... short in terms of economic development is closer to Zedong’s Three worlds perspective rather than the western one.
The West/non-West System as the Resurgence of the Land/Sea Dichotomy
There exists another dichotomy that has taken roots in western geopolitics, namely Land vs Sea. In fact, it represents a continuation of the same opposition between colonial Empires of the West and continental powers of the East. This distinction implies the world division into maritime-based powers (Thalassocracy ...
... the extended European peninsula of the Asian mainland – act as continental limitrophe states
Anyone who has at least some idea about the theory of international relations should remember the oft-quoted formula put forward by the father of British geopolitics, Halford Mackinder: “Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.” For those who are sceptical about geopolitical constructs and terminology, this logical chain may seem like a meaningless ...
Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Turkmenistan met recently to sign the convention on the legal status of the resource-rich Caspian Sea, a document more than two decades in the making. Meeting in the Kazakh coastal town of Aktau in mid-August, the leaders of the five nations hailed the summit as a historic success.
However, the convention formalizes the existing status quo rather than genuinely settling any disagreements among the five littoral states. Russian deputy foreign...
... the fate of being a redundant historical player in the evolution of the Eurasian continent.
Indo-Pacific, Quad, and Containing China
Andrey Kortunov:
SCO: The Cornerstone Rejected by the Builders of a New Eurasia?
The term Indo-Pacific has entered geopolitics via biogeography, which studies the patterns of geographical distribution and the distribution of animals, plants, and microorganisms. Biologists have drawn our attention to the fact that the vast ocean that spreads from the south of Japan ...
In the winter of 2014, two months before the events in Crimea, when it was already clear that the confrontation with the West was getting increasingly tense, I read again Leo Tolstoy’s
War and Peace.
I was struck by a phrase that had not caught my attention before: “A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it.” I realized then that Russia would resolve and win.
More than three years later, the tide has turned. There are still many dangers ahead; the economic base is still...
From July 30 to August 6, 2015, Belgrade is hosting international summer school “
Geopolitics in the Emerging Multipolar Era
”, held by the Serbian Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD) with participation of over 30 young foreign relations scholars, tutors and diplomats lectured by representatives ...
Renaissance of Geopolitics?
It is likely that, when describing the development of international relations in the second decade of the 21st century, future historians will refer to a kind of renaissance of geopolitics. While it may not be entirely accurate to suggest ...
The Soviet Union’s sunset years hardly felt like an innocent age to those who lived through them, but to recall the hopes and aspirations of that era is to rue the naiveties of those days. “A common European house” was how President Mikhail Gorbachev pictured the continent’s future; “a Europe whole and free”, in the words of George HW Bush, his American counterpart. But, as the tussle over Ukraine has shown, Russia and the west are rivals once again. The ceasefire...
Latent tensions have loomed before civil strife actually irrupted in Ukraine amid deep-rooted political uncertainties. That claims upon the Crimean peninsula would be eventually raised by Putin’s Russia, concentrating troops at the borders and effecting what appeared to be a military invasion, followed by a political validation (i.e. the referendums in the Eastern provinces), were not unfathomable. Yet, in its mitigation attempts the West has failed to appraise the region’s complex history...
From Ukraine to the South and East China Seas, the international system experiences new turbulence, even as it searches a new balance. Ostensibly, the United States and Russia are in a conflict over Ukraine. In reality, they are in a conflict over the fundamentals of the post-Cold War settlement. Russia, pushing back against expanding Western influence, is labeled revisionist and "resurgent." China is not yet in a conflict with the United States, but the Sino-U.S. relationship, too, is...
