Geopolitics ( Perez Rivera Alejandro ) PDF

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The definition of Geopolitics by three Autors...

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CRITICAL REVIEW (Alejandro Perez R)

Geopolitics has many definitions and between all of them we haven’t found one that quite explains what it really is so what I hope to do in this critical review is to look for similarities and differences between the discussed definitions and try to give it a simple and understandable definition.

To begin with, Karls Haushofer said this about geopolitics “Geopolitics is the new national science of the state, … a doctrine on the spatial determinism of all political processes, based on the broad foundations of geography, especially of political geography.” What we can conclude from this is that Haushofer consider geography as an essential part of geopolitics.

In addition, Colin Flint said this about Geopolitics “Geopolitics, the struggle over the control of spaces and places, focuses upon power. (…) In nineteenth and early twentieth century geopolitical practices, power was seen simply as the relative power of countries in foreign affairs. In the late twentieth century (…) definitions of power were dominated by a focus on a country’s ability to wage war with other countries. However, recent discussions of power have become more sophisticated.” Apart from this statement Flint said that geopolitics was a broad term and that needed more than one definition, he also explains that geopolitics is a way of seeing the world and does not agree with analysts saying that one individual can fully understand the world or what the Word geopolitics truly means.

CRITICAL REVIEW (Alejandro Perez R) Furthermore, Gerard Toal said this “geopolitics is discourse about world politics, with a particular emphasis on state competition and the geographical dimensions of power.” What we can conclude from this is that Gerard thought like Haushofer, he considered geography an essential part of geopolitics and more importantly he emphasizes the importance of discourse, he motioned that to study geopolitics we first had to understand discourse, which can be defined as the representational practices by which cultures creatively constitute meaningful worlds. Gerard also said this “Finally, geopolitics is popular because it promises insight into the future direction of world affairs. (…) Geopolitics has a certain magical appeal because it aspires to be prophetic discourse. (…) Because those most interested in international affairs live in a globalizing world characterized by information saturation, the desire for simplified nostrums packaged as ‘strategic insight’ is strong.” This last situation says that in today’s world geopolitics has come to be an important part of the world as he said before geopolitics promises insight into the future direction of world affairs so in my understanding any business that truly understand geopolitics has an advantage over other companies.

In Conclusion, now a day’s academic literature provides too many definitions of geopolitics, reflecting a broad and never ending intellectual debate, additionally we can understand that the definition changes with time so we are never going have a real true meaning to the world but of as right now we can say that geopolitics is the influence of such factors as geography, economics, and demography on the politics and especially the foreign policy of a state.

CRITICAL REVIEW (Alejandro Perez R)

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Flint, Colin, “Introduction to Geopolitics”, Routledge, 2006.

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Cohen, Saul Bernard, “Geopolitics of the World System”, Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.

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Mamadouh, Virginie, “Geopolitics in the nineties: one flag, many meanings”, GeoJournal 46, 1998, 237-253

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Dodds, Klaus en David Atkinson, “Geopolitical Traditions”, Routledge, 2000....