From “Asia Pacific” to “Indo Pacific”: The Adjustment of American Asia Pacific Strategy from the Perspective of Critical Geopolitics

After taking office, the Trump administration has shifted the U.S. strategy in the Asia Pacific region from “Asia Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific”. This paper attempts to start with critical geopolitics, compare the “Asia Pacific” strategy of the United States with the “Indo-Pacific” strategy, and investigate the changes and dynamics of the geopolitical imagination of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region. Through the investigation, it can be found that the strategic transformation from “Asia-Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific” reflects the transformation of the U.S. strategy towards China from “L-shaped defense” to “half-mouth encirclement”, as well as the Trump government’s attempt to rebuild the U.S. hegemony in various fields through all-round competition, reshape its identity and confidence as a great power by changing its self-identity and consolidating and expanding the alliance of Western style liberal democratic countries by looking for strategic fulcrum to reconstruct the strategic demands of the key geopolitical space. After Biden’s administration took office, it has inherited and strengthened the Trump administration’s “Indo-Pacific” strategy, which means that the strategic game between the United States and China in the “Indo-Pacific” region and even the global stage will continue for a long time. In order to safeguard China’s national interests and effectively respond to the “Indo-Pacific” strategy, China should enhance its influence and maintain the mentality as a great power, adopt social creation strategies to seek identity and recognition, and make plans based on the “Belt and Road Initiative”, “Polar Silk Road”, “Belt and Road Initiative” and other initiatives; if pushed forward smoothly, it will effectively crack down on the U.S.’s attempt to contain China through the “Indo-Pacific” strategy.

Critical geopolitics, the Shanghai cooperation organization and the sino-kazakh water agreements

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), previously known as the Shanghai Five, was formed in June 2001 as a security engagement organization. It is a highly influential organization in the Eurasian continent, and most Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan included - are members of SCO, as well as China. In recent years, the Chinese water diplomacy towards Kazakhstan has advanced in different agreements that are shaping the patterns of water security in Central Asia. The Chinese strategic interest in the development of the scope of the SCO in this region has made Kazakh transboundary water issues to advance in negotiations. However, these agreements have been made in a bilateral scheme, which is considered relatively unequal towards Kazakh interests; therefore, in spite of the Kazakh efforts, the SCO so far has not turned into a water security organization. This paper is going to analyze the current trends in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as well as the Sino-Kazakh cooperation platform, especially regarding transboundary water resources. From the perspective of the critical geopolitics scholarship and its considerations regarding the concepts of hegemony and zones of influence, the idea that the Sino-Kazakh cooperation has advanced following Chinese interests is going to be defended. In conclusion, this paper states that due to the lack of interest regarding Chinese water diplomacy, and despite of Kazakh efforts, the SCO is not in the near future launching great initiatives regarding water security in the region, reinforcing the Chinese diplomacy of bilateral water agreements. Recebido em 14/04/2021Aprovado em 19/09/2021

Reflection on Criticisms of Critical Geopolitics

The book Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space was first published twenty-five years ago. In this article, I briefly discuss the geopolitical and intellectual sources of inspiration for the development Critical Geopolitics as a distinctive approach within Anglo-American political geography. In doing so, I distinguish it from other concurrent critical approached to International Relations and the world-system within English-speaking Geography at this time. Thereafter I consider four lines of critique of Critical Geopolitics. The first is the argument that the approach is too political. A subsidiary argument considers its relationship to violence. The second is the argument that it is neglects embodiment and everyday life and that, consequently, a Feminist Geopolitics is needed as a necessary corrective. The third is that claim that the approach is too textual and operates with a flawed conception of discourse, one that neglects practice. The fourth critique is that Critical Geopolitics has an undeveloped conception of materiality and neglects more-than-human agency. In discuss these criticisms, I make an argument for a continuity of concern with latent catastrophism in Critical Geopolitics from the danger of nuclear war in the mid-nineteen eighties to the climate emergency of today.

