Geoeconomic Analysis and the Limits of Critical Geopolitics: A New Engagement with Edward Luttwak

Abstract

ABSTRACTThere is a new wave of interest in the interplay between commerce and strategy, and ‘geoeconomics’ is again becoming a key concept in policy analysis. In the academia, however, since the emergence of the concept in the early 1990s, geoeconomic analysis has mostly been viewed through very critical lenses. Analysts have portrayed geoeconomics as simplified neorealism, as a neoliberal discourse, and as a securitisation project. This criticism of geoeconomics relies on an incomplete view of IR realism, as well as some oversimplifications of Luttwak, who introduced the term in 1990. This article underscores the relative property of Luttwak’s argument, in which economic means are gaining in importance in relation to military power, and countries are increasingly, but not always, turning to logic of conflict and geoeconomic policies. Luttwak also underscores the role of domestic politics and ideologies in determining whether a country engages in geoeconomic behaviour or not. The article suggests that strategic geoeconomic theory-building, inspired by but not limited to Luttwak, has much to contribute to our contemporary understanding of IR and geography, for example, in the analysis of strategy and the different power capabilities of states.