Geopolitics

From the mid-1950s on, the United Nations (UN) provided a forum for Finland to have an international presence despite its status as a neutral country in the Cold War. But until 1955, Finland's bid to join the UN was blocked by the Soviet Union. The inability to gain admission caused some Finns to favor staying outside the UN, a view that gained its widest circulation in the latter half of 1950 after the UN had been invoked to respond to North Korea's attack on South Korea. Nonetheless, although some Finns were concerned that membership in the UN might cause their country to become embroiled in a superpower Cold War conflict against its will, others believed that entry into the UN would confer prestige and legitimacy on Finland and strengthen its position as a sovereign member of the international community. Although Finns realized that the UN would not provide a security guarantee, the organization did help Finland to consolidate its neutral position in the Cold War international system.

Fin dal primo Accordo centroeuropeo di libero scambio, i meccanismi di pre-adesione all’Unione Europea hanno costituito degli indispensabili strumenti per una progressiva integrazione politico-economica dell’ex blocco sovietico nelle strutture occidentali. Ciò è stato tanto più vero per i Paesi dei Balcani occidentali, emersi dalle ceneri di un paese per molti versi peculiare – socialista ma non direttamente nell’orbita sovietica: Croazia e Serbia in primis, reduci dall’esperienza del conflitto e ancora in piena transizione post-socialista.

Technogeopolitics, defined as the study of geopolitical events that are heavily influenced by technological factors, has emerged in recent years as a developing branch of critical geopolitics. However, the majority of technogeopolitical studies have been empirically based on aircraft and analyses of military airspace, missing the potential insights that could be attained through considering alternative transport technologies such as railways. In this study I therefore apply an amended technogeopolitical framework to the study of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway, a major construction project that aimed to link the cities of Berlin and Baghdad for the first time by rail in the early twentieth century, in order to enhance our understandings of both technogeopolitics and the importance of the railway in Great Power rivalry and in causing the First World War. After contextualising the railway within the prevalent German geopolitical visions of the nineteenth century, I make two related arguments. Firstly, I argue that the technogeopolitical imagery of power projection is unsatisfactory for understanding the Berlin-Baghdad Railway, and contend that we should consider power as radiating outwards through and into the space over which the railway travelled. Secondly, I reason that the railway was responsible in the deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation of the Persian Gulf from a hitherto British controlled space into a space threatened by the onset of a foreign, German railroad between 1902 and 1908. I conclude by summarising my main arguments.

The inflexible growth of the Islamic State (Arabic translation)

Taking advantage of territories and populations weakened, new jihadists rely on huge finances and a totalitarian ideology to sit their caliphate in Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State enjoys competing interests among regional powers, including among allies of the West.

Taking advantage of territories and populations weakened, new jihadists rely on huge finances and a totalitarian ideology to sit their caliphate in Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State enjoys competing interests among regional powers, including among allies of the West.

Profitant de territoires et de populations affaiblis, les nouveaux jihadistes s’appuient sur des finances colossales et une idéologie totalitaire pour assoir leur califat en Irak et en Syrie. L’Etat Islamique profite des divergences d’intérêts entre les puissances régionales, y compris entre les alliés de l’Occident.

Despite the availability of an increasing body of literature describing the European Union (EU) as a "global actor", especially in the United Nations system, it remains uncertain whether the EU acts differently from other regional groups. In order to ascertain possible peculiarities of the EU position, we therefore consider the voting pattern of its member States at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), and then make a comparison with other regional groups. The result is that the EU is confirmed as a strong and cohesive group at the UNGA, but it is clearly not the only one, since other regional groups show similar voting behaviour. What's more, from a substantial point of view, one open question remains concerning the consequence of this strong internal European cohesion, increasing cohesiveness not appearing to translate into a growth in influence.

COMPLICITY

A two-day conference exploring issues of complicity, organised by the University of Brighton's Understanding Conflict: Forms & Legacies of Violence research cluster.

Tuesday 31st March – Wednesday 1st April 2015
University of Brighton, UK

CALL FOR PAPERS
DEADLINE: 1st December 2014

A new Black Sea Security Cooperation Organisation could be created to deal with regional security issues, in particular territorial disputes and transnational energy relations. Its membership would comprise all Black Sea littoral states, as well as the European Union and the United States.

The importance of large-scale real estate projects in Phnom Penh’s contemporary development has been stressed in recent research. However, an important part of the local real estate actors, such as small and medium developers, or the emerging elite, has been overlooked. In consequence, important aspects of the reorganisation of the urban spaces production processes after 1980 remain unknown. Using a cross typology of both real estate actors and modes of real estate capital appropriation, I underline the evolution of developer’s actions and strategies since the 1980s. I argue that local real estate actors represent the core of Phnom Penh’s transformations, and have to be studied through a socio-historical perspective. I further argue that an actor-centred approach is necessary to identify the domination structure of the real estate activity. Finally, the article stresses the emergence of new groups of interest (associations of professionals), which will certainly participate to transform power relationships in Phnom Penh’s real estate sector.

Continuously challenged, states naturally seek means
of legitimating their authority, a process that increasingly
requires providing a citizenry with some level of
freedom of expression. At the same time, technologies
are evolving quickly and changing the ways that
communities are formed and authority legitimized. For
many states, allowing too much freedom of expression
risks a loss of legitimacy by another sword: the rise of
political challengers more able to engage the masses
and offer alternative visions for the future. It is within
this continuum—with absolute freedom of expression
on one end and total information control on the
other—that I explore four case studies in which states
discourage access to a singular, shared internet by
developing malleable domestic networks more capable
of facilitating a balance between freedom and control.