Geopolitical Transition Research Articles

Redefining sustainable development in the context of transdisciplinary paradigm

The authors addressed the issue of defining sustainable development using a transdisciplinary approach, as well as systemic, process-oriented, and synergetic approaches. Sustainability must be analyzed and evaluated in the context of five crises and transitions: 1) geopolitical transition; 2) energy transition; 3) climate transition; 4) demographic and medical transition; 5) technological transition. In this sense, we introduce the concept of multiple crises to reconfigure, in a transdisciplinary manner, the three aspects of sustainable development: resilience, viability, and disaster/crisis. By understanding the dynamics of sustainability, we can identify the types of strategies and ongoing development that could be implemented through technology, science, education, state regulations, and entrepreneurship. The concept of sustainable development, formulated by the UN in the 1980s, is insufficient in providing a comprehensive solution for addressing more sustainable development and ecological issues. Therefore, the authors propose a new perspective and approach to the concept through the transdisciplinary paradigm.

Geopolinomic codes: Territorial and discursive practices of connectivity networks of political economy

AbstractAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the global power structure entered a period of geopolitical transition. An evolved vision in the twenty‐first century shows the arrival of the geopolinomic order based on the combination of economic, political and territorial codes. Geopolinomic codes, in synergy with the global political economy, regulate the territorial and infrastructural arrangement of the world order in periods of geopolitical transition between hegemonic and emerging powers. Spatialization of power politics requires going through a set of geopolitical representations and this adds a thin discursive layer to the territorial hegemonic order. I argue that the development of geopolinomic codes allows for a more significant infusion of political economy through the centrality of territorial communication networks. A country with more manoeuvring power in adjusting geopolinomic codes and its triple levels can change the balance of global power structures in its favour.

The urban planning transformation of Jaffa: pre and post-1948 perspectives

ABSTRACT The urban planning evolution of Jaffa has been significantly shaped by political dynamics and conflict. Before 1948, Jaffa exhibited a diverse population and a distinctive urban layout reflective of its unique character. The British and Arab vision of the time aimed to expand and modernize Jaffa's urban fabric; however, the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 led to a reevaluation of urban plans to accommodate a growing Jewish population and their vision for a modern city. Focusing on specific neighbourhoods, this article delves into the intricate interplay of social, political, and economic forces that have shaped Jaffa’s urban structure, planning strategies, and development outcomes. Through this examination, valuable insights emerge, shedding light on the role of planning in shaping the social fabric of cities navigating significant historical and geopolitical transitions. The article emphasizes the delicate balance between modernization imperatives and the preservation of cultural heritage, underscoring the significance of fostering social inclusion and pursuing equitable development.

Strategic Reorientation: Assessing the Geopolitical Transition from Asia-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific

Strategic Reorientation: Assessing the Geopolitical Transition from Asia-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific

The State of Philippine-Iran Bilateral Relations, Maximizing Values, Human Potentials and Shared History

The Philippines and Iran are two important players in the geopolitical transition of Asian and the Pacific region. The geopolitical values that these two countries held over many decades exposes them to rivalries and competition among regional and international powers. In some part of history, they became a closed ally to the United States, while regime change in Iran in the late 1970s had created some sort of difficulty for both countries to improve bilateral relations amidst normalization. This paper therefore seeks to investigate existing domestic and external factors that can help explain the underdeveloped state of their bilateral relations. In doing so, the paper advances the idea that although the Philippines and Iran are sovereign and independent countries, the course and direction of their relation since the post-1979 event was heavily affected by the US policy vis-à-vis the Philippines and Iran.

