This book provides a broad and in-depth introduction to the geopolitical, economic and trade changes wrought with the increasing influence of the countries of the Global South in international affairs. The global role of the developing countries came to the forefront in 1974, when the United Nations General Assembly promulgated The New International Economic Order. Since then, the countries of the Global South, particularly China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Qatar, made an indelible impact upon the world's economic architecture. However, their true influence became starkly illustrated during the onset of the 2000s, when several seismic events occurred. The September Eleventh terrorist attacks with the resultant debilitating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- extreme world commodity price increases and the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 all served to wrench the epicenter of global influence increasingly southward. While the developed countries of the Global North became mired in economic stagnation with problems associated with the global financial crisis, their collective influence waned. Since then, the world has been attempting to accommodate, somewhat unevenly, the rising geopolitical and economic clout of the Global South. This book presents a collection of scholarly articles that, taken together, functions as a primer on the workings of the immense global changes at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Throughout the twentieth century, glaciologists and geophysicists from Denmark, Norway and Sweden made important scientific contributions across the Arctic and Antarctic. This research was of acute security and policy interest during the Cold War, as knowledge of the polar regions assumed military importance. But scientists also helped make the polar regions Nordic spaces in a cultural and political sense, with scientists from Norden punching far above their weight in terms of population, geographical size or economic activity. This volume presents an image of Norden that stretches far beyond its conventional limits, covering a vast area in the North Atlantic and the Arctic Sea, as well as parts of Antarctica. Rich in resources, scarce in population, but critically important in global and regional geopolitics, these spaces were contested by major powers such as Russia, the United States, Canada and, in the Antarctic, Argentina, Australia, South Africa and others. The empirical focus on Danish, Norwegian and Swedish influence in the polar regions during the twentieth century embraces a diverse array of themes, from the role of science in policy and diplomacy to the tensions between nationalism and internationalism, with clear relevance to the important role science plays in contemporary discussions about Nordic engagement with the polar regions.

This book sheds light on how global warming has caused the ongoing environmental disaster in the Arctic, namely its melting. This development, if left unabated, will have a major negative environmental impact, not only on the Arctic itself, but on the entire planet, including the worsening of global warming and rising sea levels. The latter is a major threat to all island countries and all countries having coastlines with open seas with major environmental, social, economic, political and military/security implications. The Arctic melting is bringing about challenges while opening doors for certain opportunities. These are the accessibility of the region's large oil, gas and coal reserves and minerals, including rare earth elements. They are in demand both in the Arctic littoral states (Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and USA) and the Greater Arctic countries (Iceland, Finland and Sweden) as well as in other parts of the world. In particular, major oil and gas importers (China, India, Japan and South Korea) are interested in the Arctic energy resources, the main non-regional countries with a capability to engage in the region. The obvious importance of the regional energy and mineral resources makes the division of the region among the regional countries crucial. The melting of the Arctic ice will also lead to the availability for at least a few months a year of a Northern Sea Route and a Northwest Passage connecting Europe to North America and the North-Eastern part of Asia. The importance of these northern routes and the Arctic mineral and energy resources is contributing to a growing military presence of mainly the USA and Russia in this region, which could lead to an arms race. This book offers invaluable insights on the issues that have grave implications for energy security and geopolitics in the arctic.

Writing Global Trade Governance operationalises a key post-structuralist methodology in order to expand understanding on the institution at the heart of the global political economy. Despite the WTO's centrality and the growing popularity of methods utilizing discourse theory, no other text has yet demonstrated how these two fields of learning can be productively combined. The book seeks to move beyond existing literatures that assume the WTO to be a structure, institution or normative framework, in order to enquire into the discursive processes of identity formation that make the WTO both possible and contested. The book criticises conventional approaches that treat critical civil society as distinct to the WTO, arguing instead that it is only through including such social practices within the field of relations making the WTO that we can properly understand what makes the WTO work. The book presents an empirical analysis of the discursive character of the present-day WTO (including its formation and operation) and then moves on to evaluate how it is subject to change within a broader social context. The final stage of the book seeks to discuss the impact of the findings on future research, both on the WTO and other institutions. This work is a significant intervention in the literature on the World Trade Organization and the politics of global trade and social movements, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of global governance, discourse theory and international organizations

