Geopolitical Thinking Research Articles

Military Alliances of the Great Powers

While global geopolitics has undergone a massive transformation since the end of the Cold War, the importance of formal military alliances remains central to the U.S. and its allies. NATO’s expansion and strengthening and the formation of AUKUS, I2U2, QUAD, Squad, etc. manifest unchanged geopolitical thinking and strategy.

Aquinas and the Geopolitical Thinking of Pope Francis

This scientific article explores the notion of a Christian geopolitics and its compatibility with realpolitik and international relations. The analysis delves into the perspectives of Pope Francis, John Mearsheimer, and Catholic social thought principles to examine the moral implications of geopolitical strategies. Mearsheimer’s bait and bleed strategy in Ukraine is critiqued for its callousness and disregard for human life, while Francis’s emphasis on personal and social reform highlights the importance of ethics and the universal destination of goods. The article questions whether Christians can engage in realpolitik strategies that perpetuate poverty and violate the principles of human dignity and mercy. It further considers the implications for Catholic leaders in government and military roles, particularly in the context of upcoming U.S. presidential contenders. The analysis ultimately challenges the notion that a Christian geopolitics is a category mistake, advocating for a higher moral road in international relations.

Theorising Belle Époque Rio de Janeiro through Opium: João do Rio’s “Visões d’ópio” as a Postcolonial Framework

In 1905, Brazilian writer João do Rio published the crônica “Visões d’ópio” (Visions of opium), an account of his forays into the Chinese opium dens of Rio de Janeiro. While opium is often emblematic of both Parisian cosmopolitanism and exotic Orientalism in fin-de-siècle literature, I argue that the drug is less a replication of these coordinates in Brazil than a method of geopolitical thinking. Drawing from opium’s extractive history in China and its versatility as a material thing – plant, commodity, drug, alkaloid – I argue that opium as theory and praxis not only reconfigures the writer’s experience of Rio, but also makes stark the strategies behind and costs of Brazil’s colonial formation. While opium sustains a desire for modernity through its exotic and cosmopolitan imaginaries, its destabilising effects on the body disrupt fantasies of colonial amalgamation, exposing histories of extraction and racialised labour implicit in the drug’s circulation. Through an analysis that bridges empirical and new materialisms – and from a Chinese geographical axis that puts Brazil into a transnational dialogue beyond Europe – opium becomes a medium for thinking through Brazil’s colonial roots and its place in the world among other nation-states during a period of transition from empire to republic.

The EU at a Strategic Crossroads: A Geopolitical Player in Great Power Games?

The current shifts in the post-Cold War international order are bringing the attention to notions of great power competition, demonstrating once again the geopolitical significance of Europe and Asia for global politics. This article applies concepts from the classical geopolitical thinking of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman as an ‘optic tool’ for analysing current global events and for considering the European Union’s (EU’s) strategic direction in light of the interests of the United States, Russia, and China in Europe’s wider region. With the American post-Cold War global preponderance steadily waning and the rising challenges from the east in the face of Russia and China, the EU finds itself in a position that requires the redefinition of its geopolitical identity and strategic pursuit of its own interests. A look through the classical geopolitical concepts of the Heartland and the Rimland reveals that the EU is an extraordinary player in geopolitics as it has the potential to determine (1) access to the Eurasian Heartland via its influence over Eastern Europe and (2) control of the maritime Rimland by virtue of its geography, alliances, and its potential participation in Beijing’s New Silk Road initiative. These findings are discussed by considering the EU’s potential foreign policy directions vis-à-vis the US, Russia, and China. European Union, United States, Russia, China, Eurasia, Geopolitical theory, Foreign policy, Grand strategy, Strategic Autonomy

ГЕОПОЛИТИЧЕСКИЙ ПОВОРОТ ЕВРОПЕЙСКОГО СОЮЗА: КОНЦЕПТУАЛЬНАЯ РЕВОЛЮЦИЯ ИЛИ ПРОДОЛЖЕНИЕ ТРАДИЦИИ?