From craft to industry and back: transnational efforts in reconstructing tin’s social meaning to the retail consumer (1950s–1960s)

PurposeCommodity histories generally posit colonies’ roles as mere producers but have overlooked their roles in shaping global consumption. This study aims to investigate how Malayan tin producers and British colonial institutions used public relations and advertising strategies as entrepreneurial tools to fend off competition from substitutes amid global economic and geopolitical transitions during the height of the Cold War crisis and post-war boom in the 1950s and 1960s.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws on archival research of newspaper reports written in Singapore, the USA and Britain from the inter-war years until the 1960s. It also consults advertisements placed by the Malayan Tin Bureau on Time and Scientific American, data and views on tin scarcity by US congressional reports and commodity trends data published by the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of the Interior.FindingsThis paper demonstrates how the value of tin is recreated by manipulating its symbolic meanings and embedding them within the national and political contexts of the targeted consumer markets. This creative resistance against tin substitution was enacted through a transnational collaboration among colonial institutions, entrepreneurs in colonies and marketing strategists across geographies and territories.Research implicationsThis paper provokes further reflections on the importance of socially constructed meanings in shaping the market value of a product and the understanding of embedded political value systems in marketing generic commodities. Future research may adopt this perspective to reassess the framing of meanings of commodities in the contemporary setting, especially against rising concerns on the sustainability of mining natural resources, including minerals.OriginalityThis study integrates the perspectives of Malayan tin producers in reframing the meaning of a commodity and so, widens the scope of historical analyses of commodities beyond the industrialized global North. It reassesses how a commodity’s marketing value evolves and interacts with colonial politics. It also highlights the collaborative nature of colonial governments and local producers in developing new uses and representations of a generic commodity to create new markets for its consumption.

The relationality of geopolitical codes: the example of the Belt and Road Initiative

ABSTRACT The concept of the geopolitical code is a useful tool to understand the multi-faceted nature of a country’s foreign policy, the way in which global patterns of geopolitics are an aggregation of geopolitical codes, and moments of geopolitical transition from one pattern of codes to another. We address the nature of geopolitical codes through the lens of instrumental and associative power, and the geography of its modalities. Especially, we consider the combined logics of power expressed as economic networks and territorial sovereignty. To illustrate our argument, we briefly consider a number of regional responses to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The geopolitical codes of Russia, India, Japan, the European Union, and the United States are discussed. By considering the process of the relationality of geopolitical codes constructed in response to the BRI we see an intensification in relations and an increasing scope that suggests the BRI is driving an ongoing geopolitical transition that will usher in a new geopolitical world order.

Archaeology of Radiant Mediations

This essay explores cultural, environmental, material, and political testimonies of the Gleiwitz radio tower constructed in the 1930s near the border of Germany and Poland (today Gliwice). As the tallest wooden structure of its kind in Europe, the mast has over the last century witnessed several turbulent geopolitical transitions. Those, in turn, have systematically redressed its functions to serve various, often radically competing intentions: from spreading Nazi propaganda before and during World War II to jamming frequencies of West European radio stations during the communist era. Recently, the site has become subject to conspiracy theories related to 5G infrastructure allegedly installed on the mast’s no-longer-functional structure. Attending to the concept of pharmakon that pertains to inherently mixed properties of a medium, this essay traverses these diverse historical trajectories and explores a disparate range of reverberations, events, and effects that this radio mast and its unique material affordances have over time instigated not only across human but also other-than-human realms, scales, and temporalities. Understanding media as mediations, while drawing on the case of the Gleiwitz radio mast, I take an approach in which radio becomes an instance of radiant mediation and hence radiation. This move enables us to see radio as an event that is always-already implicated in and informed by a specific climate and its transformations: environmental, social, and geopolitical, to name but a few. Consequently, the article puts forth a reading of pharmakon as a highly relational and unstable phenomenon, never an intrinsic feature of a given medium or media infrastructure. Traversing the complex history of the Gleiwitz radio mast, the essay brings to the fore key moments during which this relational reading of pharmakon of interest here becomes particularly illuminated.

