JEOPOLİTİK STRATEJİ - Deneme Sınavı - 13

To Ratzel and Houshofer, states are like living organisms that require lebensraum, viz. living spaces, to survive in the anarchical international environment. Just as individuals require a healthy body and mental condition, states are also in need. In the first stage of geopolitical thinking, geopolitics was understood as an objective scientific exercise whose primary reason was to offer ironclad statements on the impact of geographical location and physical terrain on the ability of states to maximize their power in international politics. To this view, states like living organisms that require living spaces to survive in the anarchical international environment. Just as individuals require a healthy body and mental condition, states are also in need of fertile and defensible physical terrain as well as robust and uncontaminated people to survive in international politics. The second generation of geopolitical studies came to the fore following the end of the Second World War. It was mainly an ideological competition between liberal capitalist countries of the western bloc and the communist countries of the eastern bloc. Third generation geopolitics began with the end of the Cold War rivalry between two opposing power blocks adopting diverging political ideologies. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the unification of Germany in 1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 epitomized the end of ideological geopolitics.

Turkey spearheaded the only inclusive multilateral cooperation program in Eurasia, i.e. the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization, which brought together various countries in the western part of Eurasia. The answer is D.

Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2012. The answer is A.

The second generation of geopolitical studies came to the fore following the end of the Second World War. Throughout the long Cold war years, the US-led Western camp was in bitter ideological competition with the Soviet Union-led eastern camp. The major faultiness between the two opposing power blocks was ideological. The parties competed with each other as to whose political economic model would triumph across the globe. Ideology and identity were the main signifiers of their geopolitical competition. This era in geopolitical studies is also called ideological geopolitics (Gray and Sloan, 2013).

Until 2008, the rise of China was not central to American strategic considerations and the European Union was at the apex of its power. The security concepts of Americans and Europeans alike demonstrated optimism and self-confidence in western capitals. Neither the national security strategies adopted by the George W. Bush and Obama administrations in the US nor the firstever security strategy document of the EU adopted in 2003 mentioned great power competition and ideological polarization as potential threats to liberal international world order. Many circles in the West took comfort in Fukuyama’s thesis that the history came to an end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and with the growing appeal of liberal-capitalist democracy as the only game in town. Fukuyama was basically saying that from the dissolution of the Soviet Union onwards the erstwhile non-capitalist societies would gradually become part of the US-led liberal capitalist world order because the end of the Cold War left them only with this option. The Cold War was decisively won by the liberal capitalist camp and the years ahead would not witness any ideology-driven geopolitical competition among great powers.

Even though the 9/11 attacks on the US homeland dented the image of the United States as the omnipotent global hegemon and criticisms of the American approach to the global war on terror intensified following the US occupation of Iraq, it was primarily following the financial crisis of the late 2000s that a sense of decline began to percolate down to the western elites in the United States and EU members.

The gradual shift from uni-polarity to multi-polarity has set the scene for fourth generation of geopolitical competitions among great powers. Since 2008, there have been disputes all over the world over the values of multiculturalism, openness, tolerance, and universal human rights. The morality of universal cosmopolitanism has gradually given way to the morality of relative communitarianism as rising nonwestern powers, primarily China and Russia, have increasingly offered non-western conceptualizations of international political order.

Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea on August 12, 2018.

Geopolitical understandings of different time periods tend to demonstrate diverging conceptualizations of power. Power is closely related to geopolitics. For example, while first and fourth generation of geopolitical competitions underline the primacy of hard power calculations and behaviors in relational relations, second and third generation of geopolitics tend to put more emphasis on soft power. Critical geopolitics would on the other hand say that it is not easy to separate hard power from soft power and states employ a mix of all power capabilities and relations in their efforts to justify their geopolitical view and claims. That said, a brief discussion on the concept of power would be meaningful in this context.

This dimension of power prioritizes capabilities of actors in a non-relational fashion. In this sense, some states are defined as hard powers, meaning that the tangible power capabilities at their disposal would enable them to influence the behaviors, interests and values of other states. Hard power capabilities can be of both military and non-military in nature. Therefore, a more apt categorization would be how these military and non-military capabilities would be employed to have an impact on others. Which particular logic would shape the actions of power-holder?

Persuasive soft powers are those that think they need to invest some capital in order to help create legitimacy and attraction in the eyes of others. They develop specific strategies not only to brandish their achievements but also persuade others that their behaviors and policies are legitimate and other-regarding. In this regard, persuasive soft powers take great pains in helping manufacture attraction in the eyes of targeted countries through the employment of diplomatic means of conflict resolution, public diplomacy efforts, development aids and multilateral and facilitative diplomacy at interstate and intrastate disputes.

