Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2129012
Eugene Kondratov, Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués
ABSTRACT This article examines the Russian government’s use of the cyber and information domains as arenas to challenge liberal democracies. Previous studies have examined the technical or military-strategic aspects of Russian cyber activity or (dis)information. This article builds on these efforts and extends the scope of analysis to examine the socio-political challenges of Russian ‘hybrid interference’ for liberal Western democracies such as France, Germany and the UK. Our case studies highlight Russia’s growing use of cyber operations combined with (dis)information to foment or exacerbate tensions between government and society and/or among different societal groups. Our findings suggest that while Russia utilises hybrid interference to create or augment inter-societal turbulence in the short-term, the longer-term effect might serve to erode horizontal and vertical trust in such societies.
{"title":"Russia’s Hybrid Interference Campaigns in France, Germany and the UK: A Challenge against Trust in Liberal Democracies?","authors":"Eugene Kondratov, Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués","doi":"10.1080/14650045.2022.2129012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2129012","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the Russian government’s use of the cyber and information domains as arenas to challenge liberal democracies. Previous studies have examined the technical or military-strategic aspects of Russian cyber activity or (dis)information. This article builds on these efforts and extends the scope of analysis to examine the socio-political challenges of Russian ‘hybrid interference’ for liberal Western democracies such as France, Germany and the UK. Our case studies highlight Russia’s growing use of cyber operations combined with (dis)information to foment or exacerbate tensions between government and society and/or among different societal groups. Our findings suggest that while Russia utilises hybrid interference to create or augment inter-societal turbulence in the short-term, the longer-term effect might serve to erode horizontal and vertical trust in such societies.","PeriodicalId":47839,"journal":{"name":"Geopolitics","volume":"28 1","pages":"2169 - 2199"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43400406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-25DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2126766
K. Madsen
ABSTRACT To expedite the construction of barriers along the border with Mexico, U.S. Secretaries of Homeland Security have waived an extensive array of laws since 2005 when authority for such actions was first delegated to that position as part of the REAL ID Act. This paper contextualises the political origins of what is referred to as Section 102(c) waiver authority, shows how these waivers are used to dramatically expand border barrier construction, and reviews legal challenges. In doing so, it connects the use of waivers in governance as viewed through the study of law with the theoretical prominence of Agamben in the discipline of geography. By examining the specific ways in which these legal practices and their geographic expression have institutionalised a state of exception that pushes the boundary of legal acceptability, we arrive at a more transdisciplinary understanding of the role of states of exception as a tool of governance.
{"title":"Institutionalising the Exception: Homeland Security Section 102(c) Waivers and the Construction of Border Barriers","authors":"K. Madsen","doi":"10.1080/14650045.2022.2126766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2126766","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT To expedite the construction of barriers along the border with Mexico, U.S. Secretaries of Homeland Security have waived an extensive array of laws since 2005 when authority for such actions was first delegated to that position as part of the REAL ID Act. This paper contextualises the political origins of what is referred to as Section 102(c) waiver authority, shows how these waivers are used to dramatically expand border barrier construction, and reviews legal challenges. In doing so, it connects the use of waivers in governance as viewed through the study of law with the theoretical prominence of Agamben in the discipline of geography. By examining the specific ways in which these legal practices and their geographic expression have institutionalised a state of exception that pushes the boundary of legal acceptability, we arrive at a more transdisciplinary understanding of the role of states of exception as a tool of governance.","PeriodicalId":47839,"journal":{"name":"Geopolitics","volume":"28 1","pages":"1783 - 1806"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45511382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-19DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2129011
M. Huda
ABSTRACT For the first time since the end of British colonisation in 1947, the poorly integrated and politically volatile region of South Asia is about to embark on the development of several multilateral energy megaprojects. Historically, regional energy cooperation in South Asia has been undermined by a range of geopolitical issues. Political developments in the last decade have faciliated an unprecedented level of cooperation on energy, and currently several multilateral pipelines and hydroelectric projects are at advanced stages of implementation. Yet, the progress in the physical and bureaucratic development of energy projects has not been complemented by a corresponding conceptualisation of the governance challenges of these initiatives. Within academic literature, there is a dearth of studies that analyses the critical aspect of collectively governing the proposed and under-construction energy megaprojects in South Asia. This gap is concerning as the complexity of energy megaprojects and weak governance systems in developing countries can lead to enormous economic, social and environmental externalities. This article aims to identify the governance challenges of South Asia’s energy megaprojects. To this end, the article draws on literature on global energy governance and energy megaprojects and primary data from interviews undertaken with policymakers. The article synthesises literature on energy cooperation in South Asia with existing knowledge on megaprojects and global energy governance. In doing so, the paper addresses one of the key gaps in literature, which is the lack of studies that appraises megaprojects in the context of interactions between domestic and international politics. Due to the growing importance of energy megaprojects to regional integration and energy transition, the findings of this article have relevance towards policies on global governance and sustainable development.
