GEOPOLITICS

COURSE SYLLABUS

Course Description

This course engages the impact of geography, distance, strategy, and tactical operation on the
realization of goals and objectives, with accompanying human, political, social, economic and
cultural factors that may change the shift of events and decision making power.

In this course, the development of world politics through the twentieth century and early twenty-first
century, as well as the modern geopolitical imagination that animates it are being examined. The
approach is broadly historical, descriptive, geographical, strategic, and global in scale. It combines
questions of geoeconomics in addition to geopolitical inquiry. It focuses on the tension between
two logics of political power that structure modern global politics, in the both of which geography
plays an important part: a territorial logic of power that has its basis in the direct control of territory,
people and resources, and a more diffuse, geoeconomic logic of power that derives from the
command of a “de-territorialized” market-based global economy.

Course Learning Objectives

To develop conceptual and theoretical tools to explain contemporary developments in world

politics. Questions that are raised by looking at the historical development of geopolitics and the
geopolitical imagination over the past century;

To provide explanation to persistent questions such as: Why did the alliance between the US and
the USSR in the common struggle against fascism transform into a political, economic and military
rivalry, which frequently risked universal destruction? How do we explain the geopolitical rivalry in
the post-cold war era, after the demise of the USSR and the “triumph” of liberal capitalism?

How do we explain the wave of militarism sweeping current US politics and the increasing
connection between private corporations and the “war on terror”?

Expected Learning Outcomes

By the end of the term, students-participants should have developed the analytical skills and
historical knowledge necessary to think through current geopolitical dynamics.

The students-participants should have been inspired to engage critical thinking and demonstrate
deep interest in critical discussions delving on current issues burning in borderless territories.

Enabling/ Learning Activities

Documentary readings and analyses, brainstorming sessions, film analysis, forum, focused group
discussions

Assessment Activities

Thought papers with critical research, preliminary examination, individual/collaborative sharing,

research presentation, course paper, final examination

Course Policies/ Requirements

Two (2) thought papers for every term (prelim, midterm, finals)
Major Examinations
Course Paper with presentation

OUTLINE

I. GEOPOLITICS, GEOECONOMICS, AND THE MODERN GEOPOLITICAL IMAGINATION

Geoeconomics of liberal imperialism

Territorial power and capital accumulation

The modern geopolitical imagination: global, differentiated, hierarchical world

Nation-states and global power

Historical geopolitics and the development of imperialism

II. GEOPOLITICS OF BOURGEOIS IMPERIALISM

Geopolitics, imperialism and environmental determinism

The development of US hegemony

Fascism

III. US HEGEMONY AND THE COLD WAR

Containment and rivalry in postwar geopolitics

Postwar idealism and realpolitik: the United Nations

Cold War in Europe, hot wars elsewhere

The Second Cold War

IV. CONTEMPORARY GEOPOLITICS

Geopolitics and geoeconomics of neoliberal globalization

 
The return of civilizational geopolitics

The persistence of naturalized geopolitics

The new militarism, the persistence of war

Human rights intervention and democracy assistance

Corporate warriors and warrior corporations

Terrorism, the war on terror and torture

Geopolitics in the age of matrix

BASIC READINGS

David Harvey, 2003. The New Imperialism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
John Agnew, 2003 (2nd edn). Geopolitics: Re-visioning World Politics. New York: Routledge.
Kearns, Gerard (2009). Geopolitics and Empire: the legacy of Halford MacKinder.Oxford, NY:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
Neil Smith, 2005. The Endgame of Globalization. New York Routledge
O'Tuathail, G.1996. Critical Geopolitics. London: Routledge
O'Tuathail, G. and Dalby, S.1998. Rethinking Geopolitics. London: Routledge.
Robert J. McMahon, 2003. The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.

EXTENDED READINGS

Campbell, D. (1998). Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of
Identity, revised edn. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.
Debrix, Francois (2008). Tabloid Terror: War culture, and Geopolitics. London: Routledge
Hobbes, T. (1982) Leviathan, new edn. New York: Penguin Classics.
Labban, Mazen. On Geopolitics, (cf.syllabus)
Lee Kuan Yew (2013). Lee Kuan Yew: the grand master's insights on China, the United States, and
the World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Mattern, J.B. (2005). Ordering International Politics: Identity, Crisis and Representational Force.
New York: Routledge
Morgenthau, H (1985) Politics Among Nations, 6th edn NY: McGraw-Hill.
Morrissey, John (2014). Key Concepts in Historical Geography. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
Publication
Shawcross, W.(1997) Murdoch: the Making of a Media Empire, revised and updated. NY: Simon
and Schuster
Paskal, Cleo (2010). Global Warring: How environmental, economic and political crises will
withdraw the world map. NY: Palgrave, Macmillan