Suchergebnisse

China's footprints in Afghanistan are vied by many, both, friends and rivals as it cautiously reveals its geostrategic goals. It would like to emulate the African and Central Asian success story in Afghanistan as well, which is not terra incognito. Afghanistan has been the fulcrum of geopolitical balance of power during the Cold war days. China's Afghanistan policy (CAP) is marked by its insecurities of terrorism, extremism and separatism in Xinjiang province. It has heavily invested in procuring Central Asian energy resources. Both, the concerns go well in formulation of CAP. However, the presence of the US and Russia make the scenario competitive, where its 'Peaceful Rise' may be contested. Besides, China sees South Asian Region as its new Geoeconomic Frontier. All these concerns get factored into CAP. It remains to be seen what options partake in CAP, as China prepares for durable presence in Afghanistan in the long run.

Post-Soviet Europe-Asia is reminiscent of an organizational mosaic with many regional groups emerging around Russia, both favoring and challenging its dominance in Eurasia. GUAM (later GUUAM) was one of the early geopolitical formations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The four former Soviet states of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova were encouraged by the 1996 CFE Treaty of the Conference held in Vienna to form an identity opposed to Russia. The geopolitical significance of this was quickly realized by the West, and they saw GUAM as an important player in the Black Sea region, where Russia's strategic access was of vital importance. GUAM was also important due to its location, since it occupied three land-corridors to Mackinder's Heartland. Poland and the Baltic states had already created an arc between Russia and Western Europe. The rise of Ukraine and Moldova against Russia extended this arc from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Uzbekistan joined GUAM in 1999, turning it into GUUAM. This transformed the arc into a circle around Russia extending to the Caspian and further East toward China. GUAM reminded the global strategists of the new forms of Cold War tactics that had resurfaced and the spread in the Great Game trends, which energy geopolitics only served to aggravate. GUAM has been particularly focused on Russia's influence in the Near Abroad. Its effort to check Russia's energy geopolitics was one of the key features. The Ukraine-Russia conflict over gas pricing is a well known issue. It has also tried to create a plank for NATO's advance into the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. The Partnership for Peace (PfP) program has been a success in Georgia and Ukraine. The fate of GUAM has already been overshadowed by wider regional cooperation among the Black Sea countries. This has far more potential for secure economic and political cooperation, unlike GUAM, which has earned a bad reputation for being too geopolitically embroiled with Russia. The U.S. has been a consistent supporter of the GUAM initiatives. GUAM received another setback when Uzbekistan left the organization in 2005, after seeing the portent dangers of the Color Revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the destabilizing Andijan riots. According to Daly, "GUUAM was slowly replacing its economic orientation with increased military-political cooperation, including the formation of joint military units. As Uzbekistan does not share a contiguous border with the other GUUAM member states, the shift in emphasis away from commercial interests, combined with Uzbekistan's geographical isolation, led Tashkent to conclude that its participation was no longer in the country's best interests." The democratic initiative of the West went against the interests of the Central Asian elite, who wish to retain power through controlled democratic transition. Another fact that distinguishes them is that most of the Central Asian republics are predominantly Muslim societies, whereas the GUAM states are primarily Orthodox Christian, apart from Azerbaijan. India has been keeping an eye on the energy geopolitics of Central Asia and the Caucasus as its own growing energy need demands diversify. This obviously brings the Black Sea region (the principal unit of GUAM) into focus. The Black Sea region has become one of the most vital outlets for Russia's foreign energy trade. And it is in hot competition with the Western powers, which plan to bypass its traditional monopoly with the help of Georgia and Turkey. India's relations with GUAM are under strong caveat from the fact that India can hardly afford to associate itself with the groups challenging Russia in its own sphere of influence. India and Russia have successfully resuscitated the legacy of the Moscow-Delhi ties of Soviet times. India is also one of the biggest customers of Russian military hardware. The Indian approach to GUAM has not been that of a regional organization, rather it has tried to forge bilateral relations with each individual country so as to step aside of any regional influence under GUAM. India has preferred to keep itself closely confined to an economic agenda with these countries. There have been wide-ranging cooperation agreements, tracing the essential past of Soviet days. Reciprocal trade has been slowly growing. India's policy is also distinctive in terms of identifying the political and strategic importance of these individual countries. Ukraine is one of the key countries with which India has been extensively engaged. India has kept a low profile with Moldova and Georgia. India's relations with these countries are influenced by the relations of these countries with Russia. Georgia and Russia have been on adverse terms, since the former has been allowing NATO and the U.S. ample room to maneuver against Russia's economic and strategic interests. Georgia accuses Russia of cornering it and leaving it with no other choice but to join the NATO forces.

Sir Halford Mackinder's paper, The Geographical Pivot of History, has retained a power to engage those concerned with the analysis of epochal events in world geopolitics. The end of the Cold War witnessed the geopolitical phoenix rising in the "new world order," to the extent that the legacy of Mackinder has been consistently revisited in geopolitical discourse on Central Asia and, inter alia, Eurasia. If the "age of discovery" had been the prima facie introduction to Europe of new lands and new societies across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania, then the age of capitalism had given way to virtually the complete political appropriation of these continents. Otherwise, how could there have been a sudden realization in the form of Mackinder's cognitive metaphor that the "Heartland," hitherto the vast moribund steppes of Eurasia, had suddenly become of prime importance? The paper presented here addresses a dual question. First, it looks into the historical-geographical conditions in which the Pivot was construed, and the systemic variables of global capitalism which are the source of its programming across time-space. Second, it addresses an aspect of Mackinder's model that has seldom been considered-the spatial. One of the prime reasons that the latter has so often been overlooked could be the prevalent abhorrence of mapping simple geometrical and physical tools into the complex and changing nature of the geopolitical world. Had it not been for the 11 September, 2001 episode, the restive state of world affairs would have found few takers for the platonic Heartland-Rimland debates that often used to wash the shores of Cold War geopolitics. Here, an attempt has been made to look into the dual nature of Mackinder's theory both as map and concept. The paper's original contribution is to show how new light is shed on the Pivot by tilting it on its axis.