A comparative study of the relationship between the end of the Cold War and the resurgence of geopolitics in Europe.

A comparative study of the relationship between the end of the Cold War and the resurgence of geopolitics in Europe.

Russia’s intervention in the Ukraine, Donald Trump’s presidency and instability in the Middle East are just a few of the factors that have brought an end to the immediate post-Cold War belief that a new international order was emerging: one where fear and uncertainty gave way to a thick normative and institutional architecture that diminished the importance of material power. This has raised questions about the instruments we use to understand order in Europe and in international relations. The chapters in this book aim to assess whether foreign policy actors in Europe understand the international system and behave as realists. They ask what drives their behaviour, how they construct material capabilities and to what extent they see material power as the means to ensure survival. They contribute to a critical assessment of realism as a way to understand both Europe’s current predicament and the contemporary international system.

This edited volume provides an innovative contribution to the debate on contemporary European geopolitics by tracing some of the new political geographies and geographical imaginations emergent within - and made possible by - the EU's actions in the international arena. Drawing on case studies that range from the Arctic to East Africa, the nine empirical chapters provide a critical geopolitical reading of the ways in which particular places, countries, and regions are brought into the EU's orbit and the ways in which they are made to work for 'EU'rope. The analyses look at how the spaces of 'EU'ropean power and actorness are narrated and created, but also at how 'EU'rope's discursive (and material) strategies of incorporation are differently appropriated by local and regional elites, from the southern shores of the Mediterranean to Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The question of EU border management is a particularly important concern of several contributions, highlighting some of the ways in which the Union's border-work is actively (re)making the European space.

Examining the interplay between geopolitics, the strategic priorities of Europe's most powerful nations, Britain, Germany and France, and the evolution of NATO and CSDP, this book unveils the mechanics of the tension between conflict and cooperation that lies at the heart of European security politics.

This work covers the uncertain geopolitical situation of some countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including some of those which are hoping to enter the European Union in the near future, some for which entry is far off, and some which may never seek or be eligible for membership.

With globalization fading and geopolitics on the rise this volume analyzes globalization/geopolitical cycles accompanied by rising and falling economic/military hegemonies and the Chinese concept of Tianxia as an equivalent of the idea of hegemony along with a theory of pre-emptive hegemonic decline. Geopolitical movements are also discussed including state-seeking movements since the 16th century, Kurdish struggles in Turkey, African terrorist groups, and the Russian intellectual movement called Eurasianism. Finally, there is a discussion of the geopolitics of the Anthropocene and the rise of Astropolitical theory.