Explaining a Geopolitical Vision

“The geopolitical vision is never innocent. It is always a wish posing as analysis” (Kearns, 2008). Evaluate this statement using examples to illustrate your answer.

Geopolitics is a discourse that explains and describes the individual ways in which the world’s territorial powers act, the way they are formed and the way in which their citizens experience them. The story of modern Geopolitics is the story of America and American hegemony, with the waning of the great powers of the imperial era the rise of the United States as the world primal economic and military power can be seen as the story of the 20th century. Moving into the new century America is still the hegemon however the rise of china and reawakening of the Russian bear will once again push America to defend it’s vision going forward.

Geopolitical visions are ways of thinking, of ordering and arranging the world, the assignation of roles to actors and spaces on a global chessboard. The aim of those invested in the game of politics is often to control the way the public perceives global political reality and to use this control to further their aims and objectives on the world stage.

Popular geopolitics is perhaps the vision most people are familiar with, the medias presentation of geopolitical events and their players. This can be seen most plainly during any crises, for example the current situation in Ukraine is sold to the Russian people as fighting for the freedom of the country by their national media whereas the western media paints it as an act of aggression. Russia is an interesting example in the realm of geopolitics, for over 30 years the paradigm of the cold war defined the world stage influencing everything from domestic and foreign policy, film, m...

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...he number of players regarding the geopolitical vision however the fundamental actions and concepts behind it will always remain.

Sources:

O’ Tuathail,G., Dalby, S and Routledge, P (eds) (2006) The Geopolitics Reader (2nd Edition), Routledge, London.

Dittmer, J (2010) Popular Culture and Geopolitics: Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity, Rowman & Littlefield

Dodds, K (2007) Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press (Chapters 5 and 6)

Dodds, K (2005) Global Geopolitics: A Critical Introduction, Pearson, Harlow

Jameson, F. (1995) The geopolitical aesthetic: Cinema and space in the world system. Indiana University Press,

Kearns, G (2003). "Imperial geopolitics." A companion to political geography: 173-187.

Rosaldo, R. (1994) Subjectivity in social analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press.