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Critical geopolitics
Critical geopolitics
Critical geopolitics
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In the humanities discipline of critical theory, critical geopolitics is an academic school of thought centered on the idea that intellectuals of statecraft construct ideas about places, that these ideas have influence and reinforce their political behaviors and policy choices, and that these ideas affect how people process their own notions of places and politics.[1]

Critical geopolitics sees the geopolitical as comprising four linked facets: popular geopolitics, formal geopolitics, structural geopolitics, and practical geopolitics. Critical geopolitical scholarship continues to engage critically with questions surrounding geopolitical discourses, geopolitical practice (i.e. foreign policy), and the history of geopolitics.

Key ideas and concepts

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Rooted in poststructuralism as well as various versions of postcolonial scholarship, critical geopolitical inquiry is, at its core, concerned with the operation, interaction, and contestation of geopolitical discourses.[citation needed]

This poststructuralist orientation holds that the realities of global political space do not simply reveal themselves to detached, omniscient observers.[citation needed] Rather, geopolitical knowledges are seen as partial and situated, emergent from particular subject positions. In this context, geopolitical practices result from complex constellations of competing ideas and discourses, which they in turn modify.[2] The linkages between geographical patterns and processes, on the one hand, and various types of discourses on the other hand, are a key contribution to the geography of media and communication. They also imply that geopolitical practice is not, therefore, unproblematically 'right' or 'natural'.

Further, since geopolitical knowledge is seen as partial, situated and embodied, nation-states are not the only 'legitimate' unit of geopolitical analysis within critical geopolitics. Instead, geopolitical knowledge is seen as more diffuse, with 'popular' geopolitical discourse considered alongside 'formal' and 'practical' geopolitics. These three 'strands' of geopolitical thought are outlined below:

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Popular geopolitics is one of the ways in which geopolitical knowledge is produced. It argues that geopolitical ideas are not only shaped by the state, intellectual elites and politicians. Rather, it is also shaped and communicated through popular culture and everyday practices.[3]: 208  Popular culture construct a common sense understanding of world politics through the use of movies, books, magazines, etc.[3]: 209 

Political geographers have widely studied the role of popular culture in shaping the popular understanding of politics.[3]: 209  Klaus Dodds, a political geographer, studied the conveyance of geopolitical ideas through movies.[3]: 209  While analyzing James Bond movies, he discovered a recurring message of Western states' geopolitical anxieties.[3]: 209  For example, the movie From Russia with Love conveyed United States' anxieties as a result of the Cold War and The World Is Not Enough conveyed the threats posed by Central Asia.[3]: 209 

Structural geopolitics

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Structural geopolitics is defined as contemporary geopolitical tradition.

Formal geopolitics

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Formal geopolitics refers to the geopolitical culture of more 'traditional' geopolitical actors. Critical accounts of formal geopolitics therefore pay attention to the ways in which formal foreign policy actors and professionals - including think-tanks and academics - mediate geopolitical issues such that particular understandings and policy prescriptions become hegemonic, even common-sense.

Practical geopolitics

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Practical geopolitics describes the actual practice of geopolitical strategy (i.e. foreign policy). Studies of practical geopolitics focus both on geopolitical action and geopolitical reasoning, and the ways in which these are linked recursively to both 'formal' and 'popular' geopolitical discourse. Because critical geopolitics is concerned with geopolitics as discourse, studies of practical geopolitics pay attention both to geopolitical actions (for example, military deployment), but also to the discursive strategies used to narrativize these actions.

The "critical" in critical geopolitics therefore relates to two (linked) aims. Firstly, it seeks to 'open up' Geopolitics, as a discipline and a concept. It does this partly by considering the popular and formal aspects of geopolitics alongside practical geopolitics. Further, it focuses on the power relations and dynamics through which particular understandings are (re)constructed. Secondly, critical geopolitics engages critically with 'traditional' geopolitical themes. The articulation of 'alternative' narratives on geopolitical issues, however, may or may not be consistent with a poststructuralist methodology.[4]

Key texts

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Emergence of critical geopolitics

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Critical geopolitics is an ongoing project which came to prominence when the French geographer Yves Lacoste published 'La géographie ça sert d'abord à faire la guerre' ('geography is primarily for waging war') (1976) and founded the journal Hérodote. The subject entered the English language Geography literature in the 1990s thanks in part to a special "Critical Geopolitics" issue of the journal Political Geography in 1996 (vol. 15/6-7),[5] and the publication in the same year of Gearóid Ó Tuathail's seminal Critical Geopolitics book.[2]

Ó Tuathail's 1996 book Critical Geopolitics defined the state of the subdiscipline at the time, and codified its methodological and intellectual underpinnings.

The historical role of Europe has been subjected to a rich tradition of critical works in geopolitics, as reflected in several book series, such as Routledge's Critical Geopolitics Archived 2020-08-06 at the Wayback Machine series, edited by Alan Ingram, Merje Kuus and Chih Yuan Woon, as well as the series on Critical European Studies (also at Routledge), edited by Yannis Stivachtis. Contributing to this area is the book entitled The European Union and Global Social Change: A Critical Geopolitical-Economic Analysis by József Böröcz.

Critical Geopolitics texts

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Critical geopolitics-based work has been published in a range of Geographical and trans-disciplinary journals, as well as in books and edited collections. Major journals in which critical geopolitics work has appeared include:

  • Annals of the Association of American Geographers
  • Antipode
  • Geopolitics
  • Political Geography

Elsewhere, critical geopolitics-derived studies have been published in journals specializing in popular culture, security studies, border studies (such as in the Journal of Borderlands Studies) and history, reflecting the breadth of subject matter subsumed under the critical geopolitics headline.

Texts in Critical Geopolitical theory

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Critical geopolitics 'theory' is not fixed or homogeneous, but core features - especially a concern for discourse analysis - are fundamental.

  • Introduction to critical geopolitical theory: Gearóid Ó Tuathail's (1996) Critical Geopolitics (London: Routledge) details the aims, scope and intellectual context of Critical Geopolitics. It also provides a genealogical account of the history of Geopolitics, placing Critical Geopolitics in its temporal and disciplinary context.
  • Relationship between 'classical' and critical geopolitics: There are thematic concerns in common between classical and critical geopolitics, leading to the question of whether 'mainstream' International Relations theory and geopolitics can be reconciled with the critical project. In a 2006 article in the journal Geopolitics (vol. 11/1), Phil Kelly of Emporia State University argues that it is possible.

