In the previous three lectures, we discussed the three cases of states that are involved into geopolitical competition at the global level and that have global geopolitical or geoeconomic capabilities. However, as we remember, geopolitics is much more complicated and includes many more states than just these three examples. In order to follow all events that happen in international relations and international politics, one should regularly consider geopolitical computation, should do geoeconomic analysis, should use critical geopolitics and should also follow the main trends in that happen in geopolitics that tell us about new players, new instruments, and new rules of this competition. When we look at geopolitical map of the world, we usually start with the three main players, which are the United States, the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China. However, we remember that more and more countries are becoming involved into this competition because of power shift that is happening right now from the West to the East. More and more states today are becoming economically stronger in different regions of the world. Outside the Western sphere of influence, there are new areas of competition and lines of communication appearing right now. For example, we remember that a couple centuries ago, the main arena of competition was Europe and the main Ocean where the main lines of communication exists was the Atlantic ocean. Today, there is a consensus regarding the rising influence of the Pacific Ocean, and many people say that the common 21st century will be the century of Asia. However, if we continue many contemporary trends, we can find that more and more countries in South Asia and in Africa are also economical horizons. So maybe in the future, Indian Ocean will be as important as the Pacific and Atlantic oceans right now. Together with new lines of communication, new areas computation, we can conclude that these rising powers in other Non-western regions in the future will challenge the traditional spheres of influence of contemporary Western powers led by the United States. Another process that influences significantly the geopolitical competition today and will continue to do it in the following years, is the process of regionalism. Today, it is not so easy for regional powers to spread the influence within their own region because every state possess a certain level of sovereignty. Therefore, one of the solutions here is to establish a regional community, regional alliance and to create international institutions to ensure your influence over neighboring countries. This process can be used in the opposite way as well. If you want to weaken your geopolitical opponent. One of the ways is to split the union that your opponent has created, or in other words, to make some sort of enter regionalism. It is not enough to be economically powerful or prosperous to enter the geopolitical competition. State should also care about its domestic political stability. Because only domestic stability can allow it to concentrate on foreign policy and on competition with other countries at the regional or at the global level. Therefore, the emergence of new regional powers in many regions of the world, including Africa, the Middle East, even South Asia, Latin America, will vary, depending on the ability of regional powers to ensure the political stability and to guarantee absence of any domestic political crisis. Finally, when we're speaking about geopolitical competition between the strongest powers, we should remember that this competition is not about maximization of your own power. Nobody today is trying to achieve this maximum and to control the whole world or all resources around the globe, rather states preferred to gain some profit or to strengthen themselves relatively in comparison to their main competitors, or the other option is to weaken your competitor in order to remain the strongest in the region or in the world. So geopolitical competition is not about being the only and therefore the strongest power, but rather about making yourself stronger than the others, than the main geopolitical opponents, or this days that you consider as a geopolitical opponent or weakening this geopolitical opponents. Historically, geopolitical competition happened between the strongest states, and therefore even now, in order to identify the key geopolitical players we first of all look at politically or militarily strongest states. That is why we name among them the Russian Federation and China, because of the military capability is not only because of their historical experience. Today, however, economy has become more significant in terms of this geopolitical competition. Therefore the term geoeconomics emerged. In terms of geoeconomic competition. We also named the three main states, The United States and China as the global economic powers, and The Russian Federation, which is the global geopolitical power and rather original geoeconomic power. But in terms of energy resources, it can be by some scores called a global resource power, global energy superpower. But obviously, the economic power shift is happening much faster than the military power shift. Therefore, in our global analysis of geopolitical competition, we should very attentively look at these economic power shift and new economic instruments of influence that emerge and economic spheres of influence, economic regions, economic institutions that allow great powers to spread the influence or to dominate in the region to influence the other countries. Because economic power shift is happening too first, geopolitical situation today does not reflect all these changes immediately. For example, many of contemporary institutions, international economic and financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and even the World Trade Organization were established after the Second World War and they reflected the power dominance of western countries. Today, these institutions are needed to be reformed because of emergence of new regional economic powers outside the Western bloc. However, this does not happen. Therefore new alternative institutions appear in different parts of the world. The best example is China that recently established the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank. All these means that economically, at least in economic sphere, rising powers are ready to use geoeconomic instruments and the geoeconomic potential in order to guarantee the economic stability, economic security, and economic prosperity. We by this come to the conclusion that economic growth leads to growth of other power components and this means that in the future, all these economic achievements can, or probably we can say, will be converted into geopolitical position. In the previous three lectures in our three case studies, critical geopolitics told us three main things: First, that geopolitics, among these three examples, the United States, Russia, and China, historically emerged in the Russian Federation and the United states, which means that geopolitical thinking was not and is not a worldwide phenomenon. It means that as it emerged in the West, many more western countries may continue to use the geopolitical thinking and may enter the geopolitical competition in the future, especially the strongest powers