT

The evaluation of many contested projects and policies often includes intangible benefits. Geopolitics represents one type of intangible benefit. Despite a few examples on the use of geopolitics to promote contested projects, there is a gap in the literature on how geopolitical argumentation is constructed for the purpose of promoting resource-based policies. Hence, the aim of this study is to use an Israeli case study to examine how geopolitical constructs are used to promote competing energy policies concerning recent gas discoveries and to provide rudimentary insights on the implications for policy making. It was found that the geopolitical rationale was an appealing rhetorical device for all players as it is both unquantifiable and hence difficult to disprove and is rooted in the Israeli societal context. As a result, coalitions built their own geopolitical rationales, each with its own rhetorical tools. These literary tools were often embedded in narratives of power and geographical language with emotional resonance. Yet, the Israeli case demonstrates that geopolitical constructs come at a detrimental price as they promote censorship and exclusion of the public from the process.     

试论里海地区的地缘政治意义

“地缘政治”是指地理上的缘由给国家带来了政治上的影响。里海的能源吸引着全世界的目光,相关大国如美国、俄罗斯、环里海国家以及印度和日本都纷纷加入了里海的能源竞争中,里海地区的地缘政治意义愈发突出。     

Mackinder and the Heartland Theory in Post-Soviet Geopolitical Discourse

This paper considers the ways in which Halford Mackinder's ideas are represented and mobilized in geopolitical discourses in post-Soviet Russia. Mackinder is broadly recognized as the most important proponent of ‘classical’ geopolitics, and his teachings about the Pivot of History and Heartland are referred to in virtually all geopolitical texts. Not all of this attention however is positive. We examine the very different ways in which Mackinder is deployed in this literature, and how he is re-signified to make his ideas relevant for contemporary Russia     

Domesticated Dispossessions? Towards a Transnational Feminist Geopolitics of Development

Geopolitics today is increasingly marked by the violent convergence of (in)security, market integration, and dispossession. Yet few studies address the connected, counter-insurgent geopolitics of ostensibly ameliorative, women-focused development interventions in the (post)colonial world. This paper charts a new theorisation of the geopolitics of development by focusing on gendered social movements, intersecting relations of difference, and social reproduction in two seemingly distinct areas: rural Guatemala and urban India. It introduces a transnational feminist geopolitical analytic – based on relational comparison, critical ethnography, and collaborative dialogue – to elucidate both specificity and global interconnection. Specifically, this consists of analysing struggles over dispossession through processes of ‘de(bt)velopment’ in the Ch'orti’ Highlands and ‘redevelopment’ in Mumbai at key historical conjunctures. These struggles illuminate not only (in)securities experienced by marginalised groups but also the transformative potentialities and domesticating limitations of social mobilisation. In conclusion, the paper offers insights into the how of doing more liberatory geopolitical praxis.     

Geopolitics Teaching and Worldviews: Making the Future Generation in Russia

What worldviews are passed on to students in Russian universities? This question can be approached by studying teaching in a discipline known as Geopolitics, which is offered as part of many degree programmes in Russian universities. The article makes use of observations of geopolitics lectures and geopolitics textbooks to study worldviews, understood as ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions about the geopolitical ‘reality’, the reality of geopolitics as a discipline, and how this discipline can and should be ‘discovered’ and studied. Based on the primary data, a story of the birth and development of geopolitics is constructed, and three discourses are identified. These discourses – geopolitics as a science, geopolitics as context-dependent, and geopolitics as state-centric – tell us about worldviews that espouse a positivist epistemology but vary in their degree of essentialism. Worldviews also inform us about Russia's geopolitical culture, which is, in this context, closer to the Westernisers' position than that of (Neo)Eurasianism.     

Re-Orientating Vertical Geopolitics

Geopolitics has a tradition of adopting a downward looking view-from-above, which is imbued with an imperialistic ‘god's eye’ perspective. Although acknowledged and critiqued, this paper argues that it needs to be actively re-orientated to encompass the discourses and practices of looking up. The paper analyses the practices of looking up and surveilling the sky through which air defence is achieved. It interrogates the ways in which UK air defence is represented in official documents and analyses the activities of the Royal Air Force's Air Surveillance and Control System. The paper argues that this system enacts a vertical geopolitics that goes beyond those understood in other geopolitical literatures and offers suggestions for developing our understandings of a volumetric vertical geopolitics that recognises the aerial view as generated from below as well as from above.     

Feminist Geopolitics: Unpacking (In)Security,Animating Social Change

This piece is the introduction to a special section on Feminist Geopolitics focusing specifically on securitisation. This introduction provides an overview of the field of feminist geopolitics and situates the contributions of the articles that follow. We argue that the contributions to the section push the field in two distinct ways. First, a number of the pieces draw important connections between geopolitical and geoeconomic processes. Second, the pieces continue to excavate the complex relationship between geopolitical processes and everyday life. Taken as a whole, this special section highlights the utility of feminist geopolitical approaches for gaining analytic clarity and thinking through and enacting positive social change.     