The article focuses on the recent geopolitical turn in the EU policy. Conceptually it presupposes the introduction of two notions into the official discourse of Brussels – strategic sovereignty and strategic autonomy. This move caused ambivalent response: traditionally the EU denied geopolitical thinking, sovereignty and balance of power. Moreover, the very identity of the project was based on explicit opposition to those notions. The purpose of the article is to show that there is no contradiction between these two poles. Through the prism of critical geopolitics, the author studies the key EU foreign policy texts and reveals that the normative universalism of Brussels has always been expressed through a certain vision of political geography, namely, the spatially-temporal symbolic mapping. It contains three components. First, the metaphor of a «path» or a «way» that structures reality by placing phenomena and events one after another. Secondly, the model, which turns this path into an ideological vector. The EU presents itself as a model in the official discourse. Thirdly, the European Union places different countries and entire regions along this normative route. Geopolitical concepts of strategic sovereignty and autonomy do not contradict this pattern, but rather continue it at a new stage.

La evolución del imaginario geopolítico de Brasil

The following article proposes a critical analysis on the constitution of the Brazilian geopolitical imagery, stretching from the time of Brazil’s independence to the beginning of the 21st century. More specifically, the text recognises the impact of the country’s colonial past on Brazil’s prevalent geopolitical thinking. That, along with the significance of certain geopolitical thinkers, theoretical approaches and specific socio-political contexts, would explain why factors such as the need to have a state-led plan that promotes integration in furtherance of progress, and Brazil’s hegemonic overreach at the regional and global levels, have been historically dominant in the Brazilian geopolitical vision. Similarly, it is argued that the concern to achieve an effective unification of the national territory, by means of carrying out projects to populate the Amazon, featured predominantly in the geopolitical strategies of Brazilian leaders. These strategies brought about effects visible within and beyond Brazil’s borders, the latter as regional integration initiatives.

Geopolitical Thinking behind the US Policy-Making toward China and the Diplomatic Choice of Japan

The roots of US policy toward China are laid in the geopolitical thinking mode of its strategic culture. This mode of thinking first originated in Britain and later evolved into geopolitics. Bearing such thoughts, the United States sees China as a country at the southeastern rim of the Eurasian continent, and the rise of China is a threat to its dominance as a maritime state in the Eurasian continent. No matter the rotation of governing parties in the United States, containing the development of China is not merely an expedient for electoral politics but an inevitable choice for maritime states to contain continental states and an objectively necessary national security strategy aimed at retaining the global hegemony of the United States. As China further develops, such intention will become more and more apparent. In order to achieve the goal of slowing down China’s development pace and maintaining US’s political dominance over Eurasia, it seems that the United States has to build a maritime alliance system. The alliance between Japan and the United States will be further strengthened since Japan is a strategic pivot of this system. However, Japan’s perception of interests and strategic thinking are not fully aligned with those of the United States, and as a result, Japan will choose strategies with a certain degree of autonomy, thus eventually limiting the implementation of US’s geopolitical strategies. From the viewpoints of power transfer, geopolitics and ideology for the confrontation between maritime and continental states, this paper focuses on the limitations of the geopolitical thinking behind US’s policy-making toward China and the relatively autonomous strategy of Japan to analyze the status quo and underlying trends of China–US–Japan relations.

STUDYING OF THE GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES IN THE UPDATED CONTENT OF SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY

This article examines the essence of geopolitics as a science and its importance for improving the educational level of learners in the context of geographic education. There are many definitions and interpretations of this concept, the essence of which is as follows: geopolitics is a science, a system of knowledge about the control over space (territory). It also analyzes the origins and modernity of geopolitical thoughts, the views of researchers and thinkers on this field of ​​science. As we know, over the past four years, the educational process of schools in Kazakhstan is focused on the updated program. It was revealed that the updated content makes changes, in particular, in the main areas of activity of the content of secondary education, the content of the subject, methods of assessment and is manifested in the principle of the spirality of the school program. The main task of updating the content is not only to instill in students theoretical knowledge, but also to teach them how to apply the acquired knowledge in practice. At the same time, this work focuses on the significance of the formation of pupils' geopolitical thinking, which is formed on the basis of systematized specific scientific knowledge through a theoretical, conceptual understanding of the relationship between the political activity of society and geospace, its results - geopolitical phenomena. Taking this into account, in this article the authors try to analyze the state of geographic education in the context of the updated content of education, and also to characterize the process of studying geopolitics in geography from the seventh to eleventh grades.

