[SOUND] Hello and welcome back to my course. By this moment, we have learned a lot of things about geopolitics. For example, the history of geopolitics, where and when it emerged and who were the main people who contributed to its emergence. The scholars who formulated the main concepts of the traditional geopolitics. We know the history of the classical geopolitics, how geopolitics became much closer to the realist theories and how it developed during the years of the Cold War. After the end of the Cold War we have discussed the history of contemporary geopolitics, that geopolitics successfully survived the moment of unipolarity. And it continues to provide tools to analyze international relations in terms of security, in terms of usage of hard power, and global geopolitical competition between the great powers. We have also discussed the value of geo-economics as another tool that supports geopolitics and explains a different aspect or aspects of security, of international competition in the economic sphere. Together, geopolitics and geo-economics provide tools to properly estimate the contemporary international situation. First, we do it at the global or regional level. And then we discuss the state level, the main priorities and capabilities of the state. Still, we do not have the feeling that we can successfully use all these tools. For example, how should we use the geopolitical theories? Some of them are too narrow? Some of them are too broad. For example, the heartland and rimland theories tell us a lot about strategic places somewhere in Eurasia. However, we know that in contemporary international relations, many great powers pay a lot of attention to the regions of Latin America and Africa. So both heartland and rimland theories appear some sort of useless here. The balance of power theory is a very good geopolitical approach to speak about global distribution of power between the main competitors, especially if we're speaking about bipolar competition. But today, when we have a certain level of multiplarity and many great powers to think geopoliticaly, the balance of power tells us little about regional peculiarities geopolitical peculiarities. Another problem is that geopolitics changes. It is not static as we have discussed previously with the development of new technologies, the geopolitical thing in the geopolitical understanding of space of the whole world may change. And considering this fact, how can we be sure that the theory or the concept that we use currently is still relevant, is still appropriate to explain foreign policy over certain state or international relations at large? Finally, and this is the third problem. >> There is still no common geopolitical launch. >> Geopolitics is an approach may vary from one state to another. A very good example is the period of the Second World War, when there was the Nazi geopolitics and the US geopolitical approach that totally criticized the German geopolitical thinking. Another good example is the period of the Cold War. On the one hand, we can agree that both Soviet Union and the United States had had very similar geopolitical world view on the other hand. The Soviet geopolitics was first about spreading communist ideology, and second about how to provide security for the USSR, especially in the region of Eastern Europe. For the United States, geopolitics was quite different. It was about how to contain spread of communist communist ideology rather than to Its own sphere of influence. Geopolitics can not only vary from one state to another but it also can change in the same state in different periods of its history Germany again is a good example. We remember that in the early years of the German geopolitics. It was quite Imperial. It was focused on expansion on organic theories. Then in the year of Nazi rule in Germany. it was much more concentrated on gaining lebensraum, the living space for the German Nation. After Germany lost the second world war, German geopolitics are disappeared and Germany, West Germany was much more concentrated on cooperation with the neighboring countries, especially with France to create the European economic community. Which is very different from the previous two political thinking these policy remains even today and we can say for sure that the current foreign policy of demonic is far from the previous geopolitical thinking Russia is another good example in the second half of the 19th early 20th century this country occupied territory that was called by Halford mackinder a Heartland despite this Fact Russia did not try to occupy the whole continent and even didn't start to contrast the United Kingdom's seapower rather. It was concentrated on its security and spread of his borders was a tool how to provide the security. In the years of Soviet Union ideology became a part of the Soviet geopolitics it became especially irrelevant after the end of the Second World War, in the years of Cold War when there was Global geopolitical competition between the Soviet Union and the West led by the United States. The classical geopolitics of those times was enriched by power competition with the United States in terms of nuclear power in terms of global power parity balance of power. However, in 1980s the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev voluntarily refused from this geopolitics and declared a new job. AA political thinking he called the Euro your the European continent a common home for both the west and the Soviet Union. Today, most scholars agree that Russian geopolitics is back, but we can say for sure that there is no plenty of ideology in this politics. Russian current geopolitics is pragmatic and is focused on country security again. Let's look at Japan as another example. In the 19th early Intense 20th Century Japan try to imitate the European Imperial geopolitics, and by doing this it started to conquer the new territories in East Asia. After the defeat in the Second World War Japan's foreign policy, I think in totally changed, and since those times we cannot find any signs of geopolitics in the Japanese foreign policy. We can discuss do economic dimension of it. But still we can agree that its strategy has changed significantly. Talking about the United States, we can also find several stages of the evolution of is geopolitics. It started in the late 19th century with the ideas of General Mahon that supported the idea of control the American control. Over the main trade routes over the seas. However, it took a lot of time for the United States to become more engaged in the global geopolitics. It actually happened in the years of the Second World War. In right after the Second World War, when the American geopolitics became something that we call classical geopolitics. And it started to compete with the Soviet Union with its ideology, and to contain the spread of the Soviet's ideology. After the end of the Cold War, geopolitics continued to play an important role in the US foreign policy. The United States continued to care about the security and they saved a lot of military bases worldwide. If we look at the American foreign policy through the prism of geo-economics, we can find different strategies again. For example, in the years of presidency of Barack Obama there was a strategy how to spread the American influence by constructing new trade unions. The trans-pacific partnership with the states in East Asia, mainly India East Asia, and with the European Union, the so-called transatlantic trade Investment partnership. This geo-economic strategy totally changed when the new President Donald Trump entered the White House office and became the next president of the United States. His first order actually was to refuse from trans-pacific partnership. Instead, President Trump tries to achieve geo-economic goals for his country with the use of different instruments like trade tariffs and sanctions. Essentially, the geopolitical knowledge was diverse in the recent century-and-a-half. In the age of 2 in the age of traditional geopolitics is it was different. Let's say in Germany the United Kingdom, Russia, Japan and the United States. In the age of classical geopolitics despite a very strict structure of international relations, the so-called bipolar competition. The geopolitical world view in the United States and in the Soviet Union was also different. Even today, when we are speaking about contemporary geopolitical concepts like The Clash of Civilizations, it is really hard to use this concept to explain foreign policy behavior of certain states. For example, the closest civilization a group of states to the United States is late in America. However, the efforts of the US Foreign policy are concentrated on different regions. For example, on the region of Middle East and partly on the region of East Asia, the places which are far from the American Homeland. Altogether, it means that before we start to analyze international or regional situation. And before we start to estimate capabilities or interest of a certain state we should be ready. And we should be able to explain why there is different geopolitical tradition, geopolitical knowledge in various states across the globe. [SOUND]