Adopting a constructivist approach, this book argues that China's prospects for achieving 'great power' status peacefully depend more on perceptions of the country's development than on concrete measures of power or economic benefits. Incorporating historical perceptions, survey data and general analysis, the authors explore Chinese foreign policies in international organisations, international trade, security relations and as a model for global governance, as well as the reactions to those policies within the context of China's relations with Asian neighbours (India, Japan and the states of South-east Asia), existing international powers (the European Union, Russia and the United States), and emergent trading partners (Africa). -- .

War, Identity and the Liberal State critically examines the significance of gender, race and sexuality to wars waged by liberal states and the soldiers who wage them. Drawing on original fieldwork research with British soldiers, it offers insights into how their lived experiences are shaped by, and shape, a politics of gender, race and sexuality that not only underpin power relations in the military, but a wider geopolitics of war. It explores how shared and collectively mediated knowledge on gender, race and sexuality facilitates certain claims about the nature of governing in liberal states and about why and how such states wage war against 'illiberal' ones in pursuit of global peace and security. In linking the politics of daily life to the international, this book insists that it is vital to explore how geopolitical events and practices are co-constituted, reinforced and contested in everyday experiences, practices and spaces. The book also urges scholars interested in the linguistic construction of geopolitics to consider the ways in which everyday objects, spaces and bodies also reinforce particular ideas about war, identity and statehood and some of their violent consequences. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international studies, security, gender and feminist studies and critical and social theory.

Over the 19th and 20th centuries, the political map of Europe changed considerably. At the end of this period, there were remarkably contrasting tendencies concerning the functions and densities of borders. The borders inside the European Union lost their importance, whereas Central and Eastern Europe saw the birth of a multitude of new state borders. The long-term study of border regions, therefore, is a relevant subject for geographers, historians, social scientists, and political scientists. The main thesis of this text is that the rise of the modern nation-state reinforced the separating function of state borders by nationalizing the people on both sides of them. This process gained strength in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was challenged in the post-war era by processes of supra-national integration, globalization and the revolution in communication and transport, as the case studies from different parts of Europe in this book show.

The world turned upside down? interrogates the widespread claim that contemporary globalization has ended the centrality of the state in world affairs and is effectively irreversible. It offers discriminating definitions of globalization, internationalization and international interdependence and demonstrates the analytical and empirical difficulties generated by these concepts. Developments at the end of the twentieth century are compared with those of earlier eras, particularly the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries. The book also surveys the historical role of the state and its enduring importance for human well-being. A central focus of the book is the challenge posed by contemporary developments to the role and capacity of the modern state and the consequences should such challenges prove to be overwhelming.

In this global era, Central Asia must be understood in both geo-economic and geopolitical terms. The region's natural resources compel the attention of rivalrous great powers and ambitious internal factions. The local regimes are caught between the need for international collaborations to valorize these riches and the need to maintain control over them in the interest of state sovereignty. Russia and China dominate the horizon, with other global players close behind; meanwhile, neighboring countries are fractious and unstable with real potential for contagion. This pathbreaking introduction to Central Asia in contemporary international economic and political context answers the needs of both academic and professional audiences and is suitable for course adoption.

In this global era, Central Asia must be understood in both geo-economic and geopolitical terms. The region's natural resources compel the attention of rivalrous great powers and ambitious internal factions. The local regimes are caught between the need for international collaborations to valorize these riches and the need to maintain control over them in the interest of state sovereignty. Russia and China dominate the horizon, with other global players close behind; meanwhile, neighboring countries are fractious and unstable with real potential for contagion. This pathbreaking introduction to Central Asia in contemporary international economic and political context answers the needs of both academic and professional audiences and is suitable for course adoption.