Popular engagement with the geopolitical, as (re)presented in popular culture, is a major area of research within the critical geopolitics literature:

  • Newspapers: The framing of geopolitical events in mass circulation newspapers has been addressed by a number of authors. Thomas McFarlane and Iain Hay's (2003) article in Political Geography, 'The battle for Seattle: protest and popular geopolitics in The Australian newspaper', is a highly cited example. Further, it exemplifies how critical geopolitics research can use both qualitative and quantitative approaches to discourse analysis.
  • Magazines: Joanne Sharp's analysis of the ways in which the Reader's Digest (re)presented a sense of US national identity during the Cold War started life as a 1993 article in the journal Political Geography. Subsequently, it spurred her 2000 book Condensing the Cold War: Reader's Digest and American Identity. Further, Sharp's methodology prompted an in-depth debate (2003) about the practice of popular geopolitics, in the pages of the journal Geopolitics (vol.8/2).
  • Cartoons and Comics: An early (1996) and frequently-cited popular geopolitics study by Klaus Dodds considers the geopolitical content and effect of cartoons by Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell during the Falklands War; 'The 1982 Falklands War and a critical geopolitical eye: Steve Bell and the If cartoons' was published in Political Geography (vol. 15/6). Jason Dittmer has explored the comic book titles of Captain America as an illustration of a "nuanced and ambiguous" geopolitical script in popular culture. 'Captain America's Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post-9/11 Geopolitics' was published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (vol.95/3).
  • Films: Hollywood has been the subject of numerous popular geopolitics studies, both from explicitly 'geographical' perspectives, but also from academics from a range of backgrounds. Studies of film range from those that deal explicitly with the intertextuality between 'war films' and 'real' wars, to those that deal more broadly with issues of identity formation and representation.
  • Radio: In more recent years, scholars of critical geopolitics have shown an increased interest in radio broadcasting as both a domestic and international form of geopolitical communication. Alasdair Pinkerton and Klaus Dodds laid out their agenda for the study of Radio Geopolitics in Progress in Human Geography (vol. 33/1) during 2009. Pinkerton has also written about the crucial role of radio during the Falklands Conflict. His paper 'Strangers in the Night': The Falklands Conflict as a Radio War was published in Twentieth Century British History (vol. 19/3) and was awarded the TCBH Essay Prize 2007.

Notable people

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See also

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References

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Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Critical geopolitics

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Critical geopolitics is an interpretive approach within and that emerged in the late , emphasizing the role of , representations, and power in constructing geopolitical rather than treating geographical factors as objective determinants of state behavior. Pioneered by scholars such as Gearóid Ó Tuathail and Simon Dalby, it critiques classical geopolitics—rooted in thinkers like —for assuming universal spatial logics that mask elite interests and ideological biases. Central to the field is the concept of "geo-graphing," where geopolitical narratives are viewed as scripted performances by intellectuals of statecraft, such as policymakers and media figures, that naturalize hierarchies of space, identity, and security. This perspective draws on post-structuralist theory, including Michel Foucault's ideas on knowledge-power nexus, to deconstruct how terms like "heartland" or "" encode dominance rather than describe immutable realities. Key texts, including Ó Tuathail's Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (1996), apply these methods to historical cases from British to strategies, revealing how such writings legitimize intervention and territorial control. While influential in academic circles for highlighting subjective elements in —such as the framing of regions as threats or allies—critical geopolitics has faced for prioritizing textual over testable causal mechanisms, potentially undermining predictive insights into geographic constraints like resource distribution or . Its applications extend to contemporary issues, including populist discourses on borders and migration, though empirical validation remains debated amid the field's emphasis on contingency over .

Definition and Core Principles

Foundational Assumptions

Critical geopolitics rests on the assumption that geopolitical knowledge and spatial configurations are not objective reflections of material reality but socially constructed through discursive practices that intertwine power and representation. Drawing from poststructuralist thought, particularly Michel Foucault's concept of power-knowledge, it posits that what is deemed "geopolitical truth"—such as divisions between core and periphery or friend and foe—is produced via language, texts, and institutional narratives rather than inherent geographical features. This constructionist view holds that elites, policymakers, and media "write" global space, shaping identities, interests, and conflicts through selective interpretations that naturalize particular world orders. A core tenet is the rejection of classical geopolitics' environmental determinism, which treated —terrain, climate, and location—as primary causal forces dictating state behavior, as in Halford Mackinder's 1904 Heartland theory asserting control over as pivotal to world dominance. Instead, critical geopolitics scrutinizes how such theories themselves function ideologically, embedding assumptions of racial hierarchy or imperial expansion (e.g., Friedrich Ratzel's ) that served power interests rather than neutral analysis. Geographical assumptions are thus seen as performative, actively constituting political realities rather than passively describing them, with emphasis on deconstructing binaries like civilized/uncivilized or self/other that underpin . This framework extends to viewing geopolitics as embedded in everyday practices beyond statecraft, including and non-state , where spatial imaginaries—mental maps of threat and opportunity—are reproduced and contested. While privileging contingency and subjectivity, these assumptions have been critiqued for underemphasizing verifiable material constraints, such as resource distribution or topographical barriers, which empirical cases like Russia's 2022 invasion of demonstrate as enduring influences on strategic calculations despite discursive framing. Nonetheless, the approach insists on analyzing power relations through specific technologies, like or diplomatic , to reveal how they enable dominance.

Distinction from Classical Geopolitics

Classical geopolitics, as developed by thinkers such as and in the early , treats geography as an objective, material force that deterministically shapes state power, territorial control, and international rivalry, often emphasizing fixed spatial features like landmasses and resources to explain political outcomes. In contrast, critical geopolitics, emerging in the late 1980s and 1990s through scholars like Gearóid Ó Tuathail and Simon Dalby, rejects this positivist framework by viewing geopolitical knowledge as socially constructed through discourse rather than as a reflection of incontrovertible physical realities. Methodologically, classical approaches rely on empirical of strategic to inform statecraft and predict power dynamics, assuming a neutral, scientific of spatial relationships. Critical geopolitics, however, employs poststructuralist techniques such as and —influenced by Michel Foucault's nexus—to interrogate how representations of space, identity, and threat are produced and circulated by elites, media, and institutions, thereby naturalizing hierarchies and policies. This shift emphasizes over , treating geopolitical "truths" as contingent interpretations embedded in and rather than universal facts. Ontologically, classical geopolitics posits space as a pre-given, objective arena where material factors like proximity to resources or chokepoints dictate causal influence on politics, often aligning with realist paradigms of inevitable conflict. Critical variants invert this by conceiving space as subjectively "geo-graphed"—inscribed with meaning through interpretive practices that serve power interests—challenging state-centric views and highlighting how such constructions marginalize alternative perspectives or identities. While classical geopolitics aids prescriptive state strategy, critical approaches prioritize critique, exposing biases in traditional narratives without necessarily offering predictive models, though this has drawn accusations of excessive relativism from proponents of materialist analyses.

