Geopolitical Actors Research Articles

Global urban policy and the geopolitics of urban data

Cities have gained prominence in global sustainability discourses. The United Nations ‘2030 Agenda’ highlights in at least four key agreements the need to engage local stakeholders as key partners for the implementation of global policy objectives. As a result, the rise of a ‘cities agenda’ has led not only to an increased role for cities in global politics but also to a reshaping of the knowledge-base underpinning international agreements and their implementation. This paper argues that the contemporary willingness to move beyond the “territorial trap” of modern geopolitics, by emphasizing cities’ agency in global affairs and by calling for the production of globally comparable urban data, induces a process of reframing and rescaling existing understandings of the global. In that sense, the question of urban knowledge production – especially that of urban data creation – is an essentially geopolitical one. However, insights from critical geopolitics have been rarely used in current debates on global urban policy and urban data politics. This work, we posit, can inform current academic and policy discussions, as it invites us to explore three interrelated questions: how is the urban being written into contemporary global politics? What type of ‘urban’ issues are made salient/invisible in that process? Which geopolitical actors are currently dominating the production of urban knowledge globally? This paper offers to start addressing those themes, through the study of 28 global urban databases, digging into the technical as well as human components of those. In doing so, we offer a preliminary assessment of techno-political apparatus that underpins the construction of a global ‘urban gaze’ which in turn shapes - as much as it is maintained by - global urban policy frameworks and hegemonic forms of knowledge production.

The future of the EU in the context of scenarios for its development by 2025


 
 
 The article researches the scenarios for the future development of the EU by 2025 proposed by the European Commission. The white paper on the future of EU looks at how Europe will change in the next decade, from the impact of new technologies on society and jobs, to doubts about globalization, security concerns and the rise of populism. The European Commission emphasizes that the Europe’s role as a positive global force is more important today than ever. However, under the pressure of global competition the United Europe’s place in the world and its economic weight are shrinking, which is a solid foundation for preserving the unity of the Union for the sake of achieving greater. On the contrary, the most desirable scenario, as can be seen from the speech by the President of the European Commission, is to give the European Union a greater amount of power, resources and decision-making powers. As a result, cooperation between the EU-27 Member States will deepen in all areas than ever before.
 The White Paper outlines ve main scenarios («Carrying on», «Nothing but the single market», «Those who want more do more», «Doing less more e ciently», «Doing much more together»), each of them provides an opportunity to look at the possible state of a airs in the Union by 2025, depending on the choice that the EU will make by 2019. In the opinion of Jean-Claude Juncker, the most negative scenario of the EU development, and therefore extremely undesirable, is to bring its goals to purely economic, focusing the Union’s activities on the development of a single internal market and ensuring its uninterrupted functioning («Nothing but the single market» scenario).
 
 
 
 Based on data from the European Commission the author shows and brie y describes the key advantages and disadvantages of each of the scenarios. The common features of these scenarios are outlined: rst, they all come from the fact that the United Kingdom withdraws from the EU; secondly, none of them doubts the need to preserve the euro as common currency and the Schengen zone, thirdly, neither the scenarios refers to further EU enlargement. Since none of the proposed scenarios provides for the complete disintegration of the EU, that is, the disappearance of it as a geopolitical actor, it is concluded that in the strategic perspective all the outlined models of the EU’s future development suit Ukraine. Moreover, the steps recently proposed by the President of Ukraine and the European Parliament for deepening the economic integration of Ukraine with the EU and its association with the Schengen area also does not contradict any of the scenarios.
 
 
 
 
 

From Evropa to Gayropa: A Critical Geopolitics of the European Union as Seen from Russia

ABSTRACTThe role of geopolitics in European Union (EU) foreign policy has been the focus of much media, political, and scholarly commentary. This literature has interrogated the topic from a number of perspectives, critically exploring, for example, the construction and embodiment of EU foreign policy, the geopolitics of regional cooperation within the EU, and the role of geopolitical imaginations in the creation of the EU. Far less literature, by contrast, has explored how the EU is viewed as a geopolitical actor by other entities. This paper begins to do this, by exploring how ideas of the EU have become an enduring geopolitical conception in post-Soviet Russia. It traces their evolution from the early 2000s, when Russia sought to emulate EU norms and values as part of a broader Westernising tendency in its foreign policy. Narratives about the EU were reworked in the context of the so-called ‘colour revolutions’ between 2003 and 2005, and have subsequently been revitalised since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012. In these contexts, this paper critically scrutinises the evolution of the EU’s role within Russian practical geopolitical discourse and this role’s relations to other claims and visions of what it means for Russia to be a great power.