An Odd Assortment of Foreigners in Greenland: Towards the Political Implications of Arctic Travel during the Late Interwar Years

The interwar years, 1918-1939, saw an increase in both the number and variety of travelers headed to the Arctic. Employing new technologies that allowed the region to become more accessible, knowable, and visible to the globe, these ventures to the North both reflected and contributed to the widespread geopolitical, social, and economic shifts occurring during this period, laying the foundation for how the Arctic is understood and framed today. However, many of these travelers remain marginal or completely overlooked in discussions of the region. This paper argues that greater attention to the increasingly odd assortment of foreigners traveling to the Arctic between World War I and World War II can offer a more nuanced understanding of both the geopolitical transitions underway in the region during this period and the broader political implications of travel. As an initial investigation of this ongoing research topic, this paper concentrates on three of the slowly increasing number of travelers with direct or close ties to the United States who ventured to Greenland in the late interwar years. It focuses on the travels of American artist Rockwell Kent, wealthy California socialite and amateur scientist Louise A. Boyd, and the Hollywood-sponsored filming expedition of German filmmaker Arnold Fanck, who all traveled to Greenland between 1931-1932. Approached not as singular endeavors but as part of the changing complex of Arctic expedition and travel, this paper argues that attention to these travelers provides greater insight into shifts in colonial policy, increasing cooperation between states, and the upsurge in global interest in the island, as well as the shifting relations between Denmark, the US, and Greenland. It also raises issues about the changing relationship between politics, science, and art.

Port power: Towards a new geopolitical world order

Though ports may appear to play a primarily economic role at a local scale, they also are important in global and geopolitical processes. Ports connect the two geographical realms of land and sea as geographic sites with the dual roles of economic gateways and nodes of geostrategic projection. Processes of port urbanization occur within, and are a component of, the dynamic of geopolitical world transitions and orders. A port power is a country that is dominant in eight metrics of port construction, management and control that combine to make it both a major player in the seas, especially maritime transport and naval capability, and with access to the Eurasian landmass. The current moment of geopolitical transition can be understood by considering shifts in port power. The twenty-first century global geopolitical order will be dominated by the country that is the dominant port power and China is currently positioned to take that role.

Electromobility in the automotive industry : A technological and geopolitical shift

At the beginning of 2021, the very worrying shortage of Taiwanese semiconductors from TSMC and UMC for the industrial sector, and in particular the automotive sector, highlighted the crucial role of these electronic components. If we tend to consider automobiles as a chassis-engine assembly, the 1990s introduced on-board electronics as a series for reasons of safety, electro-mechanical management and comfort. This interdependence between raw materials and data has become particularly crucial in electromobility, because it manifests itself in the midst of the industrial transition of the automotive sector, which is also in geopolitical transition from West (Atlantic zone) to East (Pacific zone). The countries that hold the systemic approach will be the masters of the mobility of the future.

Socio-economic and Geo-political Transitions in the Mediterranean Basin and Its Impact on Urban Forms of Port Cities

In the last decades, the Mediterranean region is experiencing economic, social, and spatial changes in its structures. Today, cities are experiencing an increasing number of complex problems regarding internal and external connections, reflecting on the city structural realm. The physical transformation of territories in general and cities in particular are associated with external trends, such as migration, post-colonization affects, social changes, economic, and political activities. The paper concludes how coastlines act as an interface between internal and external transitions of the Mediterranean region, and highlights those territories as important defensive lines which could embrace the Mediterranean challenges. The attitude of coastlines as a system basis of cities can find a compelling rationale as well as a cohesive meaning of recovering its major role in embracing complex external and internal relations, which result in the formation of a strong and coherent urban system to cope with constant transitions of the region.

