Geopolitics in the Anthropocene

Simon Dalby | BIG Research Reports | #45

Discussions of migrations and boundary walls and fences, military interventions, and the use of nationalist tropes have raised the rhetorical temperature in  international politics. Walter Russell Mead (2014) is concerned that antagonistic politics between at least some great powers suggests just such a return of  geopolitics after a period in which it was apparently absent. If the term is used to  refer to territorial disputes, and the use of military force or the threat thereof, then clearly the conflicts over Crimea, Ukraine, various islands disputed by China and Japan and by various states in the South China Sea, or Russian and Turkish actions  in early 2016, suggest its utility given the belligerence in recent events.

Simon Dalby

Geopolitics in the Anthropocene