After Van Gogh: The Geopolitics of the Tsunami Relief Effort in the Netherlands

The paper examines the Dutch humanitarian response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake through the lens of geopolitics. It analyses the ways geopolitical representations shape non-state collective action, in this case the relief effort to help victims of the tsunami of 26 December 2004. Drawing on earlier work on geopolitical visions and national identity, the paper develops a framework to study people's geopolitics, the geopolitics of non-state collective actions. These insights are further explored through an examination of the Dutch tsunami relief effort. The paper discusses how the Dutch media framed this collective action as a national effort and articulated a sense of proximity and responsibility to mobilise people's generosity. Dutch geopolitical vision and national identity (water as a major threat to the national territory, the country's role as development aid donor, its relation to the regions affected) offer a frame to mobilise people. The tsunami is also analysed as a critical event for Dutch geopolitical representations and the tsunami relief effort as a peak experience providing a sense of recovered national identity in times when Dutch society was painfully divided between Muslims and non-Muslims after the murder of Theo van Gogh in November 2004. The concluding section discusses directions for further research into people's geopolitics.     

State Strategies and the Geopolitics of the Global Knowledge Economy: China,India and the Case of Regenerative Medicine

The global competition between states for position in the uncertain future of the life sciences brings a new dynamic to the intersection between geopolitics and the global knowledge economy. Armed with distinctive approaches to innovation in new health technologies, the emerging economies of China and India are determined to challenge the traditional hegemony of the developed countries in areas such as regenerative medicine where the promised biotechnology future is said to lie. Yet although the political belief that there is a future value for regenerative medicine is global, the precise nature of that future when measured in terms of the path of the science, the market demand, the cultural response, the commercialisation process and its associated business models is obscure. Drawing on theories of the competition and developmental state, I analyse the factors that shape a state's response to the promise of regenerative medicine, the strategies of ‘speculative innovation’ that may be adopted in pursuit of geopolitical advantage in this uncertain field, and the adaptive qualities necessary for a state's effective competition in an age of globalisation. This analysis is then applied to the emerging economies of China and India to assess their geopolitical strategies in regenerative medicine innovation, their current position in this part of the knowledge bioeconomy, and their likely impact on its continuing globalisation.     

Environmental Consequences of Rising Energy Use in China*

China is already the world's third largest energy producer and second largest energy consumer accounting for 10 percent of global energy use. This share is expected to rise to 15 percent by 2025. Energy use in China has important environmental consequences which are explored in this paper. A range of policy options are also discussed. It is argued that each major environmental issue requires a policy response that is a mix of direct government intervention as well as market based incentives. In coming decades, the choices made by China of how to tackle the environmental consequences of expanding energy use will have important implications for China, Asia and the world.     

Unification and the policy predicament in Germany

We argue that wages have increased so far ahead of labour productivity in east Germany as to produce a problem that will continue to hound German policy-makers for the next two decades. Despite rapid rates of capital accumulation (around 9%) and growth (around 5%) in east Germany over the coming 10 years, our estimates show that even if wage catch-up decelerates greatly, as long as it continues, the rate of unemployment in the east will still be twice as high as in the west in another 10 years. Alternatively, if wage discipline forces the eastern unemployment rate to come down to the western level, wage differentials will widen substantially over these next 10 years. Thus serious problems loom ahead.     

India’s Economic and Strategic Perceptions of China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative

The Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) is a part of China’s experiment in scaling up economic corridors across vast swathes of diverse economic geographies. China’s involvement in a large number of ongoing transport corridor projects has encouraged it to embark on the most ambitious of them all till date. The heterogeneity among the economic capacities and integrations of various regions constituting the MSRI, particularly in efficiency of infrastructure and ability to trade, is noticeable. This article underscores these variations as important determinants of competitiveness of the constituent regions and countries. India’s perceptions of the MSRI are significantly shaped by its lack of quality maritime infrastructure capacities that make it relatively uncompetitive vis-à-vis China, Europe and most of Southeast Asia; and the impression of the MSRI’s “China-centrality” emanating from lack of mention of non-China regional forums in the Chinese government’s vision statement; and absence of proactive measures from the Chinese leadership in establishing the MSRI’s multi-country character. The article argues that it is important for India to appreciate the geopolitical character of this unprecedented infrastructure initiative, which, while emphasizing Chinese interests, might not be inimical to India’s economic ambitions, provided India is able to address its domestic infrastructure imperatives.     