Historical Development

Intellectual Origins in Poststructuralism

Critical geopolitics draws its intellectual foundations from , which posits that geopolitical knowledge is not derived from objective spatial realities but constructed through discursive practices that embed power relations and exclude alternative interpretations. Poststructuralist thought challenges the foundational assumptions of classical geopolitics, rejecting notions of fixed geographical determinants in favor of analyzing how representations of space—such as maps, texts, and policy scripts—produce and sustain political authority. This approach emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s amid broader applications of to , emphasizing contingency over determinism. Central to this lineage is Michel Foucault's conception of discourse as a mechanism intertwining and power, wherein geopolitical scripts function to normalize hierarchies like core-periphery divides or threat perceptions. Foucault's ideas informed early critical analyses by highlighting how state practices and intellectual writings render certain spatial imaginaries "true" while marginalizing others, thus enabling through seemingly neutral geographical expertise. Derrida's supplemented this by providing tools to dismantle binary oppositions in geopolitical texts—such as or ally/—revealing their instability and role in upholding dominant narratives. Seminal contributions crystallized these influences: Simon Dalby's 1991 article "Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference, and Dissent" explicitly integrated poststructuralist themes to critique how -era geopolitical discourses suppressed dissent and environmental concerns. Gearóid Ó Tuathail and John Agnew's 1992 paper "Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in American " redefined geopolitics as a discursive practice, applying poststructuralist lenses to U.S. policy scripts from the late period. These works, building on earlier skeptical engagements with realist , paved the way for Ó Tuathail's 1996 Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space, which systematically deconstructed the writing of global political space as an authorial act laden with ideological assumptions. John Agnew later traced these origins to a confluence of poststructuralist IR theory and 's , underscoring the shift from materialist to interpretive paradigms around 1990.

Emergence and Institutionalization in the 1990s

Critical geopolitics coalesced as an academic approach in the early 1990s, drawing from post-Cold War reflections on the constructed nature of geopolitical knowledge. Simon Dalby and Gearóid Ó Tuathail, working independently and collaboratively, laid its initial foundations by critiquing classical geopolitics' reliance on deterministic spatial theories, instead emphasizing discursive practices and power dynamics in shaping international relations. Dalby's 1991 article "Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference, and Dissent," published in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, explicitly coined and defined the term, advocating for an analysis of geopolitical texts as sites of contestation rather than neutral descriptions of reality. Ó Tuathail advanced this framework through his 1996 monograph Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Political Space, which deconstructed how intellectuals and state actors author global spatial narratives to legitimize policy, using examples from Cold War-era writings by figures like and . The book's publication by the in its Borderlines series marked a pivotal theoretical consolidation, influencing subsequent scholarship by framing as a form of "geo-power" embedded in representational practices. Institutionalization accelerated mid-decade via dedicated academic outlets and collaborations. A 1996 special issue of , guest-edited by Dalby and Ó Tuathail, featured essays rethinking geopolitical traditions through , environmental linkages, and identity formations, thereby embedding the approach within mainstream journals. This was followed by the 1998 edited volume Rethinking Geopolitics by Ó Tuathail and Dalby, which expanded the field's scope to include critiques of U.S. discourses and , fostering its adoption in university curricula and research programs across geography and departments. By the decade's end, critical geopolitics had transitioned from fringe critique to a recognized subfield, evidenced by increasing citations and symposia, though its poststructuralist orientation drew debates over its detachment from material geopolitical realities.

Evolution Through the 2000s and Beyond

In the early , critical geopolitics expanded its focus to analyze the discursive constructions surrounding the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led "war on terror," examining how these events reshaped global spatial imaginaries and power relations. Scholars applied poststructuralist methods to deconstruct official narratives, such as those in the U.S. National Security Strategy, which framed as an existential threat justifying preemptive interventions, revealing underlying assumptions of and Orientalist binaries between "civilized" and "barbaric" spaces. This period saw increased attention to popular culture's role in disseminating geopolitical scripts, including Hollywood films that portrayed the war on terror through masculinist heroism and enemy othering, as critiqued in analyses of post-9/11 spy cinema. By the mid-2000s, the field incorporated interdisciplinary influences, including feminist and postcolonial perspectives, shifting emphasis from elite discourses to embodied experiences, , and everyday geopolitical practices. Research highlighted how gender dynamics underpinned security policies, with works critiquing the militarized masculinities in and their marginalization of women's roles in conflict zones. Concurrently, critical geopolitics engaged with geoeconomic dimensions, though proved less dominant than anticipated, as global trade and resource conflicts were subordinated to security-driven analyses amid rising concerns over oil dependency and financial . Into the 2010s and 2020s, the approach evolved toward "Critical Geopolitics 2.0," integrating ecological crises and planetary boundaries, as seen in Gerard Toal's reformulation linking sea-level rise to imperial decline and urging a reevaluation of anthropocentric geopolitical reasoning. This phase addressed limitations in earlier textual-focused discourse analysis by incorporating performative and ethnographic methods to study hybrid human-nonhuman agencies in climate geopolitics. Debates also intensified over the field's radical potential, with reflections on 25 years of scholarship noting its influence on political geography while critiquing risks of detachment from material causalities in favor of endless deconstruction. Despite these advances, the resurgence of classical geopolitical paradigms in response to great-power competition, such as U.S.-China rivalry, prompted self-examination of critical geopolitics' relevance amid empirically grounded strategic analyses.

Key Concepts and Frameworks

Discourse and Knowledge-Power Nexus

In critical geopolitics, the discourse and knowledge-power nexus conceptualizes geopolitical representations as discursive formations that inextricably link the production of spatial knowledge to relations of power, inspired by Michel Foucault's analysis of discourse as a system of statements that both enables and constrains what can be known and said about the world. This framework posits that geopolitical discourses—manifest in texts, speeches, maps, and media—do not merely describe objective realities but actively construct them, naturalizing hierarchies of space, identity, and threat that sustain dominant geopolitical actors. For instance, foreign policy elites' "scriptings" of global events, such as portraying regions like the Middle East as inherent zones of instability, embody power by rendering alternative interpretations marginal or unthinkable. Gearóid Ó Tuathail's foundational text Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (1996) exemplifies this nexus by deconstructing how intellectual and practical geopolitical writings fuse geographical knowledge with power, treating space as a scripted rather than a fixed entity. Ó Tuathail argues that such discourses operate through "geo-graphing," where authoritative voices author global order, as seen in Cold War-era analyses that framed the as an expansionary menace, thereby justifying Western strategies without empirical scrutiny of underlying assumptions. This approach reveals the nexus as a site of contestation, where subordinate discourses—such as those from non-Western perspectives—challenge hegemonic framings but often face discursive exclusion. The implications of this extend to methodological imperatives in critical geopolitics, urging analysts to unpack how power circulates through everyday discursive practices, including policy documents and popular media, rather than assuming neutrality in geopolitical expertise. By foregrounding the and contingency of knowledge claims, scholars like Ó Tuathail and John Agnew emphasize that disrupting the nexus involves tracing the authorship and audience of discourses to expose their role in reproducing global inequalities, such as in post-1990s representations of "failed states" that legitimize interventions. Empirical studies applying this lens, for example, to U.S. reasoning, demonstrate how discursive shifts post-9/11 reframed global space around a "war on terror" axis, consolidating executive power while sidelining dissenting spatial logics.

