Simon Dalby

Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference, and Dissent

In the 1980s international relations theory has been undergoing a major methodological and theoretical debate which has challenged much of the recent disciplinary orthodoxy. This has been inspired by the introduction of contemporary critical social theory and poststructuralist themes into international relations by a new generation of practitioners. Given the close intellectual proximity of international relations to political geographys concerns with geopolitics, these current debates are of great relevance to any attempt to retheorise global politics from the perspective of political geography. Although the recent revival of interest in political geography has led to a considerable interest in rethinking the historiography of the subdiscipline and to reevaluating its tainted past, the necessary accompanying theoretical rethinking has not progressed in a similar fashion. The theoretical issues discussed in the contemporary international relations literature have much to offer political geographers in pursuing this important task.

The geopolitics reader

Introduction: Thinking Critically About Geopolitics 1. Imperialist Geopolitics 2. Cold War Geopolitics 3. Twenty First Century Geopolitics 4. The Geopolitics of Global Dangers 5. Anti-Geopolitics

After the Anthropocene Politics and geographic inquiry for a new epoch

Crutzen and Stoermer’s (2000) naming of the ‘Anthropocene’ has provoked lively debate across the physical and social sciences, but, while the term is gradually gaining acceptance as the signifier of the current geological epoch, it remains little more than a roughly defined place-holder for an era characterized by environmental and social uncertainty. The term invites deeper considerations of its meaning, significance, and consequences for thought and politics. For this Forum, we invited five scholars to reflect on how the Anthropocene poses challenges to the structures and habits of geography, politics, and their guiding concepts. The resulting essays piece together an agenda for geographic thought – and political engagement – in this emerging epoch. Collectively, they suggest that geography, as a discipline, is particularly well suited to address the conceptual challenges presented by the Anthropocene.

Gender and Critical Geopolitics; Reading Security Discourse in the New World Disorder

In the early 1990s a new generation of scholars has tackled matters of feminist perspectives on war, peace, and specifically the academic discipline of international relations. A similar confrontation between traditional scholarly themes and gender-sensitive analyses within critical geopolitics is now obviously necessary. Although authors such as Cynthia Enloc have written about global politics and the role of women in international relations in ways that are sensitive to the geographic dimension, many theoretical and practical implications of a gender-sensitive approach to geopolitics remain to be worked out. In this paper I argue that, among other issues, investigating the gendered assumptions in the study of international relations and foreign policy-making, in addition to more explicitly geopolitical reasoning, shows how political spatialisations render women vulnerable. In addition, examining the implications of militarised definitions of (territorial) citizenship, the use of masculinist notions of power, space, and security, and the representation of women in global conflicts, sheds light on the ‘taken-for-granted’ spatial aspects of the routine operation of power. By enlarging the scope of critical geopolitical analysis, greater attention to gender issues enhances the explanatory power of ‘big picture’ political geography, not least by focusing on the practical everyday implications of geopolitics for those who are so often written out of its scripts.

Calling 911: geopolitics, security and America's new war

The events of 11 September and their aftermath led rapidly to a military response by American forces in Afghanistan. The assumption that a state of war existed was widespread and quickly became official policy, but events might have been interpreted differently. Geopolitical reasoning was crucial to the specification of matters in terms of warfare. Three major assumptions were widely prevalent in the public discussions in the United States. First was that matters could only be understood as war, second that the primary axis of conflict was directly between America and terrorism and third that detailed investigation was unnecessary as the facts of the airliner impacts spoke obviously and said that this was an attack on America. Unpacking these assumptions shows that they are not necessarily obvious and that other geographical specifications of current geopolitical realities might lead to very different conclusions. An understanding of imperial power in particular suggests both a different geography and how assumptions of autonomous states and territorial responsibilities foreclosed other possible understandings and actions.

American security discourse: the persistence of geopolitics

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between geopolitics and security in post Second World War American political discourse. Geopolitics is one of four security discourses (the others being sovietology, strategy and the realist approach in international relations) which American ‘security intellectuals’ have drawn on in constructing the ‘Soviet threat’, Americas predominant ‘Other’ in the last four decades. The ‘Soviet threat’ is the rationale used in the US foreign policy of containment militarism designed ultimately to ensure US national security. Using a formulation of geopolitics in terms of discourse this paper widens the conventional understanding of geopolitics to show how geopolitical conceptions operate ideologically. Focusing on the practices of the discourses of security shows that a broader understanding of geopolitics in terms of discourse reveals a persistence of geopolitical thinking in US discussions of security. A final section briefly suggests how the concept of security can be reformulated and outlines the role of a critical geopolitics in revealing how geopolitical discourse operates.

