INSTITUT FÜR

SOZIALWISSENSCHAFTEN


Navigation und Suche der Universität Osnabrück


Hauptinhalt

Topinformationen

Geopolitics and geostrategy

1.130

Dozenten

Beschreibung

Geopolitics and Geostrategy - Winter term 2020/2021
Geopolitical and geostrategic thinking is experiencing a comeback in times of dwindling resources and growing insecurity in politics, raising the question of what is understood by geopolitics and geostrategy in the 21st century and how this is reflected in practice. In the past, the focus was mainly on land control, today an integrated geostrategic approach dominates with the factors space (land and sea) and time (resources and demography). After an introduction to the theory the geostrategic practice will be shown.
The course will be held in English. The literature reference list will be uploaded before course start. The topics of the course include theoretical and practical parts.

Theoretical framework:
Using established concepts (realism, neorealism, classical and critical geopolitics), it will be shown how the concepts of geopolitics and geostrategy have evolved.
Although the focus is still on territorial power politics, the theoretical and practical perspective has substantially changed: it is no longer an either-or of rule-based institutions or selfish power politics, but about trying to exert power in the existing global institutional settings. Institutional and realistic perspectives and arguments are presented comparatively.
The earlier notion of a deterministic role of space or of an objective logic of power is in particular questioned by the concept of critical geopolitics. Other problems, e.g. the presentism issue will also be discussed.
Note that there were two prominent, but different academic schools of geopolitics, the German and the American School. Whole the German School with the so-called Lebensraum concept ended with World War 2, the United States have an academic continuity over more than 110 years, in particular with the Heartland theory which is still influential. It will be shown that all larger countries continuously utilized geopolitics and geostrategy by so-called Grand Strategies, i.e. formulations of vital strategic interests.
Modern geo-strategy is considered by the major powers as an integrated concept, which also aligns with foreseeable changes, i.e. questions about the energy reserves, food security, the long-term availability of raw materials and of course also the demographic change.
The renaissance of geopolitics coincides with the rise of the Political Warfare, which is the employment of all overt and covert means by a nation state to achieve its objectives and consists of the intentional use of one or more forms of power to affect the political composition or decision-making in another state. This is ranging from psychological measures up to short of war-activities. The concept was developed in the United States, but similar approaches are also used by other countries. The renaissance of political warfare coincides with increasing difficulties to use large-scale military power and the decreasing impact of soft power in times of increasing global tensions.

Practical case studies:
At the beginning, the complex interaction of geopolitics with the rule-based global institutional framework is examined using the example of the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), especially in the South Chinese Sea, where attempts to create facts collide with norms of sea and international law.
Subsequently, the great powers, their geo-strategies and geopolitical ambitions are presented in the context of the so-called Grand Strategies and then the relationships between the actors: USA, China and Russia are analyzed.
The next part deals with the geo-strategy in cyberspace: After a long-term dominance of the perspective of the cyberspace as a virtual world, security experts are gaining a more and more physical understanding: who controls the devices and the communication lines, also controls the data in them. This means: where do the chips come from, where are the servers, what data must stay in the country, who owns deep-sea cables, node computers and transmission towers? The result is an increasing fragmentation of the Internet.
Subsequently, religion is discussed as a strategic influence factor of politics using the example of the Near and Middle East.
A final part of the seminar is dedicated to the analysis and discussion of a current topic (e.g. Corona crisis, depending on future developments).

Weitere Angaben

Ort: nicht angegeben
Zeiten:
Erster Termin:
Veranstaltungsart: Seminar (Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen)

Studienbereiche

  • Europäische Studien > Master-Studiengang > Wahlbereich
  • Sozialwissenschaften > Master Soziologie
  • Sozialwissenschaften > Master Politikwissenschaft
  • Cultural Studies and Social Sciences (e.g. European Studies, International Relations)

< zurück