Parallax Visions of the Belt and Road Initiative

Parallax Visions of the Belt and Road Initiative Jonathan Fulton (bio) Daniel Markey's China's Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia offers an important, original, and timely analysis of one of our time's most significant geopolitical transitions, as the People's Republic of China (PRC) evolves from an East Asian power to a global power. It is the type of comprehensive book that many would shy away from given its vast territorial coverage, and Markey should be commended for his ambitious undertaking. The result is an informed and engaging work that analyzes China's foreign policy as well as those of several states across South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. As China's interests and influence spreads, we need a clearer picture of the PRC's foreign policy objectives, and to understand the PRC in the Xi Jinping era, we have to start with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The second chapter, "Beijing's Global Aspirations," capably articulates the motivations of Chinese policymakers in developing BRI, putting it in the context of a foreign policy that has grown increasingly confident and ambitious. Perhaps the most important contribution of Markey's book is its emphasis on the agency of countries partnering with China in BRI projects—a part of the BRI story that is sometimes neglected. In nearly every bilateral relationship, excepting only the Sino-U.S. relationship, China's economic leverage creates asymmetry that contributes to a sense of the PRC marching toward dominance while taking advantage of weaker states' needs for development loans and FDI. China's emergence as a funding source represents a challenge to the liberal Western model, which has become increasingly irrelevant to many countries' infrastructure projects. David Dollar, formerly of the World Bank, has compared the Western model's limitations when measured against BRI: Only about 30 percent of World Bank lending is for infrastructure these days. Having run the largest infrastructure program in the World Bank, I can say that it's extraordinarily bureaucratic. Mostly, clients don't like to come the World Bank because it's just too time consuming. It takes many, many years to get things going. China is offering to finance infrastructure, not at highly concessional terms, at what we would generally call commercial terms, but frankly at interest rates that most of [End Page 146] these countries could not get from any other lender, unless they jumped through the hoops to go with the World Bank.1 The English-language narrative about BRI is often dangerously simplistic: China is using its economic might to overturn the liberal order through massive loans and infrastructure projects primarily designed to strengthen its own economy. Developed by Chinese state-owned enterprises, monitored by Chinese technology, and staffed with Chinese labor, the result is environmental degradation, the spread of an illiberal surveillance state model, unfair labor practices, and crippling debt. Partnering countries accept these adversities as the price of doing business with China. The implication is that with relatively little practical experience in dealing with the PRC, these smaller states do not know what they are getting themselves into. However, this perspective reflects a Western view of BRI in general, and a U.S. view in particular. China's Western Horizon illuminates how this process looks from the perspective of Eurasian countries working with China, explaining the motivations to forge closer ties and take on these loans and providing a more nuanced approach to BRI than we normally get from great-power competition analysis. An important theme throughout the book is that elites in partner countries adopt a logic reflecting pressures at the domestic or regional level. The chapter on South Asia offers the best illustration—not surprising given Markey's background in the region. The book begins with an interview with former Pakistani prime minister Pervez Musharraf discussing Gwadar port, the anchor of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): "'Yes, Gwadar was entirely my idea, not a Chinese idea. I was concerned only about Pakistan's strategic interests'" (p. vii). This is an important but underreported aspect of BRI—local projects in need of funding are often folded into BRI cooperation. In Oman, for example...

Cyberwar as a Phenomenon of Asymmetric Threat and Cyber-Nuclear Security Threats

The work deals with the topic of cyberwar as a phenomenon of asymmetric threat and cyber-nuclear security threats in modern world politics, potential threats to international politics and global security issues, counter-terrorism policies are discussed. The paper discusses the challenges facing cyber security worldwide and the phenomenon of cyber security against the backdrop of asymmetric threats. Cyberspace has already become a weapon of infinite capacity for the whole world. It has generated positive effect as well as has become the area of evil for terrorists, which are actively using modern technologies, computer systems. The facts are many and we are often in the center of events. With the development of technology in the 21st century, global changes are taking place in international security, the geopolitical transition and new threats and challenges, and international security issues are becoming increasingly important. The international security system is vulnerable to challenges such as the use of weapons of mass destruction and cyber terrorism. The article discusses the dangers and problems of hybrid warfare in international security, as well as the Russian-Georgian hybrid warfare.
 Keywords: Cyberwar, asymmetric threat, hackers, attack, hybrid war, Russia-Georgia, NATO, EU, nuclear terrorism, nuclear security