Geostrategies, geopolitics and ontological security in the Eastern neighbourhood: The European Union and the ‘new Cold War’

Recent years have seen the EU criticised for its naïve idealism, in particular in its failure to counter Russia's increasingly assertive manoeuvres. While Russia is presented as an inherently geopolitical actor, the EU's emphasis on a normative post-geopolitical agenda is depicted as a losing strategy. The EU, it is argued, must become ‘more geopolitical’ in what is presented as an emerging ‘new Cold War’. However, post-geopolitical depictions of the EU are problematic, but derive from an overly narrow conflation of geopolitics with modernist geopolitical practices. In contrast, the article argues that the EU's actions are no less impregnated with geopolitical visions aimed at ordering and organising the space beyond its borders, but also argues that the EU's geopolitical visions – and the geostrategies adopted to implement them – are also underpinned by a need to preserve and protect the Union's sense of ontological security. This connection between its geopolitical visions, geostrategies and sense of ontological security is important, as it means challenges to the former can generate considerable anxieties in regard to the latter; anxieties that need a response. The article argues that the return of traditional geopolitical language can be understood in these terms, calming emerging anxieties by reaffirming a sense of order and stability in terms of an historically known set of coordinates. Although seductive, this move of (mis)recognising contemporary events in terms of historical analogy is also potentially problematic.

Papal Geopolitics: The World According to Urbi et Orbi

The Catholic Church (or the Church, in this article) is, despite appearances, one of the most influential geopolitical actors in the world. Its leaders are seen as moral and political authorities b...

Germany: From Civilian Power to a Geo-economic Shaping Power

Germany has become a geo-economic power since its unification in 1990. Its foreign policy agenda has been shaped by its economic interests and the role of its export sector. Nevertheless, Russian actions in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe combined with the accession of the Trump Administration in the United States and the rise of China have resulted in a transition in the foreign policy paradigm toward Germany as a shaping power and more of a geopolitical actor which has to balance its economic interests with the new strategic challenges of a newly unstable Europe.

Геополитическая концепция «Евразийство» как фактор влияния на безопасность в Восточной Европе

The author of the article analyzes the key concept of modern Russian geopolitics – “Eurasianism”. The geopolitical concept of “Eurasianism» that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century built foundations for modern Russian geostrategy and foreign policy, defined the geopolitical identity of Russia and its vectors of development in the international relations. Russia-Eurasia is a unique civilizational and cultural type, which differs both from Europe and from Asia, has geographical unity and indivisibility, as well as a unifying mission for the entire continent. Eurasian fate of Russia defines its geopolitics, geostrategy and foreign policy, as well as the demands of autonomy in its geopolitical development and the refusal of any “Europeanization”. Ukraine in the Eurasian concept, as well as in more modern version – Neoeurasianism, is not a geopolitical actor. Moreover, the Neoeurasianism by Dugin does not prepare for Ukraine the role of independent state, and the return of Ukraine under the geopolitical power of Russia is a priority for Eurasian geopolitics. The research of the basic postulates of “Eurasianism” allows us to consider the concept from the standpoint of geopolitical identity of Ukraine and point out possible threats to the region of Eastern Europe. In addition, the author relates the classical concept of “Eurasianism” to its modern version – “Neoeurasianism” and its practical application in the real Russian foreign policy.

The battery business: Lithium availability and the growth of the global electric car industry

This article presents a spatial analysis of lithium availability from the mid-twentieth century to the present time in order to clarify and contribute to the growing body of scholarship on the relationship between the global lithium supply and the viability of a modern, mass-market electric vehicle industry. Drawing on archival research conducted in Bolivia in 2012, this article advances the argument that the concept of ‘lithium scarcity’ is much more nuanced than is often portrayed. In addition, perceptions of a worldwide lithium shortage are more entangled with business demands for certain grades of lithium at certain price points rather than actual scarcity. This analysis of lithium availability is defined in terms of the basic tension between the supply of extractable lithium deposits on the one hand and the quality and price demands of battery manufacturers on the other. This tension has played a role in determining the evolution of the electric car from a luxury to a mass-market product and involves a host of complementary and competitive business and geopolitical actors.