{"title":"Governance Challenges of South Asia’s Energy Megaprojects","authors":"M. Huda","doi":"10.1080/14650045.2022.2129011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2129011","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For the first time since the end of British colonisation in 1947, the poorly integrated and politically volatile region of South Asia is about to embark on the development of several multilateral energy megaprojects. Historically, regional energy cooperation in South Asia has been undermined by a range of geopolitical issues. Political developments in the last decade have faciliated an unprecedented level of cooperation on energy, and currently several multilateral pipelines and hydroelectric projects are at advanced stages of implementation. Yet, the progress in the physical and bureaucratic development of energy projects has not been complemented by a corresponding conceptualisation of the governance challenges of these initiatives. Within academic literature, there is a dearth of studies that analyses the critical aspect of collectively governing the proposed and under-construction energy megaprojects in South Asia. This gap is concerning as the complexity of energy megaprojects and weak governance systems in developing countries can lead to enormous economic, social and environmental externalities. This article aims to identify the governance challenges of South Asia’s energy megaprojects. To this end, the article draws on literature on global energy governance and energy megaprojects and primary data from interviews undertaken with policymakers. The article synthesises literature on energy cooperation in South Asia with existing knowledge on megaprojects and global energy governance. In doing so, the paper addresses one of the key gaps in literature, which is the lack of studies that appraises megaprojects in the context of interactions between domestic and international politics. Due to the growing importance of energy megaprojects to regional integration and energy transition, the findings of this article have relevance towards policies on global governance and sustainable development.","PeriodicalId":47839,"journal":{"name":"Geopolitics","volume":"28 1","pages":"2142 - 2168"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47708299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-09DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2129010
G. Bădescu
ABSTRACT Connecting urban geopolitics with critical geopolitics, this article highlights the urban geopolitical significance of learning from the European South-east. Urban geopolitics has often made reference to the European South-east in discussions of urban warfare, conflict and contestation. In particular, Sarajevo and discussions of urbicide played a seminal role in understanding the contemporary relationship between conflict and the built environment. Beyond this attention to the 1990s wars, this article shows that contemporary urban transformations in the region reflect novel processes and alignments that can contribute to the larger project of rethinking urban geopolitics: allegedly ‘contested’ and ‘ordinary’ cities in the region reflect today a reshaping of practices of material and immaterial urban geopolitics highlighting transnational and global entanglements beyond the East-West and North-South conceptual and geopolitical divides. By employing a critical geopolitical analysis of the urban, the article discusses performative acts of power in urban space and the reconfiguration of the built environment in two cities in the region as a nexus of geopolitical processes, well beyond the wars of the 1990s: Sarajevo, arguably a divided city in a contested state, and Belgrade, an ‘ordinary’ capital city of a nation-state, albeit uncontested capital of a country with contested territories. The article highlights the emergence of newer relationships beyond the East-West divide, particularly with the Middle East, specifically articulated through urban space reconfigurations. It shows how the European South-east reflects that the urban geopolitical goes beyond the usual lens of ‘contested’ urban space to ‘ordinary’ cities, which become arenas of multi-scalar geopolitics.
