Geopolitical Framework Research Articles

Pengembangan Konsep Indo-Pasifik: Sebuah Konstruksi Geopolitik Indonesia di Kawasan Melalui ASEAN

Abstract The concept of geopolitics appears to bridge the relationship between geographical factors in contemporary politics. Through its focus on geographical factors, geopolitics has a very materialistic and objective foundation. Based on a critical examination of the implementation of the concept, it becomes clear that the geopolitical framework depends on social construction. Through qualitative methods, this article tries to explain that the concept of "Indo-Pacific" which is of international concern at the moment, is inseparable from a geopolitical construction carried out by the countries concerned. The significance of this new regional concept has been contested by some countries such as the United States, China, India, Australia, and Japan. Seeing its position at the Indo-Pacific geopolitical junction, Indonesia felt the need to make a geopolitical construction effort to encourage the creation of a better regional ecosystem, not as an arena for conflicting interests, as happened in the Asia-Pacific region. As part of the geopolitical construction effort and changing perceptions of all countries in the region, Indonesia through the ASEAN framework continues to promote the Indo-Pacific region which is open, free, and inclusive in various international forums.

Towards a Confucian geopolitics

In this article, we argue that Confucian philosophies are vital to understanding contemporary Chinese geopolitics. Existing Western geopolitical frameworks, we contend, are insufficient for grasping the complex theories and historical legacies that underpin China’s foreign policy. This issue becomes particularly salient as scholars and the public alike try to manage complex and changing geopolitical ideas underpinning the Belt and Road Initiative, recently heralded by the Chinese state and epitomising China’s ambition for expanded global engagements. This article provides a much-needed critical assessment and review of Confucian ideas and their uptake in Chinese state theory, geographical imaginations, and geopolitical scripts. While Confucianism typically focuses on ideals of harmony, hierarchy, and normative social order, geopolitics analyses geographical influences on politics – in particular, violence and conflict. However, it is precisely within this contradictory dialectic that new possibilities for analysing the geopolitics of a rising global power can emerge.

Using the principles of Halford J. Mackinder and Nicholas John Spykman to reevaluate a twenty-first-century geopolitical framework for the United States

The dynamic concepts and principles enunciated by two classic twentieth-century thinkers, Halford J. Mackinder, a geographer from Oxford University and Nicholas J. Spykman, a historian from Yale University, are analyzed within their historical context to better understand their dynamic geopolitical concepts such as the Heartland, Pivot Areas, Eurasian Maritime Periphery, and the role of Latin America. Their concepts are subsequently qualified and applied to form a more coherent geopolitical framework for aligning American foreign and military policies to ensure that Washington’s inherent interests are protected to the greatest extent possible from a rising Asian power namely, China.

Where’s Europe?

This commentary wonders why these canonical textbooks, conceived and written in the UK as the country was integrating itself economically and politically into the European project, make so little reference to Europe as a conceptual, analytical or geopolitical framework. These highly successful textbooks have helped create an idea of modern human geography as an essentially Anglo-American social science, different in form, content and objectives from earlier, largely European versions of the discipline.

Performance Art After The 1990s

Abstract Performance art has become over-represented in contemporary art museums, at art fairs, at major international exhibitions. In this context, I have proposed a brief overview of the history of performance in North America and Europe, to identify conceptual variations or continuities in post-1989 performing arts practices. What kind of queries caused the resort to the body? Which of the criticisms are still current and which new issues are formulated in the present geopolitical framework or in particular socio-political contexts? In order to answer these questions, I’ve selected a number of national and international male/ female artists whose practices illustrate the main directions in today’s performance art.

Remembering the ‘comfort women’: geographies of displacement, violence and memory in the Asia-Pacific and beyond

The ‘comfort women’ system of the 1930s and 1940s, in which girls and women were coerced to serve as sex slaves for the Imperial Army of Japan, was one of the most systematic and institutionalized forms of violence against female bodies in contemporary world history. In spite of the unparalleled scale and systematic nature of the violence against thousands of women, the world knew little about this system until the 1980s when former ‘comfort women’ began to speak out. Geographic scholarship remains virtually nonexistent on the geographies of the displacement and violence experienced by these women and girls enslaved across Japan’s war fronts in Asia-Pacific regions. By calling our collective attention to this gross and gendered violence, this paper situates Japan’s ‘comfort women’ system in broader spatial and temporal contexts to illustrate the historical and ongoing subjugation of and violence against women, their bodies and sexuality. Using a feminist geopolitical framework, we problematize the nationalist and geopolitical framing of the legacy of ‘comfort women’ and memorial sites that are dedicated to them. Rather, we center our analysis on the embodied, intimate and lived sites of violence experienced by the women and girls under the ‘comfort women’ system.