For over a decade now, thinking on regional relations in the Gulf has focused on the competition for regional hegemony between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Today, this perspective is outdated. The smaller Gulf Arab states, led by the United Arab Emirates, are calling for their own goals and interests to be considered and a new regional order has emerged. This book asesses the UAE's increasing power and the future challenges to security it poses. It is a contemporary history and analysis of the changing role of the UAE. Dina Esfandiary argues that the UAE has become more assertive in the pursuit of its own interests in the region and beyond - even when this puts it at odds with its regional allies. This behavior includes the build-up of its military and non-military capabilities, the diversification of its partners, and its willingness to use these resources. The book examines the regional causes of the UAE's growing assertiveness - especially the 2011 Arab Uprisings - as well as the international context such as the impact of the US-announced 'Pivot to Asia', the perceptions of waning US power in the Middle East, and the 2015 nuclear deal. The UAE's changing role in the region will profoundly affect regional security. This book points towards how smaller states in the region will interact with regional hegemons in the long term, as they learn from the UAE's assertiveness and seek to imitate it.

The area between two countries, or at the edges of a civilization, has been called many things--frontier, backcountry, and most recently, the borderland. Even though borderlands are frequently located at the peripheries of empires and nations, they nevertheless shape how centers of national power-cities, national capitols, and so forth-have defined their relation to issues such as territorial expansion, sovereignty, immigration, labor, community formation, difference, and race and ethnicity. And in this global landscape, the borderlands area can teach a lot about how societies interact and how nations came to be as they are. North American Borderlands introduces students to exemplary recent scholarship on borderlands, focusing on borderland relationships--transnational or trans-cultural explorations of the many peoples and perspectives within borderlands regions.

The increasing emergence, re-emergence, and spread of deadly infectious diseases which pose health, economic, security and ethical challenges for states and people around the world, has given rise to an important global debate. The actual or potential burden of infectious diseases is sometimes so great that governments treat them as threats to national security. However, such treatment potentially increases the risk that emergency disease-control measures will be ineffective, counterproductive and/or unjust. Research on ethical issues associated with infectious disease is a relatively new and rapidly growing area of academic inquiry, as is research on infectious diseases within the field of security studies. This volume incorporates ethical and security perspectives, thus furthering research in both fields. Its unique focus on the intersection of ethical and security dimensions will, furthermore, generate fresh insights on how governments should respond to infectious disease challenges. Readers should include professionals and scholars working in infectious disease, epidemiology, public health, health law, health economics, public policy, bioethics, medical humanities, health and human rights, social/political philosophy, security studies, and international politics.

Over the past decade, democratization and civil society promotion became key variables in preserving global security and the liberal economic market. This book examines the prevalence of democratization policies as a hegemonic geopolitical tool; these policies represent a concerted political effort in which civil society organizations are manipulated through funding strategies. Denise Horn offers a fresh, innovative feminist-constructivist perspective by arguing that Western gender norms-i.e. those norms that determine degrees of participation within civil society-inform the policies of hegemonic powers and transform the foundations of civil society in transitional states. This powerful volume will be of interest to students and scholars in Gender and Women's Studies, Political Science, and International Relations.

When Taliban forces took Kabul on 15 August 2021, it marked the end of the Western intervention that had begun nearly twenty years earlier with the US-led invasion. The fall of Afghanistan triggered a seismic shock in the West, where US President Joe Biden announced an end to America's involvement in conflicts overseas. In Afghanistan itself it produced terror for the future for those who had worked with and grown up under the coalition-supported administration. Now, with the country spiralling into economic collapse and famine, Losing Afghanistan is a plea for us to keep our gaze on the plight of the people of Afghanistan and to understand how action and inaction in the West shaped the fate of the nation. Why was Afghanistan lost? Can it be regained? And what happens next? Edited by international development expert Brian Brivati, this collection of twenty-one essays by analysts, politicians, soldiers, commentators and practitioners - interspersed with powerful eyewitness testimony from Afghan voices - explains what happened in Afghanistan and why, and what the future holds both for its people and for liberal intervention.

