European Geopolitics Resurgent?

Abstract

The Return of Geopolitics in Europe: Social Mechanisms and Foreign Policy Identity Crises. Edited by Guzzini Stefano. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 322 pp., £68.00 hardback (ISBN 978-1-107-02734-3). The academic field of geopolitics has experienced something of a resurgence in recent years, driven by a changing international environment and advances in the field of critical geopolitics. Moreover, with the growth of—perhaps temporary—questions relating to the future of European integration after the 2008–2009 financial crisis, there has been particular interest in the field of European geopolitics. From a more classical perspective, analysts like Simon and Rogers (2010, 2011), Kaplan (2012), and Grygiel (2012) have sought to chart the changing geopolitical dynamics on the European continent, tracing the role played by the European great powers as they jostle for wealth and power—even during European integration. At the same time, critical geopolitical analysts have sought to analyze the discourses sustaining the geopolitical perspective and worldview, which, despite their hopes to the contrary, refuse to die away. The Return of Geopolitics in Europe —edited by Stefano Guzzini—is informed decidedly by the second camp, but does something quite unique in that it focuses on the return of geopolitical thinking within Europe before—and not after—the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and its related economic and political fallout. As Guzzini puts it: “a movement to a more Hobbesian culture happened not despite the end of the cold war but because of it” (p. 5). This book therefore shows that—contrary to received wisdom—many European countries witnessed a resurgence of geopolitical thinking after the Cold War, …