“Reach Everyone on the Planet . . .”: Kimberlé Crenshaw and Intersectionality

Reviewed by: “Reach Everyone on the Planet . . .”: Kimberlé Crenshaw and Intersectionality Angelica Fenner Gunda Werner Institute in the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Center for Intersectional Justice. “Reach Everyone on the Planet...”: Kimberlé Crenshaw and Intersectionality. Ruksaldruck, 2019. 107 pp. Open-access publication: www.boell.de/en/2019/04/16/reach-everyone-planet The occasion for this Festschrift (commemorative publication) is the thirtieth anniversary of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s landmark article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” in which she coined the term intersectionalityas a means to name overlapping forms of discrimination otherwise overlooked when only accounting for one vector of identity. Originally applied to the double discrimination women of color in the United States faced in the context of a specific job-discrimination lawsuit, the term’s capacious implications identify, in Crenshaw’s words, “the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members, but often fail to represent them” (18). One form of discrimination can occlude other, overlapping vectors, such as ableism, phobia of gender fluidity, ageism, and religious profiling, among others. Indeed, as contributor Mîran Newroz Çelik writes, “Every time that I try to understand how discrimination functions, I can only do so by trying to understand how different forms of discrimination work together” (24). Celebrating the impact of Crenshaw, one the most influential scholars and activists of our time, this volume was mobilized by Dr. Ines Kappert, head of the Gunda Werner Institute at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and [End Page 115]Dr. Emilia Roag, founder of the Center for Intersectional Justice. Their aim was to anchor intersectionality within the European context by recruiting its scholars, theorists, and activists to share how their encounter with Crenshaw, or with the concept she has advanced, has shaped their work and thinking in this geopolitical framework. What ensues is a series of personal, engaging, and highly accessible four-page testimonials that concretize how ideas travel thorough space and time to ignite further thought, action, and transformation. Although the realities captured by intersectionality predate the concept’s existence, the fact that these realities can now be named enables possibilities for social change to be more clearly plotted and enacted. Crenshaw has been a pivotal role model and mentor for generations of European scholars and activists of color, empowering them to name and theorize their own experiences and social observations. In Germany, among those who came of age in the 1990s and participated in the founding of ADEFRA e. V. (Schwarze deutsche Frauen und Schwarze Frauen in Deuschland, ein Verein; Black German women and Black women in Germany, an organization) and the ISD (Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland; Action group of Black people in Germany), personal narratives and scholarly research on Black European history afforded a means both to redefine the terms of historiography and to write themselves into that history from an intersectional perspective. Following the migration of Crenshaw’s term to Europe, contributor Dr. Maisha-Maureen Auma recalls the pivotal role the Black experience plays in the term’s implementation, although not all contributors to the volume apply the term this way. Also raised by several authors are the complications of negotiating between the German term Rasseand the English race. Whereas invocation of Rassehas remained taboo for its historical association with biological and hereditary definitions of difference, raceis implemented as a sociopolitical category that needs to be named in order for an intersectional conversation about blind spots to take place. This volume also includes a glossary explicating textual markings used by some contributors that evince how language itself can serve as a site for performing intersectionality; these include an asterisk to inflect gender terminology, capitalization of the noun and adjective Black, and lowercase italics for the noun and adjective white. In response, I have found myself musing, however inconclusively, what subconscious affective charge the printed word whitemight elicit for disparate readers. In journalism, setting a word in italics often introduces an ironic or distancing [End Page 116]tone, or signals an authorial undertow of resistance, even irritation, akin to an inner monologue conducted parallel to official discourse. As such, this practice may aid what Auma identifies as “one of...

