Offering theoretical insights on region building, this book explores the attempts to formulate a political and institutional vision for the Black Sea region in the post-9/11 era and in the context of the enlargements of the EU and NATO.
Offering theoretical insights on region building, this book explores the attempts to formulate a political and institutional vision for the Black Sea region in the post-9/11 era and in the context of the enlargements of the EU and NATO. It investigates in depth these attempts, viewed as a failure by the key actors involved, in order to understand how regions emerge in international politics as well as how and why they may fail to come into being. To this end, the book explores a range of factors that impacted region building in the Black Sea, considering the role of region builders involved, their practices and the context of their actions, and the spatial representations and security discourses that were integral to the region building process. Hence, attention is paid to how these factors both enabled and constrained the discursive construction of the Black Sea region, thus identifying the elements that distinguish the Black Sea from other successful cases of region building. Based on critical approaches towards international relations and political geography, this book both expands and deepens the scope and understanding of regions and will thus appeal to academics and students in the fields of International Relations, Security Studies, Political Geography, and Regional Integration.
Today, we know what the Black Sea is not from a strategic perspective, but we do not know what it is. This strategic indecision is the explanation for all the conflicts, frozen or not, explicit or tacit, and all the political and geopolitical tensions that are now taking place in this space and that are becoming endemic. The story of the Black Sea continues… This text is the first encyclopaedia explicitly dedicated to the geopolitics of the Black Sea, written for Western audiences, an academic research which appeals to the wider academic community, PhD students, professors, and researchers, and to any reader interested in geopolitics, history, international relations, economy, sociology, history, and geography.
This edited volume focuses on various forms of regionalism and neighborhoods in the Baltic-Black Sea area. In the light of current reshaping of borderlands and new geopolitical and military confrontations in Europe's eastern margins, such as the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas, this book analyzes different types and modalities of regional integration and region-making from a comparative perspective. It conceptualizes cooperative and conflictual encounters as a series of networks and patchworks that differently link and relate major actors to each other and thus shape these interconnections as domains of inclusion and exclusion, bordering and debordering, securitization and desecuritization. This peculiar combination of geopolitics, ethnopolitics and biopolitics makes the Baltic-Black Sea trans-national region a source of inspiring policy practices, and, in the light of new security risks, a matter of increased concern all over Europe. The contributors from various disciplines cover topics such as cultural and civilizational spaces of belonging and identity politics, the rise of right-wing populism, region building under the condition of multiple security pressures, and the influence and regional strategies of different external powers, including the EU, Russia, and Turkey, on cross- and trans-regional relations in the area.
The term “Intermarium” has a long historical tradition and was commonly used to define the area between the Baltic and Black Seas. With its regular re-appearances in contemporary academic and political discourses, this book explores and assesses a variety of its connotations. In order to do this, it applies a multi-dimensional approach to the Intermarium. Six researchers specializing in Central and Eastern European history, geopolitics, security, economics, and cultural studies are brought together here to share their expert knowledge. As a result, the book discusses various, unique aspects of the Intermarium. At the very end, a conclusion is drawn as to whether the cognominal framework possesses any feasible potential for emergence and development in the contemporary international architecture.
This book focuses on the recent political trajectories within the Baltic Sea Region from one of the success stories of regionalism in Europe to a potential area of military confrontation between Russia and NATO. The authors closely examine the following issues: new security challenges for the region stemming from Russia’s staunch anti-EU and anti-NATO polices, institutions and practices of multi-level governance in the region, and different cultural strategies that regional actors employ. The common threads of this innovative volume are issues of changing borders and boundaries in the region, and logics of inclusion and exclusion that shape its political contours. From diverse disciplinary and methodological positions the authors explain policies of specific Baltic Sea states, as well as structural matters that make them a region.
This book brings together scholars from across a variety of academic disciplines to assess the current state of the subfield of popular geopolitics. It provides an archaeology of the field, maps the flows of various frameworks of analysis into (and out of) popular geopolitics, and charts a course forward for the discipline. It explores the real-world implications of popular culture, with a particular focus on the evolving interdisciplinary nature of popular geopolitics alongside interrelated disciplines including media, cultural, and gender studies.
"Azerbaijan and the New Energy Geopolitics of Southeastern Europe" comes at a critical time when concerns about energy security are growing in the midst of military, economic, and energy conflicts in East and Southeast Europe. As the construction of the Southern Gas Corridor from Azerbaijan to Europe is advancing, natural gas from the Caspian region will challenge the gas monopoly of any single supplier in Southeast Europe, thus changing the geopolitical landscape in the region.An edited volume with ten chapters, this study enhances our understanding of Southeast Europe's energy security and the potential impact of the Southern Gas Corridor. The book focuses attention on Azerbaijan's aspiring role as an energy supplier and contributor to energy security in Southeast Europe, its evolving relations with countries in the region, and, consequently, Baku's expanding relations with the European Union and the United States.
"In this volume leading scholars from Europe, Russia, the U.S. and the Black Sea itself address the dynamics of the wider Black Sea region, discuss major issues of conflict, and identify potential for cooperation. Their contributions result from a collaborative research project organized by the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, the Austrian Institute for International Affairs in Vienna, and the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation."--BOOK JACKET.