GEO 230 Spring 2022

 Two California Cities Take Initiative to Fight Climate Change https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/06/26/climate/26cli-lawsuit1/26cli-oil1-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp In 2018, two cities, San Francisco and Oakland, were engaged in a lawsuit vs. some major fossil fuel companies. As the article,  J udge Dismisses Suit Against Oil Companies Over Climate Change Costs ,  describes, the judge threw the lawsuit out- citing that the court is not the place to handle matters such as climate change (Schwartz, 2018). While it was not particularly successful, I still think that this was a good example of cities trying to take the initiative on climate change, without a state forcing them to do so.   In this case, the California cities wanted the defendants (companies such as BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell), to help pay for the costs of dealing with climate change (Schwartz, 2018). If it hadn’t been for the cities’ defeat, they would have made these companies pay for proj...

 US vs. UK Immigration Policies The United States and the United Kingdom are facing different immigration situations as we speak. While the UK is tightening up it's borders and denying refugees, the US is still adhering to the COVID-19 immigration policies that were supposedly to be lifted. In this post, we will compare the two.      Recently, Britain has announced that they will be sending asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing/settlement, reportedly becoming one of the first major powers to turn away refugees without even considering their cases (Castle, et al., 2022) . As  UK Plans to Send Some Asylum Seekers  details, if this is implemented, it would support Boris Johnson's main argument for Brexit, that Britain would "take back control of it's borders (Castle, et al., 2022)." While human right's groups claims that this violates international agreements, and could encourage other countries to do the same, a tactic deemed "offshoring (Castle, et al., ...

Reorganization of the Former Soviet Territories The Soviet Union, or now lack thereof, is the perfect example of boundaries changing over time. In a 1998 Journal by Frank Cass, he delves into the changing territories post-collapse of the Soviet Union. As Cass goes to explain, the 1990s brought upon a new era of geopolitics, surrounding the “changing territorial dimensions of the world order (Newmann, 1-2).”  shutterstock-290167274.jpg For some background, the Soviet Union (1922-1991), also known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR), was comprised of what are now the separate nation-states of Armenia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia (Kiprop, 2018). In 1922, a legalized union of “several Soviet republics” is what bound these territories together (Wikipedia, 2022).   As Cass argues, while some places in the world’s boundaries were becoming more permeab...

  US Military Bases and the Hegemonic Cycle kontrantieff.JPG As the textbook posits, the US is currently operating on the “opposite end of the hegemonic cycle (Flint, 123).” This means that, while they used to be able to achieve their international presence in other ways, it is now achieved solely by military intervention. The hegemonic cycle predicts that a state is doing better when it is reaching the world in ways that aren’t just militarism (Flint, 123).    Let’s try to better explain this by comparing two different military bases that the US has; in Cuba and in Afghanistan. Guantanamo_Bay_map.png   The Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba is the oldest foreign base that the US has. How did they get it, though? Well, not by any military means, but instead by a treaty that benefitted both parties. In the early 20 th  century, the US got to use the Cuban land for coaling, and in return, Cuba got paid for it (Cuba). This was during a time when the US was seen as very ...

  Feminist Geopolitics In simple terms, the feminist approach to geopolitics disputes hierarchical and state-centric conceptualizations of geopolitics (Flint, 86).  With this in mind, let's consider the mission of the United States Department of Defense : "The Department of Defense is America's largest government agency. With our military tracing its roots back to pre-Revolutionary times, the department has grown and evolved with our nation. Our mission is to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security."   This mission is definitely state centric- and, as mentioned above, feminist geopolitics challenges this idea.  globe-usa-highlighted-hi.png From what I got, where the Depart of Defense (DoD) might have a focus on ensuring our own nation’s security, feminist geopolitics would instead take an approach in which we consider how all nations relate to each other, without thinking that the US is the most important (Flint, 82). ...

How the Putin Shock Might Affect the World Economy WEB_MAP_UKRAINE_RUSSIA_SEPARATIST_AREAS_REFRESH.jpg When it comes to political geography, specifically the world economy, there are three types of scale; local, national and global . Within these, local is the scale of experience , national is the scale of ideology , and global is the scale of reality . Put simply, reality is filtered through nation-centered ideology, affecting people's daily experiences. But, allow me to explain, and it is easiest to do so if we go from the top down; starting with global. Global is the scale of reality, meaning the holistic, concert reality that is the world economy. National is the scale of ideology, which is a partial and incomplete view of that world system. This distorts reality into the false and limited picture that is nation-centered thinking. Local, the scale of experience, is our daily lives, which encompasses our daily needs. Pulling everything back together, the crucial events that stru...