Geopolitički okvir srpske strateške kulture

Starting with the definition of the concept of strategic culture and its substantive extension and improvement, the paper examines the links between the geopolitical framework or the geopolitical determination of the state and its strategic culture, in this case - the Serbian state and the Serbian people. By observing the creation of the Serbian identity and the Serbian strategic culture from a historical perspective through the prism of the key geopolitical processes of "long duration" in the Balkans, we further study the specifics of the Serbian identity and the Serbian strategic culture in its contemporary major variants. The second part of the paper then examines the contemporary geopolitical processes in the Balkans and the position in which Serbia and the Serbian people are placed, as well as the perspectives to which they can lead. The final part of the paper, taking all this into account, looks at Serbian possibilities in contemporary geopolitical circumstances to achieve its vital general strategic goals that are in line with the basic features of the historically dominant Serbian strategic culture.

The Pitfalls of Multinational Banking. The Case of Italian Banks in Egypt Before WWII

The activity of Italian banks in Egypt in the first half of the 20th century represents an almost unexplored field of investigation in economic and banking historiography. This article is the first attempt to innovate the Italian banking literature in this area, providing evidence from a country strategically located in the Middle Eastern geopolitical framework. At the same time and more generally, it contributes to the multinational banking literature on the characteristics and criticalities of banks belonging to multinational groups, which are subject to a ‘liability of foreignness’ due to political, geographical and economic differences between the home country and the host economy. The paper addresses the main drivers of success of Italian banks, which were able to occupy primary positions within the Egyptian banking sector despite their relatively modest capital size thanks to an aggressive policy focused on the cotton market. It then highlights the reasons for the subsequent problems these institutes faced, showing the difficulties of a latecomer and capital-poor country, such as Italy, in carrying out a catching-up process aimed at widening its influence over geographical areas considered strategic in terms of political and commercial penetration.

Central Asia region in the system of international relations: a conceptual analysis

At the beginning of the XXI century, the Central Asian region became one of the most important geopolitical centers of the modern world. Before starting to analyze the current position of the Central Asian States in the world political system, it is necessary to determine the geopolitical framework of this concept. The problem of regionalization of the “Central Asian region” phenomenon is still relevant. Increasing the importance of regions in the system of international relations in the twenty-FIRST century from the point of view of international security, positively increases the importance of the “Central Asia” region in Eurasia.The article analyzes the role of “ Central Asia “in the system of international relations based on the concepts of “Central Asia”,” post-Soviet Asia”,”Greater Central Asia”,”heartland”. The article analyses the importance of Central Asian region in the world political system. The Central Asian region has become one of the most important geopolitical centers of the modern world. The geopolitical role of the region is determined by its intercontinental significance for trade and other relations between the countries of Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The history of the region’s geopolitical development is analyzed as the main scientific method. In Central Asia, the political role of each participant in the region is analyzed based on the conceptual analysis of the data accumulated by reviewing the literature, a scientific analysis and the necessary conclusions are made.

INTERPRETATION OF THE RISE OF THE CROWN PRINCE MUHAMMAD BIN SALMAN AND SAUDI FOREIGN POLICY ACCORDING TO THE BARAKAH CIRCLE THEORY

Saudi Arabia has begun to pursue an active and ambitious foreign policy in recent years, especially under the rule of the Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. The main parameters of this new era may be stated as: an increasing dependence on the US; the further demonisation of Iran and its regional allies; greater efforts to normalise political relations with Israel; the establishment of closer cooperation with the UAE and Egypt; and the promoting of Madkhali Salafism in the Middle East. Riyadh’s emergence as a new power centre significantly relies on regional and international power politics. In this respect, the geopolitical dimension of Middle Eastern politics plays a crucial role in examining the Saudi position. This article aims to explain Riyadh’s recent foreign policy moves within the context of the Barakah Circle Theory as a non-Western geopolitical framework.

Islam and Politics in Malaysia since 1957 Fluctuation between Moderation and Radicalisation of the State, Society and Religion

This paper discusses the relationship in post-independence Malaysia between the state, civil society and the country’s dominant religion, that is, Islam. When Malaya obtained independence from the British in 1957, many expected that Islam would lead to social and economic decline. The constitution states that Islam is the state religion, although it also states that religious freedom for non-Muslims is assured without discrimination. Since then, religious affairs have remained a state responsibility and Malaysia has been hailed for decades as an oasis of moderate Islam. However, during the last few years religiously motivated hatred has become prevalent and popular in Malaysia for many reasons. This paper underlines the factors that have led to the growth of hate and the decline of the moderate Islam previously found in Malaysia. It proposes that the radicalisation of Malaysian Muslims should be evaluated within the framework of current geopolitics and the impact on the well-being of the Muslim world, rather than localising it into regional and national faults. The paper argues that Islam in Malaysia is an instrument that shapes the political behaviour of the public and the ruling elite. Lastly, the paper proposes that effective governance and ensuring that citizens’ rights are respected are some of the most effective ways of eliminating extremism and preventing radicalisation.