in the European continent. The second thing is that despite the fact that geopolitics as worldview emerged in Europe, its ideas, its concepts, and its main components can be taken by the other non-European countries to justify their foreign policy and regional hegemony. It is something that happened in 1930s with Japan when it invaded many countries in East and Southeast Asia and today it is something that happens in China as equivalent to many scores. China is ready to convert its economic power into geopolitical influence worldwide. As example, they usually mean its initiative, the One Belt, One Road. If China is able to do that, therefore, any country that is becoming economically stronger can also at a certain moment start to use its economic power to achieve political or geopolitical goal at the regional or at the global level. So in other words, the first two things tell us that geopolitics as a worldview may emerge probably in any country in the world, and any economically successful state at a certain moment can start to use its economic power, as a geopolitical tool to achieve certain geopolitical results. The third thing that critical geopolitics told us is, was that the places where this competition may happen and the fact what country one state considers as an enemy or a friend or a competitor or an ally, depends on the history of their relations, the current differences or contradictions in values between these two countries. So not only on some natural factors or geographic factors, but also on the things that show us how you consider yourself in the surrounding neighborhood or the other countries in the world. From all these trends that tells us about worldwide transition of economic power, of emergence of geopolitical thinking in other places of the world outside the European region and outside the traditional geopolitical players. A number of research questions appear that may tell us that geopolitical competition and the rising geopolitical players go far beyond the three examples that we discussed in the previous three lectures. For example, the first research question is, what would be the geostrategy of rising India, which is the rising power in the region of South Asia, which has become an economically more and more powerful and what will be relations, geopolitical relations between India and its neighbors and with other countries in Africa, in Asia. We did not discuss the European countries of the European Union because of the contradictions between decision making in the nation states of the European Union and the European Union itself. But it goes without saying that the European Union is powerful enough and the community of European states is powerful enough to participate in geopolitical competition. Even some European states like France, like Germany, like the United Kingdom, that in the middle of the Southern 19 is deciding to leave the European Union. Have enough power and enough geopolitical experience to participate in this global competition. Therefore, one of the research questions in geopolitics today is, what would geopolitics in Europe look like? Will it be the European country, the sovereign nation states, who participates in this geopolitics? Or will any common geopolitics be formulated within the European Union. The Middle East region is known to us as a shutter volt, and we described this region as the one without the obvious regional geopolitical leader. So today one of the key questions in geopolitics is whether in theory this region can become geopolitically more united. What would be the Just strategy in the future of its key regional players that are competing with each other for regional dominance, meaning Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and what are the interests of other powers that will try to play their role in this regional competition in the Middle East shutter volt, because of its geographical location, for many decades, Latin America was distant from geopolitical competition that happened in the Eurasian continent. However, today we can name at least one state here which is Brazil, that is economical rising power, which is becoming originally more and more influential and probably in the future it may become a geopolitical player not only in the region, but also participate in the global competition. Finally, if we look in the next couple decades, another question is how the African countries will act geopolitically. Today there is a number of states here in the African continent that are very fast developing where the population is quickly rising. In 20 or 30 years, they will have many more economic resources ready to be converted into their geopolitical capabilities. Another question here in the African continent is the number of landlocked states that do not have access to the world ocean, but they will become powerful enough in order to struggle for such an access. So maybe we'll face another battle arena between the sea powers and foreign powers. Finally, with the emergence of new states that may participate in geopolitical competition and with the future possible reorganization of the world geopolitical map, we can name several more research questions that show us and other factors that will play the role in the global geopolitical changes. The first one is the change in geography of resource supplies and here we can also name how demographic and economic trends will shift supply chains. We remember that in the previous decades and centuries, any changes in resource significance or communication lines caused geopolitical changes and in other, round of geopolitical competition. So this is another question to think about in the future decades. One more question is when new weapons, probably nuclear weapons will cause tensions between neighbors. We know several cases of such tensions because of nuclear weapon deployment. For example, between the Soviet Union and the United States and the nuclear weapon, the American nuclear weapon located in Turkey and the Soviet in Cuba. Another good example is nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan and the political tensions between these two countries. So who knows what will happen if such nuclear weapon will appear in the region of the Middle East shutter volt and how it will shape the regional distribution of power and influence the geopolitical competition and the quest for dominance in this region. Climate change is a very powerful factor that may influence geopolitics of countries. Previously, we discussed the role of climate change in the Arctic geopolitics, that due to the global warming, the Northern Sea Route became possible for communication to communicate regions of East Asia and Europe. However, there are many more examples. For example, how climate change may cause food or water shortage. Shortage of food and water supplies in different regions of the world and what are the geopolitical circumstances of this shortage. The last but not least, building of artificial areas in the seas. We gave examples of China that is currently building artificial islands, the Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands and its Air braces. There are many more places in the world where this artificial areas can be built, and building off such an island can totally change the geopolitical distribution of power in a particular region.