The foundation and development of International Relations in Brazil

AbstractThis article aims to contribute to the critical understanding of how International Relations (IR) was built as a social science field within Brazil's modern project. I argue that the foundation and the development of IR in Brazil in the twentieth century is closely associated with foreign policy, on the one hand, and with the national geopolitical thinking, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War, on the other. In its trajectory, Brazil's IR has been influenced, among others, by the analysis of domestic and systemic determinants of foreign policy, historical interpretations, the study of the components of state power, studies of diplomacy and its contribution to the country's development, the analysis of decision-making processes and to a lesser extent, cognitive approaches. This article is organised around three sections. First, I present a brief history of the geopolitical tradition in Brazil's IR. Second, I discuss IR development in Brazil, stressing the role of diplomats, the key contribution of intellectuals coming from social and human sciences, and finally the emergence of the first generations of IR scholars in the eighties. Third, I analyse the institutionalisation of the field, its quantitative and qualitative growth, presenting some data on its organisation in recent times.

Geopolitics on the ‘Other Side’: Counterpart’s Imaginary of a World System after the Virus

ABSTRACT Drawing on analytic frameworks from feminist IR’s interrogation of fear in geopolitics and approaches rooted in the popular culture-world politics (PCWP) continuum, this article examines the ways in which the television series Counterpart (STARZ, 2017–2019) presaged a world defined by a novel form of ideological xenophobia and apolitical anthropophobia at the global level. As a premier example of immersive geopolitical television, the series examines diplomacy, biopolitics, and everyday attitudes to international relations via a screened imaginary that very much resembles our so-called ‘real world’ in the midst of the COVID–19 pandemic, while also auguring the likely reality to come. As I argue, our ‘new normal’ parallels many of the ‘other-worldly’ geopolitical codes and visions presented in Counterpart, thus explaining renewed interest in the series since early 2020. Focusing on the policing of bodies and borders in the time of COVID–19, I examine the series’ discursive and visual world-building against various ‘real-world’ governmental and societal responses to the‘virus’. This is done through the lens of a new, global geopolitical thinking that is founded in the fear of (other) humans who are/might be (un)knowing carriers of the virus. Using Counterpartas tool to think with, I attempt to bind geopolitics – an imagined/imaginary system of power relations based on limits and control – to anxieties triggered by the wide-ranging and uncontrollable flows of the novel coronavirus.

Геополитическая идентичность болгарской нации

The article considers the issues of the nature and conditions of the formation of the geopolitical identity of the Bulgarian nation. The author analyzes the specifics of geopolitical thinking in Bulgaria as a small state in South-Eastern Europe associated, on the one hand, with the approval of the “central”, “core” position of Bulgaria on the Balkan Peninsula, and with belonging to “Intermediate Europe” (“Wide South-Eastern Europe”) along with all other Balkan countries on the other hand. It has been shown that the fundamental Bulgarian geopolitical notions are not part of any clearly articulated doctrine, as was the case in neighboring Greece or Serbia, but are the result of a number of political events, due to which the modern Bulgarian national identity begins to take shape. First of all, we are talking about the firman of the Ottoman Sultan, according to which the Bulgarian Autocephalous Church – Exarchate was founded on March 11, 1870, and after that the draft about autonomous Bulgaria worked out at the Istanbul Conference of Ambassadors of the Great Powers (December 1876), and finally – San - Stefan Peace Treaty of 1878, which completed the formation of the national geopolitical ideal of "Greater Bulgaria."