Geopolitics is a crucial element in understanding international relations in East Asia, with major and medium powers competing for influence. This book examines geopolitics in East Asia, focusing in particular on its major, contentious maritime territorial disputes. It looks in particular detail at the overlapping claims between Japan, China and Taiwan over the Senkaku/Diao yu Islands in the East China Sea as well as the Paracel Islands claimed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam and the Spratly Islands involving Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam in the South China Sea. The book offers a comparative study of the East and South China Seas by arguing that their respective circumstances are influenced by similar geopolitical considerations; factors such as territory, natural resources and power competition all impact on disputes and broader regional relations. It is precisely the interplay of these geopolitical forces that can lead to the rapid escalation of a maritime territorial dispute or reversely to a diffusion of tensions. The book considers how such disputes might be managed and resolved peacefully, despite the geopolitical conditions that can make co-operation on these issues difficult to achieve. Ralf Emmers examines the prospect for conflict management and resolution by identifying catalysts which may contribute to improving the climate of relations.

As the challenge of preventing military conflict has become increasingly complex in the post-Cold War era, economic sanctions are being applied with growing frequency. Sanctions are also being used to enforce international law, to deter aggression and terrorism, to defend democracy and human rights, and to prevent nuclear proliferation. This study addresses questions about the utility, appropriateness and success or failure of sanctions, as well as their impact on the poor and innocent. Specific case studies, focusing on recent conflicts such as those in Haiti, Iraq, South Africa and the former Yugoslavia, demonstrate the principal aspects of economic sanctions.

The importance of the Himalayan state of Nepal has been obscured by the international campaign to free Tibet and the vicissitudes of the Sino-Indian rivalry. This book presents the history of Nepal's domestic politics and foreign relations from ancient to modern times. Analysing newly declassified reports from the United States and Britain, published memoirs, oral recollections and interviews, the book presents the historical interactions between Nepal, China, Tibet and India. It discusses how the ageing and inevitable death of the 14th Dalai Lama, the radicalization of Tibetan diaspora and the ascendancy of the international campaign to free Tibet are of increasing importance to Nepal. With its position between China and India, the book notes how the focus could shift to Nepal, with it being home to some 20,000 Tibetan refugees and its chronic political turmoil, deepened by the Asian giants' rivalry. Using a chronological approach, the past and present of the rivalry between China and India are studied, and attempts to chart the future are made. The book contributes to a new understanding of the intricate relationship of Nepal with these neighbouring countries, and is of interest to students and scholars of South Asian studies, politics and international relations.

As the North Pole is transformed from a sea-ice cap to an ice-free sea, the Arctic Ocean is becoming an environmentally insecure area. This volume proposes environmental security as providing a holistic framework to assess security risks and then identify the appropriate adaptation and mitigation responses.

The globalizing world is increasingly confronting a new category of security issues related to resource availability. The resource environment contains both traditional categories, such as energy, foodstuffs, and water, as well as new technologically related resources, such as rare earth minerals. The essays in this volume emphasize both the uniqueness and the magnitude of these new challenges, while simultaneously acknowledging that cooperation and competition in response to these security concerns occur within the context of both the historical and contemporary international power configurations. Moreover, these challenges are of a global nature and will require global perspectives, global thinking, and innovative global solutions. Krishna-Hensel brings together a wide range of topics focusing on critical resource availability impacting upon global security and the geopolitical ramifications of resource competition. The volume addresses the development of strategic thinking on these issues and underscores the increasing awareness that this is a critical area of concern in the twenty-first century global landscape.

Over the past two decades or so, medieval geopolitics have come to occupy an increasingly prominent place in the collective imagination and writings of International Relations scholars. Although these accounts differ significantly in terms of their respective analytical assumptions, theoretical concerns and scholarly contributions, they share at least one common arguably, defining element: a belief that a careful study of medieval geopolitics can help resolve a number of important debates surrounding the nature and dynamics of "international" relations. There are however three generic weaknesses characterizing the extant literature: a general failure to examine the existing historiography of medieval geopolitics, an inadequate account of the material and ideational forces that create patterns of violent conflict in medieval Latin Christendom, and a failure to take seriously the role of "religion" in the geopolitical relations of medieval Latin Christendom.

