Geopolitical imaginations are constructed views of the world that reflect the vision of a place's, a country's or a society's role within world politics. Geopolitical imaginations are constituted by shared assumptions and representations of power relations and conflicts in world politics within a certain geographical territory. By critically analyzing how and why these imaginations are constructed, it is possible to reveal underlying power relations and to get a better understanding of various conflicts. Therefore, geopolitical imaginations are closely connected to the academic field of critical geopolitics.

Concept

Geopolitical imaginations are composed of the representation of a country's territorial limits and its geopolitical code which is “ ..a set of strategic assumptions that a government makes about other states”. These so-called geopolitical codes are based on national identity (particularly in ‘them’ and ‘us’ distinctions), emotional attachment to a place as well as national myths. Geopolitical imaginations provide the legitimisation for geopolitical actions or certain positions in foreign and domestic policy. Geopolitical imaginations are reflections of current discourses and therefore they are not fixed but rather vary over time and in different societies. Research has primarily analyzed geopolitical imaginations of European and North American countries, ignoring the fact that in other socio-political contexts there exist different ‘non-western’ geopolitical imaginations.

Hegemonic geopolitical imaginations in history

The view of the world as two polarizing ideological blocs ( western and

eastern bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

) is a geopolitical imagination which was dominant during time of the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

. Designations such as the

Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...

(the boundary between the bipolar powers) helped to justify certain politics and policies, e.g. in the United States in foreign policy by

containment Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term ''cordon sanitaire'', which was ...

(a military strategy to stop the expansion of the ‘enemy’) or in domestic policy with the expansion of

homeland security Homeland security is an American national security term for "the national effort to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards where American interests, aspirations, and ways of life can thrive" to ...

which enforced technologies of control and disciplining.

Samuel P. Huntington Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927December 24, 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs ...

made a draft of a fragmented conflicted world order. In his popular hypothesis called ” The Clash of Civilizations” (1996), he divided the world map geographically into rigid cultural entities, such as the Western bloc, the Islamic bloc or the African bloc, and proclaimed that the next major conflict will occur between these different cultures. In the 21st century, “hegemonic geographical imaginations are dominated by the affective geopolitics of the

War on Terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international Counterterrorism, counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campa ...

”. This has been a consequence of the synthesis between the Clash of Civilizations, the terror attacks of 9/11 and the following designations of

rogue states "Rogue state" (or sometimes "outlaw state") is a term applied by some international theorists to states that they consider threatening to the world's peace. These states meet certain criteria, such as being ruled by Authoritarianism, authorita ...

(states which have been blamed for threatening the world peace) and the axis of evil (states which have been accused of supporting terrorism and aspiring to weapons of mass destruction).Reuber, Paul, Politische Geographie" ''Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöning'', 2012.

References

{{reflist Geopolitics Geopolitical terminology

Concept

Hegemonic geopolitical imaginations in history

See also

References