Cultura e geopolítica

Este artigo explora como a política externa norte-americana e os embates específicos do campo cultural se sobrepõem na trajetória de exposições do MoMA, buscando desvelar como os imaginários de arquitetura latinoamericana cristalizados na exposição Latin American Architecture since 1945 (1955) se articulam com os esforços de integração do subcontinente noarcabouço geopolítico da Guerra Fria.

Power Analysis and Geopolitical Codes of South China Sea States in the Context of Contemporary Geopolitics

The analysis in this article provides an overview of the research on the current relations among countries of the South China Sea basin. For this purpose, I have decided to apply the geopolitical research workshop, focusing on its contemporary approach. On the one hand, this work uses the available indicators and index to gauge the level of development, economic and demographic potential, and military expenditure of these states. On the other hand, an effort was made to analyze and measure power, taking into account the changing geopolitical status of countries in this sub-region. Contemporary geopolitics in this context allows to verify the scale of the impact on permanent environmental and geographic factors (e.g. publicized investments carried out by the People’s Republic of China in Mischief Reef, Fiery Cross, Subi Reef and Woody Island) and the elaboration of proposals going beyond the classical, geopolitical framework (morphological, political and military factors). Therefore, this article also includes the use of geopolitical codes to assess the current strategies of these countries and to describe potential scenarios of actors’ behaviour in the sub-region.

Foreign Policy Followed by the U.S. in The European Energy Market: Shale Gas Revolution and LNG Thrust Against The Russian Dominance

Bu makale, Avrupa gaz pazarının kapasitesini ve Rusya'nın ana gaz tedarikçisi olduğunu göz önünde bulundurmak suretiyle, Avrupa gaz pazarının halen gelişme sürecinde olan Kuzey Amerika gazı için henüz yararlanılmamış bir kaynak olduğunu ortaya koymaktadır. Çalışma, ABD ve Rusya’nın enerji sektörü özelinde ilişkilerine jeopolitik çerçevede geniş ve kapsamlı genel bir bakış sunmakta, diğer yandan hem ABD hem de Rusya’nın enerji politikası için Avrupa enerji piyasasının önemini vurgulamaktadır. Makalede, güvenlikleştirme teorisi ve enerji güvenliği kavramları çerçevesinde ABD’nin dış politikasının analiz edilmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Çalışmada yöntem olarak ABD’nin bölgeye ilişkin enerji politikaları bölgeselcilik kavramı çerçevesinde analiz edilmiştir. Çalışmanın sonucu, ABD’nin Avrupa doğal gaz piyasalarındaki çıkarının, yalnızca Avrupa’nın Rus doğal gazına olan bağımlılığını azaltma konusunda ‘yardım etmenin’ ötesinde olduğunu, ABD’nin nihai dış politika hedefinin Avrupa’nın önde gelen bir doğal gaz tedarikçisi olarak tebarüz etmek olduğunu öngörmektedir.

예멘 사태의 지리·정치적 구도와 난민문제의 거버넌스

21세기 난민의 문제는 글로벌 이슈로 부각되고 있어서, 유럽각국뿐만 아니라, 한국 사회에서도 이에 대한 이해관계로 대립하고 있다. 제주도에 진입한 예멘인들의 난민자격 인정 문제에 대한 대중의 의견이 극단적으로 분출되고, 사회심리기제가 분산 양상으로 확대되고 있다. 본 연구는 예멘 내전의 요인분석과 난민 발생의 전개 과정의 확인 등 현지상황에 대한 이해를 통하여, 난민에 대한 사회적 합의를 모색할 수 있는 기회제공과 정책적 함의 도출을 목표로 한다. 예멘의 내전은 종교 패권 측면에서 이슬람 순니(Sunnis)의 사우디와 쉬아(Shiite)의 이란의 대리전으로 확대되었고, 국가 기능은 회복이 불가능한 수준이 되었다. 예멘 내전은 2014년 9월 살레 정부 전복이래, 아랍연합군의 지원을 받고 있는 예멘 정부군과 후티(Houthi) 민병대사이의 전투가 증폭되었다. 현재에는 지역패권 국가들뿐만 아니라, 구미열강 및 테러단체의 개입에 의해 국제적 분쟁으로 확장되었다. 이 논문은 예멘 내전의 전개과정과 주변 패권의 개입과정을 시기별로 조사하였다. 특히, 난민 발생 및 구난 상황, 그리고 인도주의적 관점에서 예멘의 내전과 사회적 영향을 평가하였다. 한편, 예멘내전의 발생 원인을 분석하고, 난민 문제에 대한 한국정부의 거버넌스의 기조를 제안하였다.

