The theme that dare not speak its name: Geopolitik, geopolitics and German foreign policy since unification

The purpose of this chapter is to trace the emergence of a new security imaginary in the foreign policy discourse in Germany during the 1990s and to determine whether it constitutes a return of Geopolitik in German foreign policy making. Does the re- appearance of geopolitical terms and expressions in the official and the academic discourses in post-unification Germany indicate such a shift? The essay will argue that the claims about a return of Geopolitik cannot be sustained. To the extent that the rhetoric of German government officials changes during the 1990s, this does not produce a coherent geopolitical security imaginary that stands diametrically opposed to the definition of political and institutional spaces of the Bonner Republik.

Triangular Geopolitics in Europe’s Eastern Neighbourhood. CEPS Commentary, 2 December 2014

Over the last few months, Russia has employed a number of economic and security measures to derail the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) between the EU and Ukraine. Russia’s opposition to the Agreement was based on the argument that it would damage its economy and weaken its trade ties with Ukraine. Russia’s actions ultimately led to war in Ukraine, but did not succeed in reversing Ukraine’s EU integration policies; instead there are now trilateral negotiations between the EU, Ukraine and Russia on mere technical trade aspects of the DCFTA. The Kremlin is using similar rhetoric and, to some extent, similar coercive measures against the DCFTAs with Moldova and Georgia. But the small scale of Moldovan and Georgian trade with Russia is not a legitimate reason for the EU to replicate the Ukraine ‘trialogue’ on the DCFTAs in these countries. Instead, Moldova’s heavy dependence on Russia’s energy and the former’s transit role for the EU offers a greater possibility to set up trilateral negotiations, similar to the recently finalised gas trialogue between the EU, Ukraine and Russia.

Trade and geopolitics: should the EU engage with the Eurasian Economic Union? EPC Policy Brief, 2 April 2015

In an effort to find a solution to the deteriorating relationship between the EU and Russia, various commentators, policy-makers and experts have suggested that the EU should seriously consider engaging with the Eurasian Economic Union, as part of a new ‘grand bargain’ between Russia and the EU. If Ukraine will no longer be forced to choose between two integrating regimes, so the argument goes, Russian sensibilities can be pacified, which will in turn, hopefully, lead to peace in eastern Ukraine. However, according to Rilka Dragneva and Kataryna Wolczuk, these arguments are based on a number of problematic assumptions about integration dynamics in the eastern neighbourhood. In this Policy Brief, they recommend the EU better think twice before further engaging with the EEU.

Geopolitics with European characteristics: An essay on pragmatic idealism, equality, and strategy. Egmont Paper 82, March 2016

‘A bizarre phenomenon,’ Der Spiegel concluded, after trying to figure out why young people left Germany to become foreign fighters in Syria. The magazine painted a portrait of two thirty-somethings with similar backgrounds and the same hobby – martial arts. One became director of a martial arts school in Hamburg, the other became a terrorist poster boy in Syria.2

Armenia's foreign policy, 1991–2004: Between history and geopolitics

This dissertation is the first systematic study of Armenia’s foreign policy during the post-independence period, between 1991 and 2004. It argues that a small state’s foreign policy is best understood when looking at the regional level. Armenia’s geographic proximity to Iran, Russia and Turkey, places it in an area of heightened geopolitical interest by various great powers. This dissertation explores four sets of relationships with Armenia’s major historical ‘partners’: Russia, Iran, Turkey and the West (Europe and the United States). Each relationship reveals a complex reality of a continuous negotiation between ideas of history, collective memory, nationalism and geopolitics. A detailed study of Armenia’s relations with these powers demonstrates how actors’ relations of amity and enmity are formed to constitute a regional security complex. Turkey represents the ultimate “other”, while both Europe and Iran are seen as ideational “others”, whose role in Armenia’s foreign policy, aside from pragmatic policy considerations, reflects a normative quest. Russia and the United States, on the other hand, represent the powerful structural forces that define the regional security complex, in which Armenia operates. This dissertation argues that although Armenia has been severely constrained in certain foreign policy choices, it was adept at carving a space for action that privileged the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh over other geopolitical imperatives.

Armenia's Foreign Policy, 1991-2004: Between History and Geopolitics

This dissertation is the first systematic study of Armenia’s foreign policy during the post-independence period, between 1991 and 2004. It argues that a small state’s foreign policy is best understood when looking at the regional level. Armenia’s geographic proximity to Iran, Russia and Turkey, places it in an area of heightened geopolitical interest by various great powers. This dissertation explores four sets of relationships with Armenia’s major historical ‘partners’: Russia, Iran, Turkey and the West (Europe and the United States). Each relationship reveals a complex reality of a continuous negotiation between ideas of history, collective memory, nationalism and geopolitics. A detailed study of Armenia’s relations with these powers demonstrates how actors’ relations of amity and enmity are formed to constitute a regional security complex. Turkey represents the ultimate “other”, while both Europe and Iran are seen as ideational “others”, whose role in Armenia’s foreign policy, aside from pragmatic policy considerations, reflects a normative quest. Russia and the United States, on the other hand, represent the powerful structural forces that define the regional security complex, in which Armenia operates. This dissertation argues that although Armenia has been severely constrained in certain foreign policy choices, it was adept at carving a space for action that privileged the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh over other geopolitical imperatives.