Facets of Geopolitical Practice

In critical geopolitics, geopolitical practice encompasses the discursive and material ways in which spatial representations of power are enacted by actors ranging from state elites to broader societal institutions, challenging the notion of geopolitics as merely objective analysis. This approach, drawing from poststructuralist insights, views practice not as neutral implementation but as performative scripting that constructs realities of , , and . Key facets include formal, practical, structural, and popular dimensions, each highlighting distinct sites where geopolitical is produced and mobilized. Formal geopolitics examines the authoritative geopolitical discourses crafted by intellectuals, strategists, and think tanks, which frame global space through abstract models like core-periphery dynamics or pivot areas. For instance, Halford Mackinder's "Heartland" thesis posited a Eurasian pivot state as central to world dominance, influencing subsequent policy framings without direct state involvement. These formal scripts, often embedded in academic or advisory texts, legitimize power asymmetries by naturalizing geographical determinism, yet critical analysis reveals their contingency on cultural and historical contexts rather than immutable laws. Practical geopolitics focuses on the operationalization of these discourses by state practitioners, such as and military leaders, in decision-making processes. This facet scrutinizes how policymakers "read" and apply geopolitical maps in real-time actions, exemplified by U.S. strategies during the (1947–1991), where speeches invoked Soviet expansionism as an existential spatial threat. Unlike classical views of rational calculation, critical perspectives highlight how such practices embed power-knowledge nexuses, rendering alternatives invisible through performative repetition. Empirical studies, like those of Balkan conflicts in the , show practical geopolitics enacting ethnic territories via intervention . Structural geopolitics addresses the underlying economic and material conditions—such as global capitalism's uneven development—that constrain or enable geopolitical maneuvers, integrating Marxist critiques into . John Agnew's work argues that structural forces, like resource dependencies in oil-rich regions, shape state behaviors beyond elite agency, as seen in OPEC's 1973 embargo disrupting Western economies and altering alliance geometries. This facet critiques formal and practical approaches for overlooking how capitalist accumulation reproduces geopolitical hierarchies, with data from World Bank indicators (e.g., GDP disparities exceeding 1:100 between core and peripheral states in 2020) underscoring causal materialities over discursive idealism alone. Popular geopolitics investigates how geopolitical narratives permeate mass media, , and consumer culture, fostering everyday spatial orientations. Joanne Sharp's analysis of articles in the demonstrates how U.S. publications portrayed the Third World as a chaotic "other," reinforcing domestic support for interventions like those in (1983). Surveys, such as Pew Research polls from 2015–2023 showing 60–70% of Americans viewing through rivalry lenses shaped by media, illustrate this facet's role in naturalizing elite scripts at the societal level, often amplifying binaries of self versus enemy without empirical scrutiny.

Representations and Spatial Imaginaries

In critical geopolitics, representations encompass the maps, texts, images, and discourses that construct and contest geopolitical space, rather than merely reflecting objective realities. These representations, such as historical world maps like 's (1570), encode power relations by privileging certain spatial hierarchies and narratives over others. Gearóid Ó Tuathail argues that geopolitics operates as a discursive practice where such representations script global spaces, naturalizing divisions like core-periphery models or East-West binaries. Spatial imaginaries refer to culturally shared, often subconscious, conceptions of geographic space that shape political perceptions and actions. These imaginaries, including constructs like "the West" or "Eurasia," emerge from textual, visual, and performative sources, influencing how actors envision threats, alliances, and identities. For instance, post-Cold War imaginaries have fractured into multipolar visions, such as those emphasizing a rising "Global South," which reframe globalization's spatial logic and foster "othering" dynamics. Critical geopoliticians contend that these imaginaries are not fixed but contested, with media and elite discourses actively producing them to legitimize policies, as seen in U.S. foreign policy scripting of regions like South Africa during the Reagan era. The interplay between representations and spatial imaginaries underscores critical geopolitics' emphasis on : analyzing how visual media, for example, affects geopolitical reasoning by embedding affective spatial emotions and historical narratives. In contemporary contexts, such as U.S.-China rivalry, spatial imaginaries invoke pericentric logics—focusing on peripheral spaces like the —to counterbalance power, demonstrating how representations translate cultural perceptions into strategic realities. This approach reveals systemic biases in institutional sources, where Western-centric imaginaries often marginalize non-hegemonic perspectives, necessitating scrutiny of in geopolitical analysis.

Methodological Approaches

Discourse Analysis and Deconstruction

In critical geopolitics, involves the systematic examination of linguistic and representational practices that construct spatial knowledge, identities, and power hierarchies in . Drawing from Michel Foucault's conception of as a system of statements that defines what can be said or thought about a topic, scholars apply this to geopolitical texts such as policy documents, media narratives, and intellectual writings to reveal how they naturalize particular worldviews. For instance, analysis targets the ways in which terms like "heartland" or "" in classical encode assumptions about territorial control and civilizational superiority, thereby shaping rationales. This method emphasizes that geopolitical "realities" are not objective but produced through discursive formations that privilege certain actors and marginalize others. Deconstruction, influenced by Jacques Derrida's philosophical approach, extends by dismantling binary oppositions embedded in geopolitical reasoning, such as self/other, center/periphery, or secure/threatening spaces. In practice, it interrogates the instability of meanings in texts, exposing how apparent certainties rely on suppressed contradictions or hierarchical valuations. Gearóid Ó Tuathail, a foundational figure, employs to critique the authoritative voice of geopolitical experts, arguing that their representations authorize interventions by rendering alternatives unsayable. For example, deconstructive readings of Cold War-era U.S. discourses reveal how portrayals of the as an existential "other" concealed domestic power dynamics and economic imperatives. This technique avoids naive acceptance of textual surface meanings, instead tracing genealogies of concepts to uncover their contingency. Methodologically, and in critical geopolitics favor qualitative close readings over quantitative metrics, focusing on —how texts reference and reinforce one another—and on silences or absences that sustain dominant narratives. Practitioners identify recurring metaphors, such as orientalist framings of regions as "arcs of ," to demonstrate their role in justifying military or economic strategies. Ó Tuathail and John Agnew's framework reconceptualizes itself as a discourse, analyzing practical reasoning in elite speeches and reports to show how it circulates as "" among policymakers. Unlike traditional , these methods incorporate reflexivity, requiring analysts to acknowledge their own discursive positions, though critics note this can introduce subjective interpretations that prioritize textual instability over empirical causation. Applications extend to contemporary cases, such as deconstructing post-9/11 "war on terror" rhetoric, where phrases like "axis of evil" binarize global space into moral absolutes, enabling expansive U.S. interventions. These approaches have evolved to integrate multimodal elements, including visual discourses in maps or films, but remain centered on textual to challenge reified geopolitical ontologies. While effective in highlighting constructedness, reliance on poststructuralist premises risks underemphasizing material factors like distribution or capabilities, as evidenced in debates over whether discursive shifts alone explain changes. Nonetheless, the methods persist in unpacking how discourses legitimize inequality, as seen in analyses of enlargement narratives that frame through lenses of transition and integration, masking neocolonial dynamics.