Renta petrolera y dependencia económica. El papel de China en los nuevos procesos de crecimiento en África: el caso sudanés (1989-2011)

Este artículo analiza el crecimiento de la economía sudanesa de 1989 a 2011 desde la confluencia de cuatro procesos: los efectos del neoliberalismo en África y el mundo árabe, el proyecto político islamista, la extracción masiva de petróleo y los cambios en el marco geoestratégico global marcado por el creciente papel de China como inversor y cliente de las economías africanas. En este desarrollo se distinguen dos fases: en la primera se sientan las bases de la explotación y la distribución de crudo y se llevan a cabo importantes inversiones en infraestructura; en la segunda se asiste a la consolidación de Sudán como país petrolero, lo que conlleva la transformación de la estructura productiva y del papel del Estado sudanés. El texto estudia, además, el impacto del petróleo, del cambiante contexto geopolítico global y, particularmente, del creciente papel de China en la evolución del escenario de conflicto armado.

Válka mezi Gruzií a Ruskou federací jako významný předěl

In 2018, it has been already ten years since one of the major wars of the post-Cold War period, namely, the war between Georgia and the Russian Federation. This war lasted only for five days, but it also became an important milestone in the development of the international security relations as well as the military science at the beginning of the 21st century. The article evaluates its geopolitical framework on the basis of the neorealist theory of the balance of security threats and it also deals with its impact on the development of the Russian military.

Ordering Space: Intersections of Space, Racism, and Extermination

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this article is to rethink the concept of Lebensraum and its significant role in Nazi policies. During World War II, the notion of Lebensraum increasingly transcended its original geographic–geopolitical and agricultural frameworks. Nazi policy was based on the idea of racially homogenizing existing as well as conquered space. As opposed to earlier colonial land seizure, the Nazi policies of resettlement, expulsion, and murder of racially undesirable population groups were not the consequences of the occupation policy, but rather their very purpose and objective. Focusing on the category of space, this essay identifies certain continuities as well as significant breaks between colonialism and National Socialism. The author contends that the goal of colonial rule was the economic and political subjugation of the conquered countries, which necessitated heterogeneity as a structural principle. Lebensraum, on the other hand, represented a different and unprecedented model of domination, one that did not imagine, in colonial fashion, the spaces as being empty, but rather intended to empty these spaces and radically reorganize them for the purpose of racial selection.

On being psychotic in the South Seas, circa 1947

This article tells the story of an anthropologist and a research subject who encountered each other in the middle of the 20th century on an island in the southwestern Pacific. In the midst of an intensive spate of evidence gathering for his dissertation, anthropologist Melford Spiro noted that one of his would-be interlocutors, a man named Tarev – notable for failing all of his psychological tests – still managed to contribute a different form of evidence: if his views could not be amalgamated in numbers via test scores (and thus contribute directly to Spiro’s data set), they could still be rendered as a case. Tarev’s personality study, ‘A Psychotic in the South Seas’, counted as one of many cases contributing to a broad, worldwide effort to explore the meaning of suffering – specifically psychological illnesses – in non-Western cultures. This article examines Tarev’s rejected test-response ‘data’ and the ways in which his answers did not fit the epistemological and geopolitical frameworks that provoked them. The encounter between anthropologist and interlocutor, today, allows an investigation into how mid-20th-century scholars amassed ambitious data sets meant to revolutionize the sciences that dealt with human beings as psycho-social entities. What sorts of data made it into their archives and what sorts did not? How was the data of happiness, sadness and other fleeting emotional states collected from whole islands newly under US naval occupation?