European External Action provides a critical assessment of the practice of EU diplomacy in a key site of Africa-European relations and the global development industry - the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. It analyses how the EU positions itself through its newly established diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS), and how it is perceived as a collective geopolitical actor by its external cooperation partners. Going beyond existing studies on EU policy making in Brussels and African-European relations more generally, this book explores in a novel way the conduct of external relations and perceptions of the EU - abroad. Based on institutional ethnography within the EU Delegation in Nairobi and research affiliation with the University of Nairobi, as well as interviews with leading individuals of Kenyan-European interaction, it analyses the practices, processes and perceptions through which EU diplomacy is enacted and realised in a strategic node of global North-South relations. In light of the EU's claim as a key partner for developing countries and its ambition to be a major player in global politics, European External Action thereby speaks not only to wider debates on the EU's role as a global and development actor, but also provides new insights in the internal dynamics and the making of external agency in and through EU diplomacy.

Global Geopolitical Power and African Political and Economic Institutions: When Elephants Fight describes the emergence and nature of the prevailing African political and economic institutions in two periods. In the first, most countries adopted political and economic institutions that funneled significant levels of political and economic power to the political elites, usually through one- or no-party (military) political systems, inward-oriented development policies, and/ or state-led-and often state-owned-industrialization. In the second period, most countries adopted institutions that diluted the overarching political and economic power of ruling elites through the adoption of de jure multiparty electoral systems, more outward-oriented trade policies, and the privatization of many state owned or controlled sectors, though significant political and economic power remains in their hands. The choices made in each period were consistent with prevailing ideas on governance and development, the self-interests of political elites, and the perceived availability of support or autonomy vis-a-vis domestic, regional, and international sources of power at the time. This book illustrates how these two region-wide shifts in prevailing political and economic institutions and practices of Africa can be linked to two prior global geopolitical realignments: the end of WWII with the ensuing American and Soviet led bipolar system, and the end of the Cold War with American primacy. Each period featured changed or newly empowered international and regional leaders with competing national priorities within new intellectual and geopolitical climates, altering the opportunities and constraints for African leaders in instituting or maintaining particular political and economic institutions or practices. The economic and political institutions of Africa that emerged did so as a result of a complex mix of contending domestic, regional, and international forces (material and intellectual)-all which were themselves greatly transformed in the wake of these two global geopolitical realignments.

This book explores and maps the relationship between borders, security and global governance. Theoretically, the book seeks to establish to what degree, and in what ways, traditional notions of borders, security and (global) governance are being eroded, undermined and contested in the context of a globalising world. Borders are increasingly being re-conceptualised to account for connectivity as well as divisions at the same time as focus is shifting from permanence to permeability. The ambivalence ascribed to bordering processes is at heart a security concern; borders are not only entwined with state formation but are also attempts at governing securities, identities and histories. Proceeding from a critical rendering of statist conceptualisations of borders, security and governance, the book not only emphasises the politics of borders, mobility and re-locations, but also provides a shared groundwork for interrogating the spatial conditions for bordering and border work as manifestations of a continuously deferred becoming rather than being. A principal contribution of the volume is its scrutiny of how borders are enacted and perceived in and through the everyday, and of how such production and construal can make sense as acts of resistance to various forms of governing. Such a focus reveals the necessity of investigating how governing from afar affects the possibilities and tendencies to securitise as well as desecuritise, within as well as beyond elite settings. This book will be of much interest to students of border studies, human geography, governmentality, global governance and IR/critical security studies.

What can unfold from an engagement of feminist issues, concerns and practices with the geopolitical? How does feminism allow for a reconfiguration of how these two elements, the geo- and the -political, are understood and related? What kinds of objects can be located and put into motion? What kinds of relations can be drawn between these? What kinds of practice become valued? And, what is glossed or rendered absent in the process? In this thought-provoking and original contribution, Deborah P. Dixon cautions against the exhaustion of feminist geopolitics as a critique of both a classical and a critical geopolitics, and points instead to how feminist imaginaries of Self, Other and Earth allow for all manner of work to be undertaken. Importantly, one of the things they provide for is a reservoir of concerns, thoughts and practices that can be reappropriated to flesh out what a feminist geopolitics can be. While providing a much-needed, sustained interjection that draws out achievements to date, the book thus gestures forward to productive lines of inquiry and method. Grounded via a series of globally diverse case studies that traverse time as well as space, Feminist Geopolitics feels for the borders of geopolitical thought and practice by navigating four complex and corporeally-aware objects of analysis, namely flesh, bone, touch and abhorrence.