Ethnographic and Performative Methods

Ethnographic methods in critical geopolitics involve prolonged immersion in field sites through , in-depth interviews, and auto-ethnographic reflection to examine how geopolitical discourses manifest in everyday practices and embodied experiences. These techniques shift focus from elite textual productions to the micro-politics of borderlands, policy implementation, and negotiations, highlighting agency and contingency in spatial power dynamics. By privileging local voices and material contexts, challenges the top-down assumptions of classical geopolitics and enriches with empirical granularity. A key application appears in Nick Megoran's fieldwork on the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Ferghana Valley boundary dispute of 1999-2000, where closures amid ethnic tensions severed cross-border communities, altering livelihoods and fostering new territorial imaginaries; through direct engagement with residents, Megoran illustrated how state scripts of security were contested and reinterpreted on the ground, disrupting over 100 years of open mobility. Similar studies, such as those on water governance or migrant assemblages, use to link affective responses and material artifacts to broader geopolitical formations, though they risk overemphasizing subjective narratives at the expense of verifiable causal structures. Performative methods extend this by conceptualizing geopolitics as enacted through iterative bodily and discursive acts, akin to speech-act theory or Judith Butler's , where subjects "do" territory, threat, or alliance via routinized practices rather than innate essences. Techniques include of rituals, montage of multimedia artifacts, and experimental to map the relational flux of geopolitical assemblages, revealing how virtual possibilities emerge from material interactions. Jason Dittmer's 2014 analysis advocates these for tracing complexity in U.S. enactments, integrating ethnographic data with historical trajectories to expose non-linear effects, such as how policy performances stabilize or destabilize global orders. Together, ethnographic and performative approaches foster a "more-than-representational" critical geopolitics, incorporating embodiment and , as seen in studies of elite expertise or popular media receptions; yet, their reliance on interpretive depth can limit generalizability, prompting calls for hybrid methods that balance micro-practices with macro-empirical testing.

Notable Scholars and Contributions

Gearóid Ó Tuathail and Early Foundations

Gearóid Ó Tuathail, also known as Gerard Toal, emerged as a pivotal figure in the development of critical geopolitics during the early 1990s, shifting the field from deterministic spatial analyses toward a discursive and deconstructive approach. In a seminal 1992 article co-authored with John Agnew, titled "Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in American Foreign Policy," published in Political Geography, Ó Tuathail redefined geopolitics as a discursive practice involving the spatialization of international politics by core powers and hegemonic states. This work conceptualized discourses as socio-cultural resources enabling elites to construct meanings about global space, thereby naturalizing power relations and foreign policy decisions, such as U.S. strategies during the Cold War. Ó Tuathail's foundational text, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space, published in 1996 by the , expanded this framework into a comprehensive of classical . The book examines how geopolitical writings—exemplified by figures like —function as "imperial incitements" that script global space to align with imperial ambitions, drawing on post-structuralist methodologies inspired by Michel Foucault's genealogy and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction to reveal hidden power dynamics in textual representations. By analyzing historical geopolitical texts, Ó Tuathail demonstrated how such writings produce authoritative "geo-graphs" that marginalize alternative spatial imaginaries, establishing critical geopolitics as a method for interrogating the politics embedded in knowledge production about . These early contributions laid the groundwork for the field's institutionalization by emphasizing the contingency of geopolitical , challenging realist assumptions of objective spatial laws, and advocating for an anti-foundational stance that prioritizes the analysis of representational practices over material . Ó Tuathail's approach influenced subsequent scholars by integrating insights from dissidents and , fostering a subdiscipline attentive to how elite discourses shape policy and public perceptions of global threats and opportunities. His work, grounded in empirical deconstructions of specific texts and speeches, underscored the need to historicize and contextualize geopolitical reasoning rather than treat it as timeless truth.

John Agnew and Structural Critiques

John Agnew, a professor of geography at the , has advanced critical geopolitics by integrating structural analysis into critiques of traditional geopolitical thought, emphasizing the embeddedness of spatial practices within broader economic and institutional power relations. His work counters the spatial determinism of classical geopolitics—exemplified by figures like and —by highlighting how geopolitical visions arise from and reinforce material structures such as , , and state territoriality. In doing so, Agnew argues that geopolitical knowledge is not merely discursive but conditioned by historical processes of and uneven global development, which produce hierarchical spatial orders. Central to Agnew's structural critiques is his 1994 concept of the "territorial trap," which identifies flaws in for assuming an ontological prioritization of fixed territorial states as the primary units of , conflating with effective control, and treating domestic and international as discrete realms. This trap, Agnew contends, obscures how power operates through networks, scales, and relational geometries rather than absolute territorial enclosures, as evidenced in cases like the European Union's supranational integration challenging Westphalian state models since the 1992 . By linking geopolitics to , Agnew critiques the ahistorical tendencies in both classical and some post-structuralist approaches, insisting that causal explanations must account for how economic structures—such as global trade imbalances documented in World Bank data from the 1980s onward—shape geopolitical strategies and conflicts. In Geopolitics: Re-visioning World Politics (1998, revised 2003), Agnew delineates four core features of the modern geopolitical imagination: the global visualization of the world as a unified space amenable to ; the binary division of regions into advanced and backward zones, rooted in 19th-century colonial mappings; the naturalization of political boundaries as inherent rather than constructed; and the extension of state sovereignty over as the normative ideal of order. These elements, he argues, sustain U.S.-led post-1945, as seen in Cold War policies that spatialized as a territorial threat, but fail to explain post-1991 shifts like the rise of networked financial powers eroding state-centric control. Agnew's framework thus calls for "re-visioning" to prioritize structural causality over representational critique alone, warning that neglecting material foundations risks reducing analysis to elite discourses detached from empirical realities of power distribution.

