1. Geopolitical perspectives on war and peace GEOG 220 – Geopolitics

2. This week… Geopolitical perspectives on war and peace

3. This class… Thinking about war Geography, geopolitics and war Conventional geopolitical perspectives on war

4. “Geography ‘s primary purpose is to make war” (Yves Lacoste, 1976)

5. What is war? Write down your understanding of war, and then discuss it briefly with your neighbor.

6. “Hostile contention by means of armed forces between parties” (OED)

7. "War is the continuation of Politik (policy/politics) by other means“ Carl von Clausewitz (On War, 1832)

8. “At least 1000 battle-related deaths in one calendar year.” UCDP Conflict Database, Uppsala University

9. Slogans from “the Party” George Orwell’s book ‘1984’ (pub. 1949) Rather than being ‘exceptional’, the logic of war is at play in mechanisms maintaining social injustices Michel Foucault (Society must be defended, 1975

10. War and geographical knowledge Resort to war: geo-strategic imperatives Conduct of war: topography and terrain, distribution of populations, location of infrastructure and economic assets) Representation of war: imaginative geographies of ‘the enemy’ and conduct of hostilities Memorialization of war: symbolic landscapes

11. War, geography and geopolitics Cartography and geography have military roots and uses – Uses for military conquest and ‘pacification’ Geographical knowledge is frequently built through accounts of war – Official statements and media Geopolitical perspectives often associated with discourses of danger and enmity – Perspective on ‘the world’ as a dangerous place – Simplifying approach prone to dualism – ‘Dehumanization’ of victims of war

12. MAPPING FOR KILLING AND CONQUERING

13. Surveyors at work on the military survey of Scotland, which was masterminded by William Roy between 1747 and 1755. The finished manuscript survey covered thirty-eight sheets and was intended to provide information for the pacification of the Highlands after the 1745 Rebellion (K.Top.L.83-2.). Paul Sandby's 'View near Loch Tannoch' (1749 )

14. Roy Military Survey of Scotland, 1747-1755

16. BuckEyeBuckEye US Army Geospatial Center collects high-resolution, 3-D terrain data using a 39-megapixel color camera and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) elevation data to produce unclassified 10-15 centimeter resolution imagery for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and mapping missions in Afghanistan.

17. DISTORTED GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE

18. James Moxon (1691)

20. U.S. Army Geospatial Center (2010)

21. THREATENING GEOPOLITICAL REPRESENTATIONS

23. ‘OTHERING’ and ‘DEHUMANIZING’ DISCOURSES

25. Cold War geopolitical map - 1980

27. Geopolitical perspectives and praxis Conventional geopolitics: integrating ‘geography’ in power struggles between states Accounting for resources (land), terrain (mountains), and spatial position (proximity/distance) Using geographical tools in power struggles, such as maps (‘intelligence’, legitimization of claims) Seeing the world through its cartographic representation Defining the enemy or target through geographical entities

28. Conclusion [conventional] geopolitics has mostly been about rivalries between great powers and their contestations of power on the large scale. These specifications of the political world focus on states and the perpetuation of threats mapped as external dangers to supposedly pacific polities. Much geopolitical discourse specifies the world as a dangerous place, hence precisely because of these mappings, one supposedly necessitating violence in what passes for a realist interpretation of great powers as the prime movers of history. Simon Dalby, 2011, Peace and Geopolitics: Imagining Peaceful Geographies

29. Conclusion Conventional geopolitical perspective: Not only a distortion of what we learn about countries with which ‘we’ are at war… but also about who is the ‘other’ (the enemy) and who we are (as an imagined community of ‘defenders’ or ‘conquerors’)

30. So what?  Challenge conventional geopolitical perspective and geopolitical contexts that tend to justify violence  Be aware of “military mappings” of the world  Beware of simplifications of identities