This book addresses the complex origins of the Ukrainian crisis. It places the crisis in a longer-term perspective and shows how the domestic political regime interpreted, balanced and eventually chose between the competing integration offers of Russia and the EU. It also explores the key implications for Ukraine's relations with the EU and Russia.

Over the last few years Asian governments have taken a stronger approach to the Arctic, culminating with permanent-observer status to the Arctic Council for China, India, Japan, Singapore and South-Korea in May 2013. This groundbreaking book brings together the latest research in emerging Asian interests for the Arctic region, and the implications thereof this change has for the future.This book covers Arctic shipping, fisheries and mineral extraction. It analyzes key Asian countries' policies, positions and activities. The book also demonstrates that there are common aspects which attract Asian countries to the Arctic, such as a concern for climate change, but there are also important national differences. From the Arctic Council to UNCLOS, Arctic governance mechanisms are thoroughly presented and analyzed.Contributed by scholars from both Asia - China, India, Japan, Singapore and South-Korea - as well as Arctic countries - Norway and USA, this book is an essential source of reference for both academics and government professionals, as well for the readers keen on understanding the dynamic change in the Arctic region.

First published in 1982. Wide-ranging and fully documented, this book is the first detailed study of the origins, contexts and consequences of the long-standing dispute between China, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines over the Paracel and Spratly Archipelagos in the South China Sea - one of the world's most strategically important inter-ocean basins and China's southern maritime frontier. Samuels' analysis: * Highlights the impact of the shifting balance of power in Asia and the growing competition for oceanic resources * Examines the implications of the dispute in terms of the historical and modern role of china as a maritime power in Asia.

Reflecting the revival of interest in a social theory that takes place and space seriously, this book focuses on geographical place in the practice of social science and history. There is significant interest among scholars from a range of disciplines in bringing together the geographical and sociological 'imaginations'. The geographical imagination is a concrete and descriptive one, concerned with determining the nature of places, and classifying them and the links between them. The sociological imagination aspires to explanation of human activities in terms of abstract social processes. The chapters in this book focus on both the intellectual histories of the concept of place and on its empirical uses. They show that place is as important for understanding contemporary America as it is for 18th-century Sri Lanka. They also show how the concept can provide insight into 'old' problems such as the nature of social life in Renaissance Florence and Venice. The editors are leading exponents of the view of place as a concept that can 'mediate' the geographical and sociological imaginations.

Numerous scholars have noticed that certain political institutions, including federalism, majoritarian electoral systems, and presidentialism, are linked to lower levels of income redistribution. This book offers a political geography explanation for those observed patterns. Each of these institutions is strongly shaped by geography and provides incentives for politicians to target their appeals and government resources to localities. Territorialized institutions also shape citizens' preferences in ways that can undermine the national coalition in favor of redistribution. Moreover, territorial institutions increase the number of veto points in which anti-redistributive actors can constrain reform efforts. These theoretical connections between the politics of place and redistributive outcomes are explored in theory, empirical analysis, and case studies of the USA, Germany, and Argentina.

Leading academics from around the world, who specialize in analysing maritime strategic issues, deliberate the impact of the American 'pivot' or 're-balance' strategy, and the 'Air-Sea Battle' operational concept, on the maritime power and posture of a number of selected states. Intending to strengthen US economic, diplomatic, and security engagement throughout the Asia-Pacific, both bilaterally and multilaterally, the re-balance stands out as one of the Obama administration's most far-sighted and ambitious foreign policy initiatives.

At the turn of the millennium the state of Europe is fluid and contested, yet how this affects the everyday lives of European peoples and the ways they experience the social world they live in remains largely unexplored. Drawing upon ethnographic information from diverse European settings, this volume points to the contradictions that the project of a "Europe without boundaries" involves. In illustrating how the removal of political boundaries can create other boundaries, the articles in this volume provide alternatives to recent theorising on complexity, which takes little account of human agency.