Other Influential Figures

Simon Dalby emerged as an early proponent of critical geopolitics, emphasizing the role of in constructing geopolitical realities, particularly in relation to and . In his 1991 article "Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference, and Dissent," Dalby argued for retheorizing through by deconstructing dominant narratives that frame in spatial terms. He co-edited Rethinking Geopolitics (1998) with Gearóid Ó Tuathail, which advanced critiques of classical geopolitical thought by integrating post-structuralist insights into analyses of power and space. Dalby's work extended to , highlighting how geopolitical discourses securitize ecological challenges, as explored in his contributions to reframing within geopolitical frameworks. Klaus Dodds has significantly shaped the subfield of popular geopolitics, examining how media, films, and cultural artifacts produce spatial imaginaries that influence public understandings of global power dynamics. His 2005 book Global Geopolitics: A Critical Introduction analyzes how states and non-state actors construct geopolitical narratives through case studies of terror networks and territorial disputes. Dodds co-edited The Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics (2013), which synthesizes methodological approaches and empirical applications, including ethnographic studies of elite practices and representational strategies. In Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction (2019, second edition 2024), he critiques deterministic views of geography's role in statecraft, advocating for a nuanced understanding of how representations mediate international events like and China's rise. Jason Dittmer has advanced critical geopolitics through investigations of popular culture's role in geopolitical , particularly via , , and affective dimensions of . His 2010 article "Popular Geopolitics 2.0" proposes assemblage theory and approaches to study everyday geopolitical practices beyond elite discourses, drawing on materiality and relationality. Co-editing Geopolitics: An Introductory Reader (2014) with Jo Sharp, Dittmer traces the evolution of geopolitical concepts from classical to critical paradigms, incorporating postcolonial and constructivist perspectives. Works like Mapping the End Times (2010) dissect how evangelical interpretations of scripture generate alternative geopolitical visions, such as those influencing U.S. toward .

Applications and Empirical Case Studies

In critical geopolitics, popular geopolitics refers to the study of how geopolitical narratives and spatial perceptions are disseminated and internalized through everyday , including outlets, films, television, and digital platforms, rather than solely through state or elite scripting. This approach highlights media as a site where audiences encounter and negotiate representations of global power dynamics, often blending factual reporting with mythic or affective elements that shape collective identities and threat perceptions. Early analyses, such as those examining The in the 1990s, demonstrated how popular magazines reinforced by framing through narratives of moral geography and civilizational clashes. Media representations in popular geopolitics frequently operationalize binaries of "us" versus "them," as seen in post-9/11 Hollywood films like the series, where antagonists embody existential threats to Western liberal orders, drawing on intertextual references from comics to amplify emotional resonance. These portrayals, analyzed by scholars like Jason Dittmer, illustrate how cinematic narratives co-produce geopolitical scripts that align with, yet sometimes exceed, official discourses, influencing public support for policies such as military interventions. Videogames, such as the Call of Duty: series released between 2007 and 2020, extend this to interactive formats, where players simulate conflicts in regions like the , embedding spatial hierarchies and ethical dilemmas that mirror real-world media framing but allow for user-driven variations in interpretation. News media's role in popular geopolitics involves selective framing of events, as evidenced in coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict starting in 2014, where Western outlets emphasized narratives of democratic resilience against authoritarian expansion, shaping audience views on NATO's eastern flank. In non-Western contexts, Russian state media like RT has countered with alternative popular , portraying as a geopolitical pivot influenced by external powers, thereby cultivating domestic support for irredentist policies through accessible digital formats. platforms have accelerated this since the mid-2010s, enabling to challenge or hybridize elite narratives, though algorithmic curation often reinforces echo chambers that entrench polarized spatial imaginaries. Empirical studies underscore media's feedback loops, where popular receptions influence policy feedback; for example, audience engagement with Marvel's Avengers films (2012–2019) has been linked to heightened perceptions of global interconnectedness amid multipolar rivalries, blending entertainment with implicit geopolitical education. However, critiques within the field note that media analyses risk overemphasizing discursive at the expense of material drivers like resource competition or military capabilities, which empirically underpin many represented conflicts. Recent scholarship calls for integrating audience to capture how diverse demographics, including communities, reinterpret media geopolitics, as in K-pop's global spread challenging East Asian hierarchies since the .

Policy Elites and Practical Geopolitics

In critical , practical geopolitics denotes the everyday discursive and representational practices through which policy elites—such as foreign ministers, advisors, and officials—construct spatial understandings of global threats, alliances, and power dynamics to inform statecraft. Gearóid Ó Tuathail and John Agnew formalized this distinction in , contrasting it with formal geopolitics, which involves explicit scholarly treatises, by emphasizing how elites' implicit geographical assumptions simplify international politics into actionable "worlds" of fixed places, actors, and dramas. This approach reveals geopolitics not as objective strategy but as a power-infused that naturalizes certain spatial hierarchies, often marginalizing alternative interpretations of or . A foundational empirical case study examines U.S. elites' framing of the during the early . In his February 22, 1946, "Long Telegram" from Moscow, diplomat depicted the USSR as a paranoid, messianic driven by innate , embedding spatial metaphors of and ideological buffers that underpinned the and strategy announced on March 12, 1947. Critical analyses highlight how this rhetoric reduced multifaceted Soviet incentives—rooted in wartime devastation and security dilemmas—to a binary East-West divide, enabling U.S. elites to justify global commitments without deeper engagement with local contingencies. Similar deconstructions apply to post-9/11 discourses, where U.S. officials under President invoked the "axis of evil" in the January 29, 2002, address to link , , and as a networked threat, spatially reconfiguring the and as fronts in a war on terror that rationalized the 2003 invasion. Beyond Western cases, critical geopolitics has scrutinized non-Western policy elites' practical reasoning, such as in post-Soviet states where leaders spatialize dependencies on Russia. In Tajikistan and Belarus, elites from 2010 onward have discursively framed economic and security ties with Moscow as culturally resonant "benefits" amid multipolar pressures, portraying Russia as a civilizational anchor against Western "encroachment" in official statements and bilateral agreements like the 2021 Union State treaty deepening Belarusian integration. These applications underscore elites' role in reproducing geopolitical scripts, though critics of critical geopolitics argue such constructivist emphases overlook verifiable material drivers like resource geography or military capabilities, potentially overattributing outcomes to discourse alone. Empirical rigor in these studies demands triangulating elite texts—speeches, memos, policy papers—with outcomes, as seen in how EU foreign policy elites' 2014-2022 representations of Russia's Ukraine actions shifted from "partner" to "revisionist aggressor," influencing sanctions regimes.