East- European Space in the Context of the New Geopolitical Architecture Configuration

Studying the geopolitical architecture of the East-European space we can say that this part of the globe is in the process of formation as a result of relations among geopolitical actors – power centers – the West represented by the US, NATO and EU on one hand and on the other hand the Russian Federation. Carefully analyzing the ongoing transformations in EastEuropean space, we see that the content of geopolitics centered on the ability of states to divide geographical space has rapidly changed. This article analyzes for the first time the subject of the “new configuration of East-European geopolitical architecture”. Integration processes like the EU and NATO eastward extension, as well as those of integration / disintegration from postSoviet space, the events in eastern Ukraine that resulted in the annexation of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol by the Russian Federation have had a significant influence on the creation of the new geopolitical architecture of the East-European space.

Geostrategic position of Crimea as security factor for the Black sea region

As a result of the Ukrainian authorities' refusal to sign an agreement on joining the EU, at the end of 2013 protests were held in Kiev and a number of cities, led by pro-West opposition. The political situation was radicalized, resulting in the overthrow of the regime of President Yanukovych. These developments triggered protests in the Crimea and in the southeastern regions. After the referendum, Crimea unilaterally separated from Ukraine and joined Russia, while an armed conflict between the central authorities and the armed groups of rebelled pro-Russia population began in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Ukraine accused Russia of annexing the Crimea and of Russia's armed formations actively fighting on the side of the pro-Russia separatists. Bilateral relations were minimized, and have continued in that way for the last two years, with the emergence of a large number of problems that have further burdened and accentuated existing differences of views. Additionally, the newly-established status of Crimea has considerably worsened Russia's relations with Western countries and radicalized the security situation at the regional and global levels. The complexity and topicality of the 'Crimean question' is defined, inter alia, by the special geostrategic significance of the Crimean peninsula, as well as the specific geographical, historical and cultural-identity characteristics of the area. With great care not to fall into the trap of geographical and historical determinism, the paper seeks to prove that the physical and geographical and socio-geographical characteristics of Crimea, as well as its specific historical development, are elements that influenced the change of its status (unilateral separation from Ukraine and joining Russia), causing the creation of a complex political and security situation in the Black Sea region, which threatens to disintegrate the entire system of regional stability, with possible implications for global security. The aim of the paper is to point out the importance of the 'Crimean question' that significantly determines the security of the region and the relations of the most influential geopolitical actors, through the insight in the geostrategic position of Crimea. The aim is also to draw attention to the current topic and to communicate it to the general public, namely, to make, in an affirmative way, a theoretical shift towards understanding and critical perception of the 'Crimean issue', mainly from the perspective of the events of the last two years.

Стратегические интересы США, России и Китая в Центральной Азии на современном этапе

This article is devoted to develop and analyze the strategic concerns of key geopolitical actors in the Central Asian region. The author comes to the conclusion that the specialty of the Central Asia is a beneficial geopolitical location and great amount of nature resources that makes the region an object of world powers’ geopolitical interests. The main actors in the CA are the USA, China and Russia, which have influence on political processes inside the region, realizing their own strategies.

Children, Critical Geopolitics, and Peace: Mapping and Mobilizing Children's Hopes for Peace in the Philippines

This article focuses on the role and agency of children in shaping the trajectories and outcomes of peace in Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Through the analysis of children's narratives that are articulated around their vision maps of peace, I argue that such cartographic representations and dialogues of the everyday open up opportunities for them to critically reflect on their understandings of and hopes for peace. This essentially contributes to children's formation as active geopolitical actors, allowing them to negotiate broader structures, relations, and identifications of violence to situate their aspirations for peace. Rather than viewing such embodied spatial practices as having no wider political implications, I showcase efforts that seek to mobilize children's hopeful imag(in)ings for the harnessing of coalitional formations toward transformative possibilities. This enables the development of ethical relationships between local communities and other relevant stakeholders, leading to the formulation of appropriate strategies to stamp out the reproduction of violence across generations. In so doing, this article aligns to yet extends emerging literatures that cast attention on the different actors and their grounded enactments of peace. Specifically, it calls for the explicit acknowledgment of children's involvement in the rethinking and remaking of issues pertaining to geopolitics (and peace) that should be seen as closely intertwined with the everyday lives of children throughout the world.