TTIP vs. BRICS: Consequences on Geopolitics and Internacional Relations of the XXIst. Century

The TTIP is a proposal on negotiations between the EU and the USA in order to create the largest free international trade area by extension, population and volume of trade of all existing ones. In our view, TTIP would be the geoeconomic answer to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), as a comercial, geopolitical and cooperation space in other areas such as the military, in both that TTIP reproduce on a commercial scale the political and military alliance already existing between good part of the EU and USA by the NATO. In this paper we will try to explain why the possible rivalry between TTIP and BRICS would reproduce in the XXIst. Century the schemes of “Cold War” inherited from XXth. Century, that in turn reproduced the geopolitical confrontations arising from the theory of Haltford McKinder pivot area and the traditional opposition between thalassocratic imperialisms (government on the seas and oceans) and tellurocratic imperialisms (government on an enormous portion of emerged land). Likewise, we will try to show why, at a dialectic of States level, the most populated, territorially extensive and with greater amount of resources political societies will be those that have the greatest ability to impose a particular model of international relations and its geopolitical hegemony on a universal scale in response to this viable confrontation between TTIP, plus TTP, vs. BRICS.

The European Union and its Northern Frontier : EUropean Geopolitics and its Arctic Context

The present study explores EUropean geopolitical agency in a distinct spatio-temporal context: the Arctic region of the early 21st century. Thus, it provides an in-depth analysis of the European Union’s process to construct EUropean legitimacy and credibility in its ‘Northern Neighbourhood’ between 2008 and 2014. Embedded in a conceptual and methodological framework using critical geopolitics, this study assesses the strategic policy reasoning of the EU and the implicit geopolitical discourses that guide and determine a particular line of argumentation so as to claim a ‘legitimate’ role in the Arctic and accordingly construct a distinct ‘EUropean Arctic space’. In doing so, it establishes a clearer picture on the (narrated) regional interests of the EU and the related developed policy and concrete steps taken in order to get hold of these interests. Eventually, the analysis gets to the conceptual bottom of what exactly fashioned the EU with geopolitical agency in the circumpolar North. As a complementary explanation, this study provides a thick description of the area under scrutiny – the Arctic region – in order to explicate the systemic context that conditioned the EU’s regional demeanour and action. Elucidated along the lines of Arctic history and identity, rights, interests and responsibility, it delineates the emergence of the Arctic as a region of and for geopolitics. The findings indicate that the sui generis character of the Arctic as EUropean neighbourhood essentially determined the EU’s regional performance. It explicates that the Union’s ‘traditional’ geopolitical models of civilian or normative power got entangled in a fluid state of Arctic affairs: a distinct regional system, characterised by few strong state actors with pronounced national Arctic interests and identities, and an indefinite local context of environmental changes, economic uncertainties and social challenges. This study applies critical geopolitics in a Political Science context and essentially contributes to a broader understanding of EU foreign policy construction and behaviour. Ultimately, it offers an interdisciplinary approach on how to analyse EU external action by explicitly taking into account the internal and external social processes that ultimately condition a certain EUropean foreign policy performance.

Direito Desportivo Internacional: a influência das normas e das decisões jusdesportivas internacionais no ordenamento jurídico brasileiro

Este trabalho tem como escopo analisar as influências das normas e das decisões jusdesportivas internacionais no ordenamento jurídico brasileiro. Para isso, alinharam-se as predileções do autor por Esporte, Direito Internacional e Relações Internacionais, assim como por outras ciências, como Geografia. Indubitável a importância do tema para a conjuntura atual, sendo o Brasil sede dos dois principais megaeventos esportivos em 2014 e 2016, a Copa do Mundo Fifa e os Jogos da XXXI Olimpíadas, os Jogos Olímpicos. Essa dissertação foi dividida em quatro capítulos. O primeiro trata da relação entre Esporte, Globalização e Geopolítica, e o segundo capítulo versa sobre o Esporte sob a perspectiva dos Direitos Humanos. Após estudar o Esporte sob a perspectiva do Estado e do Homem, analisam-se as fontes do Direito Desportivo Internacional e o ordenamento jusdesportivo. Os Estados não são os únicos produtores de normas jurídicas. Entidades privadas são capazes de produzir normas, em cooperação ou em conflito com o Estado. Admite-se, portanto, pluralidade de produção normativa. No caso do Direito Desportivo Internacional, optou-se por abordar quatro organizações esportivas internacionais: COI, Wada, Fifa e TAS/CAS, tema do derradeiro capítulo. A influência de seus regulamentos e de seus estatutos se mostrará não apenas nos estatutos e nos regulamentos de suas afiliadas, mas também na legislação nacional. Essas organizações não governamentais de alcance transnacional/internacional têm sua natureza jurídica de acordo com seus estatutos constitutivos. A tentativa de unificação de sistemas jurídicos deve ser abandonada, dando lugar à concepção de harmonização. A dificuldade de harmonização é causada pela pluralidade de Estados e de atores privados que tentam normatizar as relações jurídicas que envolvem o esporte. Desse modo, as influências dessas normas internacionais de caráter privado são marcantes no ordenamento jurídico pátrio. Analisa-se como ocorrem essas influências e de que forma cada produtor de norma jurídica poderia atuar para que prevaleça a cooperação entre eles no âmbito jusdesportivo.