Global Events and Regional Analyses

Critical geopolitics has been applied to major global events by scrutinizing the discursive framing of threats, identities, and spatial hierarchies that shape policy responses and public perceptions. Scholars examine how elite speeches, media narratives, and construct geopolitical realities, often revealing power-laden assumptions rather than objective analyses of material factors like resource competition or military capabilities. For instance, in analyzing the Global War on Terror following the , 2001, attacks, researchers deconstruct U.S. presidential rhetoric, such as President George W. Bush's 2002 "axis of evil" designation of , , and , as embedding orientalist binaries of civilized West versus barbaric East that justified interventions while marginalizing alternative interpretations of terrorism's root causes. This approach highlights how such discourses facilitated extraordinary renditions and surveillance expansions, yet critics within the field note its tendency to prioritize textual critique over empirical assessments of jihadist networks' operational logistics. In regional analyses, critical geopolitics dissects contested spaces where overlapping claims invoke historical myths and . The on February 24, 2022, serves as a case where scholars like Gearóid Ó Tuathail analyze Moscow's invocation of "" (New Russia) as a modernist territorial imaginary rooted in imperial nostalgia, contrasting it with Kyiv's emphasis on borders to delegitimize as revanchist rather than defensive necessity. Russian state media's portrayal of enlargement as existential encirclement exemplifies how geopolitical scripts mobilize domestic support, with over 500,000 n troops deployed by mid-2022 reinforcing these narratives amid documented territorial gains in exceeding 20% of 's land by October 2024. Such studies underscore discursive contestation but have been faulted for underemphasizing causal drivers like dependencies, where 's pre-war control of 40% of Europe's gas imports via pipelines through influenced escalation dynamics. Applications extend to maritime flashpoints like the , where critical geopolitics critiques Beijing's "" claims—encompassing 90% of the 3.5 million square kilometer area—as performative assertions of historical sovereignty that sideline multilateral legal rulings, such as the 2016 decision favoring the . Analyses reveal how China's island-building, adding over 3,200 acres of artificial land since 2013, embeds hegemonic spatial practices that challenge U.S. freedom-of-navigation operations, framing the region as a zero-sum domain of influence rather than shared economic corridors handling $3.4 trillion in annual trade. Regional claimants like and the invoke counter-discourses of archipelagic entitlement, yet empirical data on militarized outposts—equipped with missile systems by 2020—suggest material overrides narrative alone in altering control. These case studies illustrate critical geopolitics' utility in exposing ideational underpinnings of events, though applications often rely on qualitative textual methods that may overlook quantifiable metrics like military expenditures, where China's $292 billion defense budget in 2023 dwarfs neighbors'. Further examples include the Arctic's emerging geopolitical theater, analyzed through lenses of where melting ice—reducing summer extent by 13% per decade since 1979—amplifies discourses of resource frontiers, with Russia's 53% claim to the seabed contested via UN Convention on the submissions emphasizing strategic sea lanes over cooperative environmental regimes. In , regional integrations like are critiqued for embedding Eurocentric spatial hierarchies that marginalize indigenous territorialities amid U.S.- rivalry. Overall, these applications demonstrate critical geopolitics' emphasis on how events are "scripted" through and popular imaginaries, providing insights into representational power while inviting integration with classical metrics for fuller causal accounts.

Criticisms and Limitations

Empirical and Material Neglect

Critics of critical geopolitics argue that the approach systematically underemphasizes empirical verification and material determinants of power, such as geographical features, resource endowments, and infrastructural capacities, in favor of discursive and representational analyses. This orientation, influenced by post-structuralist methodologies, privileges the of texts, media narratives, and elite speeches over systematic on tangible factors like topography's influence on or economic dependencies shaping alliances. For instance, physical geography's role in constraining state behavior—evident in historical cases like the ' barrier effects during invasions—receives marginal attention compared to interpretive critiques of "geopolitical scripts." Scholars like Phil Kelly contend that this discursive focus evades empirical rigor, producing analyses that lack and predictive utility, as they treat geopolitical realities as wholly constructed rather than partially constrained by objective conditions. Similarly, Terrence W. Haverluk and colleagues identify this as one of three core flaws, asserting that critical geopolitics neglects the "real" material world underpinning power asymmetries, such as bases or routes, which classical geopolitics empirically maps to explain outcomes like naval dominance in chains. From a critical realist perspective, the field's flattened ignores stratified layers of reality, including non-discursive structures like class-based economic forces or environmental limits, reducing causation to subjective interpretations and overlooking how material scarcities drive conflicts independently of rhetoric. Such neglect is attributed to an overreliance on , which, while highlighting power in production, sidelines quantitative metrics like GDP correlations with territorial control or satellite-verified border fortifications. Proponents of materialist challenges, such as Vicki Squire, acknowledge this gap by calling for integration of "more-than-human" agencies like geophysical processes, yet the dominant tradition persists in anthropocentric , potentially biasing toward ideologically driven deconstructions over data-driven causal models. This has drawn fire from positivist and realist quarters, where empirical studies—e.g., correlations between resource rents and authoritarian resilience—underscore material factors' primacy, rendering discourse-centric views explanatorily incomplete for policy or forecasting.

Methodological Overreliance on Constructivism

Critics of critical geopolitics argue that its foundational reliance on constructivist methodologies, particularly , privileges ideational and representational processes over empirical material realities, resulting in a skewed understanding of geopolitical causation. This approach, drawing from post-structuralist influences, treats geopolitical knowledge as socially constructed through texts, scripts, and narratives, often equating with the substance of power dynamics. However, scholars contend this methodological commitment marginalizes non-discursive factors, such as and infrastructural constraints, which exert independent causal influence on state behavior and conflict outcomes. A primary flaw identified is the overemphasis on textual , which critics like Martin Müller describe as neglecting performative practices and everyday enactments of identity, thereby hindering a holistic . Müller critiques the field's "traditional concern with texts at the expense of practice," arguing that this has "all but vitiated a holistic conceptualization of identity" by prioritizing inscription over and embodied dimensions. Similarly, Vicki highlights an "overinvestment in representational aspects," which impedes substantive engagement with materiality, reducing complex geopolitical events to linguistic deconstructions without addressing tangible infrastructures or resource dependencies. Haverluk et al. further note that this constructivist lens dismisses the objective impacts of on state power, such as terrain's role in or vulnerabilities. From a critical realist standpoint, this overreliance manifests in an anthropocentric that collapses into , lacking a stratified framework to differentiate emergent structural layers from subjective interpretations. The approach fails to explain non-discursive mechanisms, such as economic interdependencies or demographic pressures, which operate beyond narrative framing and possess relative . As articulated in critical realist analyses, critical geopolitics "reduces to " and cannot account for the "relative of subjective and objective layers," confining theorization to descriptive narration of surface-level empirics rather than causal depth. Such methodological limitations undermine the field's , rendering it vulnerable to unfalsifiable interpretations that prioritize critique over prediction or verification. While shapes elite perceptions—as seen in policy scripting—overreliance on constructivism obscures how material preconditions, like naval chokepoints or energy reserves, constrain or enable actions irrespective of prevailing narratives. This has drawn accusations of , where objective geopolitical constraints are dissolved into subjective "knowledge production," limiting integration with data-driven assessments of power balances.