This book seeks to address these shortcomings by providing a theoretically guided and historically sensitive account of the geopolitical relations of medieval Latin Christendom. It does this by developing a theoretically informed picture of medieval geopolitics, theorizing the medieval-to-modern transition in a new and fruitful way, and suggesting ways in which a systematic analysis of medieval geopolitical relations can actually help to illuminate a range of contemporary geopolitical phenomena. Finally, it develops an historically sensitive conceptual framework for understanding geopolitical conflict and war more generally.

Recent years have witnessed the most substantial changes in the world system of states and their boundaries since World War II. The key division between the states in the world system the former deep ideological divide between East and West has disappeared. The border between Finland and Russia was a frontier between East and West and had a long history as a fundamental dividing line between contrasting cultural and political systems. Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness is the first geographical analysis of how this critical border evolved. This original and well--illustrated book is much more than a local study. It presents both a theoretically informed analysis of the construction of territories and their boundaries and a richly detailed geohistory of the changing geography of Finland. It traces the nature of the nation--building process, the rise of the nation state and the changing position of this emerging new state in the world geopolitical landscape. The history of the construction of the Finnish Russian border is analyzed on the basis of modern geopolitical and social theory, leading to an interpretation of the changing role of the boundary in the socio--spatial consciousness of the Finnish people. This important theoretical analysis is a key reformulation of boundary studies as well as a fascinating experienced examination of a critical geographical fault--line in world history. It is essential reading for postgraduates of political and cultural geography, history, international relations, Russian studies, as well as for those with an interest in international politics.

The writings of Carl Schmitt are now indissociable from both an historical period and a contemporary moment. He will forever be remembered for his association with the National Socialists of 1930s Germany, and as the figure whose writings on sovereignty, politics, and the law provided justification for authoritarian, decisional states. Yet at the same time, the post-September 11th 2001 world is one in which a wide range of scholars have increasingly turned to Schmitt to understand a world of "with us or against us" Manichaeism, spaces of exception which seem to be placed outside the law by legal mechanisms themselves, and the contestation of a uni-polar, post-1989 world. This attention marks out Schmitt as one of the foremost emerging theorists in critical theory and assures his work a large and growing audience. This work brings together geographers, and Schmitt experts who are attuned to the spatial dimensions of his work, to discuss his 1950 work The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. Explaining the growing audience for Schmitt's work, a broad range of contributors also examine the Nomos in relation to broader debates about enmity and war, the production of space, the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, and the recuperability of such an intellect tainted by its anti-Semitism and links to the Nazi party. This work will be of great interest to researchers in political theory, socio-legal studies, geopolitics and critical IR theory

'Borders' have attracted considerable attention in public and academic debates in light of the impact of globalisation and, in Europe, the end of the divisions of the Cold War era. Instead, being inside or outside of the EU has become a major paradigmatic divide between claimed 'spheres of influence' by 'Brussels' and 'Moscow' respectively. In the aftermath of the end of communism, established certainties no longer seemed to apply. And this included many of the borders within the former eastern Bloc, with some losing their relevance, while others re-assert themselves. As its particular contribution, this book adopts a symbiotic approach to the analysis of borders, drawing on a political-economy perspective, while also recognising the importance of the socio-cultural dimension as found in 'border studies'. This seeks to do greater justice to the complex, composite nature of borders as geo-political, state-legal and cultural-historic constructs in both theory and practice. In addition, the book's approach stretches across spatial scales to capture the multi-level nature of borders. The first part of the book presents the conceptual framework as it sets out to embrace this multi-faceted, multi-layered nature of borders. In the second part, case studies from north-central Europe, including the Baltic Sea Region, exemplify the complexity of borders in the context of post-socialist transformation and continuing EU-isation.