Carbon Taxes and Joint Implementation. An Applied General Equilibrium Analysis for Germany and India

Germany has committed itself toreducing its carbon emissions by 25 percent in2005 as compared to 1990 emission levels. Toachieve this goal, the government has recentlylaunched an environmental tax reform whichentails a continuous increase in energy taxesin conjunction with a revenue-neutral cut innon-wage labor costs. This policy is supposedto yield a double dividend, reducing both, theproblem of global warming and high unemploymentrates. In addition to domestic actions,international treaties on climate protectionallow for the supplementary use of flexibleinstruments to exploit cheaper emissionreduction possibilities elsewhere. One concreteoption for Germany would be to enter jointimplementation (JI) with developing countriessuch as India where Germany pays emissionreduction abroad rather than meeting itsreduction target solely by domestic action. Inthis paper, we investigate whether anenvironmental tax reform cum JI providesemployment and overall efficiency gains ascompared to an environmental tax reformstand-alone. We address this question in theframework of a large-scale general equilibriummodel for Germany and India where Germany mayundertake JI with the Indian electricitysector. Our main finding is that JI offsetslargely the adverse effects of carbon emissionconstraints on the German economy. JIsignificantly lowers the level of carbon taxesand thus reduces the total costs of abatementas well as negative effects on labor demand. Inaddition, JI triggers direct investment demandfor energy efficient power plants produced inGermany. This provides positive employmenteffects and additional income for Germany. ForIndia, joint implementation equips itselectricity industry with scarce capital goodsleading to a more efficient power productionwith lower electricity prices for the economyand substantial welfare gains.     

The Transformation of Europe and the German Contribution - Critical Geopolitics and Geopolitical Representations

The geography of political units has been rapidly transformed over the past two decades. Along with increasing globalisation a worldwide re-ordering of power set in the 1980s. It accelerated to such an extent after the end of the Cold War as to dramatically and permanently change the postwar order established for many decades. With the cessation of East-West confrontation, much more came to an end than merely the geopolitical constellation of the two power blocs that for more than forty years had determined the 'security discourse' and the global geographies of power and fear, of rivalry and alliance.     

The Haunting of the South: American Geopolitical Identity and the Burden of Southern History

The evocative figure of a South haunted by its troubled past is a staple of representations of the region, and such representations not only create a problematic identity for the region but simultaneously produce a privileged national identity through the process of internal orientalism. This article connects internal orientalism with the notion of the double Janus to explain the similarities between America's attitude toward Southern history and its assertion that Japan and Germany bear historical burdens of their own. The inward-looking face of the double Janus is informed by the discourse of internal orientalism and gives Americans an opportunity to judge an internal spatial Other (the South), particularly with regard to the region's history (as a result American geopolitical identity is cleansed from the historical burdens that are construed as Southern). This practice as a righteous judge of the Other serves the US hegemon and its outward-looking face of the double Janus in that the rhetorical practices deployed to discuss Japanese and German history have been honed through the assessment of the burdens of Southern history.     

论印度在中国地缘战略中的角色定位及相关影响

随着中美矛盾日益加深，如何突破美国的遏制以获得自身的发展成为当前中国地缘战略的核心。在来自美国的共同压力下，提升与地区大国印度的战略合作，并建立一个更有利于发展中国家的全球合作机构，既有助于突破美国的遏制，又有利于周边环境的安宁稳定，从而对中国在中亚、南亚和东亚的具体战略安排带来积极作用，符合当前中国地缘战略宏观层次上的整体布局。     

Kemalist Eurasianism: An Emerging Geopolitical Discourse in Turkey

Over the past decade or so, there has been a convergence between the Eurasianist and Kemalist ideologies in Turkey. A number of Kemalist and Socialist intellectual and political actors together with sections of the military have started to articulate Eurasianism (Avrasyac?l?k in Turkish) as a new geopolitical discourse for Turkey and as an alternative to Turkey's pro-Western foreign policy orientation. In this perspective, Eurasianism stands for a political, economic and cultural alliance with ‘Eurasian countries’, such as Russia, Iran, and Turkic countries in Central Asia, as well as Pakistan, India and China. This article aims to deepen the analyses carried out thus far on this emerging geopolitical discourse. To this end, it contextualises the emergence of the Eurasianism in Turkey within the wider social, political and historical context of which it forms a part, including the framework of asymmetrical political and economic relations that developed between Turkey and its Western allies in the post–Cold War period.     

Demographic trends and international capital flows in an integrated world

This paper examines the impact of projected demographic trends on international capital flows. The analysis builds upon a ten-region overlapping generations' model of the world economy where capital is mobile across regions. Results show that, over the first half of the century, emerging regions will finance the demand of capital coming from the developed world where population aging is relatively advanced. In particular, the findings suggest that in the coming decades China will be the world's main creditor region. However, in the second half of the century, India will take over this leading position because of the predicted decline in the Chinese labor force. An additional analysis demonstrates that the economic consequences of demographic changes depend on the degree of capital market integration between regions.