On the Ethics of Algorithmic Intelligence

On the Ethics of Algorithmic Intelligence Roberto Simanowski (bio) Translated by Michel Brodmer and Jefferson Chase "perhaps the new intelligence will worship its creators, perhaps it will keep us as pets, or perhaps it will erase us. We simply don't know. What is certain is that if my arguments are correct we will lose control over evolution" (Gumbrecht 2018, 227). Those are the words of 21-yearold Sam Ginn, a student of computer science and comparative literature at Stanford University, who has set himself the task of inventing an artificial consciousness that understands its own existence in the world. His rather pessimistic assertion about what might result if he succeeds is contained in Weltgeist im Silicon Valley, a book by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, a professor of comparative literature at Stanford. The Weltgeist, or world-spirit, that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel saw embodied in 1806 by Napoleon riding through the university town of Jena, after defeating German troops, lives on 200 years later in California. The geopolitical transition from Central Europe to the American West Coast is simultaneously a change from the political to the scientific. The future no longer rests with politics or even the philosophy of Plato's Republic. It rests with science, as in Francis Bacon's Nova Atlantis, or more precisely, with computer science. We no longer have people like Napoleon revolutionizing their times with military campaigns or a Code civil. Instead it's people like Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg who, every day, with every new piece of data, increasingly determine the future we're rushing toward. Politicians are completely satisfied with this transition of power. If in times of post-political consensus all that matters is the administration of the established order, what they expect from progress [End Page 423] is above all more effective forms of such administration. It is thus hardly surprising that those in power embrace the digital revolution, or at least refrain from expressing any doubts or passing any laws when business demands that everything be bet "on a single card, the digital one"—as the president of Bitkom, Germany's Association for IT, Telecommunications, and New Media, said in the summer of 2017. The business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) even campaigned in the 2017 German election with the slogan "Digital first, doubts second" (Digital first, Bedenken second). This sort of optimism vis-à-vis the future has complete faith in science. As Theresa May told the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2018: "Imagine a world in which self-driving cars radically reduce the number of deaths on our roads. Imagine a world where remote monitoring and inspection of critical infrastructure make dangerous jobs safer. Imagine a world where we can predict and prevent the spread of diseases around the globe" (May 2018). True believers justify their confidence with numbers. May said: "We have seen a new AI start-up created in the UK every week for the last three years. And we are investing in the skills these start-ups need, spending £45 million to support additional PhDs in AI and related disciplines." This is completely in keeping with the myopia of the post-political dogma that the future will be determined not by societal discussions but by quantifiable investments and innovations. But to what extent does the future truly reside in the hands of the science and start-ups May praises so fulsomely? Do scientists and entrepreneurs consciously decide, after possibly discussing the consequences, which inventions they will produce and support? Do they have the power to tell society how scientific achievements like splitting the atom or decoding DNA will be used? Do they abide by social imperatives not to engage in research whose consequences cannot be anticipated or controlled? Or would they seek out a society with other moral standards and legal regulations—perhaps on an artificial extraterritorial island financed by venture capitalist Peter Thiel's Seasteading Institute? And what should we think of the fact that in the case of artificial intelligence, the threat of unforeseen consequences [End Page 424] is no longer restricted to irresponsible usage of the invention, but includes the prospect that the invention might keep its inventors as pets instead of...

Geopolitical Transition of the European Body in Ukraine

The article studies the emergence of the transgender phenomenon within LGB activism in contemporary Ukraine in relation to an ongoing geopolitical process of Europeanisation, which involves negotiations over the country’s belonging to Europe. The article is based on PhD research (2013–2018) and has borrowed from governmentality studies and also from literature about the Europeanisation process. It pays particular attention to the instrumentalisation of sexual diversity and the transfer of ideas from Western to Eastern Europe. Using data from field research, the article brings to light the discrepancies between the globalised frameworks for LGBT activism and localised meanings and practices.

South East Asian Area Studies beyond Anglo-America: geopolitical transitions, the neoliberal academy and spatialized regimes of knowledge

ABSTRACTCritical theorists and scholars in Asian cultural studies have challenged the political legitimacy and analytical validity of the cross-disciplinary enterprise of Area Studies. Area Studies has been critiqued as emerging from and reflecting imperialist and Cold War-era political agendas; as being overly empirical and disinterested in or even resistant to critical theoretical methods; and as being an outdated form of knowledge that reflects a pre-globalization era defined by the geopolitics of the nation state. I challenge these three criticisms of Area Studies in light of the fact that, contrary to predictions, spatiality has not been erased but rather has been reformulated in the context of globalization. Critiques of Area Studies fail to address dramatic changes in global knowledge production underway as a result of the geopolitical rise of East, South East and South Asia, and overlook the ways the neoliberal re-disciplining of the academy is entrenching Eurocentric forms of knowledge. I argue for the validity and importance of a theoretically engaged project of critical Area Studies in an era when neoliberal managerialism and metrification of research and teaching are casting a conservative pall over the international academy by intensifying the spatialization of knowledge under early twenty-first-century globalization.