The term geopolitics basically refers to the political significance of geography in the analysis of international relations and thus takes geographical expression of the world as a political construct. A fairly recent phenomenon, international relations (or International RelationsIR as a scholarly discipline and field of study) has been understood mainly through the lens of geopolitics and the geopolitical connotations of the international events and developments for decades. In other words, it is fair to argue that geopolitics has served as the basis and foundation that helped IR scholars better understand and explain the political aspects of the world and conceptualize the interstate affairs.

As a general rule, a state with a large territory may become a candidate of big power in case it fulfills other requirements as well. In other words, a large territory is an attribute of a big power, a mid-size territory is of a middle power. This is why, say, The Netherlands, a prosperous and wealthy state with a relatively tiny territory, is unable to move to the ranks of big powers. It should be recalled that the Dutch Empire, predecessor of The Netherlands, is cited as a major power in history because of its influence in international trade which was made possible thanks to its colonies. Thus, the reason today The Netherlands is not one of the big powers in international politics is because it does not have political control over large territories. On the other hand, Russia which, as opposed to The Netherlands, is relatively unstable in economic terms is considered a big power because of its military influence, and its vast geography. India is even a more illustrative case. Often associated with poverty and social instability, India is often regarded as a rising power which, probably for this reason, seeks permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council. The reason India is categorized as a rising power is its large territory and population.

According to Montevideo Convention which sets out the parameters of a state spells out four aspects for a political entity to be properly called a state: defined territory, permanent people, centralized authority and sovereignty.

No longer a very popular concept, globalization has been the epicenter of political debates and analyses on world politics throughout the 1990s. The rise of globalization as a very popular notion and analytical tool to explain the nature and dynamics of international relations in this particular period could be attributed to the end of Cold War where two so-called superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, dominated the stage of international politics as leaders of two power poles (this is why that era is called bipolar world). Globalization has been promoted as a sweeping explanation to describe the new state of affairs in the interstate relations.

But the study of geopolitics has to deal with further details, particularly the features and components of power and the influence that a state might have in the conduct of interstate affairs. With the advance of technological innovations, not only military and political influence of a state remains a must-included element in the analysis, but also the humane and economic geography is taken into consideration.

Because this requires a comprehensive approach, geopolitics has evolved a free-standing discipline focusing on different aspects of global politics. As an autonomous field, geopolitics now relies on different aspects and components of political geography and also pay attention to the debates and outcomes in other fields for a coherent analysis. In its new form, geopolitics help students, scholars and practitioners run predictions on the future course and trajectory of the international political system and develop strong and firm strategic simulations for the potential actions of the individual states and alliances. The potential successful performance attached to geopolitics is relevant to the growing number of elements, interacting with each other, it takes into calculation when assessing the political value and impact of the geography. These variables and elements include, among other things, technology, capital accumulation and economic development.

A similar postulate has been offered by Samuel Huntington (1996) who argued that a potential clash between major civilizations replaced the ideological rivalry during the Cold War. Huntington’s famous clash of civilizations argument suggests that ideology is no longer the source of conflicts and disputes in interstate politics which would be from now on characterized by the disagreements associated with desires for domination by different civilizations. Like Fukuyama, Huntington also agrees that the Cold War ended with the indisputable victory of the Western liberal democracy but further recalls that rivalry will not be replaced by permanent and lasting peace just because of that victory. In other words, the clash of civilizations approach underlines that there might be even a fiercer rivalry which, however, will now take place due to intercivilizational disputes and ambitions.

Russia, no longer relying on ideology as the driving force of foreign policy, recognizes geopolitics as ... the political concept, that uses natural-geographical data (configuration and the size of the territory and aquatory, climate, material and natural resources, racial and ethnical composition of the population for explanation of national interests of the states and coalition interests of military-political alliances.

Within the study of geopolitics, national security, particularly the military security of the state, could be evaluated from the perspective of several major factors including historical territory, nationalities, the structure of the state, the possession of and ability to use natural, material and human resources as effectively as possible (Logunov, 1993, 20-22). In other words, these factors shape the national security issues of each nation state and significantly impact upon the formulation and realization of its national interests. Without taking geopolitics into consideration, a definition of national interest will be missing some core components.

Interdependence is a term referring to the intricate ties and bonds between the states and intergovernmental organizations that cannot be possibly ignored in the analysis of world politics. The theory of interdependence basically suggests that due to the inevitable engagement between states in political, military and economic realms, international cooperation is a must and a wise move for the overall betterment of all states and of the international system.

It appears that Russia has been using energy as a tool of political leverage in its foreign policy after solidifying its geopolitical and military might. It is now possible to argue that energy serves as leverage in the Russian foreign policy which has been defined in aggressive terms under Putin. The Russian political elite has relied on different methods when using the energy as a trump card.