Palm oil not polar bears: climate change and development in Malaysian media

To date, debates about climate change reporting in national media focus largely on Western democracies. We aim to broaden the scope for cross‐national comparison by looking at climate change reporting in Malaysia – an emerging economy in the global South facing developmental tensions common to many, specifically an ambitious national climate change agenda in the face of an economy largely reliant on the extraction and export of primary commodities. Our questions are: How is climate change framed in Malaysian media? How do Malaysian narratives compare with those found elsewhere? How do climate change and development narratives interact in a ‘second tier’ emerging economy? And lastly, what do these interacting narratives say about the salience of neoliberal and North–South perspectives on climate change and development? To answer these questions, we undertook a content analysis of climate action stories published over a three‐year period (2009–2011) in five English‐language news sources. In addition to a high proportion of environmental‐framed articles across all the news sources, our findings show that climate change has been framed as both a multi‐scalar responsibility and a positive opportunity for two key stakeholders in development, i.e. neoliberal market forces and geopolitical actors keenly interested in restructuring the international political economy along lines reminiscent of the new international economic order (NIEO) demands of the 1970s. We label the key themes emergent from our analysis as climate capitalism and green nationalism (neither of which are unique to Malaysia), while demonstrating that debates about palm oil are particularly illustrative of the interaction of these themes in the Malaysian context. In the final section we suggest thinking of the interacting elements as a singular, structuralist model of green development – one reminiscent of discourses at work in other emerging economies.

The Small Border Traffic Zone between Poland and Kaliningrad Region (Russia): The Impact of a Local Visa-Free Border Regime

ABSTRACTAfter Poland’s accession to the EU, the Polish-Russian border became the EU external border. This significantly changed its nature and started the new type of cross border relation. Since 2012, when the Small Border Traffic (SBT) zone came into force, the border has changed its blockade function and started instead to be treated as a resource. The fundamental loosening of the border crossing regime reduced the social and functional distance between Poland and Kaliningrad, and in a broader sense between EU and Kaliningrad. This paper will try to show how small but meaningful initiative, the SBT, has had an impact on cross-border region. The present paper will describe the relationship between larger geopolitical actors and how they affect local border relations. The aim of this paper is to present phenomenon of new visa regime at the Polish-Russian border. The paper likewise describes the impact of the SBT on local communities and their economies, as well as national relations between adjacent countries. The analysis is based on the interviews and surveys conducted in the Polish-Russian border region in late 2014.

Precarious Empires: A Social and Environmental History of Steam Navigation on the Tigris

Throughout most of the nineteenth century, steamships were the main tool of British informal imperialism in what is now southern Iraq. Despite that centrality, steam shipping on the Tigris was primarily characterized by environmental and political precariousness. This article explores the steamship business of the Lynch Company, which operated on the Tigris beginning in 1861. It examines the political controversies surrounding irrigation and the expansion of the steam fleet as windows on the complex relationship between ecological vulnerability and the practice of empire and diplomacy, arguing that the states of environmental and geopolitical precariousness in which steamships operated reinforced one another, eventually coming to define the British steam enterprise on the Tigris. This precariousness helped make steamships major geopolitical actors, shaping British-Ottoman relations as well as local trade and development policies. The persistence of environmental challenges meant that the Lynch steamships, along with their Ottoman counterparts, simultaneously shaped and were incorporated into local trade and shipping networks, as well as the tribal prestige politics of raiding. On local and international levels, environmental and political issues were intertwined, and steam shipping was crucial to both. The precarious technology that formed the crux of informal imperial intervention on the Tigris is indicative of a kind of empire in which the environment significantly shaped the possibilities of imperial intervention. Precariousness—both environmental and political—came to define technology and empire in late Ottoman Iraq.