Ideological Biases and Political Agendas

Critics argue that critical geopolitics harbors ideological biases rooted in its origins within post-Cold War academic environments dominated by progressive, left-of-center perspectives, often manifesting as a systemic of Western state power and traditional geopolitical reasoning. Key figures in the field have historical ties to anti-nuclear and environmental social movements, which shape analyses that prioritize deconstructing hegemonic discourses over empirical evaluation of power dynamics. This orientation leads to accusations of a radical anti-Western stance, where critiques of classical as imperialist or deterministic overlook similar ideological underpinnings in alternative frameworks. A prominent line of critique posits that the approach is inherently "too political," exhibiting a partisan rush to judgment that mirrors the advocacy it condemns in traditional geopolitics. Jeremy Black, for instance, highlights a "general tendency to adopt a politically partisan approach" in critical , contrasting it with claims of neutrality in classical variants. Such biases are evident in the field's "anti-geopolitics" posture, which rejects material and environmental determinants of conflict—core to analyses of events like resource-driven territorial disputes—in favor of discursive deconstructions that align with utopian social agendas. This selective emphasis limits applicability to real-world scenarios, such as the 2014 annexation of , where downplays verifiable military and geographic causal factors. These political agendas extend to broader academic influences, where critical geopolitics serves as a vehicle for challenging and state-centric order from a post-structuralist lens, often amplifying narratives of Western while under-scrutinizing non-Western authoritarian expansions. In environments like Western universities, where surveys indicate over 80% of faculty lean left politically as of , such frameworks risk entrenching echo chambers that prioritize ideological over falsifiable hypotheses. Proponents counter that all is situated , yet detractors contend this excuses unexamined biases, fostering analyses that conflate empirical with moral advocacy.

Impact and Recent Developments

Influence on International Relations Theory

Critical geopolitics has shaped by foregrounding the role of discourse in constructing geopolitical realities, thereby critiquing the spatial ontologies implicit in realist and liberal paradigms that treat as a material given influencing state power. Scholars in this tradition argue that representations of —such as borders, regions, and threats—are not neutral but produced through power-laden narratives that enable particular foreign policies and hierarchies. This discursive focus, inspired by Michel Foucault's ideas on knowledge-power, challenges the positivist emphasis on observable behaviors and rational actors, instead examining how "intellectuals of statecraft" script global to legitimize dominance. Within constructivism, critical geopolitics contributes a spatial dimension to the intersubjective construction of interests and identities, aligning with Alexander Wendt's 1992 assertion that "anarchy is what states make of it" by demonstrating how geopolitical discourses socially constitute through territorial imaginaries. For instance, Gearóid Ó Tuathail's analysis in the 1990s deconstructed mappings of the world into "free" and "enemy" zones, showing how such constructs shape alliance formations and security dilemmas beyond material capabilities. This has influenced constructivist geopolitics, which bridges discursive critique with empirical spatial analysis to explain state behavior in post-bipolar contexts, such as the reinterpretation of Europe's eastern borders after 1989. In poststructuralist IR, critical geopolitics extends critiques of and the state by addressing John Agnew's "territorial trap," wherein IR theories conflate politics with bounded territory, overlooking fluid spatial practices like migration or . This has impacted subfields such as , where it informs analyses of through geographical metaphors, and feminist IR, by incorporating embodied and everyday geopolitics to reveal gendered spatial exclusions. However, its influence remains concentrated in interpretive scholarship, with limited integration into mainstream quantitative IR due to methodological divergences from causal .

Responses to Contemporary Challenges

Critical geopolitics has adapted to contemporary challenges by extending its scrutiny of power-knowledge dynamics to hybrid threats, environmental crises, and shifting great power dynamics, often emphasizing discursive constructions that obscure material imperatives. Scholars advocate for a "thick geopolitics" that integrates empirical realities, such as resource constraints and biospheric limits, to critique how traditional geopolitical reasoning perpetuates insecurity amid existential risks like pandemics and ecological collapse. This evolution seeks greater agility, incorporating posthumanist perspectives to address non-human agencies in global processes, though it maintains a focus on deconstructing elite narratives over predictive modeling. In confronting , critical geopolitics analyzes how interstate competitions accelerate by favoring short-term strategic gains over transnational cooperation. Gerard Toal argues that great power rivalries, exemplified by the surge in production following Russia's February 24, 2022, invasion of , undermine despite widespread acknowledgment of anthropogenic warming's risks, as sanctions prompted Western allies to ramp up energy output, contributing to higher global emissions in 2022 and 2023. This perspective highlights causal links between geopolitical maneuvering and delayed decarbonization, critiquing discourses that frame as secondary to security imperatives. Regarding renewed great power competition, critical geopolitics dissects spatial imaginaries and representational strategies in conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine war and U.S.- tensions. In the Ukrainian context, analyses reveal how Russian justifications for the 2022 invasion rely on modernist territorial discourses, reasserting imperial claims over realities involving information operations and disruptions. Similarly, for 's ascent—which saw its GDP surpass $18 trillion by 2023—scholars apply a pericentric lens to U.S.- rivalry, emphasizing regional flashpoints in the and transnational networks rather than inevitable bipolarity, while cautioning against alarmist narratives that overlook domestic drivers like 's internal . These responses underscore persistent biases in academic sources toward constructivist interpretations, often underweighting verifiable material factors such as military buildups, with 's defense spending reaching approximately $292 billion in 2023.

Prospects for Integration with Classical Approaches

Classical geopolitics emphasizes the causal influence of , resources, and state power on international outcomes, as articulated in theories by and in the early . Critical geopolitics, emerging in the , shifts focus to discursive representations and social constructions of space, often deconstructing classical assumptions as serving elite power interests. Despite these divergences, scholars have explored integration by leveraging constructivist frameworks that acknowledge both material constraints and ideational factors in shaping geopolitical realities. Rebin Fard, in a 2021 analysis, advocates for "constructivist geopolitics" as a synthesis, combining classical spatial determinism with to address post-bipolar complexities like identity-driven conflicts and global challenges such as . Such integration prospects are evident in regional case studies. In the , where melting since the early 2000s has expanded navigable routes and resource access, hybrid approaches merge classical assessments of geography's role in empowering states like and the with critical scrutiny of policy narratives, such as securitization discourses in meetings. This dual lens demonstrates how physical changes enable power shifts while elite representations influence cooperation or rivalry, as seen in Russia's 2014 annexation of extending Arctic militarization. Similarly, re-interpretations of classical theories through critical lenses reveal their contextual origins—Mackinder's Heartland concept tied to British imperial concerns in —allowing adaptation for modern applications, including China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative launched in 2013, which blends strategies with discursive framing of . Challenges to deeper integration stem from foundational incompatibilities: critical approaches often prioritize subjectivity and reject objective geographical causality, viewing classical models as ahistorical justifications for hegemony. Yet, empirical validations of classical predictions, such as resource-driven conflicts in the South China Sea since 2010, suggest critical tools can enhance realism by unpacking how media and elite scripts amplify or mitigate material incentives. Neo-classical variants propose retaining core spatial analytics while incorporating constructivist nuances on state identities, potentially yielding policy-relevant insights amid rising multipolarity, as evidenced by renewed interest in Mackinder's ideas following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Overall, while full paradigmatic merger remains elusive due to critical geopolitics' post-structuralist roots, pragmatic hybrids offer viable paths for analyzing hybrid threats like cyber-enabled territorial disputes, where geography intersects with narrative warfare.

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