This extensively revised second edition of The Geopolitics Reader draws together the most influential and significant geopolitical readings from the last hundred years. A compendium of divergent viewpoints of global conflict and change, it includes readings from Halford Mackinder, Theodore Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, George Kennan, Samuel Huntington, Edward Said, Osama Bin Laden and American neoconservatives. It draws on the most illuminating examples of imperial, Cold War and contemporary geopolitics, as well as new environmental themes, global dangers and multiple resistances to the practices of geopolitics. Whilst retaining a coherent five part structure, the selection of readings has been updated to account for recent developments in the critical study of geopolitics and the post 9/11 geopolitical landscape (including issues in technoscience, biowarfare, oil politics, and terrorism), and key questions address issues of the transformed nature of threats in the new millennium, the debate over the hegemonic position of the US, and non-American perspectives on contemporary geopolitics. Skilfully guiding the reader through the divergent viewpoints of global conflict and change, the editors, all leading geopolitical authorities, provide comprehensive introductions and critical commentaries at the start of each section. Illustrated with provocative cartoons, this second edition of The Geopolitics Reader is the ideal textbook for introductory classes on international relations, world politics, political geography and, of course, geopolitics, provoking lively discussion of how questions of discourse and power are at the centre of the critical study of geopolitics.

Bosnia Remade is an authoritative account of ethnic cleansing and its partial undoing in the Bosnian wars from 1990 to the present. The two authors, both political geographers, combine a bird's-eye view of the entire war from onset to aftermath with a micro-level account of three towns that underwent ethnic cleansing and-later-the return of refugees. Through the lens of critical geopolitics, which highlights the power of both geopolitical discourse and spatial strategies, Toal and Dahlman focus on the two attempts to remake the ethnic structure of Bosnia since 1991. The first attempt was by ascendant ethnonationalist forces that tried to eradicate the mixed ethnic structures of Bosnia's towns, villages and communities. While these forces destroyed tens of thousands of homes and lives, they failed to destroy Bosnia-Herzegovina as a polity. The second attempt followed the war. The international community, in league with Bosnian officials, tried to undo the demographic consequences of ethnic cleansing. This latter effort has moved in fits and starts, but as the authors show, it has re-made Bosnia, producing a country that has moved beyond the stark segregationist geography created by ethnic cleansing. By showing how ethnic cleansing can be reversed, Toal and Dahlman offer more than just a comprehensive narrative of Europe's worst political crisis in the past two decades. They also offer lessons for addressing an enduring global problem.

A powerful explanation of why geopolitical competition makes implementing effective climate change policies so difficult. As the Russia-Ukraine war has shown, great-power competition drives states to prioritize fossil fuel acquisition over working toward a zero-carbon future. In the last few years, it has become abundantly clear that the effects of accelerating climate change will be catastrophic, from rising seas to more violent storms to desertification. Yet why do nation-states find it so difficult to implement transnational policies that can reduce carbon output and slow global warming? In Oceans Rise, Empires Fall, Gerard Toal identifies geopolitics as the culprit. States would prefer to reduce emissions in the abstract, but in the great global competition for geopolitical power, states always prioritize access to carbon-based fuels necessary for generating the sort of economic growth that helps them compete with rival states. Despite what we now know about the long-term impacts of climate change, geopolitical contests continue to sideline attempts to halt or slow down the process. The Ukraine conflict in particular exposes our priorities. To escape reliance on Russia's vast oil and gas reserves, states have expanded fossil fuel production that necessarily increases the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The territorial control imperatives of great powers preclude collaborative behavior to address common challenges. Competitive territorial, resource, and technological dramas across the geopolitical chessboard currently obscure the deterioration of the planet's life support systems. In the contest between geopolitics and sustainable climate policies, the former takes precedence-especially when competition shifts to outright conflict. In this book, Toal interrogates that relationship and its stakes for the ongoing acceleration of climate change.