PENSAMENTO MILITAR NO PROJETO BRASIL GRANDE POTÊNCIA

O pensamento militar brasileiro, em sua modalidade política e estratégica, está naorigem do projeto de modernização e desenvolvimento nacional. Desde o fim daGuerra do Paraguai e a introdução do positivismo na caserna, os militares colocamsediante da necessidade de se pensar o Brasil e sua vocação de se tornar umagrande potência. Nosso trabalho visa analisar as principais ideias e momentos emque as Forças Armadas, mas, principalmente, o Exército Brasileiro, chamaram parasi a responsabilidade de serem coadjuvantes ou protagonistas do processo políticode modernização. Para cumprir com o nosso objetivo, dividimos o trabalho em trêspartes. A primeira se propõe a analisar a criação de doutrinas de segurança e aconstrução do ideal de potência mundial; a segunda será uma investigação sobre opensamento geopolítico com foco em três militares: Mário Travassos, Meira Mattose Golbery do Couto e Silva; a terceira e derradeira parte versa acerca da participaçãodos militares diretamente na política governamental por meio do Regime Militar de1964-1985.

Soviet Military Strategy in Afghanistan: Errors in Planning and Public Condemnation

Referring to archival materials and historiography, the authors of this article examine the circumstances behind the development of principles regulating the presence of a limited contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan (1979–1989), its nature, and scope. It is concluded that Soviet military strategy in Afghanistan initially set itself limited goals and assumed limited obligations. It also used a narrow set of expert assessments, mainly those that fitted into the usual picture of a “cold” confrontation and the established paternalistic model of interaction with countries in the zone of the USSR’s ideological and political influence. The study shows that the Soviet state machine was largely focused on solving geopolitical problems, and the militarist directions of defence and law enforcement agencies and provided society with very limited information. The long-term consequences of the Afghanistan policy (especially internal and economic) at the time of the decision to send troops were practically not calculated, since the initial strategy was aimed at appeasing Afghanistan with the help of limited forces without active military operations. The contradictions between the geopolitical thinking of the Soviet leadership and the peculiarities of the Afghanistan military campaign, which did not fit into the expected strategy of full-scale military operations but at the same time immediately went beyond the “limited” impact, gives contemporaries a reason to deny the victory or defeat of the Soviet troops, but does not give them an opportunity to doubt the reality of hostilities and their negative impact on the relationship between the Soviet state and society.

ONE BELT ONE ROAD FROM THE GEOPOLITICAL POINT OF VIEW

Western geopolitical studies have evolved over a hundred years, forming a systematic and authoritative classical geopolitical theory, providing a set of thought models and epistemological frameworks related to geopolitics, that is, "Western geopolitical imagination." Affected by this, contemporary western geopolitical elites will have two kinds of habitual thinking when interpreting China’s “OBOR” Initiative: the first is the historical analogy, by comparing China with the rising powers in history; the second is the common sense, by imagining that China will imitate itself pursuit of expansion and hegemony. This article critiques the cognitive foundations of traditional western geopolitical theories, and points out that neither the “OBOR” Initiative pursues power and control, nor follow the “state-centrism” path, nor take the perspective of the “dichotomy” of land and sea confrontation. It is an attempt to transcend traditional geopolitical thinking.

Astropolitics: Yes, that is really a thing

The paper reviews the main approaches towards the study of the geopolitics of outer space and presents some main issues to be tackled in the future. Geopolitics, as an approach towards the analysis of international politics, generally discusses the impact of geography on the political processes. Throughout history, approaches to analyse the impact of different types of terrain or different types of environment (sea, air, land) on the conduct of political activity were developed. It was only in the 1990s when Everett Dolman applied the geopolitical approach to the outer space domain. Since then, many approaches to the issue were developed, and the stream known as astropolitics became an important stream of academic thought. The author analyses some physical characteristics necessary for the understanding of the domain's mechanisms and then presents some important streams of thought inside the geopolitical thinking. The analysis focuses on the issues of actorness, the relations between space powers, technological progress, the introduction of space weapons, utilisation of natural resources, and sustainability of space operations. The author concludes that with foreseeable technological progress in the future, the outer space domain will become more relevant for both academia and practitioners in their approach to international politics, requiring deeper understanding of how processes in this domain can impact political events and relations.

