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Geopolitical perspectives on war and peace GEOG 220 Geopolitics

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This week Geopolitical perspectives on war and peace

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

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Geography s primary purpose is to make war (Yves Lacoste, 1976)

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

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Hostile contention by means of armed forces between parties (OED)

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

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

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Slogans from the Party George Orwells 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

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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

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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

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MAPPING FOR KILLING AND CONQUERING

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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 )

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Roy Military Survey of Scotland, 1747-1755

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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.

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DISTORTED GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE

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James Moxon (1691)

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U.S. Army Geospatial Center (2010)

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THREATENING GEOPOLITICAL REPRESENTATIONS

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OTHERING and DEHUMANIZING DISCOURSES

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Cold War geopolitical map - 1980

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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

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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

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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)

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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