A Migration Crisis or the Crisis of the European Union?

Drawing on the works of Russian and foreign scholars and using my own experience of communication with the EU migrants in the run of my long-term stay in Europe, I came to the following conclusions. Modern migration crisis should be analyzed within the frames of a current geopolitical transition conditioned by the Fourth Scientific and Technological Revolution (hereafter, the STR-4), by the dynamics of the EC political structure, ethno-confessional conflicts as well as by the wars far behind the EU, that is I consider this crisis as a moment of global geopolitical dynamics. In particular, mass migration to the EU from the Near East and Africa during last 5–7 years represents a geopolitical ‘echo’ of former European politics in that part of the world coupled with new opportunities produced by the STR-4. Actually, the EU migration politics is a politics of a’ soft colonialism’ burdened by international and local ethno-confessional conflicts. Then, the migration and following adaptation to a new sociocultural environment are always two-ways processes. The migration crisis has various scales: transcontinental, all-European, and ca particular country ones coupled with growing disagreements and conflicts inside the EU as well as between it and the US. The politics of all-European unity and allembracing tolerance failed and it has been replaced by the political principle ‘everybody each on his own.’ Current migration crisis has confirmed the U. Beck’s thesis that we are living in a society of the ‘sideeffects’, that is of the side-effects of decisions taken earlier. The main source of the above crisis is rooted inside the EU i.e. it’s the struggle for the deficit resources and geopolitical domination of the Brussels over the rest member-states as well as between them because their interests are permanently evolving.

CANCELLATION OF THE TREATY OF 1987 ON THE ERADICATION OF INTERMEDIATE AND SHORTER-RANGE MISSILES AND ITS IMPACT ON PAN-REGIONAL SECURITY IN AEGIS OF THE ‘THREE SEAS’ AREA (BALTIC, ADRIATIC-BLACK SEA SPACE)

The issue of the international security has become more pressing actual in 21st century due to the appearance of new dangers and challenges in the modern world, which were not typical for the previous century. On the background of geopolitical transition, the role of strategic offensive arms and weapons of mass destruction has become more important. In the modern world, it is important to maintain strategic parity on arms when global challenges pose a serious threat to all humanity. In this paper, we discussed the reasons for the cancellation of the Treaty on the Elimination of intermediate-range and short-range missiles of 1987 and the dangers that are threatening the world. The USA and Russia have officially announced that they are starting modernizing and producing ballistic missiles and what is more important, their policies are forcing other countries to produce similar arms. The paper focuses on the security environment of the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Sea regions, the dangers that resulted from the cancellation of the abovementioned agreement. The Politics of Strategic Bullying in the Bipolar Era, the “Cold War” phenomenon and geopolitical processes of New Cold War is also discussed in this paper. Also, discussing the role of strategic offensive arms and defining NATO's role in ensuring international security has an important place in this paper.

Mobility and regionalisation: Changing patterns of air traffic in the Baltic Sea region in connection to European integration

The geo-political transition in 1989-91 had long term consequences for the European integration process. The integration and regionalisation processes following the transition resulted in a transformation of territorial borders in and around the region; the functions of the borders changed. Mobility is vital for these processes. This paper is based on a longitudinal study of the development of air traffic from airports in the eastern part of the Baltic Sea Region, 2000-2012. The purpose of the paper is to discuss how the development of infrastructure and transport networks influence regionalisation processes in the Baltic Sea Region. Firstly, the impact of macro-economic development as a driver of internationalisation in the region is analysed, thereafter the relationship between institutional transition and regional system development. There are three periods of large increase in traffic from the Baltic States towards Western Europe, related to institutional change: rapidly after independence, as a result of the enlargement of the European Union, and related to the emergence of low-cost aviation. Aviation from Minsk and Kaliningrad have also shown substantial increase in air traffic, but mainly to other parts of the former Soviet Union. There is thus little evidence of a regionalisation process involving the whole region.