The Return of Geopolitics in Europe?: Social Mechanisms and Foreign Policy Identity Crises: 124 (Cambridge Studies in International Relations, Series Number 124)

Cambridge University Press, 10/25/2012
EAN 9781107027343, ISBN10: 1107027349

Hardcover, 342 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

The end of the Cold War demonstrated the historical possibility of peaceful change and seemingly showed the superiority of non-realist approaches in International Relations. Yet in the post-Cold War period many European countries have experienced a resurgence of a distinctively realist tradition: geopolitics. Geopolitics is an approach which emphasizes the relationship between politics and power on the one hand; and territory, location and environment on the other. This comparative study shows how the revival of geopolitics came not despite, but because of, the end of the Cold War. Disoriented in their self-understandings and conception of external roles by the events of 1989, many European foreign policy actors used the determinism of geopolitical thought to find their place in world politics quickly. The book develops a constructivist methodology to study causal mechanisms and its comparative approach allows for a broad assessment of some of the fundamental dynamics of European security.

Introduction. The argument
geopolitics for fixing the coordinates of foreign policy identity Stefano Guzzini
Part I. The Analytical Framework
1. Which puzzle? An expected return of geopolitical thought in Europe? Stefano Guzzini
2. Which geopolitics? Stefano Guzzini
3. The framework of analysis
geopolitics meets foreign policy identity crises Stefano Guzzini
Part II. Case Studies
4. Czech geopolitics
struggling for survival Petr Drulák
5. The theme that dare not speak its name
geopolitik, geopolitics and German foreign policy since unification Andreas Behnke
6. Geopolitics 'in the land of the prince'
a passe-partout to (global) power politics? Elisabetta Brighi and Fabio Petito
7. Turkey's 'geopolitics dogma' Pinar Bilgin
8. Banal Huntingtonianism
civilisational geopolitics in Estonia Merje Kuus
9. Russia
geopolitics from the heartland Alexander Astrov and Natalia Morozova
Part III. Empirical and Theoretical Conclusions
10. The mixed revival of geopolitics in Europe Stefano Guzzini
11. Social mechanisms as micro-dynamics in constructivist analysis Stefano Guzzini.