{"title":"Urban Geopolitics in ’Ordinary’ and ’Contested’ Cities: Perspectives from the European South-East","authors":"G. Bădescu","doi":"10.1080/14650045.2022.2129010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2129010","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Connecting urban geopolitics with critical geopolitics, this article highlights the urban geopolitical significance of learning from the European South-east. Urban geopolitics has often made reference to the European South-east in discussions of urban warfare, conflict and contestation. In particular, Sarajevo and discussions of urbicide played a seminal role in understanding the contemporary relationship between conflict and the built environment. Beyond this attention to the 1990s wars, this article shows that contemporary urban transformations in the region reflect novel processes and alignments that can contribute to the larger project of rethinking urban geopolitics: allegedly ‘contested’ and ‘ordinary’ cities in the region reflect today a reshaping of practices of material and immaterial urban geopolitics highlighting transnational and global entanglements beyond the East-West and North-South conceptual and geopolitical divides. By employing a critical geopolitical analysis of the urban, the article discusses performative acts of power in urban space and the reconfiguration of the built environment in two cities in the region as a nexus of geopolitical processes, well beyond the wars of the 1990s: Sarajevo, arguably a divided city in a contested state, and Belgrade, an ‘ordinary’ capital city of a nation-state, albeit uncontested capital of a country with contested territories. The article highlights the emergence of newer relationships beyond the East-West divide, particularly with the Middle East, specifically articulated through urban space reconfigurations. It shows how the European South-east reflects that the urban geopolitical goes beyond the usual lens of ‘contested’ urban space to ‘ordinary’ cities, which become arenas of multi-scalar geopolitics.","PeriodicalId":47839,"journal":{"name":"Geopolitics","volume":"28 1","pages":"1757 - 1782"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43097282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-05DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2124159
B. Martin
ABSTRACT During the Korean War (1950-53), the American-led United Nations Command requisitioned vast areas of land and property in Korea for the purpose of constructing military infrastructures. Requisitions occurred not only in the war’s combat zone, but also in parts of the country understood by the United States to be under the sovereign control of the Republic of Korea. Many of these requisitions formed the basis of a permanent US military base network in Korea. This article responds to conventional scholarship on militarization and military bases and engages critical conceptions of territory and sovereignty to examine the constellation of forces that made American militarized dispossessions possible during the Korean War. It draws on archival evidence to show that the United States and Korea never reached a bilateral agreement on land or property requisitioning during the war, but that the US military nonetheless wove its own system of requisitioning through a certain conception of Korean sovereignty even in the face of contestation from the Korean government. The US military mobilized Korean forces under its operational control through the UN Command to carry out civilian land expropriations while contending that the Korean soldiers under its control were agents of their own state acting in accordance with domestic law. It then portrayed militarized dispossessions as Korean domestic problems and domestic liabilities. Evidence from the Korean War opens broad questions about the nature of American imperial sovereignty and territory both through and beyond the spatial unit of the military base.
{"title":"American Imperial Sovereignty and Militarised Land Dispossession During the Korean War","authors":"B. Martin","doi":"10.1080/14650045.2022.2124159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2124159","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT During the Korean War (1950-53), the American-led United Nations Command requisitioned vast areas of land and property in Korea for the purpose of constructing military infrastructures. Requisitions occurred not only in the war’s combat zone, but also in parts of the country understood by the United States to be under the sovereign control of the Republic of Korea. Many of these requisitions formed the basis of a permanent US military base network in Korea. This article responds to conventional scholarship on militarization and military bases and engages critical conceptions of territory and sovereignty to examine the constellation of forces that made American militarized dispossessions possible during the Korean War. It draws on archival evidence to show that the United States and Korea never reached a bilateral agreement on land or property requisitioning during the war, but that the US military nonetheless wove its own system of requisitioning through a certain conception of Korean sovereignty even in the face of contestation from the Korean government. The US military mobilized Korean forces under its operational control through the UN Command to carry out civilian land expropriations while contending that the Korean soldiers under its control were agents of their own state acting in accordance with domestic law. It then portrayed militarized dispossessions as Korean domestic problems and domestic liabilities. Evidence from the Korean War opens broad questions about the nature of American imperial sovereignty and territory both through and beyond the spatial unit of the military base.","PeriodicalId":47839,"journal":{"name":"Geopolitics","volume":"28 1","pages":"2111 - 2141"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41946539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-20DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2124158
P. Cuttitta
{"title":"Over Land and Sea: NGOs/CSOs and EU Border Externalisation Along the Central Mediterranean Route","authors":"P. Cuttitta","doi":"10.1080/14650045.2022.2124158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2124158","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47839,"journal":{"name":"Geopolitics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41661960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-03DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2104158
Gela Merabishvili
ABSTRACT Nationalist arguments justify contemporary border walls around the world. But what happens when nationalism defines the border as a dividing line and mandates its openness to link with ethnic kin beyond the state’s borders? In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s government built an anti-immigration fence along the southern border, separating the country from a large Hungarian community in northern Serbia. To avoid the clash with Hungary’s transborder nationalism, Orbán advanced a new geopolitical storyline that explained the border/migration crisis of 2015 as a ‘Muslim invasion of Christian Europe’. The narrative shifted the border’s meaning from a dividing line of the transborder Hungarian nation to a defensive line and civilisational rampart of ‘Christian Europe’. This discursive-analytical study of Orbán’s geopolitical reasoning captures how the border’s meaning changed over several months. The paper represents a critical geopolitical contribution to the border studies literature.
