Future of Geopolitics

The classic approach of geopolitics can explain thoroughly the relations between states and the struggle to obtain power. However, regarding non state actors, classic geopolitical approach would be insufficient due to the fact that other actors are not constrain by territoriality or at least, not in the same way a state is. Just to give an example, multinationals corporations are not limited by boundaries, involving many states in the chain of production.

But these conditions are not new and geopolitics has found a way to incorporate such conditions to its analysis; so, these conditions do not represent the future of geopolitics anymore. Then, the question would be: on what elements does geopolitics has to focus on in order to update its analysis?

In order to answer the prior questioning, we have to consider the forces governing over global affairs being these two forces monetary capital and ideological capital. Both of these factors can be means or objectives within themselves and practically impulse every action in global affairs. There are some authors considering that we should talk about geoeconomics instead geopolitics, however, this consideration would be finally incomplete due to the fat that does not take into account factors like ideologies, discourses and other type of constrains. So, instead of moving from geopolitics to geoeconomics, we should think about a geopolitical analysis that thinks about discourses and money.

In order to do so, we have to understand that reality is incredibly complex and a particular phenomenon does not end in economics, politics or even a specific ideological discourse. That is the reason that my prognosis regarding geopolitics’ future revolves around the creation of a school of thought eclectically constructed re interpreting the old ideas. So, we could talk about the lebensraum of a transnational corporation, which, in order to obtain the necessary strategic resources; has to deterritorialize the process of production involving different locals in a global process, creating new economic colonies and assuring this mechanism by means of creating a geopolitical order, expressed in a certain foreign policy, spreading the domination with the military as part of the industrial machinery.

Coming from my very own consideration, I think that this type of eclectical approach can be provided by the Critical Theory, which in its own theoretical corpus is diverse and it is not monolithic, and its main objective is to criticize the modern forms of domination, expressed in the post industrial capitalism as a political and economical system; tackling the two points above mentioned, ideology and capital, but at the same time, reinforced with ideas from truly geopolitical standpoints.

Richard Ashley, Robert Cox and Andrew Liklater have taken ideas from authors such as: Jurgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault to explain International Relations. And considering that coming from a similar tradition, Immanuel Wallerstein, has talked about the ideologization of the space, the spread of a specific discourse and with this discourse the differentiation between North and South, in terms of the one who domain and the dominated with his world-system. Harvey, also has consider this, when he establishes that the world is a world spatialized and divided. The inclusion of the Critical Theory is not far from the explication of the evolution of an entity according, either to its spatiality and the relation with the territory in which is evolving.

Considering the Lebensraum, understood not necessarily as a physical, monolithic space, but rather a mobile, mutable and ideological space, which can be restrain by geographical space but not necessarily. In this space, culture and ideology converge and create a vital space for individuals that modify. The prior, due to whichever ideological project is following the individual or the community.

It has to be taken into account that every geopolitical order creates mental images of the world according to a specific vision of the world and reinforcing it in a cycle. This way, is how the capitalist system is self reproduce. The appropriation of the resources now follows the route traced by ideology of exploitation and capital; the zones of exploitation are dominated by the establishment of the negative dialectic represented by the logics of the capital; the North also backs its strategy of domination and exploitation, with other discourses like the global warming and in its most brutal way with the military component. The great meta-narratives seek to maintain themselves over the production of foreign policies; all ideological order is operational and creates political-military policies with a certain perception of the world and spaciality

Finally, not all the Critical Theory is completely fitted to analyze geopolitics phenomena; Adorno’s studies in music little have to do with IR and geopoltics. However, I am talking about the political thinking within the Critical Theory, and more specifically, the postmodern Critical theory, which tries to incorporate social problems and therefore nearer to ideas like the Schools of Peace or the Geopolitics of the ambient