The Forward View: Austen Henry Layard and the Russo–Turkish War of 1877

As British Ambassador at Constantinople during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, Austen Henry Layard was the proverbial ‘man on the spot’: an emissary, on the fringes of empire, entrusted to defend Britain’s informal empire in the Near East. Layard’s forward thinking at that time, and some would say his Russophobia, was borne of travel, as well as some official duty, in the region and at the Foreign Office. He served what historians typically regard as a pusillanimous Foreign Secretary (the 15th Earl of Derby), but a more robust Prime Minister (Lord Beaconsfield), whose ideas about British strategic defence in the region, against an expanding Russian empire, he largely shared. Layard sketched his perception of Russia’s ambitions on a very broad front, stretching from the Balkan Peninsula to the frontiers of India. This paper explores Layard’s situation in Constantinople, his geo-political thinking, his views about Russian ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, and, most of all, his ideas about the duties of a statesman, relative to the defence of British interests in the Near East

Grundlagen rumänischen geopolitischen Denkens

This paper is dealing from an interdisciplinary point of view with the complex and complicatedissue of Romanian geopolitical thinking. The text is very synthetic and dealingwith various subjects, having in common the geopolitical potential, risks and possibilitiesof Romania as a nation state and as a member of various international organisations likeNato or the European Union. It is based on the works of Romanian and foreign authorsand applies a critical approach. Major issues are Romanian-Hungarian relations, neighbourhoodpolicies, the Black Sea Strategy and the growing role of Romania in structuresof collective defense. The study also highlights geo-economic aspects. Methodologicallythe article is following the line of discourse analysis, while some constructively criticaloriginal ideas are also formulated.

Russian geopolitical narratives from “geopolitics 101” to postmodern revisionism: Implications for the Baltic-Pontic Region

ABSTRACTRussia’s annexation of Ukrainian Crimea in 2014 and its covert aggression in the country’s eastern regions gave it tremendous preponderance in the Black Sea region as Ukrainian Naval Forces, headquartered before the crisis in Sevastopol, left the peninsular base. Its growing brinkmanship in the Baltic airspace and waters, just as the policy of multi-layered revisionism (historical, ethno-political, international-legal) pursued in the region, spurred fears among three Baltic states and their neighbours. Seen in conjunction with the Baltic states’ long-standing “Yaltaphobia”, these developments created a basis for reconsideration of Russia’s interests and motives in the Baltic Sea region. In an attempt to disentangle such interests, this article maps Russia’s manifold geopolitical narratives along a divide between classical and critical geopolitical thinking. It concludes that the Baltic-Pontic region, although featured in both strands of geopolitical thought, has a greater prominence in Russia’s revisionist agenda rather than in its prudential, geopolitical agenda.

Fitting theZeitgeist: Jewish Territorialism and Geopolitics, 1934–1960

This article demonstrates the connection between the ideology and activities of the Jewish Territorialist Movement and broader geopolitical trends and discourses during the late interwar and immediate post-war period. The Territorialists, active from 1934 within the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonisation, were representative of such contemporary trends and discourses, especially those connected to prevailing approaches to peoplehood, territory and space. The Freelanders relied on accepted notions and practices such as colonialism and colonisation, ‘whiteness’, race, biopolitics and agro-industrial science, as well as (empty) spaces and un(der)developed territories. The Territorialists’ alignment with geopolitics makes the movement's little studied history a relevant chapter in the larger story of Jewish political behaviour. Moreover, the continuities in Territorialism's aspired social engineering project help to problematise the notion of 1945 as a turning point in twentieth century geopolitical thinking.

Territorial Disputes and Nationalism: A Comparative Case Study of China and Vietnam

In autocracies, nationalism appears to have merged with geopolitical thinking. In light of this geopoliticisation of nationalism, it is surprising that the literature has paid virtually no attention to the role of territorial disputes as a conditioning factor. The present study seeks to further enhance the field by factoring in the role of territorial disputes in triggering different expressions of nationalism. It develops an analytical framework for typologies of nationalism according to four territorial disputes: China's dispute with Vietnam over maritime territory in the South China Sea, China's dispute with Japan over maritime territory in the East China Sea, Vietnam's dispute with Cambodia over territorial border demarcations, and Vietnam's dispute with China over maritime territory in the South China Sea. The respective disputes of China and Vietnam are analysed and tested against criteria of expressions of nationalism in autocracies. We find that territorial disputes and therefore external context are important conditioning factors of nationalism in autocracies.