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After clicking with left mouse button on book cover, an Amazon page (or publisher's) with book info appears in a new browser window.
Saul Cohen, "Geopolitics: the Geography of International Relations", Roman and Littlefield, 2008
Simon Dalby, "Security and Environmental Change", Polity Press, 2009
Gérard Dussouy, "Les théories de la mondialité.", Traité de Relations internationales, tome 3, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2009
Michael Straus, "The Leasing of Guantanamo Bay", Praeger, 2009.
In this article, seven geopolitical specialists that have earlier contributed to ExploringGeopolitics share what they consider the most critical geopolitical development in 2009. The discussed developments include the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, implementation of the Lisbon Treaty and a couple of decisions of US president Barck Obama.
If you like to know more about 2009, please have a look at the other part of this article. Federico Bordonaro (La Sapienza University, Rome) gives an extended view on 2009 in which he argues already existing geopolitical trends accelerated over the year:
Bordonaro: 2009 Geopolitical Review - power politics in a globalized world
In 2009, common efforts to combat the deep recession by the economically interdependent Great and Emerging powers overroad some of their political and military rivalries. This strengthened global geopolitical equilibrium.
Off-setting this trend has been the increasingly destabilizing impact of terrorism and religious nationalism operating from bases within the world's Shatterbelts to threaten the security of the Great power geostrategic realms. These Shatterbelts now extend from Africa and the Middle East through Afghanistan and Pakistan into parts of Central Asia, with a Latin American outlier. Unchecked, they could evolve into a new geostrategic realm that would undermine the capacities of the Great Powers to further global equilibrium.
The moment that President Obama announced the decision to rescind the previous policy of putting facilties for a missile defence system in Europe may turn out to be the most significant geopolitical event of 2009. It opened the door for more serious negotiations concerning nuclear weapons with Russia, and partly undercut the impetus towards expanding the Shanghai security cooperation arrangement, what might have evolved towards a grand Asian alliance designed to "roll back" American encroachments into the "rimlands".
Two "geopolitical events" in 2009 appear significant to me. First, the confirmation of the movement of the global geopolitical centre to Asia. China has become the first industrial exporter and the largest creditor of the US. Henceforth, China will not accept any ideological interference by the West.
Second, the Swiss referendum on minarets which underlines the gap between the respective representations of the world by elites and by peoples. May this indicate a major future change in Europe in ideological and political terms?
As for a geopolitical review of 2009, I think for me the most critical development of the year is the LACK of development of a comprehensive climate change agreement out of Copenhagen. This event has been long-anticipated and trumpeted as a great opportunity to generate global consensus. But besides the fact that any kind of major agreement was not achieved (which I believe was idealistic to begin with), I think the event further highlighted the great, ongoing disparity in actuality and in perception between developed and developing nations. There is a very wide gulf between the two, and the geopolitical dynamic that ensues from that will continue to shape global geopolitics into the next decade (and beyond).
From my point of view the main geopolitical change for 2009 that will no doubt mark this year for the future generations is the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty on December 1. This date is symbolizing from now a crucial change not only in EU structure and politics but also means a shift in global order and power balance in the world. The EU first in it history applied for the status of another one real geopolitical power. Till now the union on the international scale presented a combination of national interests of member states that very rarely were able to formulate the mutual principles for external affaires, now it has a structured potential to implement the supra-national foreign policy. That opens the time of “EU geopolitics”.
Pakistan’s increased fight against terrorism and religious extremism has been one of the most significant developments in southwest Asia this past year. And Pakistani authorities’ success has been mixed, having had to fight on two fronts: the ‘battle’ front and the ‘home’ front. On the ‘battle’ front, the Pakistan army had success in combating the Pakistani Taliban militants by ousting them from the Swat Valley and in fighting them in South Waziristan. On the ‘home’ front, however, Pakistani authorities have been less successful, having been unable to prevent a bloody terrorist campaign against mainly civilians, including children and women, in market places and mosques. With these devastating attacks in the cities, the terrorists have confirmed that they can strike anywhere and anytime at will.
Unfortunately, we can expect more of the same on the ‘home’ front in 2010, as a response to a likely increase in US drone strikes against Afghan Taliban targets in Pakistan. And while the Pakistani security will be hard pressed to counter the terrorist attacks, Pakistan is not about to be overrun by the Taliban, as some Western analysts have carelessly assessed will happen. Nevertheless, Pakistani authorities will have to end their cosy relationship with some ‘good’ terrorist groups, eg. Lashkar-e-Toiba. These groups may have been useful in the past in their confrontation with India but they have increasingly turned against their former benefactors. The Pakistan government will need to reverse that policy for the country’s long-term stability.
I would say it's the global financial crisis. It is transforming the nature of states' relations with each other, generating new areas of cooperation, creating new tensions, and causing situations of financial interdependence that can affect the nature of sovereignty itself.