In Between The Seas, Deborah Paci takes a comparative view of insularity in island identities through case studies of islands in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas. These case studies include, in the Baltic case, Gotland, Saaremaa and Hiiumaa; and in the Mediterranean case, Sicily, Sardinia, Malta and Corsica. Examining multiple sites of these islands' identities such as history, environmental concerns and governance systems, this study provides a historical perspective into the relations between islands and the larger geopolitical regions around them as well as historicizing "insularist" rhetoric deployed by pro-independence groups within them. Paci examines the changing role and increasing political importance of islands in the European Union against the history of island insularity and offers a significant contribution to the wider field of island studies.

Offers an extensive and critical vision of border culture on the move, in bridging border studies and culture theory as it provides insights drawn from numerous examples worldwide and a growing international literature on borders and culture. Interrogates many of our assumptions and murky explanations of the intersection of borders and culture, and enable a new, broadly based dialogue about border culture worldwide.

This book conducts a comprehensive study on China's maritime strategy. It discusses the lessons of maritime power history that must be learnt by Chinese today, the relations between China's maritime strategy and domestic developing problems of China, the status and influence of maritime strategy from China's overall development strategy perspective, and the geopolitical targets of Chinese navy in 2050.China's maritime strategy is one of the most important academic and realistic subjects in the present and future. This book is the first book to discuss China's maritime strategy comprehensively in and outside China. It will give readers a better sense of why China has to develop its sea power, why it lays so much emphasis on Taiwan and the South China sea, why the country can make friends with India but not Japan, and why China's maritime strategy will never challenge America but has to face the pressure from America's maritime hegemony, and so on.

Israel and Africa critically examines the ways in which Africa - as a geopolitical entity - is socially manufactured, collectively imagined but also culturally denied in Israeli politics. Its unique exploration of moral geography and its comprehensive, interdisciplinary research on the two countries offers new perspectives on Israeli history and society. Through a genealogical investigation of the relationships between Israel and Africa, this book sheds light on the processes of nationalism, development and modernization, exploring Africa's role as an instrument in the constant re-shaping of Zionism. Through looking at "Israel in Africa" as well as "Africa in Israel", it provides insightful analysis on the demarcation of Israel's ethnic boundaries and identity formation as well as proposing the different practices, from architectural influences to the arms trade, that have formed the geopolitical concept of "Africa". It is through these practices that Israel reproduces its internal racial and ethnic boundaries and spaces, contributing to its geographical imagination as detached not solely from the Middle East but also from its African connections. This book would be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East and Jewish Studies, as well as Post-colonial Studies, Geography and Architectural History.

The European region - especially given the existence of the European Union (EU) - necessarily encompasses multiple levels of public diplomacy: subnational, national, transnational, and supranational. But do the various aspects of Europe's multi-leveled public diplomacy form a coherent overall image, or do they work against each other to some extent? European Public Diplomacy: Soft Power at Work pushes the literature on public diplomacy forward through a multifaceted exploration of the European case. In so doing, it fills an important gap in the international relations literature on the mechanisms behind soft power.

The partition of the Indian subcontinent, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the reunification of Germany, the continuing feud between two Koreas, the Irish peace process, the case of Israel/Palestine and the lingering division of Cyprus, have together given rise to a huge body of literature. However, studies of partitions have usually focused on individual cases. This innovative volume uses comparative analysis to fill the gap in partition studies and examines cross-cutting issues such as: * violence * state formation * union and regional unification * geopolitics * transition.

Crossing disciplinary boundaries, this volume offers a rare forum for a serious analysis of the territorial dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands between China and Japan. To understand the complexity of the dispute and to find peaceful solutions, we must reach beyond the confines of a single discipline and perspective. The volume deconstructs conflicting perspectives on the two sides of the dispute. Territorial disputes often become symbolic expressions of nationalistic rivalries, particularly as political claims for territories escalate and economic competition for resources between countries intensifies. Cutting through the political rhetoric on both sides of the controversy and bringing together a group of eight scholars from the disciplines of history, international relations, law, political science, and sociology, this book analyzes the relevant history, international law, multilateral relations, political agendas, and social and collective memory, to shed light on this difficult dispute. Taken together, the chapters of the book propose short-term, medium-term, and long-term peaceful solutions for going beyond the impasse of the current territorial dispute.