Vladimir Putin's intervention into the Georgia/South Ossetia conflict in summer 2008 was quickly recognized by Western critics as an attempt by Russia to increase its presence and power in the "near abroad", or the independent states of the former Soviet Union that Russia still regards as its wards. Though the global economic recession that began in 2008 moved the incident to the back of the world's mind, Russia surged to the forefront again six years later when they invaded the heavily Russian Crimea in Ukraine and annexed it. In contrast to the earlier Georgia episode, this new conflict has generated a crisis of global proportions, forcing European countries to rethink their relationship with Russia and their reliance on it for energy supplies, as Russia was now squeezing natural gas from what is technically Ukraine. In Near Abroad, the eminent political geographer Gerard Toal analyzes Russia's recent offensive actions in the near abroad, focusing in particular on the ways in which both the West and Russia have relied on Cold War-era rhetorical and emotional tropes that distort as much as they clarify. In response to Russian aggression, US critics quickly turned to tried-and-true concepts like "spheres of influence" to condemn the Kremlin. Russia in turn has brought back its long tradition of criticizing western liberalism and degeneracy to grandly rationalize its behavior in what are essentially local border skirmishes. It is this tendency to resort to the frames of earlier eras that has led the conflicts to "jump scales," moving from the regional to the global level in short order. The ambiguities and contradictions that result when nations marshal traditional geopolitical arguments-rooted in geography, territory, and old understandings of distance-further contributes to the escalation of these conflicts. Indeed, Russia's belligerence toward Georgia stemmed from concern about its possible entry into NATO, an organization of states thousands of miles away. American hawks also strained credulity by portraying Georgia as a nearby ally in need of assistance. Similarly, the threat of NATO to the Ukraine looms large in the Kremlin's thinking, and many Ukrainians themselves self-identify with the West despite their location in Eastern Europe.

This extensively revised second edition of The Geopolitics Reader draws together the most influential and significant geopolitical readings from the last hundred years. A compendium of divergent viewpoints of global conflict and change, it includes readings from Halford Mackinder, Theodore Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, George Kennan, Samuel Huntington, Edward Said, Osama Bin Laden and American neoconservatives. It draws on the most illuminating examples of imperial, Cold War and contemporary geopolitics, as well as new environmental themes, global dangers and multiple resistances to the practices of geopolitics.

Whilst retaining a coherent five part structure, the selection of readings has been updated to account for recent developments in the critical study of geopolitics and the post 9/11 geopolitical landscape (including issues in technoscience, biowarfare, oil politics, and terrorism), and key questions address issues of the transformed nature of threats in the new millennium, the debate over the hegemonic position of the US, and non-American perspectives on contemporary geopolitics.

Skilfully guiding the reader through the divergent viewpoints of global conflict and change, the editors, all leading geopolitical authorities, provide comprehensive introductions and critical commentaries at the start of each section. Illustrated with provocative cartoons, this second edition of The Geopolitics Reader is the ideal textbook for introductory classes on international relations, world politics, political geography and, of course, geopolitics, provoking lively discussion of how questions of discourse and power are at the centre of the critical study of geopolitics.

