After we have discussed critical geopolitics so deep, it is time to think about how did you approach? Is the classical one and the critical one can coexist with each other? We see that classical geopolitics and critical geopolitics, they deal with very opposite aspects of international relations, and they have different and even opposite points about international relations. Classical geopolitics believes that it deals with the world as it is, while critical geopolitics insist that there is no world as it is. Classical geopolitics offers theories that describe the world while critical geopolitics says that all these theories are constructed by people aimed to achieve certain goals. From these contradictions, two very important questions arise, is classical geopolitics can still be used within international relations theory, and if yes, how can critical geopolitics contribute to geopolitical knowledge and studies that we discussed in the previous lecture? One of the main source of critics of classical geopolitics arises from the following reasons, the dynamic nature of all theories, meaning that there were a lot of geopolitical theories that replaced each other. The dynamic nature of international relations, international relations did not follow the geopolitical theories and many times they changed and geopolitical theories could not explain them. Conflict in vision of the purpose of theory, meaning that many geopolitical approaches were aimed at achieving certain foreign policy goals, like critical geopolitics set. However, some scholars try to defend classical geopolitics. They say that all these weak sides can be found almost in every theory of international relations. Even more, in geopolitics there are more of these drawbacks because schoolers and politicians, on the one hand, were attracted by the geopolitical approach. However, they did not focus a lot on developing a single, systemic geopolitical theory that could explain everything. In many cases, geopolitics indeed attracted some populists or politicians who used some geopolitical theories and did not care about how to use them. But each could happen with any other theory, it is not a problem of geopolitics as a science, rather the problem of people who tried to use it for their own purposes. As long as we have decided that classical geopolitics is not so bad, we should find that classical geopolitics and critical geopolitics are not contradictory. They rather explain different aspects of international relations. Classical geopolitics is oriented on finding how geographic factors influence foreign policy of state and influence on geopolitical situation in the world. Critical geopolitics has different reasoning. It aimed at finding domestic social factors that influence on development of particular geopolitical ideas, and both the theories can be used together. In this slide, you see comparison of classical geopolitics and critical geopolitics, which shows us that these two theories are focused on a little bit different levels of analysis. For classical geopolitics, it is the state level or even the world level. It tries to find objective causes and processes of the global original structures, and it also considers rational assumption about decision-making. Well critical geopolitics believes that everything is dependent on a person, or or group of people, or society in general that has its own peculiarities, and these peculiarities, all these factors, influence the decision the foreign policy decision that is made. So, in other words, critical geopolitics is a decision-making level theory. Both these theories, the classical one and the critical one, can be found in the term geostrategy, which is how geopolitical knowledge is considered and implemented in foreign policy practice. Classical geopolitics believes in rational choice, and that's why it provides certain rational knowledge and beliefs that this knowledge will be taken and implemented it in practice. Critical geopolitics believes that there are some other factors beyond these rational choice model, which are personal interests of interest groups, of particular people, ideological, social, religious, and many other reasoning that also influences on implementing of particular geostrategy. Ultimately, we find critical geopolitics also very useful to describe behavior of particular states. And that's why we can add critical geopolitics as the third geopolitical approach that we can use in our everyday analysis of international relations, after geopolitics or classical geopolitics, and geo-economics. This table shows the three level of analysis that we used to describe how we use classical geopolitics and geo-economics. We add here critical geopolitics as well at the world level and at the regional level. We use the so-called structural analysis, or in critical geopolitics we show how the existing international structure is perceived by particular state at the state level. And at the state level of analysis we speak about out how foreign threats or opportunities at the regional or global level are understood by particular policy makers, or scientists, or think tanks. Maybe we also consider some other factors, religious, social, political. All these factors contribute to what concepts are created by scholars, by think tanks and how this concepts are implemented by decision makers, or in general what type of geopolitics is implanted by policymakers, even if they don't read any concepts, but just follow their own perception of world situation, of regional situation, and of domestic situation, what are their threats? What are their opportunities, and and so on? [SOUND]