Zomian, identity construction, borderlands, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand

This book analyzes the combined consequences of Brexit and of the new US foreign policy under President Trump on the geopolitical situation of Eastern Europe. It perceives the evolution of the East European regional security complex as a struggle between the European Union's Kantian, win-win geopolitical vision and Russia's neoclassical geopolitics, also promoted by President Trump. In the most probable scenario, the latter approach will have the upper hand. The EU's post-Brexit control by the Franco-German axis will likely be followed by the geopolitical irrelevance of the EU due to the renationalization of member states' foreign policy, with Germany becoming the main West European actor. Consequently, Eastern Europe will be turned into the arena of a mainly three-cornered neoclassical geopolitics rivalry opposing Russia, the Franco-German axis and then Germany, and the US in alliance with the post-Brexit UK and certain East European states. The book will appeal to scholars across the fields of International Relations, Geopolitics, European Studies, and Area Studies.

In the globalized Arctic there has been a transformation from military security to human security. Climate change, the utilization of Arctic resources and other global challenges have caused the Arctic 'paradox' and a need to redefine security.

As the economies of East Asia grow ever stronger, their need for energy resources increases, which in turn compels closer relations with the countries of the Middle East. This book examines the developing relations between the countries of East Asia, especially China and Japan, with the countries of the Middle East. It looks at various key bilateral relationships, including with Iran and Syria, discusses the impact on the United States hegemony in both regions, considers whether the new relations represent a contribution to, or a threat to, peace and stability, and assesses the implications of the changes for patterns of regional and global international relations systems."

In the struggles for political and cultural hegemony that Taiwan has witnessed since the 1980s, the focal point in contesting narratives and the key battlefield in the political debates are primarily spatial and place-based. The major fault line appears to be a split between an imposed identity emphasizing cultural origin (China) and an emphasis on the recovery of place identity of 'the local' (Taiwan). Place, Identity and National Imagination in Postwar Taiwan explores the ever-present issue of identity in Taiwan from a spatial perspective, and focuses on the importance of, and the relationship between, state spatiality and identity formation. Taking postwar Taiwan as a case study, the book examines the ways in which the Kuomintang regime naturalized its political control, territorialized the island and created a nationalist geography. In so doing, it examines how, why and to what extent power is exercised through the place-making process and considers the relationship between official versions of 'ROC geography' and the islanders' shifting perceptions of the 'nation'. In turn, by addressing the relationship between the state and the imagined community, Bi-yu Chang establishes a dialogue between place and cultural identity to analyse the constant changing and shaping of Chinese and Taiwanese identity. With a diverse selection of case studies including cartographical development, geography education, territorial declaration and urban planning, this interdisciplinary book will have a broad appeal across Taiwan studies, geography, cultural studies, history and politics.

In the nineteenth century, as the Russian empire expanded eastwards and the Japanese empire expanded onto the Asian continent, the Russo-Japanese border became contested on and around the island of Sakhalin, its Russian name, or Karafuto, as it is known in Japanese. Then in the wake of the Second World War, Russia seized control of the island and the Japanese inhabitants were deported. Sakhalin's history as a border zone makes it a lynchpin of Russo-Japanese relations, and as such it is a rich case study for exploring the key themes of this book: life in the borderlands, migration, repatriation, historical memory, multiculturalism and identity. With a focus on cross-border dialogue, Voices from the Shifting Russo-Japanese Border reveals the lives of the ordinary people in the border regions between Russia and Japan, and how they and their communities have been affected by shifts in the Russo-Japanese border over the past century-and-a-half. Examining the lives and experiences of repatriates from Karafuto/Sakhalin in contemporary Hokkaido and their contribution to the multicultural society of Japan's northernmost island, the chapters cover the border shifts in Karafuto/Sakhalin up until 1945, the immediate aftermath the Second World War, the commemorative practices and memories of those in both Japan and Eastern Russia, and, finally, postwar lives by drawing extensively on interviews with people in the communities affected most by the shifting border. This interdisciplinary book will be of huge interest to students and scholars across a broad range of subjects including Russo-Japanese relations, Northeast Asian history, border studies, migration studies, and the Second World War.

Pink Ice tells the compelling story of the political struggles over Antarctica and the South Atlantic. It shows how Britain and Argentina have sought to invest these thinly populated spaces - composed mostly of ice, rock, and water - with cultural and national importance. The author, who has interviewed leading politicians and civil servants including Lord Carrington, Lord Owen, Lord Chalfont, Lord Hurd, and Lord Shackleton, demonstrates how political rivalries may be played out in other competitive arenas such as World Cup football. With the 20th anniversary of the Falklands War in 2002, Pink Ice provides a timely analysis of how territorial disputes simply refuse to fade away.