Table of Contents

Introduction Gearóid Ó Tuathail Thinking Critically About Geopolitics 1 1. Imperialist Geopolitics. Gearóid Ó Tuathail Introduction 1. Halford J. Mackinder 1904 ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’ From Geographical Journal 2. Theodore Roosevelt 1905 ‘The Roosevelt Corollary’ From A Compilation of Messages and Papers of the Presidents 3. Karl Haushofer 1942 ‘Why Geopolitik?’ From The World of General Haushofer 4. Adolf Hitler 1942 ‘Eastern Orientation of Eastern Policy?’ From Mein Kampf 5. Isaiah Bowman 1942 ‘Geopolitics vs. Geography’ From Geographical Review 6. Karl Haushofer 1948 ‘Defense of German Geopolitics’ From Total Power: A Footnote to History 2. Cold War Geopolitics Gearóid Ó Tuathail Introduction 7. President Harry 1947 ‘The Truman Doctrine’ Truman From Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States 8. George F. Kennan 1947 ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’ From Foreign Affairs 9. Andrei Zhdanov 1947 ‘Soviet Policy and World Politics’ From The International Situation 10. Gearóid Ó Tuathail 2001. ‘A Geopolitical Discourse with Robert McNamara’ From Geopolitics 11. Leonid Brezhnev 1968 ‘The Brezhnev Doctrine’ From Pravda 12. Gearóid Ó Tuathail 1992 ‘Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical and John Agnew Geopolitical Reasoning in American Foreign Policy’ From Political Geography Quarterly 13. Policy Statement OF 1984 ‘Common Sense and the Common Danger’ The Committee on the From Alerting America: The Papers of the Committee on Present Danger the Present Danger 14. End Committee 1980 ‘Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament (End)’ From Protest and Survive 15. Francis Fukuyama 1989 ‘The End of History?’ From The National Interest 3. Twenty First Century Geopolitics Gearóid Ó Tuathail Introduction 16. Samuel P. Huntington 1993 ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ From Foreign Affairs 17. Project for a New 1997 ‘Statement of Principles’ American Century From newamericancentury.org 18. Edward Said 2001 ‘The Clash of Ignorance’ From The Nation 19. Thomas P. Barnett 2003 ‘The Pentagon’s New Map’ From Esquire 20. Michael Ignatieff 2003 ‘The Burden: The American Empire.’ From The New York Times magazine 21. Anatol Lieven 2004 ‘Introduction: America: Right or Wrong’ From America: Right or Wrong 4. The Geopolitics of Global Dangers. Simon Dalby Introduction 22 Robert D. Kaplan 1994 ‘The Coming Anarchy’ From The Atlantic Monthly 23 Simon Dalby 1996 ‘Reading Robert Kaplan’s ‘Coming Anarchy’’ From Ecumene 24 Philippe Le Billion 2004 ‘The Geopolitical Economy of ‘Resource Wars’’ From Geopolitics 25 Michael T. Klare 2004 ‘No Escape From Dependency’ From TomDispatch.com 26 Michael Renner 2003 ‘Oil and Blood: The Way to Take Over the World’ From World Watch Magazine 27 Jonathan B. Tucker 2004 ‘Biological Threat Assessment: Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?’ From Arms Control Today 28 Gwyn Prins 2004 ‘AIDS and Global Security’ From International Affairs 5. Anti-Geopolitics. Paul Routledge Introduction 29 Edward Said 1984 ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’ From Europe and Its Others, Volume 1 30 Frantz Fanon 1963 ‘Concerning Violence’ From The Wretched of the Earth 31 George Konrad 1984 ‘Antipolitics: A Moral Force’ From Antipolitics: A Moral Force 32 Subcommandante 2003 ‘Tomorrow Begins Today: Invitation to an Insurrection MARCOS From We are Everywhere 33 Osama Bin Laden 2002 ‘Letter to America’ From the internet. 34 Gilbert Achar 2002 ‘The Clash of Barbarisms’ From The Clash of Barbarisms 35 Jennifer Hyndman 2003 ‘Beyond Either/Or: A Feminist Analysis of September 11th’ From ACME 36 Arundhati Roy 2003 ‘Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy’ From The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, it invaded Georgia. Both states are part of Russia's "near abroad"-newly independent states that were once part of the Soviet Union and are now Russia's neighbors. While the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 faded from the headlines in the wake of the global recession, the geopolitical contest that created it did not. In Near Abroad, Gerard Toal moves beyond the polemical rhetoric that surrounds Russia's interventions in Georgia and Ukraine to study the underlying territorial conflicts and geopolitical struggles. Central to understanding are legacies of the Soviet Union collapse: unresolved territorial issues, weak states and a conflicted geopolitical culture in Russia over the new territorial order. Toal explains the road to invasion and war in Georgia and Ukraine, thereafter, and provides an account of real life geopolitics, one that emphasizes changing spatial relationships, geopolitical cultures and the power of media images. Not only a penetrating analysis of Russia's relationships with its regional neighbors, Near Abroad also offers an analysis of how US geopolitical culture frequently fails to fully understand Russia and the geopolitical archipelago of dependencies in its near abroad.