Nigeria as a Geo-Political Entity and Sovereign Actor in International Relations: Interrogating Its Emergence

Utilizing the Secondary Sources of information gathering as well as Content Analysis, this paper x-rayed and questioned the metamorphosis of Nigeria as a single geo-political entity and sovereign participant in International Relations. It ascertains among others that the pre-colonial ethnic nationalities (such as the Igbo, Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba societies) lived in a variety of autonomous politico-economic systems, that the present day geo-political entity called ‘Nigeria’ is neither a “Natural Evolution” nor a “willful or voluntary association” arrived at by the pre-colonial ethnic groups but an “artificial British colonial imposition or creation” culminating in the 1914 amalgamation of Northern and Southern protectorate; that even the nomenclature-‘Nigeria’ is of colonial origin; that with non-militant nationalism, Nigeria obtained her independence on October 1, 1960, but has, since then, at the standpoint of neo-colonialism, been participating peripherally in the relations among nations. The paper also proffers necessary panacea. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n1p59

Information warfare technologies in political discourse

We attempt to examine the technology of «information warfare» in this paper. The dominant theme of the paper is that the outcome of the information warfare is important not only for the future of a state itself but for the future of the world balance of forces. The main task of geopolitical actors in information warfare is to introduce ideas corresponding to their interests into mass consciousness. All participants of political conflicts have common features in technologies of Information warfare. The information anomie is the indicator of the great geopolitical actors’ personified interests on the stage of «information warfare» - the process resulted in destroying the communicative line: report-information understanding and disrupting the social order in society. In this paper authors describe the following Information Warfare technologies: Political volcano technology; SPIN technology; Widening media resource technology; specific gravity technology; Cold War 2.0 technology and Information cleaningup technology. It is assumed that in the future there will be new instructions on applying technologies of information warfare. To impart perspective to the paper we consider examples, opinions and trends.

Linguistic Features of NATO’s Media Image (the Case Study of British Online Publications)

The paper investigates linguistic specific means of NATO's image making in online British leading newspapers. The case study involves news reports and analytical articles that represent explicit and implicit evaluation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The investigation is based on the principles of the media linguistic approach and suggests the structural peculiarities of a media image that can be analyzed as a three-sided unit including positive, negative and neutral structural elements of image introduction into a media text. The NATO's image can be viewed as that of a geopolitical actor, creating its Natoland. Certain media topics are analyzed as creating positive and negative images of the NATO as a military organization. A finite list of positive and negative constituents to the Alliance's image is presented in the paper. It is assumed that the simplistic writer-reader model of interaction shapes certain elements of a media image that can be interpreted by a reader. The author distinguishes in the paper the principle constituents of an international organization in general, and the NATO in particular. Findings of the study demonstrate that the NATO's media image is interpreted by the readers as the conceptual entity of two key images: a peacemaker and a hawk that are restored on lexical and intertextual levels

Workers' rights and employment contracts in a developing country context: the case of Turkey

A rapidly growing economy and a primary geopolitical actor in Eurasia, Turkey has attracted record levels of international capital and workforce since its recognition as a membership candidate to the European Union in 1999. This article presents an English-language recap of the first two chapters of Turkish labour law – an increasingly needed legislative piece for non-Turkish corporations and people interested in doing business or working in Turkey.

Geopolitics, insecurity and neocolonial exceptionalism: A critical appraisal of the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon

The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which was set up through UN Security Council Resolution 1757 to investigate, indict and prosecute those responsible for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, is advancing a series of regional and global geopolitical interests. We focus on the structure of the tribunal and its exceptional nature within international law, examining the extent to which the STL’s so-called unique features and the process through which it emerged expose its role in representing the interests of regional and global geopolitical actors, effectively internationalizing both the prosecution of the assassination and the issue of Hezbollah’s disarmament within the discourse of the ‘war on terror’. We also take up the question of Lebanese sovereignty and the extent to which the STL shifts between challenging and altogether disregarding this issue in a manner not unusual in the context of historical trends within international law justifying the colonial tendencies of great powers. We contextualize the STL within broader trajectories in international law, with specific reference to Carl Schmitt’s ‘challenge of imperial conquest and land acquisition’, such as exceptionalism and the colonial genealogy of international law. We then discuss the extent to which the STL enunciates the geopolitical interests of powerful regional and global actors, unpacking the so-called unique features of the STL that reflect its exceptional character. Throughout our analysis, we argue that the STL and its manifestation of contemporary discourses of insecurity play a highly significant role in the international disregard for Lebanese sovereignty and the delegitimization of most domestic political actors, including Hezbollah.