Imperialism, Domination, Culture: The Continued Relevance of Critical Geopolitics

Twenty years ago Gearóid Ó Tuathail called for an approach within Political Geography that made geopolitical culture and the formulation of foreign policy the object of analysis. He specified the task of what subsequently became critical geopolitics as the need to expose the complicity of geopolitics with domination and imperialism. After the cold war there was a decade when military matters declined in importance and globalisation confused the geographical designations of danger. In the aftermath of 9/11 the utility of force has been reasserted by a neo-Reaganite American foreign policy using military force in the global war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. Now the geopolitical culture is a matter of debates about empire and the appropriate geopolitical designation of danger, whether in Thomas Barnetts non integrated gap on “the Pentagons New Map” or in the complex geographies of Alain Joxes “Empire of Disorder”. This re-militarisation of global politics clearly suggests the continued relevance of Ó Tuathails specification of the need for critical geopolitics to grapple with the culture that produces imperial attempts at domination in distant places.

Framing the Anthropocene: The good, the bad and the ugly

The Anthropocene has become a key theme in contemporary speculations about the meaning of the present and the possibilities for the future. While ecomodernists argue that current circumstances present opportunities and possibilities for a thriving future for humanity, a ‘good Anthropocene’, critics suggest that the future will be bad for at least most of humanity as we accelerate the sixth extinction event on the planet. The geopolitics of all this, which may be very ugly in coming decades, requires much further elucidation of the common Anthropocene tropes currently in circulation. As with the classic Western movie, in the search for the gold neither ‘the good’ nor ‘the bad’ have the whole story; ‘the ugly’ will probably turn out to be decisive in determining how things play out. How the Anthropocene is interpreted, and who gets to invoke which framing of the new human age, matters greatly both for the planet and for particular parts of humanity. All of which is now a key theme in the discussions of political ecology that requires careful evaluation of both how geology has recently become so important in global politics, and in discussions of humanity’s future, and how scholars from various disciplines might now usefully contribute to the discussion.

The ‘Kiwi disease’: geopolitical discourse in Aotearoa/New Zealand and the South Pacific

Abstract In the middle years of the 1980s New Zealand/Aotearoa became the center of attention in a dispute over nuclear deterrence and membership in the western alliance system. The Labour government instituted a ban on visits to its ports by nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships. The high-profile dispute engaged government officials, peace activists and academics in an extended discussion of geopolitics and security policy. At least four distinct ‘geographs’ were in play in these discussions; the conventional deterrence discourse of a bipolar geopolitical confrontation between the ‘West’ and the Soviet bloc, the anti-colonial discourse of the nuclear-free zone advocates, the regional nonnuclear security policy language of the Labour government, and a more radical feminist critique of patriarchal security formulations. Focusing on the geopolitical premises of these discourses is a useful way to examine what was at stake in the construction of cold war security discourse, and allows a critical insight to its continuing influence after the cold war.

Reading Rio, writing the world: The New York Times and the ‘Earth Summit’

Abstract Practical geopolitical reasoning structures many of the scripts of media coverage of international politics. This paper investigates the practical geopolitical reasoning in media coverage of one important episode in global environmental politics and North-South relations. Reading the New York Times′ coverage of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro extends critical geopolitical analysis beyond its normal focus on the spatializing tropes of geopolitics. The coverage focused on the US President and other political leaders, on matters of international geopolitical rivalry and used conventional ‘developmentalist’ tropes when discussing development issues. Notably absent from detailed reportage were matters of the ‘alternative summit’, the Global Forum, and the concerns of nongovernmental organizations and environmental organizations. The New York Times′ coverage of the summit effectively marginalized alternative possible interpretations. This scripting of the Earth Summit reinforced northern assumptions about the contemporary geopolitical order of modernity, despite the summits ostensible purpose of reshaping global politics.