Masyarakat Adat dan Diskursus Representasi di Lingkar Artik: Tinjauan Kosmopolitanisme dan Geopolitik Kritis

The Arctic Circle, without a doubt, has turned into a region of various complexities and holds a huge prominence in the contemporary world; especially if one link it with discourses regarding energy, resources, and maritime issues which have helped in triggering wide international contestations. These discourses, consequently, are getting more proliferated as the polar ice melting. However, the existing paradigm carried about within the research of the region tends to be ignorant of those whom are marginalized, yet distinctly significant to the shaping of the Arctic environment, under the shadows of nation-states and high politics agendas: the indigenous peoples. This article, therefore, would contribute to the political discourse of the Arctic by elaborating the perspective of indigenous people in regards of the ongoing dynamics. Utilizing Critical Cosmopolitanism as a normative basis, as well as taking the approach offered by Critical Geopolitics, this writing will try to deconstruct how the nation state’s prolonged hegemony impacting the Arctic Circle, displaying the significance held by indigenous communities, as well as factors leading to its heighten representation—with a more through focus on Inuit Peoples in regard of their population and prominence within the discourse. This article reveals that the shifting global paradigm which, in time, echoing Cosmopolitanism values, such as inclusivity, paves a way to the growing representation to the indigenous peoples.

Promises Made to Be Broken: Performance and Performativity in Digital Vaccine and Immunity Certification

Digital vaccination certification involves making many promises, few of which can realistically be kept. In this paper, we demonstrate how this phenomenon constitutes various forms of theatre – immunity theatre, border theatre, behavioural theatre and equality theatre – doing so by drawing on perspectives from technology regulation, migration studies and critical geopolitics. Technological theatre and political theatre often serve valid functions, but these forms are problematic for several reasons. First, they involve real-world infrastructures that, while unlikely to accomplish the task at hand, will nevertheless last a long time and be repurposed. They therefore constitute governance by data infrastructure, diverting action and control away from elected legislators to for-profit contractors. Second, vaccine certification effectively legitimises inequalities between countries and people by formalising ways to distinguish between the vaccinated and non-vaccinated and to exclude the latter, thus reinforcing both mobility and connectivity divides. It serves as a way to (further) close borders and to regulate, through code and infrastructure, access to public goods such as employment and public space. Finally, the project of certification displaces a more important action, namely addressing the radical inequality in countries’ ability to combat the pandemic.

Why a critical geopolitics cannot be Confucian

In this commentary, I welcome An et al.’s (2021) commitment to explore the role of Confucian thought in the contemporary practices of statehood in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nonetheless, I also take issue with the authors’ argument that a Confucian geopolitics is needed to replace inadequate ‘Western geopolitical frameworks’. Confucian philosophies promote a hierarchical social order based on authority and subordination, and the way in which they are selectively and strategically utilized in contemporary China represents an important subject of analysis. However, they should not be viewed as a framework of analysis, as they obscure rather than shed light on spatial and class struggles – even in the hybridized stylization endorsed by An et al. Critical political economic and critical geopolitical perspectives with a global theoretical orientation and a knowledge of place and culture offer more promise in the disentangling of state practices and social relations in the PRC.

Towards a New Concept of Constructivist Geopolitics: Bridging Classical and Critical Geopolitics

This essay deals with the question to what extent perspectives of classical and critical geopolitical thought are suitable for analysing geopolitical structures of world politics. The following article discusses the potential that opens up a constructivist perspective for the conceptualisation of space and spatiality in geopolitics. This article is about links between geopolitics and international relations for a theoretical rebuilding of geopolitics. It focuses on the constructivist geopolitics and thus questions of power, space, politics and new political spaces; however, not only in a global and national context but also on a local and regional scale. According to the basic premises of constructivist geopolitics, geopolitical constructions and conceptions of space can be asserted as subjective and objective categories. From this perspective, it also shows that the geopolitical world order can be understood not only objectively but also subjectively in reciprocal interaction. These discussions are seen as an interrelated contribution to combine two different paradigms and to promote the synergy of scientific expertise to understand world politics and for the management of temporary global problems. Constructivist geopolitics attempts to conceptually rethink classical geopolitics and critical geopolitics together in a new way to enrich the subject of geopolitics as a possible approach.