GEO 230 Spring 2022

  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...