{"title":"Defending Europe at the Trianon Border: Geopolitical Visions of Nationhood and the Remaking of Hungary’s Southern Border","authors":"Gela Merabishvili","doi":"10.1080/14650045.2022.2104158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2104158","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Nationalist arguments justify contemporary border walls around the world. But what happens when nationalism defines the border as a dividing line and mandates its openness to link with ethnic kin beyond the state’s borders? In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s government built an anti-immigration fence along the southern border, separating the country from a large Hungarian community in northern Serbia. To avoid the clash with Hungary’s transborder nationalism, Orbán advanced a new geopolitical storyline that explained the border/migration crisis of 2015 as a ‘Muslim invasion of Christian Europe’. The narrative shifted the border’s meaning from a dividing line of the transborder Hungarian nation to a defensive line and civilisational rampart of ‘Christian Europe’. This discursive-analytical study of Orbán’s geopolitical reasoning captures how the border’s meaning changed over several months. The paper represents a critical geopolitical contribution to the border studies literature.","PeriodicalId":47839,"journal":{"name":"Geopolitics","volume":"28 1","pages":"2074 - 2110"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43377954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-28DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2094774
S. Nygård
ABSTRACT The Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway (sometimes including Finland and Iceland) have been depicted as small states punching above their demographic, political, military or economic weight in international affairs, especially in the post-Second World War era. The article historicises this notion by discussing nineteenth-century Scandinavian cultural elites and opinion makers who began portraying the region as culturally homogenous and distinctly modern. Coincidentally or consequently, this occurred at a time when Sweden and Denmark, having ceded their status as Northern European great powers to Russia and Prussia, were acutely preoccupied with reorienting themselves geopolitically. Expanding on the historiography of global positioning strategies in Scandinavia, the article centres on the interface between the realms of politics and cultural production during this period of transition. It highlights a group of self-declared cultural modernisers that in the 1880s came together under the banner of the Modern Breakthrough. Members of the group merit attention as public intellectuals advocating new ways of understanding Scandinavia’s place in the world by redefining the relationship between the local and the global. By focusing on their role as catalysts in a collective reorientation towards non-military claims to international relevance and status as an example of space-making practices, we can shed new light on region-building in Scandinavia against the backdrop of changing social and political realities.
{"title":"The geopolitics of the ‘Modern Breakthrough’: Cultural internationalisation and geopolitical decline in Scandinavia 1870–1914","authors":"S. Nygård","doi":"10.1080/14650045.2022.2094774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2094774","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway (sometimes including Finland and Iceland) have been depicted as small states punching above their demographic, political, military or economic weight in international affairs, especially in the post-Second World War era. The article historicises this notion by discussing nineteenth-century Scandinavian cultural elites and opinion makers who began portraying the region as culturally homogenous and distinctly modern. Coincidentally or consequently, this occurred at a time when Sweden and Denmark, having ceded their status as Northern European great powers to Russia and Prussia, were acutely preoccupied with reorienting themselves geopolitically. Expanding on the historiography of global positioning strategies in Scandinavia, the article centres on the interface between the realms of politics and cultural production during this period of transition. It highlights a group of self-declared cultural modernisers that in the 1880s came together under the banner of the Modern Breakthrough. Members of the group merit attention as public intellectuals advocating new ways of understanding Scandinavia’s place in the world by redefining the relationship between the local and the global. By focusing on their role as catalysts in a collective reorientation towards non-military claims to international relevance and status as an example of space-making practices, we can shed new light on region-building in Scandinavia against the backdrop of changing social and political realities.","PeriodicalId":47839,"journal":{"name":"Geopolitics","volume":"28 1","pages":"1990 - 2015"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42999693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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